What Is Character Design? And How to Get Started

What is character design? 

Character design includes creating characters for animated films, comics, TV, toys, and publications. A character starts as a concept: personality traits, behaviours, and physical attributes. Then, the designer sketches the character or uses design software to bring the character to life in print, on screen, or as a physical object.  

Discover the discipline of character design, potential salaries, and how you can make a start in this creative career.

Elements of good character design 

What makes a character interesting and memorable to an audience and what sets one character apart from others comes down to good character design. This starts with three important elements:

1. A silhouette shows the outline of a character’s shape and excludes interior details like facial features and colours. Using shape language, you can create meaning through the lines, curves, and angles that make up a character’s silhouette. These choices can mean distinguishing between a character that looks soft and cuddly and menacing and dangerous. 

2. A colour palette refers to the designer’s use of different colours to make a character unique. Using colour theory, you can choose colours for characters effectively and evoke emotions in the audience. For example, red can convey a character’s passion or intensity, while green can convey a connection to nature or serenity. 

3. Exaggeration refers to making some of a character’s features more prominent than others, such as by enlarging the eyes or having the character make dynamic gestures. Depending on what you exaggerate, you can make a character appear comical, beautiful, evil, heroic, and more.   

Tip: Look for instances of good character design in your media and note the silhouettes, use of colour, and exaggeration. For example, the world knows the Disney character Mickey Mouse for the size and shape of his ears, broad smile, and optimism in the cartoons in which he appears.  

What does a character designer do?

Character designers, sometimes called character animators, are responsible for choosing each detail of a character to communicate a personality, role in a storyline, relationship to other characters, and other essential aspects. 

Consider this  list of specific duties and tasks you may be responsible for in a character designer role: 

• Exploring character concepts

• Designing characters’ visual appearances

• Developing characters’ personalities, behaviours, gestures, facial expressions, and body movements  

• Drawing upon psychology to explore a character’s psyche 

• Exploring different characters impacts on a story’s plot and themes 

• Collaborating with other creators on a team to create characters 

• Using digital design or software to create visual representations of characters  

• Staying up to date with the latest animation and 3D design technologies 

Depending on your interests, you may want to focus on a particular area of character design, such as: 

• Anime character design: Features exaggerated facial expressions and large and expressive eyes of human-like characters, while bodies are relatively proportional 

• Fantasy character design: Often features elves, witches, fairies, mermaids, or other supernatural creatures

• Cartoon character design: Features characters that appear in a cartoon series or animated film and are meant to look drawn rather than true-to-life 

Tip: Consider exploring inclusive character design to connect with diverse audiences and represent the world around us. Areas of inclusion might include characters with different skin tones, cultural backgrounds, gender identities, age groups, occupations, body types, physical abilities, and clothing and hairstyles. 

Character design jobs 

As of July 2024, career sites list open animation positions in India as follows: 

• Naukri: 1055 jobs [1]

• LinkedIn: 359 jobs [2]

• Indeed: 1000+ jobs [3]

• Glassdoor: 1417 jobs [4]

Industries include sports, gaming, entertainment, language learning, software development, IT, consulting, web design, health care, and education. Hiring companies include Rockstar Games, XR Digitech, Orange Shark, EY, Sparkle Minds, and STEMpedia.  

What degree do you need to be a character designer?

In general, career sites recommend that you complete your 10+2 in any stream and earn a bachelor’s degree in animation, fine arts, multimedia, or a related field to apply for jobs in character design. You might decide to continue your education and pursue a master’s degree in animation or similar. 

Tip: To find out what skills, experience, education, and other qualifications employers seek in a character designer, scour job listings on career sites. You may find it useful to create accounts with various career sites and set yourself up to receive notifications about new character designer job listings. 

How much do character designers make?

According to Glassdoor, character artists in India make, on average, ₹48,000 per month as of July 2024 [5]. 

Character design software 

The table below explores the cost and features of five different character design software programs. Use this table as a starting point for finding the best software program for you:

How to design a character 

If you’re ready to design your first character and see your ideas take shape, follow these steps: 

1. Prepare and plan.

The first step is to decide on the kind of character you want to create.  Prompts to guide and narrow your preparation include: 

• What kind of story will the character be a part of?

• What is the story about? Describe what happens and how the story ends. 

• Identify the genre, such as fantasy, comedy, mystery, etc.

• What is the character’s role in the story? 

2. Use character design prompts.

The next step is to explore the character’s psyche and essence more deeply using character design prompts that spark your imagination: 

• What goals and motivations drive the character to act? 

• What personality traits set the character apart from others? 

• How will these traits correspond to the character’s most salient physical features? 

Need more character design ideas to fuel more creative energy? Look online for pre-made resources by searching the following terms: 

• Character design generator: This can be an app or internet tool for auto-generating ideas or a basic visual appearance for new characters. 

• Character design sheet: This overviews a character in multiple poses and details the character’s personality, psyche, and role in a story. 

• Character design template: This can be a pre-drawn outline or sketch of a stock character. You can modify a template by changing or adding details as you fine-tune a new character.  

3. Gather character reference materials. 

Before you start sketching and designing your character’s physical appearance, you’ll need some visual examples and inspiration to serve as reference material. Consider creating a mood board on Pinterest or collecting posts on Instagram from other accounts. Examples of reference material you might need include: 

• Hairstyles

• Facial expressions

• Poses

• Clothing or costumes

• Gestures

• Body types and proportions

4. Create a thumbnail sketch. 

A thumbnail sketch is a visual mockup of the character you want to create. The sketch is an important step, even if you’re not a trained artist. When sketching, use your design templates and sheets to capture the basic shape of your character, proportions, the most salient physical features, and the colours. Next, you’ll fill in details, such as adding buttons to a costume or more volume to the hair. 

5. Use software to finalise your character. 

Once you choose a character design software program, as your final step, turn the thumbnail sketch into a polished digital illustration. Familiarise yourself with the software program's features to get the most out of the final design work.  

Repeat this process to complete more character designs. You might consider compiling a character design portfolio for a job search, taking on freelance projects, launching your own character design brand, and showcasing your work to family and friends.  

Learn character design with Coursera. 

Character design is a creative career that involves technical skills, imagination, and artistic abilities. You’ll want to earn a degree in animation or a relevant field and explore animation software.

Online courses can be a great way to formalise your foundational training in character design. Learn from professional character designers and observe them in action in the CalArts Character Design for Video Games course, available on Coursera.