How I design book characters
It's all about ~story~
If it isn’t obvious from my newsletter name, I LOVE to draw book characters. The process of bringing them to life on the page is so satisfying because they don’t exist in visual form without that work, and I take such great pride in being able to do that.
I get asked a lot how I do it, and I realize I (sort of) have a defined process for this, and it essentially follows the design thinking process, and includes 5 steps:
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
This is fancy corporate speak, but it’s a framework for solving problems. Some of this is specific to the tech world, and so you might be asking how is designing a book character solving a problem, but the act of attempting to bring the book character to life IS the problem you’re trying to solve.
What are the details, the characters, and the vibe of this character that would make them recognizable to a reader on the page?
So think of it more like this:
Empathize (Understand the book and overall mood and tone)
Define (Get inspiration)
Ideate (Sketch!)
Prototype and Test (Assess and evaluate your work and try again)
So here are my steps to doing that!
Step 1: Empathize (Understand the book)
This might seem obvious, but it’s vital to understand the overall mood, vibe, and tone of the book! Whether that means you read the book, or need the author to provide this information, understanding the overall tone and mood of the book will help you make informed decisions in your character art.
I do this by:
Reading the book
Looking at other people’s art of the character
Creating mood boards
Creating Spotify playlists for a mood or vibe
Step 2: Define (Find Inspiration)
This often happens in tandem to step one, but for the sake of my design process framework, this is more specifically:
Gathering the character descriptions
Looking at models who fit character descriptions
Looking at actor fan casts
Writing down the features that you feel like are important to capture for that specific character.
Step 3: Ideate (Sketch and make decisions)
The first 2 steps are intended to give you the tools to help make the potentially a hazy aura of a character more visible for you to begin sketching. These elements should give you at least a baseline place to begin as you start to figure out how you want this character to look.
When you start sketching, you want to constantly be thinking about personality, story, and shape. Every decision you make in drawing the character should relate somehow to their overall story.
For example: did they have a rough childhood? If so, maybe they have a broken nose, are skinnier, etc. Understanding the character will help you make more unique and engaging decisions about their design to illustrate a broader depth to their story.
Pose and facial expressions are also critical to helping the character feel more accurate on the page, so think about how you want the character to be positioned in relation to the story and themselves.
Certain shapes also illustrate different meanings. For example, someone who has sharper lines and edges might come across as meaner, whereas someone illustrated with softer and rounder lines might be a sweeter, nicer character. These are general ideas and not rules, but they help you make decisions about how you want to draw the character, always going back to their story and personality.
Step 4: Assess and sketch again!
The odds of getting the character exactly right on the first time are slim, so this is where it’s important to reflect on your work and ask yourself:
What elements work with this character?
What feels off or doesn’t seem to fit?
And also think about color. What colors fit the book and the character, and help make this person feel more alive on the page? Bring color to the art and continue to design and iterate on what seems to work and what doesn’t.
This is a quick little summary of the general process, but I hope it provides some perspective on how to begin to draw book characters that feel both book-accurate and alive! I actually made a YouTube video on this 2 years ago if you’d like to watch that, and I go a bit more in depth into the details and provide examples:
Sorry for being inconsistent with Substacks, but I haven’t gone anywhere and still intend to update this page! If you liked this explanation and this type of content, let me know!
Thanks for reading!
xo Olivia