The Webcomic Diaries #2 | Character Design Tips And A Showcase Of My Character Sheets

Webcomic update and mini character design chat!

Hello friends!

Welcome to the second installment of my ‘Webcomic Diaries’ series! I thought today I would share some insights into my character design process. I’m really loving writing and creating here on Substack. Everyone has left such wonderful comments on my blog posts as well as many of you expressing excitement about my webcomic. It’s definitely boosted my motivation to keep going. The last installment of my ‘Webcomic Diaries’ did extremely well and I can’t thank you all enough for reading it and supporting me on my webcomic journey!

If you haven’t read the first installment of this series yet, you can check it out here:

As I stated in my last webcomic update, I have finished scripting the teaser page for my young adult Irish superhero webcomic which I’m planning to release (hopefully) in the autumn. I would really like to launch my webcomic either in September or October of this year but we will have see how long it takes for me to get everything sorted. As you can probably tell, I am still a newbie artist and I’m still figuring out how to draw but I’ve wanted to create a comic book series for the longest time so I’m finally doing it (regardless of how low my art skill level may be.)

I thought it would be fun to share with you all some of the character designs I have been working on. So far I’ve only made four character design sheets. Since I’m only starting with a simple teaser page and a few one-shot comic strips, I’m still feeling my way and figuring out what way I want my characters to look as well as keeping things easy. Some of these designs are a little rough because I’m still getting used to colouring digitally so bear that in mind.

The main character of my webcomic - both in her superhero form and her normal everyday civilian form

Four of the main characters featured in my webcomic

In terms of character design tips, I often take inspiration from real people in my own personal life when I’m designing characters for my stories. These four characters are all main characters in my webcomic series. There’s my main superhero character, her best friend, her romantic interest, and her best friend’s mother. For the main character’s best friend for example, I took a lot of inspiration from my sister - the blonde hair, the pigtails, the big expressive eyes, the bubbly personality, and so on.

I find doing that helps me to create character designs more easily. Taking inspiration from real people to build your own fictional characters helps so much because you already know the real person so well - their appearance, their personality, their body language, etc. I understand this tip doesn’t work for every comic book story but it’s a good starting point.

My main character in her school uniform with her “Clark Kent” glasses

The main character’s best friend (inspired by my sister)

I decided to go with a simple cartoony style because this is my very first webcomic so I want to my character designs to be simple and easy enough to draw. I don’t want to draw my characters in a super detailed style because I don’t want to pressure myself too much. I want to enjoy drawing my webcomic and I think in order for the process to be sustainable for me, it’s probably best to pick character designs that aren’t going to be too difficult or intense to draw. They need to be fun for me to draw over and over again.

One of my favourite characters in my webcomic - think of her as a sassy badass Irish Commissioner Gordon!

The main character’s childhood best friend / romantic interest

Another tip that’s helped me to design my own characters is setting my characters apart with distinctive features. I want my characters to be attractive to me so that way I can enjoy drawing them and I won’t get bored. I love drawing characters that have really big expressive eyes and exaggerated features. Setting your characters apart is a great way to keep your character designs interesting and that way they don’t all look the exact same.

And the last tip I’ve learned about character design is to keep a cohesive art style. For the female characters, I want to keep their eyes big and give them all the same small simple noses and slim body types. The male characters are all quite muscular and broad because those body builds are easier for me to draw and it helps me to keep the style more consistent.

Like I said, these are only four of the main characters that will be featured in my webcomic. There are many more to come! I’m super excited to share more character designs and updates from my webcomic soon!

As always, thank you all so much for clicking on this blog post and giving it a read. It means so much to me that there are people out there who enjoy my writing and who are looking forward to reading my webcomic.

I hope some of these character design tips have helped. Thank you all again!

Love,

Laura-Louise xoxo