How do I create appealing western character designs?

>>7621450 (OP)
Post your designs so far so we an give you critique.

>>7621450 (OP)
Appealing is when round exaggerated big eyes simple
Unappealing is when realistic lanky no chin big mouth long midland

both look ugly

>>7621458
shut up

It's in the ability to exaggerate and express. Look at each pic on the left.
The eyes alone convey plenty, and the facial expressions are very clear in their emotions
The body language is very flexible.

Realism is the bane of expressionism.
The right is just too damn static

A sure way to get more appeal is to get more skilled. Combine that with cultivating some Taste and you're pretty much set up for success.

>>7621450 (OP)
yuro genes

>>7621450 (OP)
This isnt going to be the magic trick to solve everything but as I’m seeing it the most common mistakes happening on designs like on the right are
>Characters designed to be seen exclusively from one angle to save money
>lines are uniform and thin, no indication of depth or movement to them whatsoever
>bodies are kept stiff and move around like 2D puppets in a sidescroller because of the angle restrictions
>If bodies are not kept stiff they are treated like gelatinous blobs with no bones or muscles

>>7621450 (OP)
>appealing western character designs
Doesn't exist. Western character design pretty much just means caricatures, deformed weird looking abominations, etc. It's not about appeal, it's about making it look ugly and funny.

>>7621507
You can make characters that are suppose to be seen as "ugly" look "good", take asterix for example, he has a big nose and he is a hairy midget but he is not repulsive to look at like the characters on the right

>>7621518
even Bonemine is cute very motherly.

>>7621518
Asterix is a weird case where the character designs basically peaked in the early to mid 60s and gradually became increasingly grotesque into 70s, Obelix especially. But those early albums are immensely soulful, especially Asterix in Britain.

>>7621450 (OP)
don't be american

>>7621507
We've had plenty of cartoon characters that were genuinely cute.

>>7621518
The difference is that Asterix is clearly made by a very happy guy who wanted to entertain everyone

This is the reason why Western art sucks now
Expressionism reflects the artist.
The western art today is filled with bad people

Newgrounds stuff is a major contrast to the modern cartoons

>>7621450 (OP)
Honestly I can't even consider Big Mouth to be art. It seems like the point is to be educational and the fact that they had to draw SOMETHING for it to technically qualify as a show was something they were forced to accept. Nothing about the show looks like the creators wanted it to exist.
Same with hte grubhub ad, the point was to create ana dvertise, which is inherently not art. They did use art as a tool to achieve their agenda, but it wasn't a message, it was a shill, so it ceases to be art.
I don't know what that shit in the top right and bottom right are, and brickleberry at least looks like it's trying to be a family guy clone. So it is art, I see expression and humanity and a fat fucking cameltoe.

>>7621485
>The right is just too damn static
>>7621505
>bodies are kept stiff and move around like 2D puppets in a sidescroller because of the angle restrictions

That's because of the intersection of
>tightening budgets for the actual work (and not the marketing/negotiation deals or embezzlement)
and
>the western canon for animation holding it as mindlessly sacred that the more frames in a movement the better quality it is
This IS changing, slowly. Boomers still see anime and shit like the slower framerate segments of Puss In Boots and Spiderverse as "slideshows" because of this norm though. So you're going to still see puppet animation and a shitload of motion tweening until the data says they aren't worth it anymore and the animators are told to do something different. Or the industry collapses and we have only indie stuff remaining. Either way, you won't have to deal with it for that much longer.

>>7621543
Curious to see some new grounds cartoon characters compared to mainstream cartoons

>>7621645
Let it collapse and let it be "only indies remaining" then only the passionate people will make art, vs the people who want to commodify it.

>>7621532
I think thats more to do with the fact that the artist was getting old and his friend/writer died. Since it was a passion project, he didnt want anyone else's help but that double the workload. So we see a drop in the quality of the art and writing itself over the years.

>>7621661
Smiling Friends, Harry Patridge, Oddballs, and Digital Circus all started on Newgrounds

You can easily tell that it's Newgrounds because the humor is always a no-holds-barred level of edge.

>>7621645
doubt it’s going to disappear completely tbr, because afaik it really is that much cheaper than the alternative. Cartoons for toddlers and young children has always had a high demand for low cost stiff animation, and cartoons for adults tend towards the same, largely because they are less about the visuals and more about the spoken content. That makes cutting costs on animation easy to justify in those contexts.

>>7621859
It's not about the cutting of costs but about the kinds of work the low budgets are put towards. If you're drawing twice as many frames, simplifying the designs to a ridiculous degree makes sense for cutting costs.
Saving frames is more of a thing in anime, and western studios are gradually learning to do this and make it look good, but the transition is slow since the standard mentality is that more frames = more better, even if it's cheap shit.

It's entirely on the directors to do this properly, and they're picked and subject to being okayed by the people with the cash.

>>7621895
I guess the thing I’m also trying to get at is that many of these shows arent even doing that many frames, it’s more like they’re doing flash animation. Theres degrees to it of course, but something like Peppa pig makes pretty good money without needing to do anything big with their animation. I don’t see that approach to doing certain animated shows dying out anytime soon.

>>7621921
Yes, the cheat is that using puppet animation allows you to just motion tween those extra frames in because everything is rigged up similar to a 3d model. It just looks really fucking rancid and outside of things for tiny children doesn't produce the secondary sales of merch that most of these shows are looking to capitalize on. The alternative is the "new" rubber hose which was what things like flapjack and adventure time were utilizing, then it moved to hybridizing the two. Rick and Morty is an example of that.

The idea that you can have a single frame last for more than a split second is an unsettling alien concept for some people. But as I said, it's less so now. As cringey and crap as they are in a story/thematic sense, some of the netflix originals - castlevania, he-man, dmc - are at least giving people experience with this. They used to be rare, and mostly adult swim was doing them - Venture Bros, The Boondocks, Black Dynamite.

Really the only thing that needs to be done is to use styles like the left side of OP's image with these techniques, and then the /co/mrades will be happy instead of having to seethe over the anime style itself.

>>7621450 (OP)
I'd say it's just a matter of taste. Find good work and be inspired by it.
I think an issue is that many western creators were inspired by other creators who were lacking in the visual department, but were inspired by their work so much that it impacted their visual taste.
Think Homestuck, a comic that I consider one of the true greats of the webcomic medium that utilises it in ways no one could or have since... but it's pretty visually ugly, or overly simple. However, there is little doubt that Homestuck was extremely influential, to the point that it likely had many many imitators for its overly simplistic messy art. The same can be said for Scott Pilgrim, or Adventure Time, or Steven Universe.

However, you may think that these art styles weren't so bad, and that may be true, but then along come the imitators who seem to (as a universal rule) always do a worse job of what it was they're copying, often flanderising it to an extent that it becomes a repulsive misshapen clone of the original.
Just look at that brickleberry artstyle - it's clearly meant to be aping family guy, and while family guy is hardly all that appealing visually, that is a good deal worse.

So the tldr is; Bad taste and being cheap imitations.

>>7621841
>The image about good thoughts coming through via beauty, implying good thoughts will come through you're art
>"The difference is that Asterix is clearly made by a very happy guy who wanted to entertain everyone"
>"Newgrounds stuff is a major contrast to the modern cartoons"
>"You can easily tell that it's Newgrounds because the humor is always a no-holds-barred level of edge."
Not to say you're wrong, but aren't these conflicting? I'd say newgrounds art hits different because they're not conforming to anything - their work is theirs, and theirs alone, and not the corporatised cookie cutter mush we so often get elsewhere.

>>7621450 (OP)
Draw only males, then you can do whatever fun design you want without needing to go for pretty but samey look

>>7622332
I think Western Cartoonism has some of the greatest examples of simplification and expression in art you'll find. Japanese Manga / Anime have gained a lot of influence recently, but I find their designs typically much more stiff, minimalist and too "realistic" to elicit the sheer joy that good western cartoonism can capture. Ignoring today's boring modern western cartoons!

I think a BIG component to good western cartoonism is a sense of rubbery, dynamic weight. This is portrayed through a few techniques:
>1) Roundness. Everything is soft, round and squishy and bouncy. Classic Disney being the best example of this, it gives everything energy and dynamism! Funny enough, the best Japanese designs are strongly influenced by this Disney style Roundness (Tezuka, Toriyama and Oda are great examples)
>2) Shape Language. Western cartoonism uses extreme shape exaggeration far beyond what you see in Asia. Extreme round heads and eyes for cute characters, giant cubes for strong characters, massive torsos and limbs for strong guys, spindly long limbs and fingers and angular faces for evil characters. Nothing beats the giant fat noses you see in western newspaper funnies and classic Disney. Once again, Japan's most iconic designs lean heavily into Western Cartoonism (Mario & Luigi)
>3) Sense of Weight. This comes from the animation roots of western cartoonism, but line weight and shape is used to give everything a significant sense of weight. The way Popeye's muscles and bulk shift around. The way big chunks of shape hang off a character's frame. The exaggerated anatomies of The Incredibles is a great example of this. The bounce in a big sausage nose in Fred Flintstone. Western Cartoonism, because it's so influenced by Disney early animation, has incredible sense of weight in its designs that is completely ignored in your typical anime character's semi-realistic stick arms.
>4) Exaggeration. Self explanatory. Western cartoonism exaggerates to the extreme.

>>7621450 (OP)
have talent

>>7621543
>pic
debunked

>>7622783
A lot of what you touched upon is what I was talking about here
>>7621928
>>7621895
Those can still be done, it just requires reducing how much actual animation occurs. You said it yourself that tezuka, toriyama and oda manage this in an anime format. I think that Venture Bros is the quintessential "western cartoon that manages its budget well while still being visually western", compared to the more anime-inspired netflix ones or boondocks.

There's really no reason you couldn't animate something cool stylized in the sense of Tintin or Popeye without needing to blow money ensuring every blink is 4 frames long.

>>7622783
>disney! japan! influence in prehistoric times! see! we're worth something! japan bad! cartoon for child good!
Is this the western cartoonist version of we wuz kangz?

>>7622947
As usual, all cultural growth starts in the USA and is then mimicked and expanded upon around the world. All cartoonism and animation is influenced by Disney. All of Manga and Anime is borne from Disney influencing Tezuka.

>>7622783
ironically i rarely see americans drawing like this anymore, only chinese people and some europeans

>>7622973
>we wuz kangz! cartoon for children is better than anything that came after it!
This is why the west can't create anything great today. It's like a child coping with nostalgia and playing around with its toys, never reaching even the level of those toys, much less moving on to learn the contemporary techniques of masters that have perfected their crafts. The reality that Japan has surpassed them to the point the west can't even comprehend what they're doing on a technical level is far too depressing for the westroonized artist, so he clings to his comfort cope slogans and emotional appeals.

>>7622982
You just described boomer mentality.

>>7622993
Yeah that's fair. The zoomer mentality is more about being too scared for various societal and personal weakness reasons to commit to one's Japanese influences wholeheartedly. But the nostalgia obsession is still the comforting cope they turn to in order to escape reality.

>>7621450 (OP)
Doesn't exist anymore. What would your character designs even be a part of? Modern western storytelling is completely dead and coopted. It can't support or foster appealing character designs because they would be too problematic.

>>7622982
you are seething very hard at some anon pointing out that there was a period where undeniably the west set the standards for animation, ofc it went down the shitter but you need to have some deranged amounts of weeberism in you to take someone simply saying that they like the expressivity of old cartoons into whatever you've twister it into

>>7623349
The guy is denigrating Japanese animators based on we wuz kangz tier achievements of the past, while not being able to create on the level of either.

>>7623536
>we wuz kangz
NTA, but am I misunderstanding something here? I believe that line is thrown out whenever someone falsely attributes something to themselves (like the africans who believe that it was black people who made europe, and that the royal families were originally all black, etc).
Are you saying that Disney didn't create work so influential that it heavily impacted Japan's comic and animation industry? Even if we look at the most minimal influence Disney had on Japan, and say only one person was truly impacted by their work, that one person would be Osamu Tezuka, the guy who basically made modern manga and anime what it is - something of a Japanese Walt Disney in his own right.

If you're saying that the anon you're responding to is too busy naval gazing and glazing the old accomplishments of his country, sure, but I think it's good to look back and see where you were so you know that it can be achieved again.
America COULD be the artistic powerhouse for animation again, if they truly wanted to - but they're more interested in doing things for cheap and making as much profit as possible, rather than artistry.

>>7623559
>If you're saying that the anon you're responding to is too busy naval gazing and glazing the old accomplishments of his country
Yeah that's pretty much what I'm saying. He's claiming to be kangz in a past that's long gone as an argument for why he should be treated as royalty today. Also he wasn't directly involved in those accomplishments and is overstating the effects/influences of those accomplishments in current time (because he has no idea about Japan animation beyond the very basic surface level stuff). He's reducing Japanese animation to a period where it was in its infancy and using that to make himself feel better.

>America COULD be the artistic powerhouse for animation again, if they truly wanted to
Not without respecting what has been done in the field and learning from it. In the current state of western culture with its obsession with denigrating Japan at every opportunity they get it's impossible. Widespread mental illness in 2025 surely plays into it but even then, a superiority complex towards Japan is very engrained in western artistic culture. The guy could just talk about Disney but he needed to bring Japan into it.

>>7621718
The artistic fall off is way before Goscinny died, I want to say Asterix in Corsica is where the art starts really getting phoned in and genuinely ugly, but even before that the art starts getting much blander. Ofc the writing goes to absolute shit when Goscinny dies tho. It just got successful, every album was a guaranteed bestseller and he started phoning in the art because there was no reason to try too hard.

>>7622783
Shape language’s importance is overexaggerated.

>>7623750
>le triangles are aggressive! le squares are le burly men!
only the crude concept of westoid shape language is.

>>7623583
>In the current state of western culture with its obsession with denigrating Japan at every opportunity they get it's impossible.
western animation is currently the most influenced by anime that it has ever been if you look outside of disney

>>7621450 (OP)
Can Americans just fuck off from art please? Everything on the right gives me instant söyjak vibes. This is the soul of a nation raised on Disney and Nintendo.

>>7621450 (OP)
French jeans vs Asian jeans discourse time...
If you're American, you have no choice but to become a furry.

>>7623775
I'd say in the worst way honestly. Either gross facsimiles of the 'anime' art style, or they use anime to justify making their animation more janky (the japs animate of 3's, or whatever, so we should too!) - which is cool for a limited animation television series, but when it's a big budget animated feature film, it feels less cool, and just more fucking annoying.

>>7623790
This, the supposed influence doesn't go deeper than what >>7622783 thinks about anime. Nobody cares to learn actual technique or art styles outside of a few people who want to work in Japanese productions anyway. And even if many artists learned them, nothing would be allowed to be made with full on anime technique and art styles in the current culture (this isn't even getting into arguably much deeper problems with voice acting and writing).

People will skirt the line with having "safe" influences but it's never anything deep.

>>7623750
Shapes are cute, fuck you.

>>7621450 (OP)
By copying the designs you like and combining and playing around with them to make something new

>>7623875
Ugly