Do You Have Any Tips On Character Designs

Do you have any tips on character designs

So many! Character design is my favourite thing and something I've learned is that there is beauty in simplicity. Simple shapes repeated (loosely, usually) throughout a character tend to lead to more cohesive designs; in reference to my Beetlejuice design he's shaped roughly like a pineapple chunk, head and body. And simple colours, palettes of 3-7 colours, work best; one colour that takes up most of the character, two supporting colours, and then (if desired) small amounts of any additional colours. Keeping colours close together on the colour wheel makes them look more unified and then I like to toss in a colour from somewhere on the opposite side for contrast. After choosing colours you can use a colour balance option for digital pieces to "slide" the colours closer together and to a more preferable base hue i.e. make them all redder, bluer, or greener. You can also use pre-chosen palettes from a palette picker site. Also remember pointy vs round. Usually a friendly character will be round and a mean character is pointy, but you can also use that to subvert expectations and do the opposite. Another big thing is consistency vs inconsistency; something great that I was taught is that you don't have to design/render your characters in the same way. To start a character draw them as many times as many ways as possible. Everytime you draw them again take the things from the version you liked and change the things you don't until you settle somewhere. From then on try to draw them as on-model as possible. But, with all that in mind, you don't have to draw two characters from the same universe with the same levels of "realism"; once again regarding my Beetlejuice and Lydia designs, Beej has perfectly round eyes, mostly separated teeth, and implied claws while Lydia has oval and more realistically shaped eyes, solid-line teeth, and actual fingernails. I could have drawn Beej with actual claws, but I preferred the look of the implied claws because it uncluttered the design of his hands, which leads back into the fact that sometimes less is more, and simplicity can look better. And lastly, diversify. It can be really hard to try new things, and even harder to not immediately think it looks bad because you've never done it before, but recently I redesigned some of my childhood ocs and I couldn't help but think that they all looked awful because they all looked the same. Post redesigns they're all so different and it feels like character design I can actually be proud of. Same face syndrome is a curse and try not to get yourself stuck in the rut of drawing the same style of individual and/or the same pose everytime. And, to anyone who sees this, if it does come out bad just remember that all new art is growth, you're never obligated to show anyone anything you don't want to, and you'll never get better if you don't practice, so keep at it. People say there's no such thing as bad art, and, personally, I don't think that's true. Everybody has to be bad at something before they're good at it, but that doesn't make it worth less. And hopefully these tips can help others improve the way they helped me.