I am very good in writing fun stories, but I am not a professional manga artist(also known as “Mangaka”). Therefore, I am working together with very skilled artists who create these beautiful drawings for me.
In this post I will share with you my approach in getting a character designed. Overall you could say it consists of the following steps:
- Write character description and collect example images. Send both to your artist.
- Request 3 character sketches.
- Give feedback on the 3 character sketches.
- Request a character sheet(different views and faces of the character).
- Give feedback on the character sketch sheet.
- Let the artist create the grayscale or colored version. Request changes if needed.
For getting a character designed, I provide the artist with a description of the character, as well as different example images that I get from websites like Pinterest that show about what I want.. He will then do three different sketches for me. Let’s take one of the main characters, Ayrora Aywara, as an example. Following is the description taken directly from the story:
“A few minutes later she arrives at the spacecraft, where Ayrora is awaiting her. A woman about 165cm tall and 24 years old. Her well-defined body shows that she visits the gym regularly, with slightly visible muscles that shape her body perfectly, while not reducing any of her feminine charm. She has black hair with long waves reaching down to the middle of her back. Her brown skin looks like the product of someone bathing herself in the sun every day for 1 month to reach the perfect, slightly darker suntan. Her lovely eyes are a shiny tropical ocean blue that reminds of the waters of a shallow beach. Each eye has three spots in it, and when you take a closer look, they look like small paradise islands full of palm trees and nice sandy beaches. She currently wears a black sports bra and black sport shorts. There are a lot of scars on the left side of the body and face. It doesn’t make her look bad at all, it rather adds to her overall coolness.”
Based on the above description, the Mangaka created the following 3 sketches for me:
I use that image and with help of the free tool Affinity, I add comments to the sketches and highlight what I like and what I do not like, to give the artist a better idea how the character should. Sometimes I copy a design and make changes directly myself as it is easier to communicate it that way.
Normally I won’t request too much changes on sketches if they already show what I like, but will request a character sheet next. A typical character sheet will have a front and a side view of the character and three facial expressions. To make sure that he goes in the right direction, the Mangaka sends me a sketch of the character sheet:
Again I provide my feedback to the artist, in this case I was quite happy with the sketch and only asked for smaller changes (adding missing scars, reduce the size of the butt).
And so I end up with a character design that I really like! 🤩
