The Importance of Character design!

This is a post I never thought I’d make. But I saw a post on tumblr that completely changed my views on character design and why it’s so important in books and tv shows. We often dress our characters in ways to make them look cool. And that’s great! We always want our characters to look awesome. But.... there’s actually a lot more to it than that. You can’t just put your characters in anything. Let me explain further using RWBY as an example. (I rag on RWBY a lot, but it’s actually a great learning tool for how not to do things in storytelling.)

Personality

Ok so first things first. You have to know the characters personality and motivations. No matter how simple they are, they need to be there. Because this is the starting template of your character deg. Now let’s look at our 4 RWBY girls for reference:

Ruby: An energetic happy go lucky girl with socialization issues. She loves weapons and wants to be a hero like in the books she reads. Is suddenly given many hard responsibilities as a leader despite being younger than her team.

Weiss:A rich ice princess with daddy issues. Wants to be different from the rest of her family and restore her family name. Takes great pride in herself.

Blake:Mysterious and level headed with trust issues. She’s on the run from an activist organization and wants to start her life anew. Loves books and usually keeps to herself.

Yang:A spunky tough girl with abandonment issues. A thrill seeker and a flirt who’s not afraid to throw some hands. Wants to know why her mom left her.

Now in order of mention, look at their outfits:

Do these outfits reflect those personalities? No seriously. Think about it for a second. Does Ruby look like a weapon junkie? At all? Does someone who’s set up with that personality seem like they’d dress up like a gothic Lolita? It really doesn’t fit her personality.

Weiss is the best dressed for her personality, but at the same time, she still dresses rather uniform like the rest of her family. Which kind of defeats the purpose of her being “free” from them.

With Blake, does she look even remotely close to someone one the run? She’s not doing anything to even hide her identity. Anyone from the organization that saw her would recognize her face immediately. Her outfit is cute and all, but being trendy is the last thing on her mind based on her personality and reason for being there.

Yang is ok, but the poofy selves and the frills on the back of the shorts? It’s like they tried so hard to make her girly when she’s supposed to be a tough girl. She’s plenty pretty without them. She’s a boxer, for goodness sake! Let her show of her muscles or put her in something more comfortable for fighting in. She doesn’t strike me as a girl who would casually wear frills “look cute” with her fighting outfit. Her purple leg sash is fine tho. Because I feel like it gives the impression of keeping something together that was broken. Which she very much is deep down.

Now this would be ok if it was expressed in universe why they chose to dress this way. If it was shown that Ruby’s closet was full of dresses or the comic books that she reads has a certain hero that wears a dress that she wanted to be like, etc. If any of those had been mentioned or explained as to why she wears this outfit that seems to clash with all other parts of her, then it would’ve been fine.

But guess what? They don’t. So it’s out of place.

Motifs

“a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition.”

Think of these as “symbolic accessories”. These are little nods to other parts in the story. Like a style that’s similar to someone they look up to, something that was given to them or reminds them of something, just anything that represents something of meaning to the character.

Now I know some of you are thinking: “But BR! They look that way because they’re based off of fairy tale characters! That’s why their outfits look like that! To keep the theme!” You can keep a theme and still have it be practical and make sense. If you establish a theme and don’t stick to it, people will notice. And they’ll also notice you bending plot and logic for the sake of a theme as well. You’ve gotta find that happy medium and use subtly.

But let’s look at the artists updated reimagining.

Let’s go through them one by one:

Ruby- She looks like a cute little mechanic! And that’s warranted considering it was mentioned in universe that she made her scythe herself and it’s one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed. (And it’s never brought up again?) It also adds to her love of weapons as well. In this version, her shoes are hand-me-downs from her sister, quite literally giving her “big shoes to fill”. Relating to her new responsibilities as a team leader. And she still gets to keep her hood for her fairytale theme! It’s a bit shorter and more tattered, but that shows that she does have fighting experience with having it on all the time. It’s down to her knees instead of her ankles, like in the last one that gets caught on everything.

Yang- Her outfit just looks so much easier for her to move in. Way more comfortable and has the a real “biker chick” feel to it. Y’know since she actually has and frequently rides a motorcycle. No unnecessary frills or impractical sleeves. (Since her arms are her basically her ENTIRE fighting style, she needs to be able to move them without issue.) And her Goldilocks motive only needs her long blonde hair.

Weiss- She was already the best dressed, but this improves on her backstory motifs. For instance: her sideways ponytail was always meant as a sign of rebellion against her father and combats falling in line symmetrically like the rest of her family. (If you look at her family you’ll see they all have very symmetrical outfits.) But in the new one, her outfit is ALSO unsymmetrical just like her hair. Really making her the stand out from the rest of her family and accenting her want to be different. Still dress like she’s from a rich environment and fits her elegant fighting style and prideful nature.

Blake- Given her fighting style is very ninja like, it’s not out of place at all for her to dress like this while ALSO hiding her identity. Her face isn’t easily seen and it’s the perfect excuse to be secretive. She could still have the bow if she wanted to from the old design, but that shouldn’t have been her only line of defense. The bow plus this concealing outfit and changing her last name would have been very convincing of hiding her true identity. But either way, this shows she actually put in some effort into concealing herself.

You should be able to tell a lot from a character before you talk to them in the story. Body language, clothing, mannerisms. They should all be shaped by their background as well as their current situation. These are important for making the most out of introductions of characters without a need to dump pages of backstory on them all at once.

Outfit Progression

This usually only happens when a big development for the character has occurred or there’s been a time skip.

In this particular story of rwby there was a huge disaster that killed lots of people and effected each of the characters harshly. Lets take a look.

Ruby- ... The cape is shorter and more tattered, which it should be. Her boots look more ive and her arm guards were a nice touch. I see motives of Pyrrha and Penny in her wardrobe wich is good for ing their deaths. But I don’t get why her shoulders are uncovered tho...? And her upper legs? Her having more skin showing seems strange to me. Especially in the upper chest area. It gives me the creepy feeling that it’s just there for sexualization. Despite her being the youngest at 15. I get they wanted to make her more mature looking, but there are other ways to do so on someone of that age.

Weiss-Ok this was a good choice. Her individuality looks like it’s been taken. Which makes sense due to her being back at home under her father’s control. Everything is symmetrical, uniform and boring. And she clearly doesn’t like it, but is being forced to. Perfect for her situation.

Blake- ... I have mixed feelings? I don’t even know what they were going for in her outfit. The thing is, she’s dressed like an organization leader, but that wasn’t her intent when wearing the outfit. That wasn’t until the end of her arc. Like they dressed her for completing her development when it hadn’t happened yet. She was going back home to reflect, so I expected something a more flowing and relaxed. And I expected her to have a motive of yang. Similar to how yang has one on her leg. Showing that she re her but still carries the guilt of leaving her behind. (They’re supposed to be friends after all.)

Yang- This was GOOD. She totally looks like a cool biker chick with stories to tell. And upgrade from the redesign and really shows her newfound confidence.

This is why taking into current and past situations is important to design. But not so much the future. Leave foreshadowing of future events to story elements. Not costume design. Or you’ll end up like Blake and be dressed for the wrong arc. And I will discuss time skip arcs as well!

In a later post...

(Hint hint *nudge**nudge*)

:womans_clothes: :womans_clothes: :womans_clothes: :womans_clothes: :womans_clothes:

So this was the definition of “looking too deep into things”. But alas, it’s what I do. Details are important for when you’re polishing your work and refining it to a point. Those who understand all your small details will appreciate your work even more than most. And when those who missed most of that hear that theirs deeper meaning they may have missed, it makes them want to go back and look for them. That’s how you get re-readability!

So I hope this was somewhat helpful to you all in character design. that the rule of cool doesn’t always apply. Just because you think it sounds or looks cool, doesn’t mean it’s going to fit into your story. You have to make it fit by carefully molding it in in relation to your themes and plot. But then again, this post was just talking about outfits! Yet you can see how deep the thought process of deg can go. Not saying you need detail for every single object, but just the one ones you’ll see a lot. Like your main character makes clothes!

See you soon in the next installment fellow adventurers!

#adventureclub