If you want to know how to make a good character design, the first thing to do is to take a look at the characters you like and see what makes their designs stand out. Look at all different kinds of styles and mediums, but the best to start with is animation. In animation, it is important that a design stands out against the background and against other designs. Character design for animation can be broken down into several categories, the first of which is shape language.
Every animated character’s design is made up of combinations of shapes morphed into one another. The shape that you use to build your character is beyond important as it will help to determine the personality of the said character to the audience. Characters that are built from rounded shapes like ellipsis and circles convey a steady and friendly feeling to the audience. Examples of this can be seen in Mario’s rounded head, Pikachu’s signature circular red cheeks, and Mickey Mouse’s head consisting of just three circles. Characters that are built from squares and rectangles are often seen as strong and stable, a good example of such being Optimus Prime from the Transformers series and Carl Fredrickson from Disney’s Up. The last shape to look at is the triangle. Characters that consist of triangles are known to be colder and most of the time, mysterious or antagonistic, which is brought out by the angular points on their designs. This is largely where the term “edgy” comes from, as these characters are known to have sharp edges on their designs. For good examples of this, take a good look at the king of “edgy” himself, Shadow the Hedgehog, or the Pokémon Rayquaza.
Another important aspect of character design is color theory. The word theory is a big scary word synonymous with science, but don’t worry, it’s basically a way of saying that certain colors make you feel a certain way and give off certain vibes. The combination of these colors can help to make a character more recognizable to an audience at a glance. Yellows show happiness, red is often a brash color that either serves for passion or warning, and blue is reserved for characters who are cool and collected. Green is the color of life and growth while also representing disgust and envy, black implies mystery, white implies purity, so things like that. But the most important thing about this is to make a recognizable palette. The audience should be able to look at the color palette of your character without any other information and be able to glean a good idea of who that character might be.
Using all of these factors in combination with one another along with a distinct silhouette is what will make your character design distinct. Ideally, a good character design should be able to tell you about a character’s personality and role in the story at a glance and allow for them to stand out from the crowd. So get out there and observe, take a stab at it, and don’t be afraid to create. Putting it on the page is what matters the most. You can always focus on refining ideas later in the process. Most of all, have fun!