On your section about disability I think a lot it's important to come to a realization that disability as a whole is more common than it may initially seem. Just to give some wider net ones: Some come with age (Loss of sight + hearing + mobility), some result from line of work (workplace injuries), or from the artist's perspective, repetitive motion and poor habits leading to carpal tunnel. I think learning that disability is not just some 'oooh scary rare thing' is really important since, like, we have 8+ billion people on the planet, if statistically 0.5% of people experience something that's 40 million people as is.
Honestly, this video is awesome, like, it is unlike any other designing OCs, and again, the subject of research pops up and I'm afraid that my researching is always poor or not good enough, thus I always resort to claim things are loose. Like, the rest I've always been aware (I often make OCs that despite not being humans I want them to feel human), it's just I'm kinda afraid fully committing due to being afraid to research wrong. I dunno, perfectionism just kills me.
(I'm using Google Translate, sorry for any mistakes) I'm just starting to get out of my comfort zone with characters because of these "woman and man blah blah blah" stigmas, and your video is making me want to try more diverse characters more lol thank you! I just wanted to point out in the part about the glasses comment, as an afab person with myopia, instead of people considering me "nerd" for wearing glasses, they said I looked like a "corn" actor, which in addition to making me insecure for a while because I wear glasses (I literally can't even use the computer without glasses, because I can't see), it shows how much society tries to differentiate and objectify women just because they were born female (note: who said I look like this type of actor were other women)
This is so refreshing to watch because I thought I was crazy when I see people be so rigid with especially gender expression and body types and darker skinned characters (always making them there outgoing one in the cast or the mean one or something like that) Also most media I do consume primarily features skinny, light skinned characters and I do fear that it will or already has bled into my art despite being black myself. Again, thanks for this video!
OMG EVERYTHING YOU SAID WAS SO REAL LIKE I GET SO ANNOYED BY OC DESIGN TUTORIALS THAT LIMIT THEMSELVES BY PUTTING THEIR CHARACTERS IN NEAT LITTLE STEREOTYPICAL BOXES DEFINITELY SUBSCRIBING 💯💯💯
Omg Trinidad mentioned!! being both Jamaican and Trini it's nice to see more representation for other Carribbean islands other than just Jamaica. Also these tips are so useful especially since I've been thinking of finally designing characters from a personal story
I love this video, you made so many good points, especially in the section about disability, but then again, all sections were just great. Also, I'd like to add my own shorthand for evil characters, it's either bright red and or bright green with a darker, sometimes very dark, purple. I think purple is a great evil, but also good colour.
YESSS i was wondering when you'd get a new video out this is actually really interesting I havent really seen anyone bring up these topics for characters and designs im really glad this isn't just the same points everyone's been regurgitating in every design tips video
I was just looking for more Black creative to follow when TH-cam recommended you to me! 💛 I'm trying to work on drawing bodies in general, but especially more varied bodies.
Omg the ethnicity and nationality can not ally it's one of my serious problems to explain to americans as a latin american, I'm glad you explain it 💗 I have a peruvian-japanese oc because it's a huge colony there, other chilean-bulgarian and a white chilean just by random genetics. Sometimes even lots of people looks like some ethnicity but actually they don't even have that culture, others have the culture but doesn't look like the ethnicity and some allign as percieved, in the world we have a huge variety people don't know
this is such a great video! ive been following you on tumblr for a little while now and im always so impressed with your creativity in your designs, so its neat to see your insight! the resources at the end are going to be so useful for me, as im trying to rework a lot of my OCs to be more varied and interesting i hope we see more vids from you soon
OOOOH thank u for the earthsworld rec!!! i'll definitely be checking that out. ALSO the tip that race and nationality can be different seems so obvious but i realized i don't. really do that. so i'll definitely keep that in mind for future ocs :O
I just want to say thank you for sharing your resources, and links to different sites to help me make a diverse cast of characters. I have been searching for a long time on how to draw realistic people instead of same cliche of skinny models and body builders. There are some things that I disagree on but all in all your information was really helpful and I appreciate it a lot.
commenting before i finish the video (a cardinal sin ik im sorry lmao) but i'm so glad u mentioned Kingdom Hearts in the section about visual shorthand. I'm a black anime fan and KH has been a major obsession of mine for over a decade. I love that series to death, but the thing is, they pretty much imply in the first game that Ansem (SOD) is brown *because he attracts darkness to him*. I caught that as a kid, and it really grated on me, especially considering that Xaldin/Dilan literally has dreads and they still couldn't be bothered to make him black...also, one of the characters in KH2 is just straight up doing magic blackface (which happens when he becomes his evilsona. dont ask). That's never not gonna haunt me. Like i said, i love this series a lot, but yikes. I have noticed that as a recurring pattern in other media as well, it just sticks out the most with KH because i've played those games way too much. Darker skin often has connotations of evil/aggression/etc in media, which has pretty nasty corollaries in real life. thoughts after finishing the video: I like giving my characters scars, but I looked over my character designs a while back and realized my scar design and placement was kinda anime, like i was trying to give them “cool” scars instead of more normal and varied ones. I want to redesign those characters soon. Maybe before artfight (but probably not lbr) & i’m definitely gonna check out earthsworld!! That’s exactly the kinda reference i’m looking for. In general, i feel like, it’s the 21st century. weve been doing this for a while. I think it’s about time we stopped immediately associating “beauty” with “purity”/goodness and “ugly” physical traits with undesirable personality traits. People can look and act like anything. It’s so weird to me how pervasive those ideas are in popular culture, especially highly visual culture. i mean, shouldn't we have gotten past this by now? I’m not exempting myself from this, I still use visual shorthands like round = friendly and triangle = mean/evil/whatever sometimes, but I’m trying to break out of that because as you said it’s a bad thing to rely on too much. If you’re not careful, it can make your designs lazy and narratively flat/uninteresting. Speaking as someone who likes drawing cartoons, people are much more interesting when you don’t reduce them to caricatures. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we present such a narrow slice of humanity as being the only people worth looking at, if that makes sense. There’s so much beauty and variance in ordinary, mundane people who aren’t trying to be instagrammable. I think we’d be slightly better off as a society if we were more capable of lifting up normal-looking people and seeing them as desirable. Of course, that would have to go hand in hand with breaking down at least some beauty standards, which is a tall order…I don’t think it’s impossible, though. Also, with the major caveat of “don’t be a creep about it”, i would honestly suggest casual people-watching as a method of finding “reference” for diversifying characters. When i say casual, i mean just paying a bit more attention to peoples’ appearances when you go out in public. What do the teachers at your school dress like? Or your local librarian, fellow students, people on the train, people you see when you’re out shopping, you get the idea. TBH i think this is good for general art improvement too, trying to notice more details about your environment and surroundings to bolster your visual library. When I started doing this, I noticed how many types of people there are in real life that don’t get represented in media as much (or at all). For instance, there’s a _lot_ more fat people in the real world than TV shows want you to think lol. Also, women with visible body hair. People with wider-than-normal eyes. Or narrower-than-normal eyes. The list goes on. The more you pick up, the more you can use in your art. Also also (i’m almost done i promise) it’s nice to find another wikipedia addict! I love researching random ass shit on wikipedia (and youtube too) and filing stuff away to use for stories later. I know about so many more countries and languages and ethnic groups now. it’s great
Characters are a delicate balance of stereotypes and breaking them. Definitely a little bit stressful especially for someone who’s not really a minority but I’m trying and learning 👍
"Women can also be built like doritos" I have to know if this is just a general joke or a captain america dorito joke because I have seen so many dorito cap memes
Haven't watched the video fully yet but seeing someone else using the name Cinni online jumpscared me so much LOL (ik it's not in my user here but on other sites it is lol)
On your section about disability I think a lot it's important to come to a realization that disability as a whole is more common than it may initially seem.
Just to give some wider net ones: Some come with age (Loss of sight + hearing + mobility), some result from line of work (workplace injuries), or from the artist's perspective, repetitive motion and poor habits leading to carpal tunnel.
I think learning that disability is not just some 'oooh scary rare thing' is really important since, like, we have 8+ billion people on the planet, if statistically 0.5% of people experience something that's 40 million people as is.
studios hiring cinni as a character designer when
HOLY SHIT YOUR CHARACTER WON THE FIRST FAT OC BATTLE HI NAOMI. anyway very good video, lots of good points!
NAOMI MISS WORLDWIDE☝🏽‼🇯🇲 thank you for watching!
DEFINITELY REWATCHING THIS WHEN I SIT DOWN TO STUDY👌🏾🙏🏾🌟
AND FR LIKE I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR DESIGNS 😫👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Honestly, this video is awesome, like, it is unlike any other designing OCs, and again, the subject of research pops up and I'm afraid that my researching is always poor or not good enough, thus I always resort to claim things are loose.
Like, the rest I've always been aware (I often make OCs that despite not being humans I want them to feel human), it's just I'm kinda afraid fully committing due to being afraid to research wrong.
I dunno, perfectionism just kills me.
(I'm using Google Translate, sorry for any mistakes)
I'm just starting to get out of my comfort zone with characters because of these "woman and man blah blah blah" stigmas, and your video is making me want to try more diverse characters more lol thank you!
I just wanted to point out in the part about the glasses comment, as an afab person with myopia, instead of people considering me "nerd" for wearing glasses, they said I looked like a "corn" actor, which in addition to making me insecure for a while because I wear glasses (I literally can't even use the computer without glasses, because I can't see), it shows how much society tries to differentiate and objectify women just because they were born female (note: who said I look like this type of actor were other women)
This is so refreshing to watch because I thought I was crazy when I see people be so rigid with especially gender expression and body types and darker skinned characters (always making them there outgoing one in the cast or the mean one or something like that)
Also most media I do consume primarily features skinny, light skinned characters and I do fear that it will or already has bled into my art despite being black myself. Again, thanks for this video!
thoughtful character design like this rules
your human au for undertale is wonderful, mani! (and i will 100% cosplay your version of sans one day 🫶🏾🩵)
OMG EVERYTHING YOU SAID WAS SO REAL LIKE I GET SO ANNOYED BY OC DESIGN TUTORIALS THAT LIMIT THEMSELVES BY PUTTING THEIR CHARACTERS IN NEAT LITTLE STEREOTYPICAL BOXES DEFINITELY SUBSCRIBING 💯💯💯
sitting at my desk and spacing out to your voice its like an angel in my ears
Omg Trinidad mentioned!! being both Jamaican and Trini it's nice to see more representation for other Carribbean islands other than just Jamaica. Also these tips are so useful especially since I've been thinking of finally designing characters from a personal story
yaaay, glad i could be of some use!! :D def design those OCs, the world needs it 🫡
HOLY SHIT IM JAMAICAN SND TRINI ‼️‼️‼️ we twins Fr fr
I love this video, you made so many good points, especially in the section about disability, but then again, all sections were just great. Also, I'd like to add my own shorthand for evil characters, it's either bright red and or bright green with a darker, sometimes very dark, purple. I think purple is a great evil, but also good colour.
this was such a refreshing character design video!
YESSS i was wondering when you'd get a new video out
this is actually really interesting I havent really seen anyone bring up these topics for characters and designs im really glad this isn't just the same points everyone's been regurgitating in every design tips video
I was just looking for more Black creative to follow when TH-cam recommended you to me! 💛 I'm trying to work on drawing bodies in general, but especially more varied bodies.
Omg the ethnicity and nationality can not ally it's one of my serious problems to explain to americans as a latin american, I'm glad you explain it 💗 I have a peruvian-japanese oc because it's a huge colony there, other chilean-bulgarian and a white chilean just by random genetics. Sometimes even lots of people looks like some ethnicity but actually they don't even have that culture, others have the culture but doesn't look like the ethnicity and some allign as percieved, in the world we have a huge variety people don't know
this is such a great video! ive been following you on tumblr for a little while now and im always so impressed with your creativity in your designs, so its neat to see your insight! the resources at the end are going to be so useful for me, as im trying to rework a lot of my OCs to be more varied and interesting
i hope we see more vids from you soon
OOOOH thank u for the earthsworld rec!!! i'll definitely be checking that out. ALSO the tip that race and nationality can be different seems so obvious but i realized i don't. really do that. so i'll definitely keep that in mind for future ocs :O
this vid has such good tips!!! including resources was super helpful too
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO MENTIONED!!! THIS IS SUCH A GREAT REFERENCE VIDEO!!
This video is super helpful. Thank you so much for making this. Beautiful artwork too!
THIS IS SO HELPFUL THANKYOU
Wow , your art is really cool!
oh, thank you so much! :D
YIPPEEE MANI UPLOAD!!!!!!!
I just want to say thank you for sharing your resources, and links to different sites to help me make a diverse cast of characters. I have been searching for a long time on how to draw realistic people instead of same cliche of skinny models and body builders. There are some things that I disagree on but all in all your information was really helpful and I appreciate it a lot.
wow i just stumbled accross this channel and i love it already
TYSM for showing the sites you use for help! I've been dying to diversify my disabilities.
this vid is so helpful and i love ur designs 👍 my fave is ur human!sans and naomi
want diverse oc's? look at diverse people! thats why representation matters even from just an artistic POV
cinnimani back with a banger!!!!! 🔥
REAL
commenting before i finish the video (a cardinal sin ik im sorry lmao) but i'm so glad u mentioned Kingdom Hearts in the section about visual shorthand. I'm a black anime fan and KH has been a major obsession of mine for over a decade. I love that series to death, but the thing is, they pretty much imply in the first game that Ansem (SOD) is brown *because he attracts darkness to him*. I caught that as a kid, and it really grated on me, especially considering that Xaldin/Dilan literally has dreads and they still couldn't be bothered to make him black...also, one of the characters in KH2 is just straight up doing magic blackface (which happens when he becomes his evilsona. dont ask). That's never not gonna haunt me. Like i said, i love this series a lot, but yikes. I have noticed that as a recurring pattern in other media as well, it just sticks out the most with KH because i've played those games way too much. Darker skin often has connotations of evil/aggression/etc in media, which has pretty nasty corollaries in real life.
thoughts after finishing the video: I like giving my characters scars, but I looked over my character designs a while back and realized my scar design and placement was kinda anime, like i was trying to give them “cool” scars instead of more normal and varied ones. I want to redesign those characters soon. Maybe before artfight (but probably not lbr)
& i’m definitely gonna check out earthsworld!! That’s exactly the kinda reference i’m looking for. In general, i feel like, it’s the 21st century. weve been doing this for a while. I think it’s about time we stopped immediately associating “beauty” with “purity”/goodness and “ugly” physical traits with undesirable personality traits. People can look and act like anything. It’s so weird to me how pervasive those ideas are in popular culture, especially highly visual culture. i mean, shouldn't we have gotten past this by now? I’m not exempting myself from this, I still use visual shorthands like round = friendly and triangle = mean/evil/whatever sometimes, but I’m trying to break out of that because as you said it’s a bad thing to rely on too much. If you’re not careful, it can make your designs lazy and narratively flat/uninteresting. Speaking as someone who likes drawing cartoons, people are much more interesting when you don’t reduce them to caricatures. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we present such a narrow slice of humanity as being the only people worth looking at, if that makes sense. There’s so much beauty and variance in ordinary, mundane people who aren’t trying to be instagrammable. I think we’d be slightly better off as a society if we were more capable of lifting up normal-looking people and seeing them as desirable. Of course, that would have to go hand in hand with breaking down at least some beauty standards, which is a tall order…I don’t think it’s impossible, though.
Also, with the major caveat of “don’t be a creep about it”, i would honestly suggest casual people-watching as a method of finding “reference” for diversifying characters. When i say casual, i mean just paying a bit more attention to peoples’ appearances when you go out in public. What do the teachers at your school dress like? Or your local librarian, fellow students, people on the train, people you see when you’re out shopping, you get the idea. TBH i think this is good for general art improvement too, trying to notice more details about your environment and surroundings to bolster your visual library. When I started doing this, I noticed how many types of people there are in real life that don’t get represented in media as much (or at all). For instance, there’s a _lot_ more fat people in the real world than TV shows want you to think lol. Also, women with visible body hair. People with wider-than-normal eyes. Or narrower-than-normal eyes. The list goes on. The more you pick up, the more you can use in your art.
Also also (i’m almost done i promise) it’s nice to find another wikipedia addict! I love researching random ass shit on wikipedia (and youtube too) and filing stuff away to use for stories later. I know about so many more countries and languages and ethnic groups now. it’s great
Characters are a delicate balance of stereotypes and breaking them. Definitely a little bit stressful especially for someone who’s not really a minority but I’m trying and learning 👍
CINNIIIIII THIS IS GREAT OMG
i love having you read out memes to me, cinni. and the spongebob censors? you get it☝️😌🎶
the " tan (but never black ) manly alpha male and his white blonde kitten with skin more reflective than moon" is so real
"Women can also be built like doritos" I have to know if this is just a general joke or a captain america dorito joke because I have seen so many dorito cap memes
this is such a good video!!!!
venture bros mentioned BUUUUUH
Notification Gang😤😤😤
Haven't watched the video fully yet but seeing someone else using the name Cinni online jumpscared me so much LOL (ik it's not in my user here but on other sites it is lol)
these tips are actually so helpful?? 🫶
How do you connect bracket to neocities????
I’m tryna indulge in your art but your links ain’t working😭 what’s your ig?
SORRY LOL my insta is cinnnimani 🫶🏽