I've disabled this weird new "AI language dubbing" thing, but unfortunately it seems to still be defaulting to that on some browsers 😩 I've followed all the instructions on how to disable it both from my channel overall and on individual videos, but since it's a new feature, I think it's just buggy. Hopefully it'll be gone soon, but in case you're still seeing it - I'm sorry! I didn't choose this!!
I am a 63 y/o man who has been playing RPGs since 77 and I am a Ginny Di fan boy. I am constantly impressed Ginny’s ability to bring a fresh and creative approach to mundane tasks like this…creating characters. Ginny, you are a delightful original in a hobby filled with unoriginal me too’s. Love your sense of humor, your dedication, and that under everything, you give us solid advice that we can use at our tables…even after 40+ years of playing.
@@GinnyDi Thank you for keeping this game fresh and fun. After this video, I will be looking at my character’s aesthetics in a new way. You’ve given me permission to be more creative than I would have been on my own. This old dog has a new trick to try out.
I’ve got you beat, I’m a 65 y/o man who has also been playing since 77. Other than that I fully second all your comments regarding Ginny Di. My whole group uses her videos as a source of inspiration.
Oh my god... the white and black crew neck PERFECTLY matches Blasphemy's black and white color scheme! Since Ginny and I are friends I think she should pair it with the hey friends t-shirt, available right now for 20% OFF at ginny's OWN STORE! 😌
Right?! Sadly, I didn't want to risk ruining a Pointy Hat hat with the horns 😂 And omg such a smooth segue - now I want to make a whole look with all our pieces
@@GinnyDi Love the movie Clue. I can never deliver the 'flames lines' like Madeline Kahn Mrs. White: Yes. Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her, so much... it-it- the f it flam flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing breathl heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heathing...
"Not sponsored, we're just friends." I have no connection to either of you but when I say this line made me grin like an idiot, you have no idea how much I'm understating the scene.
You're the ONLY TH-camr who makes their sponsored ads feel like they're just an excuse for you to cos/roleplay - a creative outlet - and not just a way to make money and I really appreciate that!
My main Baldur’s Gate 3 character is a Wood Elf with shoulder-length wavy pink hair and gold eyes. She's a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, so she has gold scales on her forehead. I'm pretty sure my inner anime fangirl created her. Her aesthetic is fairycore crossed over with Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.
@@yostinator81 And Pikachu. What ? Ever petted a Pikachu against it´s will ? I´d rather tongue-kiss a bumble bee XD Okay, okay - Salamander would be a classic answer. Or some tropical frogs. Poison is the point. Lame. At least compared to electricity ^^
I actually play a Trickery Cleric in our Pathfinder game, and her symbol is a wasp! I tinkered around with Bing AI until I created her in wasp striped scale mail armor
I love how this isn't just a generic character design video. While ticking all the general points, Ginny's four points are all geared towards one thing: sparking play and conversation! That's a priority that's very DnD specific, and it shows a really great understanding of what actually matters at the end of the day!
one thing that helped me when i started thinking about this stuff is the 60/30/10 rule its usually applied to colors, white jacket and pants, black shirt and a red undershirt as a highlight but it can be used for all kinds of things, 60% biological, 30% mechanical and 10% ethereal or something like that
As a concept artist specifically for DnD players this is so fun! Love watching how other people design! and I love the question of "What story do they want to tell the world?" I ask that every time and it's always so fun to see people live in their character and tell you what pieces really make them feel in character. Also as someone who gets commissions: I always ask for my players to send me a song that feels like their character. For me it gives me the vibes! And of course I love a little doodle! Little doodles are so helpful with the TYPE of things a character has when words aren't enough. Even a color palette they scribble out in MS paint! Great video, as always!
It's so cool you incorporate music into your process. I really enjoy making playlists for my character! "What story do they want to tell the world?" is a great prompt too 🥰 So much of our appearance is about how we want to present ourselves to the world - that's a unique way to drill down into that!
My dm also asked me for a song or two for my character! I put them in my backstory sheet as well as one for the related noteable npcs. it's a great way for them to help get a good general understanding of the characters
All of this. I too illustrate d&d characters for commission often and what I usually request is, like, a mood board or a pinterest board of their vibe. Playlists, animal associations, seasons, favorite foods, etc etc etc. Help me get in your head! Gush to me about your blorbos!
5:30 About the color palette. The advices of your video talk about matching colors, but we can even open the possibilities by considering that people, in the middle-ages, LOVED flashy, contrasting colors and would just put them all over themselves with no concern if the colors fitted together or were complementary. I use this example not to say that we should follow that historical reality of course (We're talking about fantasy here), but to open the realm of possibility by taking the POV of another culture.
Definitely didn’t mean to imply that all colors should match! Mentioning complementary, split complementary, and analogous colors was my best attempt at suggesting that ANY color palette is valid and you should choose based on what suits your desires for the look. Just because my example characters tend to match doesn’t mean yours have to! That’s more indicative of my personal taste than anything else.
So true about details changing with times. After 3 years of playing (and 1 year and a half in game), my drow elf has long hair again. Because he had escaped from the underdark and distanced himself from his family he had cut his hair short to signify his "exile" from the culture. He later started growing a little braid because he formed a new family of his own. But after more than 1 year of adventuring and discovering new facts about himself and his bloodline, he started to really care about his party and finally found himself a true home for himself and his family. He's embracing elf culture... so he's getting a ponytail in his new portrait!
Ginny casually giving a 20 minute workshop on brand design concepts disguised as a DnD video...which is more concise and clear than actual graphic design workshops I've sat through 😆💅🏼
My character I made while watching this video is: • A dragon born that's more bat looking • red and gold clothes but ragedy and torn with a captain's hat • rogue • 1 evebrow piecing and ear piecings • a sword on his hip and a pistol sitting in his belt
I definitely deliberately broke the guideline about how many colors to use in a color palette because of my current character's duality. It was absolutely a deliberate choice to have a blue, yellow, and red color palette representing his fancy-pants wizard half and a green, black, and brown palette for his savage tribal orc side and not just me throwing random colors on the mini.
Character, aesthetic, and character design is probably my favorite part of DND! Right now I’m playing in an eladrin and daughter of Persephone (pjo themed campaign) i’m also a wizard because I’ve never played a spell based type before. All of the spells I chose were either nature or necromancy themed.
I gasped when I started the video. You talk about PCs aesthetic, but, not wanting to be corny or anything, you are absolutely astonishingly fabulous. You wear these colors so well.
I recently got inspired to make a College of Dance bard after watching your video on the topic and this video made me think about his design in a lot more depth! The most i had before was "Elstair is wearing a purple mask and has an attention grabbing outfit." but now it's "Elstair is wearing tight purple-pink dance clothes that he sewed and dyed himself using his mother's tools without her knowledge, and on one of the sleeves is an embroidered symbol of his past lover's clan as a way to keep a part of him with him at all times. The most notable element of his outfit is his magical purple mask with pink glowing lines running across it that he commisioned with his parents money, again without their knowledge, which when worn supresses his memories of his past life and replaces them with the life of his new persona "Elstair" instead of the life he actually lived as Esther."
Just choked on my coffee the second you said "lunar moth". I just finished making my new D&D character last night that is based on the theme of "ArchFey lunar moth monk".
Great video! When I started watching, all I knew is that I wanted to create a human ranger and now, I'm kind of in love with the character I created while watching. I'm not at all a visual person, but I can completely picture them and describe them in detail and I even have a basic backstory. Your patented, copyrighted, trademarked and totally official four step character design process really does work wonders.
So far as color theory and seeing many, many character designs that obviously didn't use it, it's a case of knowing the rules so you know how to break them. Added tip, don't just vary your hues, vary saturation (color/gray) and volume (light/dark) to create more interest and balance, and to highlight the parts you really want focus on.
Real, couldn't stop staring at the eyeshadow, she did it so flawlessly! I couldn't figure out what was making it REALLY pop to me until I realized her shirt matched it perfectly!
I will not be satisfied with a dnd character for myself until I get the exact thing I want in a character modeler. Then I fill in that into my backstory. Anything regarding looks is basically Mad-Libs until then in the backstory.
That's a cool way round to do it! I know people who find cool character art online and get inspired to base their character's personality and backstory off elements in the designs.
My group uses HeroForge to make a picture of our characters, pasting it into our computerized character sheets. You have to use some tricks like PRINT SCREEN into a format you can use, but that makes it free. And if you want, you can have HeroForge make that very mini you've designed. It's a little pricy, but they can also print it in the colors you've chosen. - Not sponsored, it's just what we use.
I just have to say, I love your voice for Tasha so much! It sounds like of like Laverna from Barbie Fairytopia; sexy, kind of evil, but also really fun to listen to.😄 I hope you make more videos with her in the future!❤
I'm 57 and I've been playing since I was 14; not just D&D but many other games as well. Ginni is the only person on TH-cam that I will watch their sponsorship spots, and I'm especially glad that I did for this one. Went immediately to the link after the video and ordered the Worlds and Realms book as a Christmas present for myself! Thanks, Ginni, for all the fresh content you provide, the humor and the advice, the amazing outfits and character designs, the calendar and Deck of Boons and Banes. I've bought them all, and I've even watched your Mimic video multiple times to try and get your numbers up! :)
Great vid as always, I always try to come up with a few catch phrases that my character says or gestures that they do to help define them at the table. I'm not one to dress up at the table, but the occasional 'dwarves do not ride horses' or 'when the cave toad speaks, you better listen' have made my character memorable at the table. Oh, and I usually have some object to fiddle with or set at the table - I'm always looking at garage sales for oddities I can use - nesting dolls painted to be animals for my druids focus, a radiant sun pendant for my cleric of pholtus, a big beer stein for my barbarian, etc.
I have never played a single session of D&D but I have been watching D&D content for literal years, including your channel. And this video is a perfect example of why - even if it's not for a roleplaying game in my case, creating characters is fun, and seeing what/how other people create gives me a childlike joy - it makes me excited to work on my own creative works.
It has become one of my favorite ways to build a character to start with crafting a design in a character creator before almost anything else, and then taking time to stare at the final picture asking myself who this dashing stranger that wandered out of the aether is supposed to be. It can be very fun to lose yourself in jumbling through face, hair, and clothing options until something cohesive just seems to materialize out of nothing and then build the rest of the character's concept off of how they look.
What an excellent step-by-step video, thanks Ginny! Using a colour palette was such a big help when I last created a character, will strongly recommend to everyone.
Absolutely!! I have so many characters now, when I need to create a new one, I often think, what color palettes have I not used yet? It really helps create visually distinct designs!
Pinterest mood boards are how I capture the vibe of my characters. Half of it might be completely unrelated things like artpieces but the vibe helps give the idea of the character
I'm about to start playing my first campaign in 6 years (the previous attempts to start ended pretty badly for me so I barely even made it past 2 session 1's) and I've been binging your content all last week. So excited to get started, thank you so much for all the helpful info!
I'm jealous! Our group finally came apart after about 40 years of continuous gaming. We have had membership changes from people moving away before, and even one dying (that sucked). But the last 5 of us finally apathy-ed away from gaming after one started working weekends and two moved halfway across the country. - Now I have about 100 pounds of minis (most of them are lead, pewter or other metal) and around 20-30 cubic feet of crafted table terrain just sitting around.
Bringing up a yellow/black Rogue immediately had me think this up: A Swarmkeepee Ranger/Assassin Rogue, going by the underground name "Yellowjacket", for her command of a swarm, paired with her particularly... disturbing method of target execution. Being envenoming through small needle-like wounds. Either through darts, blowdarts, or her signature rapier, "Stylet".
This is a terrific video for GMs as well as players. Giving key NPCs visual hooks that tell part of their story is such a great idea. I don't do enough of it.
This look is SO good 😄 The thoughtfulness of the design choices really come through to make a vibrant character. Also, I LOVE the transitions. Super slick.
You need both for balance. Also it's peak comedy to have Lady Nightshade Of The Seventh Hell, a tiefling/celestial hybrid with wings of pitch black bone and skin that shimmers with forgotten dreams, interacting with Bobert, a character made in 3 seconds by a man who has never played before.
Ha! When Ginny held up the "Today's sponsor" book I had to pause the video and swirl around in my chair... to confirm I already have that same book sitting next to my bed. I bought it 2 weeks ago after feeling especially inspired - after reading Time Magazine's D&D edition.
When I saw your video on back stories where you said that you don't need to have a tragic background, just have the GM ruin your life and make that your tragic background, I ran with it. I told my GM to wreck my life and she has been doing it so much. Poor Amanor, every negative association in his list shows up nearly every session.
This all is something I’ve been trying to piece together myself, trying to think about what my character WOULD wear instead of what I would want them to wear (maybe they don’t want to look like a medieval pop star, depending on background?). You explained it all so well and now I have a better grasp. Thank you Ginny!
This really helps as I narrow down the details on some characters. I have two characters that I've been dying to play but I'm currently the DM. While I've had fun coming up with both, I think Denrí is the most visually striking. They are a tiefling, with one half of their body being a deep pink with tall horns that curve gracefully to the side then back to center. The other half of his body is blue, with horns like a ram, compact and unassuming. Their hair is white and eyes are opposite colors on each side (blue and pink). He was made this way because their mother, a tiefling demigoddess, created him as a perfect combination of both her and her lover. Denrí represents duality, balance, curiosity, and independence
All great advice! One aspect I'd add is to try and consider your character's _silhouette._ Good character design in games often leans heavily on this aspect, and it can work for you too. Though it's difficult (though not _always_ impossible) to incorporate if you're planning on cosplaying them. For example, I think my main character I play currently is pretty distinctive and memorable, despite being a 1. human, 2. fighter (& rogue & wizard, but that came later), who 3. has a colour palate consisting mostly of black (cloth, beard & hair), brown (leather armour & boots; wooden bow, weapon handles & toolbox) & cream (skin). His theme is, generously, "practical adventurer/monster hunter"; you wouldn't know he was the son of a wealth merchant, but ran away, lived on the streets, was drafted into the army, then became a bounty hunter, then monster hunter, by looking at him, and his choices for himself consist entirely of "things I can use" (swords, dagger, toolbox, longbow, etc.). So how is he still visually distinctive? Simple. He's short and fat. Muscular, sure, but certainly rotund. I made a HeroForge miniature of him, and while I'm pretty happy with the result, their sliders didn't allow me to make him quite as corpulent I would have liked. More in the range of 2/3rds of what I imagine. That and his omnipresent toolbox means you can pretty easily identify him by _just_ his silhouette, which I think is pretty neat.
I usually build my characters based on mechanics i want to try or a central theme, but usually from something I've seen before. Thank you for breaking down how to design unique character aesthetics, because it's definitely one of my blindspots, and something I struggle. It gets me excited to design my next character.
I love designing the aesthetic vibe of my characters and honestly it's such an important part of my character design process because it's such a great way to communicate your characters' personality and backstory. Physical habits and tendencies are another thing that I like to add to their visual aesthetic. I had a wizard who with a scruffy bird + urban courier theme who would "perch"/unconventionally sit on furniture when looking through his spells for the day and was generally flighty and would flit around. Then now I'm playing is a performative wizard sorcerer who hides his true feelings and emotions behind a masked "customer service" smile that I now communicate to the rest of the party is his habitually performative fake smile. Also working their style into their combat is always fun. Spellcasters are pretty fun to cosmetically flavor their spells to match their style and aesthetic and then martial classes are fun to describe how they fight and move in combat whether they're a highly skilled and disciplined warrior of the art of war or if they're wild, carefree, and swing their weapon around without a care in the world.
I'm a writer when I play or run a game. It's text based most of the time. I want to just assure everyone that you don't have have be as amazing as Ginny is to express yourself. Her last point about " a stick figure with horns and a sword" is valid! It is a start a place to be nerdy with people and help you. Don't avoid doing the things because you don't think you are good at them or just stagnate about it. I promise the good people at your table are interested in what you want to make, and it's more fun than just the game seems to be at face value. You actually learn life skills, like time management, and get to satisfy the fun you want to have or even passions you have in your expression, by throwing your janky base whatevers to try it out. Do it :) no one worth your time is going to mock you or tell you your fun is wrong.
I laughed out loud at the aside to bards in the part about limiting one’s color palette to the choices. My bard was asked in session one what his favorite color was. His answer - “All of them!” He dresses like a peacock.
I love this video! What I also find helpful for visual design is look I ng at what gear I've chosen. I character that uses a curved weapon might include other curved themes in the look such as swirl or knotwork tattoos etc
Don't forget that if you can't think of an idea, then make that gap of an idea into a Feature. At a recent convention one-shot I could not think of a first name even though my character was supposed to be well known to the party, so I just declared that it began with a "K" and my character was refusing to reveal it yet, and I declared I didn't have a single God but was a multi-faith Chaplin. Turned out later, with help from my fellow players, that my supposedly Lawful Good cleric was actually called Kaos, as my characters alignment slipped due fast talking my way into being the new high priest of the Goblins & Hobgoblins. My failure to stick to my alignment was not poor role play but a character journey that was probably fated!
One thing you might not have brought up is maybe your ascetic/visuals change during Gameplay. For example, my shifter warlock. Da Ji. (Background. Folk hero) After gathering info, training her @$$ off and a lengthy encounter. She slew a gorgon and literally dragged its corpse back to Sharn. (Its an Eberron westmarches) After making Val cry tears of joy. (A mothy sorcerer she's friends with) she realized that its her duity to slay monsters and protect the innocent. So. She had plate armour reinforced and transmogged by her patron to resemble a gorgon. Along with a freaking magical greatsword made from gorgon parts. Its honestly an important tip, don't be afraid to change your characters asterics. Especially if they went through major character development.
"All the colours of the rainbow" seems to be very prominent in D&D. Personally, I find it hard to have that in my games. I like it when a group makes a game world of their own but I like mine a bit more medieval "realistic" and the PCs set themselves apart not by looks but by deeds and skill.
As an artist, I am instantly analyzing my designs for my own characters as well as my party and coming up with ideas for the second art wave. Thanks Ginny! 💜
Ginny, just want to saw, "Wow! That look is amazing. You're a very imaginative creator and storyteller. I bet you make an amazing DM". Also, I am still trying to wrap my head around how to incorporate this into a game character. Aside from the initial "describe your character" moment, it seems like most of it is more useful for art commissions or cosplay, but I still love it all the same. Keep up the great work.
I really love the way my partner designed his circle of stars druid. He is a kenku who is very into astronomy and became a navigator on a ship. So he is just this litte crow guy with a large backback filled with navigators equipment and star maps. The base of his starting outfit was a the coat of a navigators uniform he inherited from his mentor.
after DMing for three years and cooking up a new character in OneD&D when i finally got to play, i was afraid of just creating my first ever character all over again, but thanks to this video i‘ve really been able to step up my game in that regard, thank you so much!! even though they are both troll rangers (trolls like in world of warcraft, but using the elf species in dnd) they couldnt be more different from one another. absolutely awesome video!!:))
The Swan Princess usage was a nostalgia brain blast I didn't expect today. But on the topic of the video, I am learning a lot of things about color theory (cause of painting warhammer) and this video emphasizes how colors can work and make things POP and too many colors can make things extremely busy real fast. Also I love these videos.
incredible advice as always ginny! It's also very fun to make designs for characters that dont necessarily fit the "stereotype" of their class. One of my characters that i keep in my back pocket to either play or introduce as an NPC is Olefin (or OLFN-01 in my campaign's setting), a warforged druid with the Circle of the Blighted subclass from tal'dorei reborn. The theme i had when designing her was "Pollution", so her colour scheme is very industrial; iron greys and rusty ochres, with soot-black accents highlighted by the pearlescent blacks of an oil slick She's a warforged who retrofitted herself into a walking petrochemical refinery upon discovering this weird, sticky, black substance on an elemental subplane and realising the energy it holds that she can release as part of her magic, so she has smokestacks rising from her upper arms and steam vents in her torso, both of which are stained. Her body is criss-crossed with welding lines because doing surgery on yourself is messy, even when you're a robot. Even her wildshapes are part of the refinery; she can take forms reminiscent of various beasts to perform different kinds of refining processes, rerouting pipes and tanks within her. She's not overly concerned with clothes, but has welded bits of ornamental metal to her smokestakes, and engraved them with Primordial phrases; her left smokestack reads "All magic is but steam and tar" and her right smokestack reads "The circle of life is but another turbine for me to spin"
My process is a little less planned and a little more: “Hey, this is cool, let’s steal it and throw it in a blender with a bunch of other copyrighted stuff!” This is really helpful though! I also often create characters on the spot, based on songs or other media, distilling it into a story and vibe. It’s chaotic, but hey, it’s home! Great video, I love how so many of your past characters were fleshed out a little more! Can’t wait for more of them to interact with each other!
I don't play D&D (yet) but World of Darkness instead, and your videos are still such a big help and serve as inspiration for things to think about and to explore! Thank you for that!
As the resident rules lawyer/power gamer at my tables this couldn’t be more useful. Seriously I always see my characters as awesome in my head but providing a good description and design has always been a struggle. 10/10 I will be coming back to this video a bunch to reference it.
This video is actually SUPER helpful. Also, a blast to watch. Really enjoyed it. Edit: Also, your character and their design, sick as hell! Love the detail about the holy symbol 16:46
I’m an artist, and I love drawing my D&D characters (and my party’s characters). A strategy I use for color schemes and even just general character ideas is DICE! I like to go to game shops and pick out pretty dice, and then theme a character off of the dice I picked out!
Loved this WHOLE video, but just also wanna say I love that you and Pointy Hat are friends. The person I like is friends with the other person I like!! Aaaaahhhh!!
My Tiefling's theme was "tiger's eye" when I designed her. My Celestial/Devil hybrid's theme was "Heaven and Hell". My Halfling Barbarian was inspired by Atalanta, and has the theme of "angry smol". I've got a theme for all of my D&D characters already.
The timing on this is so perfect considering I JUST got a commission slot for my Eve of Ruin character. I already had a whole Pinterest board for him but still, new tips are always neat lol
Very good advice, while I don't have any personal checklist those points do tend to come into my thoughts of my characters appearance too. While I like my characters to stand out in some way, sometimes it's more subdued too. Like Baltazar my fiend pact warlock I went with the kind of vibe of the old coach driver in a gothic horror story who warns travellers of how cursed these lands are. An old human guy who clearly has seen stuff, fitting with his haunted background. He wears a somewhat tattered long black coat that's red on the inside, hinting at his pact with a devil and fitting for a coachman. He wears a teal padded vest underneath, providing some warmth and light protection and it makes for a gentler colour, fitting with his personality. He is not evil, he is generally a good man though acting as one without a soul to lose. He already knows he's going to hell when he dies. He will do the dark things for the greater good so that others don't have to. He has mutton chops with a moustache and a head full of grey hair, he is in his fifties. Facial hair that stands out can also add character after all, and a hairstyle. All his spells have a fire theme to it, like I imagine his eldritch blast having a deep red colour to it and his mage hand looking like a devilish claw. Flavouring your spells like that can also add to the look.
In the Foreign Legion the vial of soil contains a bit of earth from the graves of fallen comrades. More of a remembrance than a fashion statement. And I LOVE ALL Ginny Di videos!
You certainly did something right with Blasphemy's design, because now I REALLY want to learn more about her story, and see her in action in a future video. :D
I have a very eclectic miniature collection having played a lot of different skirmish games over the years as well as GW army games so I tend to pick a mini and base my character of one of them Sportsteams very often has colour pairings that works. so in a pinch you can pick your favourite team and base your characters colours on it
This is actually a great little starter guide for character design in general! I’m an artist, and I always have a hard time making my characters more notable/interesting, so I’m totally using this in the future for my characters, dnd or otherwise!
Watching the colour scheme section while playing a purple tiefling bard from the circus was crazy! You brought up all the key details of my character in the span of 30 seconds haha made me look around my room in confusion (I am learning I can use MANY colours and I love that for me)
This came at a perfect time. My table is making mixtape/playlists for our character's, so even though it's not a visual medium, these ideas still hold.
Like to think I'm already a pretty decent character designer but as I'm getting into more frequently drawing characters for my games, I think this process will come in super handy for my character/concept art sheets. Thanks Ginny!
I really like the concept of a regular human that looks like a tiefling. With so many different species that can be in a family's history, this is a possible thing that can happen. Or the opposite can be true with a tiefling that almost looks completely human. Bright orange eyes could be the only hint of the heritage. I love the creativity that RPG's can inspire.
As someone who adores character design (I'm literally drawing and organising my portfolio as I watch this), I have only just now realised I've never actually drawn my dnd characters D: TIME TO PUT MY NINE CHARACTERS ON HOLD!!!! MY CAT PALADIN MUST BE SHOWN LOVE!!!!! Side note - if colour theory is absolute nonsense to you, you can use a random colour palette generator, flip through a few, and then pick a few colours that you like!
I played a 63 year old necromancer grandmother with deathly pale skin and a subtle aroma of wet earth with a friendly, motherly demeaner and a face covered in smile lines with a hand knit sweater under her studded leather armor.
I made Facade. They're a tiefling sorcerer based on a demon from the abyss made for the abyss. The demon feeds on creativity. Their design is fun. They look like an infinished statue in places. For example like a mask the area of their upper face is pure black rock that doesnt reflect light edged in metallic orange. Their eyes are permanently closed. Their hair is made from metal dreads woven in large braids. They dont have horns. They only have hands (like the wrist up without the rest) that float a few feet away from them. They always were revealing clothes that show off their parentage and no shoes. But their central outfit item is their arcane focus (gifted by their parent) a heavy choker and anklets linked by orange chains that wrap around their body. Their parents gave them to Facade for their birthday.
Anytime I do a campaign with friends who can't draw, I ask them to make a pinterest moodboard, or I will build one with them. Going through reference images and asking someone what they like about it can really help, and moodboards are pretty and can help give a vibe without needing a specific image! Then if I decide to draw the character for them as a gift, its a great starting point.
My first BG3 character was a duergar bardlock of the Archfey, who liked to both wear bright colors and use illusion magic to change her hair (dark blue and magenta). She liked to try to pass for a surfacer. My favorite Solasta character is a half-elven Child of the Rift sorcerer who is visibly changed by his magical source: blood-red hair, blood-red facial markings that look wispy and stretch from the sides of his face toward the middle, and colored his eyes entirely, to the point where only his iris edges and pupils are faintly visible. I headcanon that he's had to deal with prejudice from looking spooky his whole life, and the party's like his family. This stuff is so much fun! I love the relationship between design and how it interacts with backstory and character choices.
I've disabled this weird new "AI language dubbing" thing, but unfortunately it seems to still be defaulting to that on some browsers 😩 I've followed all the instructions on how to disable it both from my channel overall and on individual videos, but since it's a new feature, I think it's just buggy. Hopefully it'll be gone soon, but in case you're still seeing it - I'm sorry! I didn't choose this!!
I knew the clones overpower you one day, RUUUUUUUUN!
It sounded beyond weird. Not your fault, Ginny. TH-cam won't even show me the original title.
That was... creepy. But thankfully a simple settings change sufficed and all back to good ol' Ginny
See you at PAX!
Still the case for me at least on the Android app. So it is by default active if the language parameters of the app doesn't fit with the spoken one? 🤔
I am a 63 y/o man who has been playing RPGs since 77 and I am a Ginny Di fan boy. I am constantly impressed Ginny’s ability to bring a fresh and creative approach to mundane tasks like this…creating characters. Ginny, you are a delightful original in a hobby filled with unoriginal me too’s. Love your sense of humor, your dedication, and that under everything, you give us solid advice that we can use at our tables…even after 40+ years of playing.
That is SO kind of you to say. I'm so glad you find the videos helpful, even after all those years of playing! 💖
@@GinnyDi Thank you for keeping this game fresh and fun. After this video, I will be looking at my character’s aesthetics in a new way. You’ve given me permission to be more creative than I would have been on my own. This old dog has a new trick to try out.
Just coming in to second everything else already says.
I’ve got you beat, I’m a 65 y/o man who has also been playing since 77. Other than that I fully second all your comments regarding Ginny Di. My whole group uses her videos as a source of inspiration.
@ Good to know that I am not the only old man Ginny Di fan out here.
Oh my god... the white and black crew neck PERFECTLY matches Blasphemy's black and white color scheme!
Since Ginny and I are friends I think she should pair it with the hey friends t-shirt, available right now for 20% OFF at ginny's OWN STORE!
😌
Right?! Sadly, I didn't want to risk ruining a Pointy Hat hat with the horns 😂
And omg such a smooth segue - now I want to make a whole look with all our pieces
I knew he would show up as soon as I heard the 4 step process!
zesty besties fr????????
I was waiting for this to pop up lol
Gotta get the book too!
making a single color your personality is such a mood haha every character I design could work as a Clue character
hahahah time to make a reskinned Clue with all your PCs!
This is a wonderful comment. thank you for the hearty laugh.
Listen, every single one of the Clue characters in the new game can GET IT.
@@GinnyDi Love the movie Clue. I can never deliver the 'flames lines' like Madeline Kahn
Mrs. White: Yes. Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her, so much...
it-it- the f it flam flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing breathl heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heathing...
@@GinnyDi wait no that would be so fun
"Not sponsored, we're just friends."
I have no connection to either of you but when I say this line made me grin like an idiot, you have no idea how much I'm understating the scene.
You're the ONLY TH-camr who makes their sponsored ads feel like they're just an excuse for you to cos/roleplay - a creative outlet - and not just a way to make money and I really appreciate that!
6:30 - My bard appreciates this exception, as their signature accessories are a rainbow patchwork cloak and an endless supply of pocket glitter.
My main Baldur’s Gate 3 character is a Wood Elf with shoulder-length wavy pink hair and gold eyes. She's a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, so she has gold scales on her forehead. I'm pretty sure my inner anime fangirl created her. Her aesthetic is fairycore crossed over with Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.
This is such a cool inspiration!! I loved having fun with the BG3 character creator too 😂
Baldur's Gate's hair, hair color and highlight options really tempt you to go over the top. I love it.
6:59 Color theory also talks about that specifically. Black and yellow together make us think of danger, its usually used in warning signs and stuff,
Thats why bees and wasps wear it :D
And Batman
@@yostinator81 And Pikachu.
What ? Ever petted a Pikachu against it´s will ? I´d rather tongue-kiss a bumble bee XD
Okay, okay - Salamander would be a classic answer. Or some tropical frogs. Poison is the point. Lame. At least compared to electricity ^^
I actually play a Trickery Cleric in our Pathfinder game, and her symbol is a wasp! I tinkered around with Bing AI until I created her in wasp striped scale mail armor
@ That’s great. AI is a cool way to get quick variations of your character.
I love how this isn't just a generic character design video. While ticking all the general points, Ginny's four points are all geared towards one thing: sparking play and conversation! That's a priority that's very DnD specific, and it shows a really great understanding of what actually matters at the end of the day!
one thing that helped me when i started thinking about this stuff is the 60/30/10 rule
its usually applied to colors, white jacket and pants, black shirt and a red undershirt as a highlight
but it can be used for all kinds of things, 60% biological, 30% mechanical and 10% ethereal or something like that
As a concept artist specifically for DnD players this is so fun! Love watching how other people design! and I love the question of "What story do they want to tell the world?" I ask that every time and it's always so fun to see people live in their character and tell you what pieces really make them feel in character.
Also as someone who gets commissions: I always ask for my players to send me a song that feels like their character. For me it gives me the vibes! And of course I love a little doodle! Little doodles are so helpful with the TYPE of things a character has when words aren't enough. Even a color palette they scribble out in MS paint!
Great video, as always!
It's so cool you incorporate music into your process. I really enjoy making playlists for my character!
"What story do they want to tell the world?" is a great prompt too 🥰 So much of our appearance is about how we want to present ourselves to the world - that's a unique way to drill down into that!
My dm also asked me for a song or two for my character! I put them in my backstory sheet as well as one for the related noteable npcs. it's a great way for them to help get a good general understanding of the characters
All of this. I too illustrate d&d characters for commission often and what I usually request is, like, a mood board or a pinterest board of their vibe. Playlists, animal associations, seasons, favorite foods, etc etc etc. Help me get in your head! Gush to me about your blorbos!
6:33 My circus born bard feels seen. Also she want to know, glitter is a color right?
A very dangerous color
I'm pretty sure that just by reading this comment I somehow managed to get glitter on me
It´s ALL colors. Call it - prismatic !
no, glitter is a gender and it's beautiful.
Glitter is what you add to color to make it SHINE.
5:30 About the color palette. The advices of your video talk about matching colors, but we can even open the possibilities by considering that people, in the middle-ages, LOVED flashy, contrasting colors and would just put them all over themselves with no concern if the colors fitted together or were complementary.
I use this example not to say that we should follow that historical reality of course (We're talking about fantasy here), but to open the realm of possibility by taking the POV of another culture.
Knights looked so bright and fun. I love making medieval knight characters
I'm a simple person; when I can play a landsknecht I'll play a landsknecht. Gimme those flashy colours.
Definitely didn’t mean to imply that all colors should match! Mentioning complementary, split complementary, and analogous colors was my best attempt at suggesting that ANY color palette is valid and you should choose based on what suits your desires for the look.
Just because my example characters tend to match doesn’t mean yours have to! That’s more indicative of my personal taste than anything else.
So true about details changing with times. After 3 years of playing (and 1 year and a half in game), my drow elf has long hair again. Because he had escaped from the underdark and distanced himself from his family he had cut his hair short to signify his "exile" from the culture. He later started growing a little braid because he formed a new family of his own. But after more than 1 year of adventuring and discovering new facts about himself and his bloodline, he started to really care about his party and finally found himself a true home for himself and his family. He's embracing elf culture... so he's getting a ponytail in his new portrait!
Obligatory Zuko joke.
But honestly, I love hair as a storytelling device.
@songofshadow5043 haha maybe i was influenced by zuko and didn't realize
Ginny casually giving a 20 minute workshop on brand design concepts disguised as a DnD video...which is more concise and clear than actual graphic design workshops I've sat through 😆💅🏼
My character I made while watching this video is:
• A dragon born that's more bat looking
• red and gold clothes but ragedy and torn with a captain's hat
• rogue
• 1 evebrow piecing and ear piecings
• a sword on his hip and a pistol sitting in his belt
Me, writing a character creation guide for my LARP team: "Do I... just link this video?"
Work smarter, not harder!! 🥰
6:30 I was literally just thinking about my bard’s colorful, hand embroidered skirt. Thanks for the disclaimer
9 out of 10 dentists joke was a 9 out of 10 joke. very well done friend
*fiend
9 out of 10 dentists approve of this comment
I definitely deliberately broke the guideline about how many colors to use in a color palette because of my current character's duality. It was absolutely a deliberate choice to have a blue, yellow, and red color palette representing his fancy-pants wizard half and a green, black, and brown palette for his savage tribal orc side and not just me throwing random colors on the mini.
Character, aesthetic, and character design is probably my favorite part of DND! Right now I’m playing in an eladrin and daughter of Persephone (pjo themed campaign) i’m also a wizard because I’ve never played a spell based type before. All of the spells I chose were either nature or necromancy themed.
A pjo campaign sounds awesome!
I gasped when I started the video. You talk about PCs aesthetic, but, not wanting to be corny or anything, you are absolutely astonishingly fabulous. You wear these colors so well.
I recently got inspired to make a College of Dance bard after watching your video on the topic and this video made me think about his design in a lot more depth! The most i had before was
"Elstair is wearing a purple mask and has an attention grabbing outfit."
but now it's
"Elstair is wearing tight purple-pink dance clothes that he sewed and dyed himself using his mother's tools without her knowledge, and on one of the sleeves is an embroidered symbol of his past lover's clan as a way to keep a part of him with him at all times. The most notable element of his outfit is his magical purple mask with pink glowing lines running across it that he commisioned with his parents money, again without their knowledge, which when worn supresses his memories of his past life and replaces them with the life of his new persona "Elstair" instead of the life he actually lived as Esther."
Just choked on my coffee the second you said "lunar moth". I just finished making my new D&D character last night that is based on the theme of "ArchFey lunar moth monk".
Great video! When I started watching, all I knew is that I wanted to create a human ranger and now, I'm kind of in love with the character I created while watching. I'm not at all a visual person, but I can completely picture them and describe them in detail and I even have a basic backstory. Your patented, copyrighted, trademarked and totally official four step character design process really does work wonders.
So far as color theory and seeing many, many character designs that obviously didn't use it, it's a case of knowing the rules so you know how to break them.
Added tip, don't just vary your hues, vary saturation (color/gray) and volume (light/dark) to create more interest and balance, and to highlight the parts you really want focus on.
actually the _just Ginny_ look was already cool as f ;)
Real, couldn't stop staring at the eyeshadow, she did it so flawlessly! I couldn't figure out what was making it REALLY pop to me until I realized her shirt matched it perfectly!
I will not be satisfied with a dnd character for myself until I get the exact thing I want in a character modeler. Then I fill in that into my backstory. Anything regarding looks is basically Mad-Libs until then in the backstory.
That's a cool way round to do it!
I know people who find cool character art online and get inspired to base their character's personality and backstory off elements in the designs.
@@GinnyDi that's me half of the time lol
My group uses HeroForge to make a picture of our characters, pasting it into our computerized character sheets.
You have to use some tricks like PRINT SCREEN into a format you can use, but that makes it free.
And if you want, you can have HeroForge make that very mini you've designed.
It's a little pricy, but they can also print it in the colors you've chosen.
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Not sponsored, it's just what we use.
1:38 quote of the year!
I just have to say, I love your voice for Tasha so much! It sounds like of like Laverna from Barbie Fairytopia; sexy, kind of evil, but also really fun to listen to.😄 I hope you make more videos with her in the future!❤
Omg what a great comparison, thank you!!
Me on day 6 of a backpacking trip - "It's dirt, I'm making it fashion" 😂 Great video! I love watching how people break down their design processes!
Obligated to give this video a like because of the makeup look at 00:45 alone!
I'm 57 and I've been playing since I was 14; not just D&D but many other games as well. Ginni is the only person on TH-cam that I will watch their sponsorship spots, and I'm especially glad that I did for this one. Went immediately to the link after the video and ordered the Worlds and Realms book as a Christmas present for myself! Thanks, Ginni, for all the fresh content you provide, the humor and the advice, the amazing outfits and character designs, the calendar and Deck of Boons and Banes. I've bought them all, and I've even watched your Mimic video multiple times to try and get your numbers up! :)
Great vid as always, I always try to come up with a few catch phrases that my character says or gestures that they do to help define them at the table. I'm not one to dress up at the table, but the occasional 'dwarves do not ride horses' or 'when the cave toad speaks, you better listen' have made my character memorable at the table. Oh, and I usually have some object to fiddle with or set at the table - I'm always looking at garage sales for oddities I can use - nesting dolls painted to be animals for my druids focus, a radiant sun pendant for my cleric of pholtus, a big beer stein for my barbarian, etc.
I have never played a single session of D&D but I have been watching D&D content for literal years, including your channel.
And this video is a perfect example of why - even if it's not for a roleplaying game in my case, creating characters is fun, and seeing what/how other people create gives me a childlike joy - it makes me excited to work on my own creative works.
It has become one of my favorite ways to build a character to start with crafting a design in a character creator before almost anything else, and then taking time to stare at the final picture asking myself who this dashing stranger that wandered out of the aether is supposed to be. It can be very fun to lose yourself in jumbling through face, hair, and clothing options until something cohesive just seems to materialize out of nothing and then build the rest of the character's concept off of how they look.
Our (former - sadness) group has so many minis that we often picked a mini and make a character to fit it.
What an excellent step-by-step video, thanks Ginny!
Using a colour palette was such a big help when I last created a character, will strongly recommend to everyone.
Absolutely!! I have so many characters now, when I need to create a new one, I often think, what color palettes have I not used yet? It really helps create visually distinct designs!
Pinterest mood boards are how I capture the vibe of my characters. Half of it might be completely unrelated things like artpieces but the vibe helps give the idea of the character
I'm about to start playing my first campaign in 6 years (the previous attempts to start ended pretty badly for me so I barely even made it past 2 session 1's) and I've been binging your content all last week. So excited to get started, thank you so much for all the helpful info!
That's awesome! I hope this time you have a better experience and that the campaign goes super well! 🙏
I'm jealous!
Our group finally came apart after about 40 years of continuous gaming.
We have had membership changes from people moving away before, and even one dying (that sucked).
But the last 5 of us finally apathy-ed away from gaming after one started working weekends and two moved halfway across the country.
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Now I have about 100 pounds of minis (most of them are lead, pewter or other metal) and around 20-30 cubic feet of crafted table terrain just sitting around.
Bringing up a yellow/black Rogue immediately had me think this up:
A Swarmkeepee Ranger/Assassin Rogue, going by the underground name "Yellowjacket", for her command of a swarm, paired with her particularly... disturbing method of target execution. Being envenoming through small needle-like wounds. Either through darts, blowdarts, or her signature rapier, "Stylet".
To me yellow is the colour for cultists and warlocks. Hail to the King!
This is a terrific video for GMs as well as players. Giving key NPCs visual hooks that tell part of their story is such a great idea. I don't do enough of it.
This look is SO good 😄 The thoughtfulness of the design choices really come through to make a vibrant character. Also, I LOVE the transitions. Super slick.
Thank you so much!! 🥰
The two types of character: elaborately designed and fleshed out heroes like Ginny’s and Bob III.
You need both for balance. Also it's peak comedy to have Lady Nightshade Of The Seventh Hell, a tiefling/celestial hybrid with wings of pitch black bone and skin that shimmers with forgotten dreams, interacting with Bobert, a character made in 3 seconds by a man who has never played before.
@@genericname2747 Trust me: Bobert is 100% the PC of a 15-year veteran. :P
@HorizonOfHope You know what, you're right. Veterans either make the most unhinged character concept, or Human Man.
Your hair is awesome. I’m loving the darker blue roots. I love having two toned hair.
Ha!
When Ginny held up the "Today's sponsor" book I had to pause the video and swirl around in my chair... to confirm I already have that same book sitting next to my bed.
I bought it 2 weeks ago after feeling especially inspired - after reading Time Magazine's D&D edition.
When I saw your video on back stories where you said that you don't need to have a tragic background, just have the GM ruin your life and make that your tragic background, I ran with it. I told my GM to wreck my life and she has been doing it so much. Poor Amanor, every negative association in his list shows up nearly every session.
This all is something I’ve been trying to piece together myself, trying to think about what my character WOULD wear instead of what I would want them to wear (maybe they don’t want to look like a medieval pop star, depending on background?). You explained it all so well and now I have a better grasp. Thank you Ginny!
I just HAVE to mention Ginny's hairstyle! Soooooooooo pretty! I love how the braids create a layered look in the back of her hair!
“Not sponsored. We’re just friends. Bye.” Best way to end the video
This really helps as I narrow down the details on some characters. I have two characters that I've been dying to play but I'm currently the DM. While I've had fun coming up with both, I think Denrí is the most visually striking. They are a tiefling, with one half of their body being a deep pink with tall horns that curve gracefully to the side then back to center. The other half of his body is blue, with horns like a ram, compact and unassuming. Their hair is white and eyes are opposite colors on each side (blue and pink). He was made this way because their mother, a tiefling demigoddess, created him as a perfect combination of both her and her lover. Denrí represents duality, balance, curiosity, and independence
All great advice!
One aspect I'd add is to try and consider your character's _silhouette._ Good character design in games often leans heavily on this aspect, and it can work for you too. Though it's difficult (though not _always_ impossible) to incorporate if you're planning on cosplaying them.
For example, I think my main character I play currently is pretty distinctive and memorable, despite being a 1. human, 2. fighter (& rogue & wizard, but that came later), who 3. has a colour palate consisting mostly of black (cloth, beard & hair), brown (leather armour & boots; wooden bow, weapon handles & toolbox) & cream (skin). His theme is, generously, "practical adventurer/monster hunter"; you wouldn't know he was the son of a wealth merchant, but ran away, lived on the streets, was drafted into the army, then became a bounty hunter, then monster hunter, by looking at him, and his choices for himself consist entirely of "things I can use" (swords, dagger, toolbox, longbow, etc.).
So how is he still visually distinctive? Simple. He's short and fat. Muscular, sure, but certainly rotund. I made a HeroForge miniature of him, and while I'm pretty happy with the result, their sliders didn't allow me to make him quite as corpulent I would have liked. More in the range of 2/3rds of what I imagine. That and his omnipresent toolbox means you can pretty easily identify him by _just_ his silhouette, which I think is pretty neat.
I usually build my characters based on mechanics i want to try or a central theme, but usually from something I've seen before. Thank you for breaking down how to design unique character aesthetics, because it's definitely one of my blindspots, and something I struggle. It gets me excited to design my next character.
I love designing the aesthetic vibe of my characters and honestly it's such an important part of my character design process because it's such a great way to communicate your characters' personality and backstory.
Physical habits and tendencies are another thing that I like to add to their visual aesthetic. I had a wizard who with a scruffy bird + urban courier theme who would "perch"/unconventionally sit on furniture when looking through his spells for the day and was generally flighty and would flit around. Then now I'm playing is a performative wizard sorcerer who hides his true feelings and emotions behind a masked "customer service" smile that I now communicate to the rest of the party is his habitually performative fake smile.
Also working their style into their combat is always fun. Spellcasters are pretty fun to cosmetically flavor their spells to match their style and aesthetic and then martial classes are fun to describe how they fight and move in combat whether they're a highly skilled and disciplined warrior of the art of war or if they're wild, carefree, and swing their weapon around without a care in the world.
omg THANK YOU i NEEDED thissssss
You're so welcome!! Hope it helps 🥰
I'm a writer when I play or run a game. It's text based most of the time. I want to just assure everyone that you don't have have be as amazing as Ginny is to express yourself. Her last point about " a stick figure with horns and a sword" is valid! It is a start a place to be nerdy with people and help you. Don't avoid doing the things because you don't think you are good at them or just stagnate about it. I promise the good people at your table are interested in what you want to make, and it's more fun than just the game seems to be at face value. You actually learn life skills, like time management, and get to satisfy the fun you want to have or even passions you have in your expression, by throwing your janky base whatevers to try it out. Do it :) no one worth your time is going to mock you or tell you your fun is wrong.
You look like the start of an amazingly designed character yourself in this video. The hair, earrings, and makeup are seriously serving
I laughed out loud at the aside to bards in the part about limiting one’s color palette to the choices. My bard was asked in session one what his favorite color was. His answer - “All of them!” He dresses like a peacock.
I love this video! What I also find helpful for visual design is look I ng at what gear I've chosen. I character that uses a curved weapon might include other curved themes in the look such as swirl or knotwork tattoos etc
Don't forget that if you can't think of an idea, then make that gap of an idea into a Feature. At a recent convention one-shot I could not think of a first name even though my character was supposed to be well known to the party, so I just declared that it began with a "K" and my character was refusing to reveal it yet, and I declared I didn't have a single God but was a multi-faith Chaplin. Turned out later, with help from my fellow players, that my supposedly Lawful Good cleric was actually called Kaos, as my characters alignment slipped due fast talking my way into being the new high priest of the Goblins & Hobgoblins. My failure to stick to my alignment was not poor role play but a character journey that was probably fated!
One thing you might not have brought up is maybe your ascetic/visuals change during Gameplay.
For example, my shifter warlock. Da Ji. (Background. Folk hero) After gathering info, training her @$$ off and a lengthy encounter. She slew a gorgon and literally dragged its corpse back to Sharn. (Its an Eberron westmarches)
After making Val cry tears of joy. (A mothy sorcerer she's friends with) she realized that its her duity to slay monsters and protect the innocent. So. She had plate armour reinforced and transmogged by her patron to resemble a gorgon. Along with a freaking magical greatsword made from gorgon parts.
Its honestly an important tip, don't be afraid to change your characters asterics. Especially if they went through major character development.
"All the colours of the rainbow" seems to be very prominent in D&D. Personally, I find it hard to have that in my games. I like it when a group makes a game world of their own but I like mine a bit more medieval "realistic" and the PCs set themselves apart not by looks but by deeds and skill.
As an artist, I am instantly analyzing my designs for my own characters as well as my party and coming up with ideas for the second art wave. Thanks Ginny! 💜
Ginny, just want to saw, "Wow! That look is amazing. You're a very imaginative creator and storyteller. I bet you make an amazing DM". Also, I am still trying to wrap my head around how to incorporate this into a game character. Aside from the initial "describe your character" moment, it seems like most of it is more useful for art commissions or cosplay, but I still love it all the same. Keep up the great work.
I really love the way my partner designed his circle of stars druid. He is a kenku who is very into astronomy and became a navigator on a ship. So he is just this litte crow guy with a large backback filled with navigators equipment and star maps. The base of his starting outfit was a the coat of a navigators uniform he inherited from his mentor.
after DMing for three years and cooking up a new character in OneD&D when i finally got to play, i was afraid of just creating my first ever character all over again, but thanks to this video i‘ve really been able to step up my game in that regard, thank you so much!! even though they are both troll rangers (trolls like in world of warcraft, but using the elf species in dnd) they couldnt be more different from one another. absolutely awesome video!!:))
The Swan Princess usage was a nostalgia brain blast I didn't expect today. But on the topic of the video, I am learning a lot of things about color theory (cause of painting warhammer) and this video emphasizes how colors can work and make things POP and too many colors can make things extremely busy real fast. Also I love these videos.
incredible advice as always ginny!
It's also very fun to make designs for characters that dont necessarily fit the "stereotype" of their class. One of my characters that i keep in my back pocket to either play or introduce as an NPC is Olefin (or OLFN-01 in my campaign's setting), a warforged druid with the Circle of the Blighted subclass from tal'dorei reborn. The theme i had when designing her was "Pollution", so her colour scheme is very industrial; iron greys and rusty ochres, with soot-black accents highlighted by the pearlescent blacks of an oil slick
She's a warforged who retrofitted herself into a walking petrochemical refinery upon discovering this weird, sticky, black substance on an elemental subplane and realising the energy it holds that she can release as part of her magic, so she has smokestacks rising from her upper arms and steam vents in her torso, both of which are stained. Her body is criss-crossed with welding lines because doing surgery on yourself is messy, even when you're a robot. Even her wildshapes are part of the refinery; she can take forms reminiscent of various beasts to perform different kinds of refining processes, rerouting pipes and tanks within her.
She's not overly concerned with clothes, but has welded bits of ornamental metal to her smokestakes, and engraved them with Primordial phrases; her left smokestack reads "All magic is but steam and tar" and her right smokestack reads "The circle of life is but another turbine for me to spin"
My process is a little less planned and a little more: “Hey, this is cool, let’s steal it and throw it in a blender with a bunch of other copyrighted stuff!” This is really helpful though! I also often create characters on the spot, based on songs or other media, distilling it into a story and vibe. It’s chaotic, but hey, it’s home! Great video, I love how so many of your past characters were fleshed out a little more! Can’t wait for more of them to interact with each other!
I don't play D&D (yet) but World of Darkness instead, and your videos are still such a big help and serve as inspiration for things to think about and to explore! Thank you for that!
2:08 PREACH🗣️🔥
As the resident rules lawyer/power gamer at my tables this couldn’t be more useful. Seriously I always see my characters as awesome in my head but providing a good description and design has always been a struggle. 10/10 I will be coming back to this video a bunch to reference it.
This video is actually SUPER helpful. Also, a blast to watch. Really enjoyed it.
Edit: Also, your character and their design, sick as hell! Love the detail about the holy symbol 16:46
I’m an artist, and I love drawing my D&D characters (and my party’s characters). A strategy I use for color schemes and even just general character ideas is DICE! I like to go to game shops and pick out pretty dice, and then theme a character off of the dice I picked out!
Loved this WHOLE video, but just also wanna say I love that you and Pointy Hat are friends. The person I like is friends with the other person I like!! Aaaaahhhh!!
My Tiefling's theme was "tiger's eye" when I designed her. My Celestial/Devil hybrid's theme was "Heaven and Hell". My Halfling Barbarian was inspired by Atalanta, and has the theme of "angry smol". I've got a theme for all of my D&D characters already.
For some reason, how proudly Ginni said the line "because I'm f****** nerd" made me crack up
The timing on this is so perfect considering I JUST got a commission slot for my Eve of Ruin character. I already had a whole Pinterest board for him but still, new tips are always neat lol
I'm so glad the video was helpful, I hope you love the finished character design!
Very good advice, while I don't have any personal checklist those points do tend to come into my thoughts of my characters appearance too. While I like my characters to stand out in some way, sometimes it's more subdued too.
Like Baltazar my fiend pact warlock I went with the kind of vibe of the old coach driver in a gothic horror story who warns travellers of how cursed these lands are. An old human guy who clearly has seen stuff, fitting with his haunted background. He wears a somewhat tattered long black coat that's red on the inside, hinting at his pact with a devil and fitting for a coachman. He wears a teal padded vest underneath, providing some warmth and light protection and it makes for a gentler colour, fitting with his personality. He is not evil, he is generally a good man though acting as one without a soul to lose. He already knows he's going to hell when he dies. He will do the dark things for the greater good so that others don't have to.
He has mutton chops with a moustache and a head full of grey hair, he is in his fifties. Facial hair that stands out can also add character after all, and a hairstyle.
All his spells have a fire theme to it, like I imagine his eldritch blast having a deep red colour to it and his mage hand looking like a devilish claw. Flavouring your spells like that can also add to the look.
In the Foreign Legion the vial of soil contains a bit of earth from the graves of fallen comrades. More of a remembrance than a fashion statement. And I LOVE ALL Ginny Di videos!
You certainly did something right with Blasphemy's design, because now I REALLY want to learn more about her story, and see her in action in a future video. :D
1:39 |Lae'zel voice| "Teeth-ling."
My kids are dwarven fighter and lizardfolk barbarian.
Yeah, I dont want to play with smell'o'vision...
I have a very eclectic miniature collection having played a lot of different skirmish games over the years as well as GW army games so I tend to pick a mini and base my character of one of them
Sportsteams very often has colour pairings that works. so in a pinch you can pick your favourite team and base your characters colours on it
This is actually a great little starter guide for character design in general! I’m an artist, and I always have a hard time making my characters more notable/interesting, so I’m totally using this in the future for my characters, dnd or otherwise!
Blasphemy repping Pointy Hat (Antonio) is something I never knew I needed until it happened!
All of my characters would rep Pointy Hat (if only I could be bothered to get the bodypaint out 😂)!
Watching the colour scheme section while playing a purple tiefling bard from the circus was crazy! You brought up all the key details of my character in the span of 30 seconds haha made me look around my room in confusion (I am learning I can use MANY colours and I love that for me)
I see what you did there: A beautiful workshop on character creation focused on the visual elements. Thanks for the inspiration.
Love, love, love this video! I’m a big believer in themes and vibes for character creation. I will be showing this to all of my players old and new.
This came at a perfect time. My table is making mixtape/playlists for our character's, so even though it's not a visual medium, these ideas still hold.
Ginny, you are not a boring human! You are the ultimate proof that you can make an interesting and colourful character, even when you pick a human!
Like to think I'm already a pretty decent character designer but as I'm getting into more frequently drawing characters for my games, I think this process will come in super handy for my character/concept art sheets. Thanks Ginny!
I really like the concept of a regular human that looks like a tiefling. With so many different species that can be in a family's history, this is a possible thing that can happen.
Or the opposite can be true with a tiefling that almost looks completely human. Bright orange eyes could be the only hint of the heritage.
I love the creativity that RPG's can inspire.
As someone who adores character design (I'm literally drawing and organising my portfolio as I watch this), I have only just now realised I've never actually drawn my dnd characters D: TIME TO PUT MY NINE CHARACTERS ON HOLD!!!! MY CAT PALADIN MUST BE SHOWN LOVE!!!!!
Side note - if colour theory is absolute nonsense to you, you can use a random colour palette generator, flip through a few, and then pick a few colours that you like!
Ginny to play Tasha in the next D&D movie! But who to play Graz'zt? Hmmmm...
I played a 63 year old necromancer grandmother with deathly pale skin and a subtle aroma of wet earth with a friendly, motherly demeaner and a face covered in smile lines with a hand knit sweater under her studded leather armor.
I made Facade. They're a tiefling sorcerer based on a demon from the abyss made for the abyss. The demon feeds on creativity. Their design is fun. They look like an infinished statue in places. For example like a mask the area of their upper face is pure black rock that doesnt reflect light edged in metallic orange. Their eyes are permanently closed. Their hair is made from metal dreads woven in large braids. They dont have horns. They only have hands (like the wrist up without the rest) that float a few feet away from them. They always were revealing clothes that show off their parentage and no shoes. But their central outfit item is their arcane focus (gifted by their parent) a heavy choker and anklets linked by orange chains that wrap around their body. Their parents gave them to Facade for their birthday.
Anytime I do a campaign with friends who can't draw, I ask them to make a pinterest moodboard, or I will build one with them. Going through reference images and asking someone what they like about it can really help, and moodboards are pretty and can help give a vibe without needing a specific image! Then if I decide to draw the character for them as a gift, its a great starting point.
My first BG3 character was a duergar bardlock of the Archfey, who liked to both wear bright colors and use illusion magic to change her hair (dark blue and magenta). She liked to try to pass for a surfacer. My favorite Solasta character is a half-elven Child of the Rift sorcerer who is visibly changed by his magical source: blood-red hair, blood-red facial markings that look wispy and stretch from the sides of his face toward the middle, and colored his eyes entirely, to the point where only his iris edges and pupils are faintly visible. I headcanon that he's had to deal with prejudice from looking spooky his whole life, and the party's like his family. This stuff is so much fun! I love the relationship between design and how it interacts with backstory and character choices.