flâneur

New Characters - by Roman Muradov - DADA issues

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about what makes a visually compelling character. In this post you’ll find lots of new character designs, and no stories about them. I’ve been traveling a lot, so this is a bunch of semi-scattered thoughts, and not a thought-through essay. Such is September. Most of my characters tend to carry suitcases, or some other bags, or something—one can probably psychoanalyze it as some manifestation of my many many migrations, and one probably wouldn’t be wrong. I think a good character is a balance of shape and reference. A distinct shape makes it readable, while a connection with something in our world (humanoid, animal, object, etc) makes it feel familiar. For the characters in Foghorn, I was very deliberate in making their designs not too clearly referencing one animal or another, so some people think Irma is a cat, others think she’s a fox—myself, I have no idea. If it looks too familiar, the character can appear dull, and if it has no connection to what we know

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what makes a visually compelling character. In this post you’ll find lots of new character designs, and no stories about them. I’ve been traveling a lot, so this is a bunch of semi-scattered thoughts, and not a thought-through essay. Such is September. Most of my characters tend to carry suitcases, or some other bags, or something—one can probably psychoanalyze it as some manifestation of my many many migrations, and one probably wouldn’t be wrong. I think a good character is a balance of shape and reference. A distinct shape makes it readable, while a…

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