Over the course of many years, characters have been designed for all sorts of media with many different roles, but how are they designed to fit these roles? This essay will examine exactly how characters are created to fit the role they are supposed to portray.

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First, a major aspect of character design is shape language (Walt Disney Family Museum, 1908). Shape language is the technique of portraying a character’s personality and traits in their designs via the use of shapes. The earliest known use of shape language we know of is Emile Cohl’s French animated films from the early 1900’s. As said in the Walt Disney Family Museum, shape language can "tell a story, show personality and illicit an emotional response from the viewer without using any words" or alternatively could be avoided to be used to deceive, having the design represent the opposite of what the character actually is like, such as being evil despite the character looking friendly. Shape language is very important as it helps determine and portray the entire character, and generally, having a recognisable silhouette for a character is considered to be "of extreme importance" by Mark McDonnell (Mark McDonnell, 2010) when talking about a character’s design. However, you cannot completely rely on a silhouette and shape language for an effective character design, as without colour, all designs would end up just being black and white, which isn’t very visually stimulating most of the time.

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This is where colour theories (Isaac Newton, 1704) become relevant, which are theories based around the composition of colours in a design, and there are multiple aspects of colour theory that can be applied to character design, which can be divided into a few separate major areas: The colour wheel, colour harmony, colour emotions, and colour context. The colour wheel is a wheel of colours that can come in many forms, but mainly revolves around breaking up the three primary colours: red, blue, and yellow. Other forms of the colour wheel add colours based on how to colours adjacent to each other mix and have the colour between them be the result, you can expand on a colour wheel infinitely if you have the colours to mix, but there isn’t really a need to expand past the first three iterations, as that provides you with primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. The colour wheel is the basis for colour harmony, which is how colours work together in a colour scheme to create visual appeal. The general idea for colour harmony is that if a colour scheme is too boring, then it is not stimulatory enough for the brain to be interested, but if a colour scheme is too chaotic, it becomes far too stimulatory for the brain, and becomes overwhelming, and thus uninteresting. Colour harmony is an attempt to find an equilibrium between the two of those, creating something that is stimulating enough, not too little, or too much, so that it is visually appealing for the viewer. However, this is entirely dependent on the context of the colour schemes. For example, if you were to take a character from South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, 1997) and put them in a very dull, dark context such as Dark Souls (FromSoftware Inc., 2011), the character would look very out of place and unfitting (See figure 1) so whilst colour theory should be followed to create something visually pleasing, it can be purposefully ignored to create a specific aesthetic, which are exceptions to the rule, so you should keep context in mind when using colour theory. Colour harmony usually works with a few types of colour schemes: analogous, complementary, natural, triadic, and split complementary. Analogous colour schemes are based around three colours on a 12-part colour wheel and has one of the three colours dominate. It is used when you want to create a visually pleasing, but also quite calming colour scheme for a character, a good set of examples would be the emotions from Inside Out (Pixar, 2015) (See figure 2). Complementary colour schemes are based around the colours exactly opposite to one another on a colour wheel, and split-complementary is the same thing, but with three adjacent colours on each side of the colour wheel. Complementary colour schemes should be used when you want your character to really stand out, so using it for something along the lines of a main character or a main antagonist would be effective as it makes them stand out more. An example of this would be the contrast between Sonic's (Sega, 1991) main blue body contrasting with his red shoes and Eggman's (Sega, 1991) main red body with his blue goggles (See figure 3). The self-explanatory natural colour scheme is a colour scheme based off nature. This is where a colour scheme doesn’t follow any rules, but rather tries to base its colours off of nature, so the character would have colours such as neutral colours, earthy tones, or simply a brown or green colour palette. This could be used for a character that has been raised in the woods, or a god/goddess of nature for example. An example of this sort of design can be seen in Kid Icarus Uprising (Sora Ltd, 2012) in the design of Viridi, the goddess of nature. (See figure 4). Finally, there is colour emotion, which is the theory that colours can be associated with different emotions and themes. As said by Clara Vetter (Clara Vetter, 2019) in her article 'The effects of colour on behaviour' , "Warm colours like red, yellow and orange evoke higher arousal emotions, such as love passion happiness and anger. Cool colours, like blue, green and purple are linked to calmness sadness and indifference", these colours can be used to help a character fit role as it portrays the kinds of emotions and sentiments attached to them without having any form of storytelling or context to them beforehand.

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Having said that, storytelling and context is also a major part of helping a character fit their role. The storytelling of a character is a large part of what makes a character interesting and as said by Reedsyblog under the article 'Character Development 101' (Reedsyblog, 2019), can usually be broken down into several parts, which you will need for a "Fully realized, multidimensional character". First, you need to establish goals and motivations, so there is a reason for them to exist and so that it gives them motivation, making them seem more alive, helping them fit role in the sense that it makes said role feel more realistic. Secondly, you could give a character an external and internal conflict, as that brings obstacles between the main character and their end goal. External conflicts are overcome to develop the story centred around the character, perhaps having them overcome a series of challenges set by somebody else. Internal conflicts are problems the character faces to do with themselves, an example could be getting over another character’s death and moving forward, or something as simple as getting progressively less irritable over the course of a story. These help a character feel real, and could help them fit their role even more, as it would provide a more realistic character to be put into said role, especially if the conflicts are based around their role in the story. An example of a character having both internal and external conflict is Sunny from Omori (Omocat, 2020), having the external conflict of having to deal with his friends and moving away from town, and having the internal conflict of mentally overcoming the absence of his older sister and dealing with guilt. This is agreed on by Michelle Beerli Chagoya (Chagoya M.B, 2021) in her review of Omori  where she says that the game "eerily echoes real-life internal conflicts" and "Plays with how traumatic experiences show themselves. The game "eerily echoing" these real life conflicts helps the player feel immersed as they are realistic situations, allowing for the internal conflicts to be placed onto the player, helping Sunny fit his role as the player character. Another thing that really helps make a character feel realistic and three-dimensional is giving them both strengths and flaws in their character and how they act or behave. A successful example of a character having both strengths and flaws is Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling, 1997), who, as agreed by Amanda Steele in her article 'Harry's 5 greatest strengths (& his 5 weaknesses)' (Steele A, 2020) is "self-sacrificing" and "loyal", but also "lacks common sense" and "is overly emotional", creating a balance of the two. This, yet again, helps a character appear more realistic, and in some cases more relatable to the viewer. This work especially well at making characters fit role, as it gives them individuality. For example, if two characters were miners and their goals were both getting a promotion, you could differentiate the two personality wise by identifying their strengths and flaws. This makes them fit their role in a more successful manner, as not only do they fit their role from other factors, but this gives them a more unique overall character.

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Next, is to decide if a character should be static or dynamic. The difference being dynamic character changes because of their actions over the course of their story and a static character tends to remain mostly the same regardless of any actions. Dynamic characters tend to work better in a lot more story driven media, such as a novel series or a drama-based show and static characters would work better either for a comedy relief character in a serious show, or more realistically, an episodic tv series or series aimed at children, who don’t need character development and story to remain interested. The choice between the two could make or break a character in comparison to the kind of world they are in. An example of a dynamic character would again be Sunny from Omori, overcoming his guilt and his sister’s absence by the end of the story, changing from his guilt-ridden self, seen at the start of the game, to a much more happy and stable character at the end. An example of a static character would be Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (Maxwell Atoms, 2001), who remains the same character regardless of the events of each episode of the series, this helps with her fitting in the role of a character in an episodic show, as every episode feels the same, and the viewer doesn’t need to have watched previous episodes to understand her character. As J.S. Morin said in their article 'Writing an episodic series' (J.S. Morin, 2015), "You can jump in at nearly any point, and while you'll lack the backstory, you can still experience a good story.". This is one of the many advantages to having an episodic format in relation to a series.

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In conclusion, there are many factors that go into creating a successful character design that fits the role that it’s been given, but these select few stand out among the rest of them. These are all major parts of character design and should not be ignored when making characters and concepts for said characters.

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Bibliography

Figure 1 - South park in Dark Souls Source: I made this image.

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Figure 2 - Inside out Emotion Characters: Source: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/thumbnails/image/rwt94qb9-1435039338_1.jpg?itok=Im7kBrr0

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Figure 3 - Sonic and Eggman Contrast: Source: http://cdn.entries.clios.com/styles/clio_aotw_ems_image_details_retina/s3/entry_attachments/image/39/20943/takeovercover.jpg

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Figure 4 - Viridi's Natural Colour Scheme: Source: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/kidicarus/images/c/ca/Viridiconceptart.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/899?cb=20160414025521

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Barnhart B. 2021. How to embrace a natural colour palette in your designs [Online] Available at: https://www.vectornator.io/blog/natural-color-palette [Last Accessed on 04/03/22]

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ColourMatters (No exact author). 2022. Basic Colour Theory [Online] Available at: https://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory  [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Hampton-Smith S. 2021. Colour theory: A Jargon-free designer's guide [Online] Available at: https://www.creativebloq.com/colour/colour-theory-11121290  [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Kaushik V. 2021. How to use analogous colour scheme in design? [Online] Available at: https://uxplanet.org/how-to-use-analogous-color-scheme-in-design-bf32d18ab05c [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Kaushik V. 2021. How to use a complementary colour scheme in design? [Online] Available at: https://uxplanet.org/how-to-use-a-complementary-color-scheme-in-design-b50d06df24ef [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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McDonnell M. 2010. The Importance of a good silhouette [Online] Available at: http://theartcenter.blogspot.com/2010/02/importance-of-good-silhouette.html [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Morin J.S. 2015. Writing an episodic series [Online] Available at: https://www.jsmorin.com/2015/08/episodic-series/ [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Reedsyblog. 2019. Character Development 101: Writing Characters Readers Won’t Forget  [Online] Available at: https://blog.reedsy.com/character-development/#:~:text=To%20write%20such%20a%20character,an%20external%20and%20internal%20conflict [Last accessed on 04/03/22]

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Steele, A. 2020. Harry Potter: Harry's 5 Greatest Strengths (& his 5 weaknesses) [Online] Available at: https://screenrant.com/harry-potter-greatest-strength-weakness/ [Last accessed on 24/03/22]

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Walt Disney Family Museum. No Date. Shape Language [Online] Available at: https://www.waltdisney.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/T%26T_ShapeLang_v9.pdf [Last accessed on 04/03/22]