Why Do You Need Character Designing Websites?
As much as creating OCs can be a personal process, driven by individual tastes, it never hurts to consult experts and turn to resources to improve your craft. Character design is a skill set that is important across many industries and there are some “rules” to what makes a character design successful. Being aware of character design trends and what resources are out there just makes sense for anyone who loves creating original characters.
Well, we’ve searched for some of the best websites for character design and put them together in a handy list. We feature everything from creative communities to YouTube channels, to webpages that let you design characters in your browser. This array of resources and tools all serve unique purposes and we’ll cover how to best use them in your character design process.
Of course, this is in no way an exhaustive list - so if you need more resources, let us know, and we can find more that are worth exploring. With that said, here are the 11 best websites for character design we’ve found.
The Best Character Design Websites
These websites vary between tools and resources, to points of inspiration. We’ve provided some guidance as to best utilize them.
CharacterHub (Inspiration)
One of the best ways to experience great character design is to go to where the character designers are. In that sense, CharacterHub is a go-to destination for innovative character design ranging from the work of beginners to professional designers. You never know what cool tweak to character design you may pick up from observing some of the characters in the trending feature. That is part of the reason I am a CharacterHub user, as I have an interest in character design websites myself. I am always striving to learn.
It is easy to find and follow unique OC creators on the site and to learn through observation. However, you also benefit from the ability to create profiles and share your characters for valuable feedback. You can even network with other creators for trades, conversation, and even purchase commissions through the marketplace. Plus, you can easily organize the fanworks based on your designs once they start rolling in.
CharacterHub is a fantastic tool for many creators thanks to its organizational features and the huge community within. The ability to store hundreds of original character designs and include stylistic and biographic details makes CharacterHub a great resource for a character designer. Additionally, the profile customization features can serve as an extension to your character design, with custom color themes and information blocks. Take a look at my character, Dash, for example.
Best Use of CharacterHub
CharacterHub’s variety of features are all very useful for creators looking for character design websites. Being able to store, update, and roleplay as your characters allows you to get into their heads and develop them further. However, all those features are bonuses considering the primary draw of being able to see incredible varieties of styles and techniques in character design.
With that said, one of those features worth exploring is the very blog where you are reading this article right now. Between inspiration posts, tips and tutorials, and creator interviews, you never know what character design influences you may pick up.
BaM Animation (Video)
BaM Animation is a collaborative video project of Brent Noll and Maximus Paulson, who are artists who worked in the television industry and have worked in major studios. As professionals in animation, they have a lot of knowledge they share across several videos. Their channel isn’t as active as some others on the list, but covers some fantastic topics such as character turnarounds and character design tricks and tips.
You’ll find some fantastic guides in their videos, and some recent uploads suggest that these two busy professionals may be preparing even more videos soon. They also have a website with even more resources if you’re interested in their approach.
Best Use of BaM Animation
Like a few other video resources included on this list, the tutorials offered on their channel can be quite helpful in understanding the character design process on a technical level. These videos are nice, bite-sized lessons that you can watch on a break or before you start your next character design project and make for a good way to “warm up” before you draw anything.
CharacterCreator.org (Tool)
The Character Creator is an interesting tool based on the concept of the kisekae ningyou, or Japanese paper dolls. Of course, the fact that this is also 100% free is a huge win for any character designer as well. The website features an app that lets you click between parts for your character design and variations on those parts, such as skin colors and outfits.
Visually, these aren’t the most stunning-looking character illustrations, but they are quite flexible and fun to mess with. You are also limited to humans with this tool, so if you are designing something more fantastical you may need to turn elsewhere.
Any design you develop on The Character Creator is free to use and is provided in the SVG format, meaning a vector output. You can even register for an account keep your characters on the site and edit them later.
Best Use of CharacterCreator.org
There are a few interesting ways to use this “design a character” website. For example, if you need to create a bunch of quick characters with outfits and hairstyles, such as a crowd for a comic page, you can use the random feature.
There is, of course, just the fun of playing with character editing and features and seeing what you can develop. It can be quite addicting playing with all of the available parts and seeing what new characters may develop in the process.
Subjectively (Video)
Subjectively is a YouTube channel that features numerous design videos dealing with character design challenges and theory. The channel is comprised of five friends who comment on popular culture by creating their design takes on all sorts of series. There are one-off design videos, in addition to multi-episode series that explore different themes. In particular, their takes on Pokémon character designs can be extremely entertaining and inspiring.
For starters, give their video on how artists find their styles a look. It has a lot of interesting insights. Plus, if you like Fakémon, fan-created Pokémon, well, they have tons of videos designing them as well.
Best Use of Subjectively
Subjectively isn’t the only YouTube channel that is on this list, but it is a great example of a whole genre of art-focused channels on the platform that deals with character design specifically. This channel is useful for periodic inspiration and fun discussions about how and why character designers make the choices they do. For in-depth dives into specific styles, the videos go a long way toward explaining what elements are key to those styles, which can help you figure out those kinds of elements in your work.
Character Design References (Reference)
Character Design References is a great resource featuring visual inspiration, challenges, and interviews all focused on, well, character design. You’ll be quick to see why this is one of the best websites for character design out there. The website falls into a research and curation category, where it collects information and relays it to millions of aspiring character design artists. For example, the tremendous visual library is an invaluable resource for guides of all sorts, in addition to inspiration.
The amount of resources found on the website can be overwhelming, but well worth exploring. Everything from theme-specific character design references to interviews with industry talent can provide a ton of insights to make your OCs all the better.
Best Use of Character Design References
The visual library is the most exciting feature of this character design website. The resources are valuable and cover so many aspects of design, such as silhouettes and shapes. Use Character Design References to challenge yourself to design exercises or find solutions to character design challenges based on how experts tackle them.
CharacterDesigns.com (Reference)
CharacterDesigns.com is another great resource that is less about character design itself and more about references you may need when creating characters. The website, put together by Hong Ly, provides high-quality, free images that you can use as you draw. The Creative Commons license is also quite reasonable and these references can even have a role in commercial work.
As for the resources, they are collections of images, separated into different themes. This includes nude and non-nude figure references, in addition to costuming. Also of interest is the statue maquettes and materials section that houses everything from armor to weapons, to creatures.
Best Use of CharacterDesign.com
This is not only a great character design website, it is also a character designer’s website. Hong Ly has worked for Riot Games, Naughty Dog, and more, and put together the site to share the very same resources they use as they work. As such, this website should be used in a couple of ways. For one, use this site for the sheer amount of valuable image references, collected by someone with an eye for what a good character artist needs.
Second, however, is the larger takeaway that character designers should build libraries of images that help them work. And maybe even consider sharing those libraries with other creators. If you’ve not assembled your own references collection, at least take advantage of CharacterDesign.com.
Picrew (Tool)
Picrew is a collection of character image generators featuring all sorts of unique styles, contributed by members of the community. Piccrew is a great tool for seeing how your OCs can adapt to another style. Artists can build their paper doll kits, much in the style of CharacterCreator.org. However, these are very impressive because of how visually unique they can be. Some great generators to look at:
Because users create their kits on the website, you ultimately need to pay close attention to their terms of use and rules. However, you’ll find that most Picrew generators are very open. You obviously shouldn’t try to pass the work of others as your own, but they are great for quick visualizations and concepts.
Best Use of Picrew
Picrew has an addictive quality to it and you’ll find it is easy to get lost in many of these generators for minutes at a time, just exploring all the customization available, with each unique style. These are particularly useful when trying to get a sense of how another creator might design your OCs. Plus, they are a great way to build a gallery of reference images of your original characters, in other styles and approaches.
ArtStation (Inspiration)
ArtStation has a reputation as one of the biggest websites around for artists and a great many professional character designers have profiles there. The website is very much portfolio-forward, providing galleries for artists who might be looking for work, but that is part of why it is one of the best character design websites out there.
The website has various functions, but the main thing you’ll be doing is looking at inspiring character designs and considering how each creator tackled their task. You can also search for specific genres as well. As for specific artists, consider checking out the following three portfolios.
The unique styles of each designer will give you plenty to consider before branching off and finding other character designs that appeal to you.
Best Use of ArtStation
ArtStation does provide some learning materials, but the best use of it is simply to discover great artists to study and references as you develop your style. There are incredible character designers who put up their portfolios that are well worth studying. The fact that so many of them can be found on one website is a huge advantage to anyone looking to build up their character design skills.
DeviantArt (Inspiration)
If you are after an anime character design website, then DeviantArt is a strong choice. The anime style is one of the most popular, trending styles on the site, and with that comes plenty of interesting anime-styled character designs. Of course, the diversity of styles on DeviantArt is impressive as well, ranging from amateur and beginner character designers to professionals.
A simple search for “character design” will reveal a lot of great examples, but you can take that a step further by exploring character design communities on the website. Your best bet is to find artists with styles you find particularly appealing, and follow their work, as well as the artists they follow. We have some suggestions for artists to follow right away, of course:
- Loish - Loish is one of the biggest artists on DeviantArt with expressive caricature work that influences their character designs.
- Caisne - This brilliant Ukranian artist has a distinct, painterly approach to their character design work.
- EsbenLash - One of the biggest “online artists” out there, Esben Lash Rasmussen has worked with companies like Riot Games.
Best Use of DeviantArt
The best use of DeviantArt is simply exploring and finding what you like the most. If you have an account you can easily create inspiration folders for different elements of character design that you can go back and reference later. Ultimately, you’ll be amazed at how much time you’re going to be able to spend just clicking through gallery after gallery of art that you can learn from.
Tumblr (Inspiration)
Tumblr is an interesting case as a website for character design. The website is not particularly designed for artists, but the art community on the platform is large, and with that large community comes posts about character design. There are so many fantastic and inspiring artists that can be found on Tumblr.
Looking for cool character designers to follow on Tumblr? Check these folks out. They have unique character design skills and interesting art styles worth exploring.
From there, you can find all sorts of great artists by searching the “character design” tag on Tumblr if you want to expand your inspiration pool.
However, there are also some more specialty blogs, such as Character Design Inspiration that aggregates resources and examples from all over the community. It is a blog that deserves a follow if you want to make finding great character design examples easier. They do a particularly excellent job of finding and sharing cool outfits from all over history.
Best Use of Tumblr
Because Tumblr is a platform rather than a character design-specific website, you’ll end up bouncing from post to post, and from profile to profile collecting interesting links. Since you are already doing that, it would make sense to share what you find and what you draw. Having a Tumblr account is a good way to share your artwork and the resources you find.
Winged Canvas (Video)
Winged Canvas is the YouTube channel of a group that provides online art classes. With nearly 700 videos available, a good portion of them focus specifically on character design. However, the variety of videos in general can range from specific art techniques to exploring the functions of specific drawing software. Some videos even cover character design processes, such as this video on the creation of “Gummy Worm Boy.”
If you like the videos they upload on YouTube, you can also join their online classes, but be aware that they are not free. However, if you want to improve your character design skills, such classes can be extremely useful. Even if paid classes are a bit too large a step at the moment, they even offer a ton of free art resources as well on their blog.
Best Use of Winged Canvas
Because of the variety of videos offered on the channel that go beyond character design, Winged Canvas is a video resource that will surprise you with how much is offered. Watching their general technique videos, those not specifically about character design can help improve your art overall. However, take the time to watch every character design process video on the channel - those are among their best offerings with how candid they can be.
Looking for More of the Best Websites for Character Design?
Our collection here was only scratching the surface of the best character design websites on the internet, and we’re always on the lookout for more. In the meantime, please consider sharing your findings with us on social media so we can consider them for a future article.
Until next time, consider sharing your character design journey with everyone at CharacterHub on your character’s profile. You do have a character profile, don’t you?
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David Davis
David Davis is a cartoonist with around twenty years of experience in comics, including independent work and established IPs such as SpongeBob Squarepants. He also works as a college composition instructor and records weekly podcasts. Find out more about him at his website!
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