How Alicenpai Created The Popular Story Series Around Her Original Characters

How did you get started as an artist? What got you started with creating characters and fan art?

Like many kids growing up, I was fascinated by cartoons and video games. Of course, I watched stuff like Pokémon and Sailor Moon, but it was when I delved into the “anime” rabbit hole in middle school, that got my brain into the gear of making characters. I drew mainly original works for a few years, with a sprinkling of fanart. When I signed up for my first ever convention in 2014, I started to dabble in more fan works. Fanart just kind of stuck from then on, though I wish I did more originals too! Fanart is kind of a “lowbrow art” to some, but I think it’s fun since you get to see artists express their love for these characters via a variety of interesting art styles.

What inspires most of your original characters?

I have two series in the works: Lost and Found Children, and The Magician’s Protegee.

Lost and Found Children is a sort of 20th-century steampunk fictional world. It’s something I’ve been working on since I was still quite young, and I began completely uprooting the story and character designs in the last few months because everything was inconsistent – it was difficult to find time to flesh out the story while in school. The story is inspired by the world over – anime, games, movies, documentaries, and real-world history. I’ve always been fascinated by history, and I love stories in fantastical, old worlds even more - I wanted to create my own historical world. My greatest inspirations for this story are Fullmetal Alchemist (Hiromu Arakawa), Pandora Hearts (Jun Mochizuki), and Violet Evergarden (Kyoto Animation).

The Magician’s Protegee is a much newer story, a slice of life set in a futuristic world with robots – so, a completely different world than my first. I was inspired by the likes of futuristic or technologically advanced fictional worlds, like Astro Boy (Osamu Tezuka), Pluto (Naoki Urasawa), Aria (Kozue Amano), and many others. Media exploring human nature through robot characters, and documentaries about robotics (including the famous Mars rovers…) are so deeply moving to me.

I’m really passionate about costume design in particular – both cartoony and realistic. Kenichi Yoshida (Eureka Seven) is one of my favorite character designers, and his emphasis on strong silhouettes and unified color palettes really resonated with me back in middle school. To this day I continue to take that approach to heart when designing my characters. Another artist that influences my designs is Hidari (Fire Emblem: Echoes). I saw someone once describe his work along the lines of “expertly hiding details utilizing color theory” and the thought has lived in my head rent-free ever since. The embellishments on the cuffs, hemlines, and edges of each garment are so fun to discover and look at. Both artists are different in their subject matter, but the silhouette and color palette concept is there.

Would love to hear more about the favorite character you designed and what you think made it so good.

I’ll share the most recent characters I designed – Lee and Iris, from my second story, The Magician’s Protegee. When designing these characters, I primarily pulled in mecha anime character designs. I was also inspired by 60s fashion, specifically space-age fashion in particular since the movement has appealing silhouettes, fun colors, and playful patterns. The overlapping colored lines on Iris’s dress are a nod to Anemone from Eureka Seven, and I put in a repeating visual motif on the flower petal-like sleeve cuffs and socks. On the other hand, Lee’s frame is designed to be tall and lanky, a bit awkward, and I thought to offset his ridiculously long legs with a top-heavy design - an oversized coat, like the 80s-90s bomber jacket. I think the shapes and color palettes in these characters turned out nicely.

What advice do you have for beginner artists who are looking to do character art? What advice do you have for people who are looking to come up with their own characters?

My art is a lot more anime-influenced so I’ll focus on that style of character design.

I care a lot about the costume design – how does the character put their outfit together, layer by layer? Even if a garment is not realistic – think of high fashion – there are ways it can still work. It’s worth it to study little things like fasteners (buttons, zippers, etc.) or clothing seams, in order to understand how the garment is worn and put together. For fantasy characters – combining trends from various time periods can make for a more unique and fun design.

I care a lot about the expressiveness of the characters too. How do they emote? The expressions can be as realistic (more subdued) or as cartoony as you like, none are superior to the other, but the expression still has to read clearly. Yoh Yoshinari (Little Witch Academia) is a favorite of mine when it comes to facial expressions.

How does the character pose? How do they interact with others? You don’t have to draw intense sakuga level action poses – I’m not one of those artists - but keeping in mind strong silhouettes makes for more engaging and grounded characters.

What do you think is the difference between an average character design and a mind-blowing one?

Of course, to each their own, but generally speaking – I judge it by the project. I look at the way the character poses, their general facial expression, the way they dress if there’s anything that stands out about them. Sometimes the series doesn’t need anything beyond an “average” character design, like if it’s more grounded in reality, and that’s fine.

I think any kind of character who encompasses a lot of well-thought-out, fresh, contrasting elements like, “Wow, I never thought of it that way!” is most mind-blowing to me. Like when Promare came out, a lot of people were really blown away by the tough leather-wearing gang leader Lio, juxtaposed with the soft-looking androgynous bob and jabot. All of these elements made for such a fresh design. It’s reminiscent of Prince’s Purple Rain.

It looks like you’ve spent some time experimenting with colors within your art. What’s something counterintuitive that you’ve learned there?

The colors I use in my work change drastically with my mood during certain periods of time. Learning about colors is both an art and a science, and I think the most counterintuitive things I’ve learned about color theory have some scientific reasoning. Like Georges Seurat’s theory about contrasting colors, or the Anders Zorn color palette. I could not even begin to explain how they work, so please read up on them if you’re interested!