As a freelance artist, I'm often called upon to create for my clients, cartoon characters for their various projects whether that be logo/avatar design, animation, or comic books.
Without fail, if I neglect to "breathe life" into the character, the client hates it.
I don't know how it's possible, but something intangible occurs that tells the client that I, the artist, do t "believe" this character, so they don't either.
So how do we get to "believe" our character? Two methods I use are physicality, and backstory.
PHYSICALITY Physicality is pretty basic.
It's a physical description of how the character looks, in term of height,weight, race, and gender.
Sometimes a client will give you these specs, other times you will have to make the decision.
In getting the physicality together I use an approach I learned as a 911 emergency operator.
JUST THE FACTS.
As a 911 operator we asked if the perp was Asian, Black, Hispanic, or White.
We asked for height and approximate weight, articles of clothing, jewelry and accessories.
As you are creating your characters you want to nail down these basic facts first.
Once you have established that you can go deeper.
Does the character walk with a limp? Does he smoke, are there any ratios? At this point in your character creation, you aren't concerned about personality traits, that comes at the next stage, and this is where it gets fun.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A BACKSTORY.
Okay, you've got your character.
He's six feet five inches, has blond spiked hair, wears sunglasses, blue jeans a tee shirt and an torn army jacket.
His mouth has a constant frown, and there is the ever present cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Automatically you may say, oh, he's the hero, or maybe the cool villain! Well..
..
he could be, but because of backstory, he's actually the coward of the story.
According to my backstory on the character, he's not tall and athletic, but tall and lanky, almost frail.
The army jacket he wears, is torn because he found it discarded in a dumpster.
His hair is spiky because he hasn't combed it for days, and it is greasy and unkempt.
He wears the sunglasses because he grew up under the guise of an abusive father, and as a result, avoids eye contact.
He smokes constantly because it's a compulsive behavior to cover up his nervousness.
He's a teenage runaway always on the lookout for his crazy father who wants to kill him because he witnessed a murder.
Okay, that's my backstory, now I can start drawing.
I'm willing to bet that until i added this information, you had a totally different view of the character, initially, and even now have another view of him.
The added details of the backstory makes you want to breathe life into the character! I can guarantee you that if you use this technique your characters will never be boring! YOUR AUDIENCE DOESNT HAVETO KNOW THE BACKSTORY.
The backstory is something You use in the back of your mind to get the "feel" of the character.
It need not be as complex as the example I just used, but in order to help you draw believably it should be there.
It's not enough to say, well, my character is cool.
Or she's a a warrior.
Ask yourself, WHY is she a warrior? What is she fighting for? Did she lose something? Is she trying to prove something? Ask yourself about the aforementioned character, Why is he cool? Is he hiding something? What is it? You get the idea.