The graphic novel is a personal, idiosyncratic medium. Other related art forms, including animation, computer games, and monthly comic books, require more standardized processes than do graphic novels, due mostly to the larger number of people involved. Also, the particular markets for such products demand that more precise expectations are met, whereas most graphic novel readers enjoy the indivisible peculiarities of an individual vision.

Rather than make pronouncements about how to draw or what tools and techniques are best, we will explore character design as a function of storytelling, as each design should follow the unique requirements of each story. We will focus to a greater degree on the story-driven decisions that specific authors make—and how individual authors think when they’re crafting characters—than on the process steps they take and how their characters look when completed. In short, this is a book about the why of character design as much as it is about the how.

Other books take a much more comprehensive look at the tools and techniques of comics art, so if you’re looking for additional nuts-and-bolts content, we’ve listed many in the reference guide on pages 186 and 187.

Here are seven basic precepts to consider, and perhaps even challenge, before reading the subsequent sections of this book:

1. Character design is not an end in itself.
The goal of character design for graphic novels is storytelling, not image creation. (That said, there is an aesthetic appeal to looking at character designs as visual objects, but that really shouldn’t concern the graphic novelist in the moments of creation.)

2. Comics characters are sequential beings.
They are meant to be drawn hundreds if not thousands of times—and often don’t (and shouldn’t) stay perfectly consistent from drawing to drawing. Unnecessary complexity and disparity of design, however, can be cumbersome and distracting. And, as we’ll emphasize throughout the book, characters can have more than one level or aspect of detail.

3. The “appeal” of a character is context-specific.
Put simply, what works for one author, in one story, for one audience, will not necessarily work for another. Hergé’s world-famous design of the boy reporter Tintin, for example, is brilliant in its context, but would be ludicrous for a character in Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s poignant yet violent manga Lone Wolf & Cub (except perhaps in an ironic context). Also, it should be noted that readers rarely see exactly what the author sees.

4. “Bad designs” can sometimes be very effective.
Some designs lacking in the finer points of visual art—symmetry, consistency, proportion, etc.—are actually perfect for the story they belong to. If it’s done purposefully and serves the story without being too distracting, then no design is truly bad. A certain rawness or wrongness can often be the key to real substance, whereas a slick, schematic surface can sometimes be quite hollow. (Again, it’s context-specific.)

5. Memorability is not always a good thing.
For minor and background characters, it’s often effective to strive for “bland” designs so as not to steal attention away from the main players.

6. Writers are character designers too.
In a writer-artist collaboration, the content if not the look of a character often stems from, or draws upon, the writer’s concepts and script work. For example, the characters in Sandman (DC Comics/Vertigo) owe their fictional lives to writer Neil Gaiman’s vivid descriptions, dialogue, and storylines.

7. No character design exists in a vacuum.
It is always beneficial to study the work of others—other artists, other art forms, other subjects, other cultures, other historical eras. Influence and comparison are fundamental parts of a graphic novelist and character designer’s education.

We’ve structured this book—arranged so that you can read it cover to cover or sample it by section—to maximize the opportunities for in-depth investigation, which should begin and not end when you’ve stopped reading.