Now that you have a fully-fledged backstory and personality, you can finally begin giving your OC a vessel to reside in.

Designing is one of the easiest parts for some people, the hardest part for others. Don't worry if you're having a hard time giving form to your OC, some characters go through several iterations and designs before settling on one. Redesigning is part of the process! If you cannot draw in any form, remember that a lot of gacha dress up games exist online. Popular ones being Gacha Life, Gacha Club, Gacha Life 2, etc. Some more restrictive but still good ones may include Picrew, which is mainly user made character creators, it is good for when you want something that the apps above may not offer like animal creation or things for certain fandoms. Remember, a lot of bases exist online as well though they require more effort to work with but can let you be more creative without any restrictions on what an app may have.

Match their wardrobe to their personality

If your character is a tough thief who lived in the city, don't make them look like royalty. Their design should reflect their personality and what they've gone through in life. A prince dresses differently than a knight, even though they're both nobles. Does your OC like dressing up fancy, or do they prefer being cozy and warm?

Of course, not all OCs wear clothes - animals, for example, likely won't need clothes (unless they're anthropomorphic).

Facial Features

Experiment with different hairstyles, hair colors, and eye colors to make their face distinct. Especially with hairstyles, push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. Don't be scared to give them a striking haircut and hair color. This will help you distinguish characters from each other at a glance. Remember that facial and body hair is an option too!

Freckles, eye color, face shape, and scars also make the face stand out. Again, if they're a thief, they may have scars and/or bruises. If they're nobility, they will probably have smooth skin and makeup, and if they like being in the sun or live outside, they'll have a tan or freckles.

On animals, you can have a lot of fun with fur patterns, fur lengths, and fur colors, though unless they're magical, we don't recommend unnatural colors. Animals don't tend to have access to hair - or fur - dye. (Furries exempted)

Diversity

If you're making or interacting with a group of characters, your OC should stand out. We can't stress this enough: PUSH YOUR LIMITS. Be creative! For groups of characters, try and give each character a different hairstyle and/or color. Take into account where they're from.

When lining up your characters together, they should all be recognizable from either color palette or body shape. Something we like to do, especially with groups of 3, is assign each character a primary color! That immediately gives them a theme and shows a little bit of their personality! 

Body Shape

Going back to the example of the prince and the thief, if you lined up these two characters, the thief would be slender or skinny, perhaps short as well, or simply hunched over, sneakily, while the prince would be tall, standing straight, looking regal, and perhaps slightly plump to suggest a life of good eating.

Don't be afraid to give characters different body shapes, skin tones, and markings to make them unique and hint towards the rest of their story.

Original Species or Magical Being

Here's our advice for any kind of original beast or magic creature you may design: Go wild! Be as creative as you can. A shadow being with red eyes, flickering tails, and long, wicked claws, or a dragon with giant curling horns and bio-luminescent scales, or something entirely new - do your best to make it flow together while still looking unique and interesting.

Color palettes go a long way towards making a creature look good. For a species, think about where it lives and what its natural colors would be. Predators blend into their surroundings to not detect attention. Venomous insects are brightly colored. Male birds are flashy while females tend to be more dull. Take inspiration from the world around you.

If you're making a completely original character that isn't part of a species, you don't have to take the above directions into account, as it wouldn't need to have protective measures against the other beings in the wild to survive as a species. Just let your creative juices flow.

Complexity and Practicality

Designing a character with lots of complicated little details can be fun, and can help them look more unique, but can also make them very hard to draw. When designing your character, it's best to think about what you want to do with them.

If you're an animator, or want to commission artwork of your OC, try not to make their design too complicated. When commissioning, artists may charge more money for artwork of characters who are more difficult to draw. When doing traditional frame-by-frame animation, any detail you add (such as a button on a jacket or a lock of hair) will need to be redrawn thousands of times, and when using rigs, every detail will need to be carefully modelled. Simple designs are best for animated characters, especially if you're a beginner.

This includes different art games you may participate in. Artfight is a game taking place in July where artists draw other individuals ocs for points for their team to win. You can put up multiple ocs for others to draw but they only really need to choose one, if any at all. If you were to put a complicated OC around a bunch of simple characters, more people are likely to draw the simple characters. If every character is detailed, some may pass as it would take too long to draw, due to multiple peoples views on Artfight being to draw as much as you can during the single month it goes on for. Of course, this shouldn't stop you from creating a detailed character as some people prefer doing designs like that, but other people may not always wish to take the time to put in that extra effort. This is not only an Artfight thing, this includes other art games as well if you were to give multiple options.

If you want to cosplay as your character, you may want to think about how difficult it would be to make a costume based on them, and how expensive the materials are. If it's difficult to find the materials you need in certain colors, it's best to avoid using those colors in your design, especially if those materials are difficult to dye or paint. For instance, fake fur in common natural colors like brown and white is usually cheaper and easier to find than fur in neon colors. If your character is humanoid and you're trying to decide whether to give them an unusual skin color/pattern (like blue with green stripes), make sure you know how to apply and seal body paint correctly, and consider whether you want to use it or not.