Edit from future self: Hello hi yes i have two things to say before you read this.
1. Please do not spam with comments and votes, save my notifications and sanity
2. Please dont look at my old stuff it makes me cringe, all my older art is outdated...
Welcome to a new mini series im going to start to help out uprising artists, animators, and character designers. This will basically help people learn how to make a good OC, improve old ones, and fix up "bad" ocs.
In this first part we will be focusing on color usage.
There will be future parts explaining in depth how to build backstories, further design details such as markings or clothing, personality relating to design, and much more.
But today we will mostly be focusing on colors, color theory, color combinations, and especially how to use and control saturation.
Ill tell ya, i had to plan how many drawings i used here, cuz i almost completely used up wattpad's 20 image limit so i could show you guys lots of examples.
All art and examples shown are created by me, yes you may make ocs based on the designs or colors, no you may not directly claim the characters here or art as your own.
For this color theory part I used a base lineart i made of a Dutch Angel Dragon specifically for this. I used a Dutchie since i feel like they are a furry species that you can get especially diverse with.
This was the basic lineart i used for all pictures shown, although it was edited for some of them.
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Side note, no this dutchie is not a character of mine, i only doodled it to make this little art lesson.
So part one and a huge focus of mine in this chapter will be mainly about color saturation, how to and not to use it, and how to pair highly saturated colors with other colors.
Keep in mind I'm not trying to attack you or call your art bad. But I am giving you advice to edit and improve, and be more easily accepted and respected among the art community.
But without further ado lets get this show on the road!
Tip #1: greyscale colors
One of the easiest ways to make good oc is to ignore colors, use black, white, and greys!
While greyscale OCs might seem dull, repetitive, lazy, or have negative connotation they can actually look super nice and there's a surprising amount of diversity and variation you can come up with. After all, everything on the greyscale palette looks good with everything else.
Here are two examples that are very different from each other but also still show their own characters and individuality.
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