Characters are the best part of any webcomic, and they’re what will bring your audience back to your comic, week after week. And the way to make a character memorable is to make them believable, motivated, and consistent in their emotions, even if they do change. The best characters aren’t perfect or idealized; they have quirks and flaws and habits that expose their personality. So if you make characters with strong motivations, and who have changed visibly, you will make a comic that appears more natural rather than scripted. So good character design is not just about making a pretty character, it’s about making a character that your readers will be able to recognize, based on their actions, decisions, and reactions.
The first, and possibly the most crucial thing you need to establish about your character, is their want. This must be specific enough to tell us how your character is likely to act, but broad enough for the character to grow out of. The want can be anything, anything at all: acceptance, freedom, revenge, understanding, and it doesn’t have to be rational. The important thing is to show how the want colours every choice your character makes. If you can establish the want then your reader will understand your character’s motivations, even when they choose to do something that proves to be a mistake. This, in turn, will create sympathy, because your reader will be able to anticipate how your character will react in a given situation.
On top of desire, a character needs to have a unique voice and emotional arc to be truly memorable. The term “voice” often gets talked about in terms of dialogue, but it extends to how a character thinks, how they react, how they perceive the world around them. Some characters cope with stress with humor, some with nonverbal gestures, some with impulsive decisions. And we should see these traits in both the dialogue and the visuals. Establish the character’s emotional arc early on, and readers will begin to anticipate it, and look forward to it, even as the context changes. That’s not to say a character can’t grow and change, but it should be consistent enough that we feel it’s simply an evolution of what came before.
The look of a character is important, but the look of the character should not overshadow the story. There are a few things you can do to help keep it from overshadowing the story. For example: If at all possible, make sure your characters have a very simple and distinct shape that readers can recognize, even if they’re not fully in frame. Webcomic panels are small and we don’t have a lot of time to spend on each panel, so it’s best to make sure readers can tell who’s who right away. Use shapes to represent personality and character traits, such as a very stiff and upright posture on a character who is a little uptight or very loose and flowing lines on someone who is a little bit more disorganized and messy. Use signature items to help the reader keep track of who is who, such as a hat or a necklace that your character is seen wearing a lot. A signature facial expression can work well too. Just don’t go overboard and make it so your character looks like he’s wearing a costume or a mask. You want the reader to think of him as a real person who could exist, not just as a cartoon character.
Last but not least, character development. It is, in my opinion, the trait that separates a good webcomic from a great one. It shouldn’t come overnight, it shouldn’t come without reason or struggle. A character should be presented with obstacles and opportunities for change. Perhaps they shouldn’t always succeed in changing, perhaps the changes shouldn’t be absolute, but they should try. People root for characters who try, because in the real world, we’re all just trying. My favorite characters are ones who learn to live with their flaws, not overcome them overnight. A webcomic that presents me with characters who develop throughout the story is a webcomic that will stay with me for a very long time.