John Kascht is an amazing artist. I've heard of his caricatures before, but I never realized how much he thinks about the people he draws. It's amazing. My following thoughts were posted on my tumblr, they pertain mostly to character design (since there was a comment about it.)


This (how John Kascht speaks about Conan's facial structure and personality) is HOW one designs a character. These are the things that you should be thinking about. These are the things I think of when I draw my characters. WHO They are and how their appearance portrays that.

I've always loved caricatures, They're exaggeration, a caricature is literally personality meets art. It's more about drawing your personality than it drawing the person.

I LOVE The way he goes into detail about Conan's features. If YOU can't do this about your characters, you haven't been working on them well enough. If you don't know WHY your character looks the way he/she looks, you aren't serious about your characters as people. You only see them as images. They're pretty. They look nice. And they're often one dimensional.

What does her having sexy full lips say about her? What do her lips actually LOOK like. Maybe she hates them because she's not actually fond of looking like a sex kitten. Maybe she grew up in a repressive family and dresses sexy as a continuing form or subconscious rebellion. What does that beef cake man think about at night? Why is he such a beef cake? Is he compensating for a being a weak child? Is he super macho and thinks that he's the only "real" type of man. Does he exercise obsessively because he's trying not to think about negative things so he tries to replace his negative thoughts with a "positive" action, yet he wont deal with his negative thoughts so he takes his "positive actions" entirely to far.

Nothing about a character should ever be as simple as: She's sexy because she likes to be. No one dresses sexy ALL the time with out a reason. We all have "sexy" days. Were we just feel like being sexy, but those aren't usually our normal days unless we have ulterior (or subconscious) motives.

Also, about character creation: You character needs flaws. Humans HAVE flaws. Every single human, ever. EVER. EVVVVEEEERRRR. Even Jesus. Yes. Even Jesus. You need to give your characters flaws. And fuck me, get more creative than "she has a bad temper" over used much? How about: She has a bad temper but instead of externalizing everything and starting fights she internalizes it and is an insomniac constantly thinking about the things that made her angry during the day. OH MY GOD, PLOT TWIST: Your main character just had a melt down. But not the normal, I beat you up now kind; maybe he just nonchalantly walked out of his job and has been sitting on a park bench for the last 12 hours.

In most cases subtle things will be a lot more disturbing than seriously outrageous things. What's more unnerving: Man "randomly" quits job, abandons house and lives under a bridge Or man crashed car into his house, kills his wife, then himself. The first one seems strange and stupid, the second one makes you wonder what the fuck happened to this man to make him do such a thing. What if I tell you they are the same man. His wife of 40+ years has been cheating on him with his boss for 20 years and the only reason he kept his job was because his boss would have a reason to see his wife at office gatherings. Now you have a man who completely broke down and stopped functioning vs a man who ramped into a rage. Why do I think the first one is more interesting than the second? Because the first story the man has hope to get his life back together, even if the story NEVER goes that way the hope, and sadness of his plight is interesting. It's unnerving because you don't understand WHY right off the bat. You need to know his story to understand. If a man just goes and kills his wife you assume automatically she wronged him, or he wanted her life insurance, or whatever, something happened between them. If a man just gives up on life.... what the hell happened to him? It could be anything. Any number of things.

Anywho, rambling. I love character creation and psychology.

And to finish my thoughts on this video: Connan O'Brien is awesome. And so is John Kascht.
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