So here’s our scenario: you’re making your webcomic, your readers are following to the best of their ability, but you’re hearing the feedback that they can’t tell some of the characters apart. This can be about how you draw them, the styles and coloring you’re using… OR there could be aspects of your writing that are affecting how they’re perceived. For whatever reason, people are getting confused. That's what we call Same Face Syndrome and we're here to help you diagnose and treat.

In this Episode:




• Have you ever used sameface in your work, intentionally or unintentionally? Did you make a conscious choice to use it/stop using it? Tell us your experiences!
• How do you know when you have a problem? Where do we draw the line between stylistic choices about characters looking similar, and an issue we might want to address to reduce reader confusion?
• What is your advice to someone who might be worried that it’s a problem in their webcomic?

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Episode Release Date: February 18, 2026

Episode Credits:

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Star Prichard - she/her, https://thestarfishface.com/ https://castoff-comic.com/

Claire Niebergall (Clam) - she/her, https://intothesmokecomic.com https://www.demonoftheunderground.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:01.91

Delphina

Hello and welcome to Screen Tones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about making your characters distinct, versus making characters that are very similar and what you can do so readers can enjoy your comic with minimal confusion.

00:21.93

Delphina

I'm Delphina. I use she/her pronouns, and I make the webcomic Sombulus.

00:27.52

Claire

I'm Claire, also known as Clam. I make the webcomic Phantomarine. I use the pronouns she/her.

00:34.72

Bob

I'm Bob, I use any pronouns, and I make the webcomics Into the Smoke and Demon of the Underground.

00:45.06

Star

And I'm Star, she/her, and I make the comic Castoff.

00:48.94

Delphina

Woo! Okay. So here's our scenario. You're making your webcomic. Your readers are following to the best of their ability, but you're hearing the feedback that they can't tell some of your characters apart.

01:01.73

Delphina

This can be about how you draw them, the styles and colors that you're using, or there could be aspects of your writing that are affecting how they're perceived. For whatever reason, people are getting confused.

01:13.76

Delphina

So I'm just going to throw this out there. This is something we call same face, right? Where you see somebody and their character faces don't really, there's no distinction. Have you ever used that in your work intentionally or unintentionally?

01:37.26

Delphina

Did you make a conscious choice to use it or stop using it? Tell us your experiences. I'm gonna throw it to you, Clam.

01:44.90

Claire

I will say that I have a bit of it. Nobody's ever really called it out on like a bad level, but they have called it out on a stylistic level as in like, I could draw fan art of something completely unrelated to my story and people be like, “Oh, that's the Phantomarine artist. I know that's her.”

02:03.48

Delphina

Yes, yes.

02:04.34

Claire

It's something about how I do the eyes and the color and the shading. They just, they could just see me from a mile away. And part of me is like, “Oh no, I'm seen. I wish I could hide better.” Cause like,I don't know. there's an element of that where I wish it wasn't so obvious, so you could focus on the art and not the fact that it's probably me. But I feel that it it's kind of a natural thing that came to me because I actually started drawing not with humans a lot, but with animals. So I I'm actually relatively new to drawing people, and I feel like I I actuallygravitated a lot just towards kind of my own face shape which is that just kind of oval and then I've got big blue eyes and then I do my eyeliner exactly the same as all my characters that have eyeliner so I'm like

02:59.83

Claire

I've already cursed myself in that this is just my comfort zone, and this is what I learned when I entered college and they're like, you have to actually draw portraits now. And I'm like, “uh-oh, well, I guess I'm going to get some bad habits”. And a lot of people, I think they they started out earlier so then they could break those bad habits sooner. And i feel like I've run into it with my work where it actually has become a little bit of a feature with certain elements of the story where certain characters do look similar, but that's very much retrofitted. Like it's not intentional and it does come from me kind of looking back and being like, “this is a problem. How can I make it something more interesting?”

03:43.19

Claire

So yeah I find it's just a natural consequence of how I learned, but I've kind of wrangled it into a shape that is maybe a little bit more interesting on a story level. But you could very clearly tell, like, “That's Claire. That's Claire drawing a character. That's her.”

04:02.39

Delphina

That's okay, though. I feel like styles are... everybody here, I feel like, has a specific style that I could say, oh my gosh, that definitely looks like Claire, or that looks like Bob, or that looks like Star.

04:15.93

Delphina

But, like, it's kind of a weird line. Like, when is it a problem? When is it not? And are people going to notice or have a issue with it in the context of the webcomic?

04:30.92

Delphina

So I'm going to throw it to you, Bob. What about you? Have you ever used same face in your work?

04:37.67

Bob

So I haven't used it intentionally. I think that it was a little bit more of a problem for me when I was a new artist. And I'm quite old now, so I feel like I've mostly broken away from accidentally and unintentionally falling into same face.

04:53.57

Bob

But when I was new, I was very heavily inspired by the popular anime and manga of the time where, you know, your side characters might be distinct where like if it was a live action, we would think of those as like the character actors, right? The ones with like the unique facial features, but the main characters and the main cast tended to be the same kind of quote-unquote “generically attractive” face.

05:20.38

Bob

And a lot of times the uniqueness would come in their styling and their costumes, but it wasn't really about the unique face. And so it took me a really long time and kind of having that beaten out of me in art school and falling in love with real human faces. They are actually like my favorite thing, like distinct faces, like if I see someone with a unique face, it's like, “Oh, I gotta remember that. Like I got get angles and stuff like that.” So I do a lot of studying of real faces now, and do exercises to kind of take them from realism to cartoony.

06:01.21

Bob

And so I think that has helped a lot. In addition to the fact that, you know, I tend to work with fairly diverse casts, people who have to have different bone structures.

06:12.94

Bob

And so that has also kind of trained me, I think. Where I still am very tempted sometimes to fall into same face is when I'm confronted with a deadline, because when deadlines get scary, it's like, “Oh, I really just want to draw a round face with a little nose and get it through and not have to think too hard about making this character look very distinct.”

06:38.46

Bob

And I have to really fight that urge when I'm, you know, struggling to fill in tons of side characters. But I think for the most part, my struggle is usually like these characters are supposed to look really distinct and how do I get them to look the same every time I draw them, which is kind of the flip side of the issue.

06:57.82

Bob

I kind of wish they could have the same face every time, but it is kind of always a learning process and something that deadlines and laziness on my part, it always kind of tempts me a little.

07:17.44

Delphina

I mean, but what are web comics except like a series of lots and lots of little deadlines, right? And so I think that does make sense to be wanting to reach to the thing that's the default, like the comfort character or the comfort zone sort of like, “okay, I know I can nail this every time” versus “I'm going to have to look at the reference every time to remember where this person's mole is and where their hairline goes and all that stuff.” So, yeah, it's an interesting situation for sure. I'm going to throw it to you, Star. What are your experiences with same face in your own work, intentional, unintentional, things like that?

07:58.04

Star

So I'm not, I think similar to Bob, this was not something that I ever did intentionally, but it is something that I have struggled with. For a couple years there, and you can see this in like the first several chapters of Castoff, I kind of drew every single character with the exact same eye shape.

08:19.29

Star

Because my thing was i was just really really attached to kind of like this cartoony just every character has like these big oval eyes, And i don't mean like anime style, like the line went all the way around, it was almost like Gravity Falls but if you stretch them vertically a little bit and every character just that was their eye shape. And that was my art style for years and years and years. I don't think i actually ended up kicking that until like chapter 10 of the comic. And I was like, “Okay, I'm tired of just using the same eye shape for every single character”, especially when you get kind of the more sinister characters. And then they also have like this big cartoony eye shape. I'm like, okay, “I got to change this”.

08:58.13

Star

But my thing has always been, it's like, okay, even if all my characters have pretty similar eye shapes, that is something I'm working on, number one. But again, just sometimes it is easy to just fall back into the, just, big swoop and then you're done. Just the same shape that you're always used to drawing and then you're done, and it's easy, and you're fine.

09:18.29

Star

But one thing I try to do ,is I try to give every character... like If I'm drawing a lineup of characters for, like, a webcomic, for example, I try to make each character have a distinct nose and shape of their face.

09:35.27

Star

Because even if the eye shapes are similar, I do feel like... cause the thing about eyes, is like eyes are so squishy. Eyes move around a bunch. If you're emoting and expressing, your eyes will like constantly change shape, and same with the mouth. And so I try to take the things that are not going to be changing as much, like the shape of the nose or the shape of the face, just in general.

09:59.21

Star

And I try and really make sure that every character has, like, at least a somewhat distinct combination of those two things. And then I feel like, If you combine it with like their hair and their general color scheme and other features, you can kind of get away with it. But yeah, I think it's something that I'm more self-conscious about than is an actual problem in the story itself.

10:21.73

Star

But it's still something I'm trying to work on. Please hold.

10:26.57

Delphina

It's fine. I mean, like, that's the thing, too. I mean, I think some of it comes down to style and some of it comes down to… as long as you have enough there. And I really like how you call out like the nose doesn't really change a lot.

10:35.33

Star

yeah

10:39.27

Delphina

I think jawlines and things are things and also facial hair. You can kind of get away with, “Okay, that's going to be the core thing that somebody is going to focus on and see as different” so you can kind of wiggle around the other stuff, I think that's an interesting approach to it. I think for me I definitely am feeling what Bob was saying about all the anime cartoons and the cartoons i was growing up watching, just sort of lended themselves to same face

11:15.69

Delphina

I don't know if it's an animation thing necessarily, but there's just a lot of stuff where character differences were a matter of, you know, how many sparkles were in their eyes or the cut of their bangs or the colors that they were wearing.

11:30.83

Delphina

And I feel like that definitely made its way into my early work and was something that I had tried to move past as I grew as an artist.

11:43.59

Delphina

And, you know, it might be because of practical reasons that like, you know, you don't move a jawline lot when you have to animate somebody talking.

11:54.51

Delphina

I don't know. I don't actually know how it works.

11:58.19

Star

Because I think one of the things that makes it so prevalent in anime and just animated shows in general is that you do have to abstract those features down in order to, like, make it feasible to draw them in that art style.

12:13.18

Star

The art of... figuring out an art style is figuring out how you are abstracting specific features. Like how do you take a human nose, and design it in a way that it's just a couple of lines or sometimes even just like one or two lines?

12:31.08

Star

How do you scale down the complexities of the human eye into, just like, simple shapes? And I feel like sometimes what happens is you just kind of simplify it down… One might argue a little bit too much sometimes! And then I think that's where you start to get in trouble is you see all these anime characters with the same sparkly, sparkly eyes and teeny tiny nose.

12:52.69

Star

And the only way to tell them apart is their hair.

12:56.42

Bob

And that's like a really good point because I think this even kind of ties back to like what I was saying before about deadlines, where a lot of times I think same face exists in kind of corporate media because of deadlines and production methods and, you know, simplifying the methods to like get these characters on screen in the cheapest way possible.

13:19.33

Bob

And when you aren't working in that environment, when you are like an indie creator, it, you know, do you want your work to look very corporate? That's kind of a question. And, you know, I think different people have different feelings about that. I personally don't want mine to look corporate.

13:37.54

Claire

I think it's also, I've thought about a lot in terms of like old versus new She-Ra where old She-Ra, it was basically, as many things in the ‘80s were, a way to sell toys.

13:53.62

Claire

And you've got all these toys that essentially have to use the exact same model, the same sculpt, but then you can change you know the clothes, you can change the eye color, you can change the hair color, but the face? The faces of all of those princess characters are the same. But then you go to new She-Ra where you see this conscious effort to play with body shape, play with face shape, play with height differences. But that was just something that was not possible back in the day, or even if it was possible, they didn't want to do it because it would have been harder.

14:28.03

Delphina

And I think there's a fear of like the ugly sorts of characters sometimes to the things that are not conventionally attractive, basically, that wasn't very conductive to selling girl’s dolls because they all wanted them to be pretty and perfect. And there's some all kinds of problems with that, for sure.

14:49.13

Delphina

But just having that kind of idealistic, okay, these are what people are supposed to look like. It's beautiful. And so... that's another thing I think about.

15:01.72

Star

It's very much like the Frozen versus K-pop Demon Hunters argument, right? Because I've heard stories when they were animating Frozen. It's like, “you're not allowed to twist the girls' faces too much or else they're not going to be pretty. And then we can't sell toys of them.”

15:17.30

Star

And then meanwhile, K-pop Demon Hunters just came out. And that that movie's got all kinds of crazy faces in it. And I'm just like... You know that meme of the guy sitting on the couch and then they see something and they get really, really excited? That's me watching K-Pop Demon Hunters and going, “Yes, they're emoting, let's go!”

15:36.56

Claire

I've heard even stories of the animators who are animating Frozen. And I think any any movie from that same sort of “Disney princess” style where you've got these very almond-shaped eyes that when when you turn the head to a profile view, you basically have to shift all of the controls very specifically so that it looks appealing because the model from the front might look really good.

16:02.87

Claire

Model from the side might look like, oh no, I immediately see the 2D sort of effect is gone. And oftentimes animators, if you're working in a style like that, you'll have your own like library face shapes for like, here's how to make the base model look better from this side view. And I know that like it's it's a very appealing and very popular face shape for a lot of these sort of Disney princess style characters. But then as soon as you actually look under the hood, you're like, “Oh no, this is..”

16:38.22

Claire

You have to do a lot of extra work to make it keep looking like this. And I'm so glad when some studios are just like, “You know what? Nah, let's just have some more fun with it. There's no style guide here. Let's go.”

16:52.77

Delphina

For sure. And I feel like, too, because a lot of us were starting from this background of maybe you didn't have a lot of stuff on the Internet that you were referencing when you were first learning art. You were watching these Disney movies and you were watching things that were targeted towards kids from these corporations. And then you're kind of trying to move past that eventually, to Bob's point, you know, moving past the the corporate sort of look towards something that's more unique and suited to your own story, and comics too, because comics and animation are not the same thing, so we have other tools at our disposal and we also don't have some of the tools that animation has like maybe voice actors that would help you distinguish one character between another.

17:48.83

Delphina

So I think it's important to keep it in the context of webcomics, too. And to that end, I want to ask, you know, maybe how do you know when you have a problem with same face in your web comic work.

18:03.08

Delphina

And where do we draw that line between a stylistic choice or a design style that you have where your characters sort of look similar and an issue where we might want to address it to reduce reader confusion? I'll throw that to Claire.

18:22.41

Claire

I actually have a very specific example that I ran into in my very first chapter, because as I was saying, like I didn't have a lot of experience drawing people.

18:56.72

Claire

I had more experience drawing female characters. Not a lot of experience drawing men. So you can very clearly tell there's the very first page where my villain shows up and it's a guy and he's, I know I have to have a very distinct face for him. I need to find it.

19:17.79

Claire

So I have six or seven versions of the page where he shows up where I can see the face like getting molded into something more and more like what he ended up looking like.

19:30.83

Claire

And it's literally turning from like that kind of round, base shape that I was so used to into most long and angular Joker face that I could possibly think of.

19:42.16

Claire

Because I'm like, “this makes him distinct now.”

19:45.40

Claire

But what happened is like I reached that, but then a few pages later I was like, “Okay, i have another male character. I have to draw him shape-shifting into Phaedra's dad. And the dad has the same face! And I'm like...

20:00.96

Star

Oh no…

20:01.68

Claire

And like, I see it now. And I actually learned from a lot of people later, they thought it was intentional. And I'm like, “No, it's because I learned how to draw men two days ago!” I knew I have one man face shape.

20:14.75

Claire

And that's it. And I just, I find it so funny how like, it's completely forgivable, I think, because I know the history behind it, but in terms of actual character design and story design and stuff like that, like again, you can kind of retrofit it into this weird, “Oh, maybe it's messing with her head even more, that they look similar!” But at the same time, I'm like, no, I know that's not what I intended. It was just me being like, “Man face long, man face square. That's a man face.” And now I'm just like, “Make it longer.”

20:50.92

Star

Long, long face man.

20:54.83

Claire

Long man, long, long man.

20:57.30

Star

Okay, have you ever seen those Japanese candy commercials with the long, long man?

20:57.60

Claire

Yes!

21:02.53

Delphina

Yes!

21:04.35

Star

That's all I could think about while you were describing that.

21:07.42

Claire

And I joke all the time that his face- I drew a picture of what his face would look like when I'm finished with the comic in 2050 or something, and it's just like flying off the page because it's so long.

21:17.82

Star

Yes! Long man! Man so long! His face go on and on!

21:24.77

Delphina

Oh my God.

21:26.27

Claire

It goes to the heavens, and we never see him again.

21:29.29

Star

Goodbye Cheth!

21:32.37

Claire

But it's funny in its own way.

21:32.68

Delphina

He's gone.

21:35.32

Claire

And I actually really love seeing comics where you can see someone becoming more comfortable with their idea of what the character is supposed to look like. And almost like you can feel the frustration with the artist being like, “They all look so similar. I have to fix this.”

21:50.42

Claire

And then like two or three chapters down the line, you're like, okay. They have reached their final form. Everyone's happy. This was fine. And you can see it in like professional comics too. Like I love seeing the art evolution of something like the first chapter of Bleach, where I'm like, “Oh, a lot of these phases are very different than where they end up”. And then, then you see what the final form is and you're like, “Oh yeah, that's the intent.”

22:18.89

Delphina

For sure. We're playing a very long game here making webcomics. And page after page things are going to change just so incrementally and you won't even necessarily notice.

22:30.98

Delphina

But once you start looking back 100 pages or 200 pages. It's like “Yeah things actually did change! That's wild! I don’t know!” I'm gonna throw it to Bob about like how do you know when you have a problem with same face and like what's the line between like characters looking similar and maybe something you want to address

22:59.70

Bob

Yeah, I mean, I think the first basic issue is always just the very simple, can people tell your characters apart? And not even just can they tell your characters apart from each other, but can they tell your characters apart from other characters?

23:15.78

Bob

And, you know, for me, for example, my first webcomic, Demon of the Underground, all the main characters are in uniform.

23:26.45

Bob

So I couldn't rely very heavily on distinct clothing to make each character look different from each other. In some cases you can, in some cases, maybe it really is about, like, each character having some distinct thing that they wear that's really unique and it just isn't as much about the face and that's fine. So I think it's about just looking at the overall character and seeing like, where can you bring out the distinction?

23:59.23

Bob

And secondly, I think it's good to ask yourself, like if there is a same face problem, why? What are the reasons for the characters looking similar?

24:10.47

Bob

And you, Delphie, brought up a very important thing to think about, which is the idea that certain faces are not considered, quote unquote, “attractive”.

24:24.39

Bob

And, you know, are you boxing yourself in with a very narrow idea of what is considered attractive? Or are you afraid that other people will think that your character's distinct face isn't attractive?

24:40.44

Bob

Because I think that sometimes it's about your own tastes and sometimes it's about trying to preempt what you think other people are going to think or what you think is going to be easier for you to, you know, get readers and get fans for.

24:53.07

Bob

And I am just a really big advocate for… people love interesting faces and character faces and and they love the overall character! And that's what ultimately, you know, sells people on a character.

25:06.05

Bob

And I'm not going to like, you know, pretend that a generically attractive face won't have a slightly easier time getting out there. But I just think that it's also really an asset to have that kind of distinct look where, where someone like Clam, like, where someone sees a character and they're like “Oh, I know who drew that. And I know what that character is from because that look is so distinct.”

25:29.90

Bob

And I just think it's the final thing that I would say on that note is, does your approach to character design match the vibe of your story?

25:47.87

Bob

Because different types of stories have different goals. And maybe you are telling the type of story where, you know, you want all your characters to have that sort of simple, attractive look, and it fits what your story is about, but maybe it doesn't fit a different type of story. So just tying in the art style and the art approach with what you're trying to say as a writer, I just think that that's kind of what it comes down to.

26:19.17

Delphina

I think we're talking about attractive faces or other things like that. And it's interesting to think about what the goal of the story is, because nobody's going to go up to Gary Larson and say, I really like Far Side, but I can't tell your bear characters apart? That's not what they're for. They're just a vehicle for the joke or the message.

26:40.59

Delphina

So if it's serving your story okay, maybe that's all right. I think it's very interesting to try to figure out, what's my goal and what am I achieving here?

27:06.53

Delphina

And for the kinds of stories that we're trying to tell, matching that up.

27:15.36

Star

One example that I think is pretty prevalent to my life, at least, is I am on another podcast where my host and I watch a lot of idol anime, which means we watch a lot of, like, very cutesy, very girly, like, kind of… cute girl anime, basically. And this is, I almost feel like I'm betraying myself by saying this. So there is a show that is very, very popular called Love Live.

27:39.66

Star

And one of my biggest beefs with Love Live is the fact that all the characters look exactly the same.They have all the exact same faces and they all have like those big… they put 90% of the budget into giving these anime characters the sparkliest eyes you've ever seen in every single frame that they're on camera. And if you chopped all their hair off, you shaved their heads, and you put it in grayscale, you would not be able to tell these characters apart.

28:09.27

Star

And it drives me crazy, but here's the thing. You're never gonna see them without their very recognizable hairstyles.

28:22.73

Star

And like the point of these characters is to be cute anime girls. And they all have, like, very distinct hairstyles and different hair colors. So if you see them in a lineups, like, okay, there's some characters like between different seasons who never actually interact on screen. It's like, okay, these two look very, very similar. And I would have a hard time telling them apart if they were in the same shot, but they're from different seasons of the show.

28:45.88

Star

And it's like, okay, but within each season of the show, I don't necessarily have a problem telling the characters apart because there's other features like their hair and their hair colors and their eye colors and their voice actresses and their outfits and all these other stuff that helps you tell them apart.

29:01.86

Star

And so in that way, I would say it's like Delphina said, I don't think that having the same face is getting in the way of doing what they want with the story.

29:14.39

Star

It still annoys me just like a little itty bitty bit, but like... I would say that is a scenario where it's workable, it's doable.

29:24.83

Star

You're not having people say, “hey, I can't tell these two characters apart” most of the time, like 90% of the time, because there's other things that help you tell the characters apart.

29:36.38

Star

(wheezing) So I guess it's fine. But me personally, I gripe about it just a little tiny bit, little bit. Yeah.

29:42.45

Bob

No, I definitely feel that. And I kind of have this theory or this idea where like, I feel everyone's characters kind of exist on a spectrum where, like, one end of the spectrum is like a real nuanced human being with like thoughts and feelings and layers like an onion. And then like the other end of the spectrum is like an archetype, like a symbol.

30:05.23

Bob

And this character is like, like it's almost like a it's the character stands for something, but isn't so much that layered nuanced human person. And you, know, you can have even a mix of those different types of characters within the same so story.

30:22.42

Bob

Or you can just have different types of stories that deal with different ends of the spectrum. But I feel like they also require a really different approach to drawing them because I think the more archetype end of the spectrum does work very well with, even though it is a little, like I feel that! Like it still annoys you just a little bit when they all have the exact same face!

30:47.53

Bob

But having it where, you know for example, if you have each character that stands for like a part of the Zodiac and they have like symbols on them that mean that. And it's like, does it really matter what the shape of their nose is?

31:01.42

Bob

And meanwhile, if you're selling this kind of really nuanced type of character with all these different levels, then it can be really jarring if they look like everyone else and don't seem to be able to show that uniqueness in their facial design and have that same level of nuance and subtlety.

31:22.63

Star

Yeah, I guess what I would say is like, if the characters having very similar facial features is going to make it difficult to understand the story because readers cannot tell them apart.

31:36.49

Star

If your protagonist is a generic guy with a generic face and just like short black hair with bangs, he's going to get confused with the other character with short dark GRAY hair and the same bangs, except maybe there's four little spiky downs instead of three. Ooh! I'm not going to be able to tell those two apart!

31:59.00

Star

And if they're like fighting each other and interacting a lot on screen, then that's gonna cause a problem. Like I have a character in Castoff who was originally… her design was very similar to one of my other main characters. And at some point before starting the comic, I sat down and I told myself, “These two cannot look this similar because they're going to be interacting so much. If the only difference between their like general appearance is that they are both blonde, but one has a wavy hair and one has straight hair and like their eye colors are different, but everything else about them is almost exactly the same, that's going to confuse people. We're redesigning one of these characters because I know that's going to cause problems.” And this is something I've encountered a lot in manga because manga's grayscale.

32:52.21

Star

So you can't work with colors on like a regular basis. So like if one character has... Neon green hair and the other character has neon red hair.

33:02.87

Star

Well, okay, if it's in a manga, if it's in a grayscale comic, you can't tell the difference between their hair colors because it's probably just both rendered as white. And if they have similar hairstyles, I'm going to get them confused.

33:15.41

Star

So I think if you are looking to start a webcomic and you are worried that your characters are too similar, draw them in a lineup, shave their heads, draw them in a lineup with just like, just from the neck up, don't show their clothes and just show them to your friends and be like, can you tell these characters apart? And then also show them with their hair.

33:38.94

Star

Can you tell these characters apart just from their faces and their heads? And I think that that is a good way to just, you know, maybe avoid some issues before they come up.

33:51.37

Delphina

Yeah, I think too that in the realm of webcomics and stuff, you're not just looking at people with neutral faces staring at you all the time. You also have body language to work with. You also have, like, their mannerisms and stuff like that. So even if you have some characters, like maybe, that look very similar, if they have different ways of interacting or different speech styles or or just something that you can do with the posing and the writing? That can help a lot too.

34:28.28

Delphina

I think for me too, I see it a lot in short comics where characters might look a little more similar.

34:41.88

Delphina

And to the points that we already said, like it's because they're just a stand in for an idea or a symbol. You're not going to be sticking with this character for pages and pages and pages.

34:52.85

Delphina

If this is just an eight page one shot, like, it's fine! It's going to be, you're going to be fine. So I think there's things like that where you don't necessarily have to worry. But definitely when you're when you're getting into character driven stories, when you want to follow a character's arcs.

35:12.77

Delphina

Um, and especially when people want to see their growth, or over the course of years, that we take so long to tell our stories and it's a lot to try to remember sometimes.

35:27.94

Delphina

So the easier we can make that for the reader, I think the better it'll be. Especially when we're trying to meet bigger casts or we're throwing a lot of characters at somebody at the same time.

35:45.84

Delphina

Iif we have a lot of focus… like if you're changing the point of view from one set of characters to another set of characters from scene to scene? That's where sometimes you can get into a little bit of trouble because you're already playing a little bit by saying “Okay well we're not showing things exactly sequentially and we're not showing things from exactly the same people” So like, is this the same person who was in that scene? People are going to try to make a connection. People are going to try to make things feel familiar to them because that's how human brains work.

36:21.28

Delphina

And if you jump to a scene where somebody looks very, a little bit similar, but you didn't have like the context of... I mean, I think I'm almost saying like the opposite of what Star is saying, too, because I think it's also a problem where… I saw this person in one scene.

36:40.55

Delphina

I'm looking at a different person, another scene, but I'm not actually sure if they're the same person? And the writing isn't quite distinct enough or the personalities aren't really distinct enough or I'm just not oriented enough in this story to know all the setting stuff yet and where we are.

36:59.14

Delphina

So that's just another point of disorientation that can really throw people out. And that's where you might want to look at the art, the character design or… something else to try to get people on board with you know, who this person is, what they're about, and try to make that as distinct and clear as possible. Just one less roadblock, I think.

37:26.78

Delphina

So that brings me to my like, third point, like if you have some advice to somebody who's worried that it might be a problem in their webcomic. What are some things you can do if you suspect it's a problem? I'll throw it to Claire.

37:44.54

Claire

I think the advice given about drawing your characters bald is probably the best, like, first level kind of triage thing of just like, “Okay, do I have a problem?”

37:56.96

Claire

Because as soon as you do that, you'll probably learn pretty quickly, like, “Uh-oh, I'm using a lot of the same shapes and maybe expressions.” And maybe in your mind, you're telling yourself like, “Oh, I gave that character way different eyes than that character”, but then actually seeing them next to each other and showing it to somebody else.

38:15.84

Claire

It can at least prove that maybe you're seeing it differently in your mind's eye, compared to anything else. I think for me, one of the biggest things that I always want people to remember with webcomics is like, you can go back and you can change things.

38:32.31

Claire

That's always like one of the superpowers of being a webcomic artist. I know it sounds simpler than it actually is, especially when you're like, I don't know, you've already drawn 10 pages of this character and people are like, “I thought it was, I thought Jim was James from, you know the previous chapter. Oh no!” And you're like, “Uh-oh, well I could go back and I can do a little bit of zhushing up of that character design to make it look a little bit more distinct.”

39:01.70

Claire

One of the things that I think about a lot, Star was talking about Love Live and I'm like, “Yep, I know. I know exactly what you mean.” One of the…

39:09.50

Star

Ugh. Ugh.

39:10.70

Claire

I know, I'm sorry.

39:13.26

Claire

As a palette cleanser, one of the properties that I think of that actually handles potential same face stuff really well is Fire Emblem Three Houses.

39:24.26

Claire

Cause a lot of the characters in that are students, and they all have a pretty basic student uniform. But they all they all have different ways of posing themselves. They have different body mechanics, different expressions, different hair colors, as you do.

39:44.42

Claire

The faces themselves are not as distinct, but they have enough distinction within them. But even within the costume design, like that same school uniform, like some of them have their sleeves rolled up. Some of them have, like, a scarf.

39:57.83

Claire

Some of them have, you know, they're too big for the uniform. So the uniform is like popping off a little bit. There's always clever ways to take a very basic design, even one within your comic where you're like, “Oops, I made these two characters too similar.”

40:18.30

Claire

See if you can challenge yourself to not completely change things. Because you still had an intent with making them look a certain way. See if there's even just something you can do to pivot, whether it's you know eye shape or a different hairstyle while still maintaining the same general feel like… something. There's something out there. And I promise you, like stare at the wall enough and really think about it. And you can probably be like, “Wait a minute.That's exactly it. That's what I need to do.” And I promise you, the more that you just kind of focus for even like 10 minutes and just think about what you can do, you could come up with something.

41:02.34

Star

One small thing I wanted to add because I was reminded of it because of something that Claire brought up is that maybe in addition to having your character's appearances be distinct, maybe don't have two characters named like John and Jim and James all in the same comic.

41:28.09

Delphina

Yes.

41:28.30

Star

Those guys are going to get confused no matter how differently they look because your readers are going to, when leaving comments, get their names mixed up. So I would almost say it's like something I do in Castoff is that every main character, their name starts with a different letter.

41:42.84

Star

And I just try and make sure that people are not going to get them confused with each other. It's like, even if they typo the name… like I get so many people calling Vector “Victor” or spelling Arianna's name wrong. But even if they do that, they're not going to confuse it because there's nobody else in the comic whose name starts with a V or an A. So even if they type it wrong, everyone still knows who they're talking about.

42:08.39

Star

So, just, maybe another thing is keeping your characters' actual names distinct from each other is also a good idea. Just going to put that out there and then go back into my hole.

42:17.43

Claire

That's a good point, though. Thank you.

42:21.61

Delphina

I do the same thing, too, though. I have to have different letters for different people. I kind of broke the rule with Sydney and Sonia. But I do feel like there's just enough l letter differences to be able to be like, okay, you're never gonna forget that, you're never going to replace every single letter after the S with other letters. But yeah, it happens. I think it happens with very long names or long names that like maybe fantasy sort of things where, “oh, okay, I don't know what this is. And so in my brain, I am processing the first three letters and then I'm just cutting off everything else.”

43:06.76

Delphina

And in a perfect world where like everything else about your character was pretty distinct, it might not matter. But again, it's just one of the many tools at your disposal if you think it's a problem and you think you might want to adjust that so. Yeah these are really good tips! I'm gonna throw it to Bob, what do you have for us?

43:52.45

Bob

So even going back a few steps to before the actual having a character down on the page, and this is something you can really do at any stage, just, you know, diversifying your inspiration.

44:09.15

Bob

So that would mean following different types of artists who work in vastly different styles, because a lot of times, you know especially with like, you can see this with fan artists where a different artist can draw the same character in such a different way from another artist.

44:27.56

Bob

And it can give you some ideas on how to stylize certain facial features, even if the faces themselves would look fairly similar in real life. There are sometimes things that you can do stylistically to differentiate them.

44:44.73

Bob

And also i would say, again, going back to my love, which is real human faces and their very distinct qualities. I have a file that I, you know, my giant, giant reference file.

44:59.33

Bob

And I have a folder for random faces, and I have a folder for specific people's faces where I can get different angles of the same face. And just pay attention to where you're getting the references though, because for example, if you are looking at actors, just keep in mind that there aren't as many opportunities for, for example, female actors with very distinct faces, and it might be harder to find those unique faces if you're looking at like Hollywood, because you're you're actually gonna see a lot of same face if you're looking at the most popular Hollywood actors. So, you know, you can look at things like the faculty page of a yearbook, or you can look at like the employees on a corporate website. You can get really creative for where you are looking for unique and interesting faces.

45:59.58

Star

Just the way you brought it up, have you ever seen like lineup images of recent seasons of like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette and just like, everybody looks the exact same and it's like, “Oh my god, it's Attack of the Clones!”

46:07.14

Claire

I hate it.

46:13.89

Bob

No, I actually have in Demon of the Underground, one of the villains has like a board of advisors that are literally all like your bachelor guy.

46:24.39

Bob

Like they very deliberately all look the same as each other. And it's like a big joke. Like I put together a little fake captcha, be like, “pick out Pratt”. And it's like all eight of the board members, but they all have the same face.

46:38.73

Bob

It's just, you know, I like to make fun of those guys sometimes.

46:39.20

Star

Oh no.

46:43.06

Star

It's just like how every action movie has the same main character. It's like white guy with a heavy set with like a nice jawline and brown hair and a little bit of stubble.

46:54.32

Bob

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

46:56.48

Claire

Meanwhile, you have something like Jojo characters where you can very clearly tell that like to the artist, this is like the most amazing kind of character design, the most beautiful man, the most fashionable man on the planet.

47:12.59

Claire

And like there's several different versions of this kind of character. It's not quite same face, but like you can clearly tell like stylistically this is from the same storyline.

47:24.33

Claire

But they all have something a little bit different within them that makes them distinct, but you're still like, okay, “This is a Jojo. This is a Jojo, and I'm excited for another Jojo.” It's the same style, but they are all distinct characters, and I love that.

47:41.44

Star

Slaps the roof of the car “That's a certified Jojo right there!”

47:45.76

Claire

“I can fit so many Jojos in here!”

47:49.40

Star

“Fit so many in there. Them and all their weird latex bodysuits!”

47:54.92

Delphina

Listen, sometimes…tThat's the thing, too! Styles are not something to shy away from. And I would not want anyone to come away from this episode thinking, “oh, I have to shirk my style because if somebody can tell it's the same style from character to character, i have a problem.” Like, no, absolutely not. Like if you have a strength, please lean into that. Like people will appreciate it.

48:24.17

Star

You're going to traumatize all the little art kids in my YouTube comments who are so obsessed. He's like, “I have to find a style. I have to like, people have to know that it's my art the instant they look at it. “And then they're going to hear this and be like, “if we can tell it's your art style, then you have same face syndrome.”

48:39.53

Star

And then you're going to shatter their entire universe if you start saying stuff like that.

48:42.95

Delphina

No! That's not my intent!

48:47.83

Star

How dare you have recognizable art?

48:47.80

Delphina

Oh...

48:50.64

Star

How dare you? You're a hack. You're a fake.

48:53.98

Delphina

No!

48:55.64

Claire

It can be good, we promise. It can be totally fine.

48:59.83

Delphina

Yeah, for sure. And I'm just saying in the context of webcomics, when we're trying to tell a story, this is not necessarily even about people who have OCs and like appreciating their OCs independently.

49:15.62

Delphina

In the context of a webcomic, I feel like you might be contributing to reader confusion when you have this. And if that is the case, if you are already drawing pages and you're feeling like people are disconnecting, there are things that you can do. One of the things I want to bring up is cast pages.

49:36.86

Delphina

We have cast pages if you have, if you make your own site and you have various peripheral web comic pages or whatever, you can have a cast page where you say, this is my character. This is their name. This is their age. Here's what they look like.

49:56.14

Delphina

And especially when I'm reading a lot of comics, I am looking at those so much, especially at the beginning, because sometimes I am having trouble or sometimes I'm not quite acquainted with the characters yet.And I will be after a couple of pages, but I'm not yet.”

50:09.66

Delphina

So in those initial stages, when I'm experiencing confusion, I always look for a cast page and I try to figure out, “OK, here's this person.I'm reoriented now.” I don't want to say you should necessarily rely on that, but it can be a very useful tool that we have. And it's unique to webcomics.

50:34.13

Claire

Yeah, when I first started, I was like, “Should I? Is a cast page necessary? Is it cheating? Is it something bad?” But then I'm like, imagine a cast page is kind of, it's on the same level as like a map.

50:47.75

Claire

To have a map of wherever you are or like, orientation depending on where you are in the story or the just… it's information. And I think for something like a webcomic or just anything, any sort of visual sequential medium, like, unless you have like a full page splash of like “Name: Jim Bob McJones, Age:who cares” whatever like a whole thing where it's like a very clear like putting the cast page into the comic like…you can help people. If you have a large cast, like there's nothing wrong with just being like, “Here's a little bit of information. The story will give you enough to understand what's happening and hopefully be able to tell people apart.” But if you need that little extra bump, yeah, a cast page is extremely helpful. I rely on them a lot too. They're very good. Please do them.

51:44.97

Delphina

Yeah. I mean, um and I do like kind of the intro card sequence or like at least giving your main characters a couple pages or a scene all to themselves where we can kind of imprint on them to say, “This is the blonde lady. Her name is Margaret and she is a teacher and she's kind of sassy.”

52:10.76

Delphina

Just getting those initial impressions in there associated with the character can help a lot as you move Margaret to meet other people in the scene.

52:24.13

Delphina

But also having the cast page means you don't have to scroll back through pages and pages of archive when Margaret comes back onto the scene and then you're like, “Oh, oh, I know who that is! Who is that?” So both, both is good.

52:40.37

Bob

I just wanted to say that I really, really, really liked your use of the word imprint, like to imprint on the character because it just makes me think of like all these little like baby ducks or geese just like following after the character, like, “Oh, I love them so much now that I know them.” And just I just really love that visual. So thank you for that.

52:58.59

Delphina

I mean, like, have you seen the Phantomarine fans with Cheth? I think that's what happens. They imprint.

53:04.98

Bob

I feel that, yeah. And I love that, it’s perfect.

53:07.11

Claire

I don't know. I just shove him in front of people long enough and people are like, “I guess I like him now.” And just, I don't know, I'm lucky.

53:17.99

Claire

I'm lucky that the character itself kind of like, I don't know, certain characters, they show up and they kind of write themselves.

53:26.13

Claire

And I do think the, the concept of like using the introduction of a character as part of their design, like, even if the character is relatively basic in terms of looks, or how similar they are to another character, like, people will remember if they're introduced with a bang in a particular way. People might even be kind of protective of the idea of like, “No, that's not Jim, that's James. He's way cooler!”

53:59.87

Delphina

Jim and James, they're just fighting it out. I can't believe it. I don't know if I'm on team James or Jim. Like, we're all going to have to make a decision at some point.

54:12.21

Delphina

But I feel like, yeah, it's just an interesting... there's a lot of tools that you have. And we talked about color too. Because I think some of us are working in black and white comics. And it's definitely not impossible to like go into a black and white comic and like be like, “okay, how do you tell these characters apart?”

54:35.08

Delphina

You just really start having to think about contrast. And you have to start thinking about a little more about the shapes of things, I want to say. Because you don't have that additional tool of color, but even sometimes when you do have the additional tool of color, it's not enough to help if they're like all the same values or something, I feel like there's a challenge there.

55:03.47

Claire

It is one thing with my work where I know that I rely a lot on color, but I did also want to incorporate shape language, at least into my main three characters.

55:17.83

Claire

Like Phaedra is based around a spiral, Pavel's based around a triangle and Cheth is based around a square, but more like a coffin shape when it gets really particularly angled. And like in their silhouettes, you don't need that much variation because their heights are very different and their shapes are very different. But you get this sense of what this character is about just from the shapes that are introduced in their costume or their expressions or anything. It is a big thing in environment design, character design, where to see… which character is a square, which character is a circle, which character is a teardrop, and what might that kind of signify.

56:00.25

Claire

There's so many techniques that you can use. Pick up a book on character design, and you might be just immediately inspired and just be like, “oh that's something I can do.” Even working within a like an anime style, there are things that you can add that you might not have thought about before. So steal from everything, be inspired by everything.

56:26.11

Delphina

We love stealing. Stealing is great. Love stealing. And with that, like, I just want to say that it's amazing what we can do with characters. Like there's just so many options when you are a webcomic artist and you have the ability to go back, you have the ability to change things and you're gonna grow as you go.

56:52.21

Delphina

And that's always something that's comforting to me that even if I have… some issues or there is some confusion, like I have time to work on that.

57:03.62

Delphina

So yeah, I think we're going to wrap it up there. I think this has been a Chicken Caesar salad wrap. So thank you so much for listening. I've been your host Delphina and you can check out my webcomic Sombulus at sombulus.com.

57:21.49

Claire

I have been Claire/Clam. You can read my webcomic at phantomarine.com.

57:27.80

Bob

I've been Bob, and you can find my webcomics at intothesmokecomic.com and daemonoftheunderground.com.

57:35.85

Star

And I've been Star, and you can read my webcomic at castoff-comic.com.

57:42.42

Delphina

Now we're all going to go design long, long man.

57:45.47

Star

Long man!

57:48.70

Claire

If you can design a longer man than me, I will be very impressed, actually.

57:51.91

Star

Long man contest! Let's go!

57:54.41

Delphina

Oh my gosh. It's a challenge. I am down for it. Okay.