Webcomics need characters in order to communicate a story. The characters’ dialogue, their personalities, their actions, it all shapes the story and gives the reader enjoyment through a compelling story. However, webcomics and comics are visual mediums. The readers will see the characters, they’ll see their designs, they’ll see how they interact with their environment. Unlike novels, webcomics use art as their strong point!

That means you’ll have to get used to drawing the same characters over and over and over. Consistency is important, you must avoid making mistakes while drawing your character. This is where a character reference sheet can be rather useful to you.

By keeping it as a reference while you work, you should be able to avoid forgetting details and making the mistake of drawing your characters ‘off-model’, something that’d reduce how effective your illustrations would be. But what does a character reference sheet have? What must you keep in mind while making one? When should you make one? If you’re wondering anything like that, then let’s try to find answers to all these questions!

HOW DOES A CHARACTER REFERENCE SHEET LOOK LIKE?

Character reference sheets are meant to be a quick reference for the artist to look at. For that reason, it’s better to keep them uncluttered and easy to understand. You don’t need to make a dozen poses, all you have to do is draw enough for you to be able to see what your character should look like, and what you need to draw every time.

Take this reference sheet as an example:

—Edwin Huang

See? There are two full-body illustrations. This is enough to show how the character is like.

—Cut Time

This one is a sketch that can work as a reference sheet too. It only has two full-body sketches. Through these two sketches, anyone who looks at it can see how this character looks like and what she is wearing.

In other words: the artist is the one who decides what a character reference sheet needs. Some artists may need more information in their references, others may need less…you need to judge what exactly you need, and what you’ll have trouble remembering. The only element that always needs to be in a reference sheet is a full-body illustration of your character, preferably in full color.

Is it worth it to make a character reference sheet? It definitely is. For the purpose of finding out more about this topic, Journeys Into Webcomics contacted someone with experience. Mr. Edwin Huang – professional cartoonist and illustrator – has worked for a diverse array of high-profile clients in the field of illustration and storyboarding, as well as illustrating comics and webcomics. This is what he had to say when he was asked if he recommended undergoing the work necessary to make all the character reference sheet you may need:

I’d highly recommend creating a reference sheet of your characters in order to see if they work in a 3D space. It’s always good to know how they look in all angles before jumping into a big project. It also helps you realize if the character is easy or hard to draw over and over.

—Edwin Huang

It’s better to find out any potential problems before you start your webcomic, not while you’re drawing it. The perspective of having to draw several character reference sheets may seem daunting, but there’s no doubt it’ll be worth it.

I’M READY TO START!

Then let’s do it!

Reference sheets should be one of the first things you need to make to prepare yourself to work on your webcomic. You may have an idea for the designs of your characters but remember: once you start uploading your webcomic, making changes won’t be an easy task. Sure, a character’s looks could change during the story, but those changes usually happen in response to events or environments in the webcomic, instead of the author deciding to change the design. You also have to remember you can’t retroactively erase what your readers thought about a design! By sketching your character in a reference sheet, you can make decisions regarding the design and modify it until you feel satisfied.

That said, it’s better to make your reference sheet digitally. Many of the necessary steps to make a webcomic page are done digitally, given how colorization and lettering are usually done on a computer instead of using traditional mediums.

Don’t get impatient, though! Take small steps every time! The first step is to sketch manually or digitally, use whatever you’re more comfortable with. Draw how the entire body of your character looks like, their clothing, their hair, their face. Draw somewhere else everything else you want to include on your reference sheet. If you want to know what you could include on your sheet, that’ll be discussed in a moment. The point is that first you should sketch, don’t jump straight into doing lineart. Once you’re happy with what you’re seeing, then you can start making hard lines, making the lineart!

The lineart could be considered the middle point of the illustration process. Once the lineart is done, you can start colorizing. How much detail you put in the colorizing is up to you. Do you want to only use the base colors, without any shading? Go ahead! Do you want to apply lighting and shadows? Sure! Generally, you may want to stick to the amount of detail and shading your webcomic will have, but you’re the one who chooses how much detail there’ll be.

THAT’S A LOT OF WORK

It is! It’s so much work it could get tedious if you’re not enthusiastic about having to wait longer before being able to start making your webcomic. Allow me to repeat once again: it’s worth it to make reference sheets. Making reference sheets could spare you headaches in the future.

FINE. WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

Decide what you may need a reference on. It’s essential to have a full-body picture, so remember to draw that first. What kind of positions would be useful? Front, back, and ¾ are the most common ones. In general, you need to keep this in mind: being able to see every angle of your character is a desirable result.

You also need to keep in mind the complexity of your character. The more details there are, the more angles you’ll need to portray them in your reference sheet.

It really depends on the difficulty of a character. If a front and back shot can convey all the info you need, then I stick to that. Certain designs need more angles as well as additional shots of accessories.

—Edwin Huang

Look at this image again:

Just with these two images, you could imagine spinning the character on a vertical pivot, seeing every angle of the character. It means this is effective! Note there’s one frontal pose and a ¾ that shows the back. Given how it’s likely the design is symmetric, just showing one side should be enough.

If your character is asymmetrical – for example, if they’re wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the right sleeve is ripped apart noticeably – you may consider drawing a position where only the intact left sleeve is shown, and another where the ripped sleeve is rather visible. What’s important is that as much detail as possible is shown in your character reference sheet!

Personally, I think It’ll be easier to take these sheets as reference if you don’t make complicated poses. What matters is the detail, not to make a dynamic pose. In reference sheets, usually you’ll see the character with a pose where there’s no perspective, simply standing on the floor and doing some minor action. However, if you want to use a dynamic pose, then here, take a look at these. I have marked with red circles those I think wouldn’t work for a character sheet, and with blue those I’d use.

The poses I marked with red are poses that would hide too much of some parts of the body, such as those where the hands are in front of the face, or those positions where there’s too much perspective – and therefore it’d be difficult to use detail. The ones I marked in blue are poses that are interesting and would allow you to see most of the body.

For the purposes of this article, this concrete reference sheet shall be analyzed:

—Edwin Huang

Let’s focus on one thing at a time, shall we? Take a look at the poses.

Three poses in total, all of them similar to each other. As you can see, one shows the front, the next one shows the side, and the last one shows the back. It’s not necessary to draw the side that isn’t seen here, just by seeing the side in the second pose you can picture how the other side looks like.

What kind of pose would be of help to you? A simple pose such as looking at the front, or maybe in a T pose, or a dynamic pose? You be the judge of what would be better for your future use.

Headshots are close-ups of the character’s head, showing them expressing emotions. Given the wide range of emotions your character is likely to feel in your webcomic, you could use this to practice, study how the face moves, take it as a reference for the future for when you have to draw a concrete emotion. It’s unlikely you’ll draw the exact same face – you’d have to use the same angle and position! – but it can serve to have an idea of how the face is likely to look like.

Usually, headshots involve drawing the entire head and all the hair that’s in that area. Most times the neck and the shoulders are included, for the sake of not having a floating head in your reference sheet.

Decide towards where the character will be looking. Draw the basic shape of the head, and sketch the hair. What you’re doing is setting the bases for the finished drawing, you may want to draw lightly with your pencil or, if you’re drawing digitally, use a new layer for each part of the sketch. Position where the eyes, the mouth, everything on your character’s face will be at. Once you’re happy with how it looks, go ahead and draw the final lines! The lineart, in other words!

Here are three headshots. Observe how much the artist drew here. It’s true the size of the drawing isn’t large, but the mere fact it’s limited to the head and shoulders gives emphasis to the face. There’s no need to make headshots extremely large, as you can see!

Since headshots are intended to show emotions, make emphasis on that. Once the head is drawn you can choose to draw neck and shoulders. It’ll make the headshot look more natural, but it’s not essential.

Some artists like to keep a reference sheet of the heights of their characters, sometimes comparing them to objects or to a chart placed as background. It’s true that in your webcomic it’s unlikely you’ll draw them in a way where their exact height is known, but what matters the most is that you stay consistent. If a character is shorter than another character, you need to make sure to always draw that character as shorter. The height can’t vary drastically. If your character is taller than their surroundings, try to envision how they’ll look among furniture, for example. There’s no hard rule about how your character would look in contrast to furniture, trust your instinct and draw!

There’s a website that can help you figure out how characters of different heights would look near each other. Take a look!

Furniture usually has standards, being aware of the general height they have can be a good idea. Just to show an example, here’s an image showcasing the height of some of tables and counters:

If you wish to be more precise, there are many height charts you can use to draw your character on. A quick search showed there are many transparent backgrounds in DeviantArt you could use.

As you can see, these are marked in feet and inches, while others may be marked in meters and centimeters. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to draw the same exact height to your character during your webcomic, but if you want to define the height of your character in such precise way, then go ahead! Remember to draw on a different layer than the background, by the way, and reducing the opacity of the layer with the height chart will make it easier for you to draw on the other layer without the black lines getting in the way. Always remember one of the keys to drawing digitally is to be orderly!

A character is likely to have smaller details. The trinkets your character has, the weapons they may carry, some decoration on their clothes or hair, all those details can say a lot about a character’s personality, but they may be difficult to remember to draw every single time, or how they look like. That’s another reason to have a character reference sheet! You’ll start drawing them automatically once you get some practice, but in the meantime, you can take the reference sheet as your go-to when you forget about them.

Sketch and draw close-ups of the items your character carries, or those smaller details that you’d like to remember. Given how these are meant to be only the object, you may want to avoid drawing much of the character themselves other than the surrounding area. It’s true many times in your webcomic you may not be able to draw every detail to the nitty gritty, but having a general idea of the general shape of the detail you want to remember is a good idea.

This reference sheet shows almost all the sides of the character’s sword. You now could envision that item in a 3D space, you know how it’d look like no matter what angle you choose. Of course, you don’t have to draw multiple angles for every object you want to add, but if you do, you may find it’s easier for you to picture the object in a tridimensional space. That’s one of the reasons to draw a character sheet, after all: to help you have a better handle of how a character or an object looks like from all sides – in other words, a tridimensional character/object!

IS THAT ALL I NEED TO DRAW?

More or less, yes. If you feel you need anything else in a reference sheet, then by all means, go ahead! There are a few other neat things some people like to add.

Some authors and illustrators add text, whether as a way to give a reader more information – when they show reference sheets to other people – or as a way to remind themselves of something. Given the focus of a reference character sheet is the illustration itself, you may want to write as little text as possible. The name of the character would be good to have, for example. Maybe the most basic information will be useful to you, too.

In that case, all you have to do is to choose a font that will not detract from the illustration and make sure to not place it too close to the drawing.

Sometimes minor annotations are placed, pointing out details that may need a concise explanation, details that would be difficult to remember otherwise. For example, pointing out a circumstance or detail, or some characteristic that’s not obvious at first sight.

Others consider a color key is good to have. Given how colorists and illustrators work digitally, this is a good way to ensure the colors used in each page stay consistent. A colorist or illustrator simply will use the eyedropper tool to take a color from the color key.

Doing something as simple as this will be enough, you don’t need to make it complicated, all that matters is that you put all the colors you need to use, such as skin color, hair color, and other colors that will always be associated with your character. This will ensure the character will have the same colors each time. Color keys are rather convenient tools, since picking colors out of the illustration itself on the reference sheet can be rather imprecise, due to the shading and illumination the illustration would have.

In other words: I heartily recommend placing a color key on your reference sheet! Consistency is important in a webcomic!

It’s not necessary to make a background for a reference sheet. If you do, it’s better to make sure it doesn’t distract you from the character. A soft background, preferably with one tone, should be enough. Choose a light color and avoid making distracting patterns.

As a rule of thumb, for the background you should avoid the very top corners of the color palette. In those places the color is too saturated and bright, therefore you risk making too distracting of a background.

I THINK I UNDERSTAND!

Great. Reference sheets aren’t useful only for yourself, too. Character reference sheets are an important part of the illustration, comic and webcomic industry. If you were to hire an artist to draw the webcomic for you, it’s very likely they’ll request character reference sheets to know your character and learn how they should look. That is essential. Even if it’s just a sketch it’s a good idea to have something to give them.

Mr. Huang mentioned this when he was asked about the topic:

If it’s for a one-off illustration, there usually is no need for a reference sheet. For comics or incidents where you’re drawing the same character multiple times, the client might ask for a sample pin up and/or character sheet.

Once another reason to make character reference sheets, see?

Working with a reference sheet doesn’t have to be complicated. Keeping the reference sheet open to a side of your screen or in a secondary screen should be enough. What’s important is that you don’t have to distract yourself from drawing by clicking or having to change windows.

I’m often supplied with reference sheets when I design toys. They’re always opened in my browser. It’s good to have in the background as a refresher.

Character reference sheets are something that may take a while to do, that’s true. However, doing them can be rather beneficial to you as a webcomic author. From helping to realize errors in character design or difficulties at the time of drawing it, to keeping track of the color palette and of the small details of your design, reference sheets are a tool you’ll be glad to have.

I hope this reference post was useful!