Manga Iconography - Character Design

Character Design

To better elicit a more emotional response with the audience for a certain character, a manga artist or animator will sometimes use certain traits in the character's design. The most common features include youthfulness as a physical trait (younger age or pigtails) or as an emotional trait such as a naive or innocent outlook, a childlike personality, or some obvious sympathetic weakness the character works hard to correct (extreme clumsiness or a life-threatening disease) but never really succeeds to get rid of.

Other artistic conventions used in mainstream manga include:

• A round swelling, sometimes drawn to the size of baseballs, is a visual exaggeration of swelling from injury.
• A white cross-shaped bandage symbol denotes pain. (In older manga, eyes pop out to symbolize pain, as shown in Dragon Ball.)
• Thick black lines around the character may indicate trembling due to anger, shock or astonishment. This is usually accompanied by a rigid pose or super deformed styling.
• Sparks literally fly between the eyes of two characters when they are fighting, or simply glaring at each other (in this case, their eyes may also be connected by a lightning streak).
• A character suddenly falling onto the floor, usually with one or more extremities twisted above him or herself, is a typically humorous reaction to something unexpected happening.
• All facial features shrinking, the nose disappearing, the character lifting off the floor and the limbs being multiplied as if moving very fast symbolizes panic; if the same but with larger facial features it symbolizes comic rage.
• Tear drops everywhere or forming a fountain indicate intense joy or sadness.
• An ellipsis appearing over a character's head indicates a silence, implying that something is going unsaid.
• A drooping head may indicate sorrow.
• More often than not, character colorisations tend to represent the character in some way. A more subdued character will be coloured with lighter tones, while a flamboyant character will be done in bright tones. Similarly, villains are often coloured in darker tones, while colder character will be given neutral tones (black, white, grey, etc.).
• Characters push their index fingers together when admitting a secret or telling the truth to another.
• An odd white shape (more often than not, something close to a mushroom) that appears during an exhale represents a sigh of awkward relief or depression.
• A wavy ghost coming out of the mouth is often a comical representation of depression or mortification. This is a reference to the hitodama, as is the above example.
• Cherry blossoms indicate a sweet or beautiful moment. This is a reference to Mono no aware.
• A flower blossom falling off its stem may indicate death or, more commonly, loss of virginity.
• Unbound hair may represent freedom, while hair that is tied back may represent some form of either literal, figurative or emotional enslavement of some kind.
• Sleeping people may be indicated by having a bubble coming out of the nose, said bubble inflating and deflating as they snore. This is usually done when the character sleeps at an inappropriate moment (e.g. during class, at work, outside, in public, in an unusual pose or location, etc.).
• Sometimes, when a character screams or is surprised, they will do The Scream pose.
• Twitching eyebrows or eyelids may indicate anger or shock that the character is holding back.