Thread "How do you make a sexy/attractive character? What makes a character sexy and or attractive?" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 9, 2015

I'm not so sure about that! To me that's the difference between "objectively attractive" and "sexy." Because I'll see a guy with all those traits but who is otherwise unremarkable and I might think "Oh, that's a handsome man" but often won't have any sort of animalistic urge towards them. As oz says, having something that sets a character/person apart from others is really important, and I think comic book characters in particular fall into that. All superheroes are hunky, and so looking at them doesn't have any effect on me. But the same character in a world of ordinary people, or the same character with a little something that sets him apart, might be a different story.

Basically, I think sexiness as distinguished from objective physical attractiveness is often very unique to people and un-pin-down-able.

Don't get me wrong! I'm not saying if you or I see a guy with all the 'right physical traits', that we'll feel the strong urge to jump his bones right there on the sidewalk! I'm just saying there's unversal hard-wired aspects, common points, that sexiness originates from.
I'm saying that I don't think you (or me) will find anyone sexy that your (and my) litte inner beast doesn't find attractive on some level, based on these universal traits. Our subjective minds, our personal preferences, sort of build upon the little urge inside (that we're often unaware of). And it's never an overwhelming urge (unlike dogs in heat lol) - we can supress it pretty easily, sometimes to the point we don't think we even have it…
But it's always there… always there…
(of course this is just my subjective opinion!)

Posted at 8:04AM, Apr. 9, 2015

Attractive is appearances with the broad shoulders or wide hips. Sexy is in the behavior. You can have perfection in attractive appearance but if it's a cardboard cut-out it won't be sexy. Though that characterization (beautiful but shallow and empty) can make for an interesting character mash-up with the slightly less obviously attractive but oh so interesting character who exudes sexuality.

Who is more attractive? Obviously Quinn.
Who is more sexy? Daria.

Posted at 10:04AM, Apr. 9, 2015

Bravo has a point! Below is sexy…!! But picture him exactly the same, hair and clothes, but making a face with a ridiculously exaggerated overbite smile and squinted eyes…

Posted at 3:04PM, Apr. 9, 2015

I think that it's also important to consider what we're socialized to believe is "attractive" and "sexy". We have a whole industry that relies on selling us certain ideals so that we always feel inadequate and that there's some sort of universal constant state of attractiveness that we should all aspire to.
Not all men find certain things attractive, nor do all women. And it can be hard to differentiate what someone finds attractive on an instinctual level, because what American culture tells us is attractive is different from what Japanese culture suggests is attractive. There IS no universal set of rules for what's attractive.

Posted at 6:04PM, Apr. 9, 2015

Remember that the questions this thread asks are what individual things that you find sexy/attractive, as well as the more general stuff.

I think it's safe to say that while there is no "mathematical law of sexy", there are certainly things that are global, cross-cultural, and even cross-time and history that still remain broadly sexy or attractive.
The wider the net goes though the less specific you have to become unfortunately. Sex is one of the main drives for animal life, like hunger and the need for sleep, so if we have a solid level of comonallity with fish, bugs, birds, and snakes etc. It's a safe bet we share quite a lot more with members of our own species.

Posted at 7:04PM, Apr. 9, 2015

More specific stuff, eh? Great sense of humor and ability to carry on conversations about a wide array of subjects, likes outdoor adventurous stuff, has a great appreciation of music (prefer being able to play an instrument or sing, but just an appreciation and general knowledge of music culture goes a looooong way), a desire to visit new places and try new things, from visiting new cities to parks and trails to explore, has a love of culture, treats family (parents and children) well and genuinely wants to spend time with them…
Physically (beyond the basic biological stuff we all find attractive), I find a wide gamut of body types for both sexes attractive. I like someone who looks active and is reasonably fit, clearly takes care of themselves but isn't fanatic about it! Where it's clear they think there's more to life than having visible tendons and veins poking against dehydrated looking skin! Here's a final arbiter I use to determine who's sexiest when I see two people of the same gender and are roughly the same level of attractiveness: the one who most appears like they could kick the other one's ass, that one is the sexiest!

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 9, 2015

Hahaha! Now apply that to comic characters! :D

Posted at 11:04PM, Apr. 9, 2015

Sex is fun, weird, and often messy. Characters that tend to personify those qualities go a lot further towards being "attractive" to me than those that are all gloom and doom. When I started working on The Harlot, I found myself in a conundrum: I was making a boner comic, but I didn't want to fall into the standard tropes of that genre. I wanted it to be graphic, but not gross. Exciting, but not exhausting. I wanted it to be something that would be welcoming to people from a wide variety of backgrounds and personalities, as long as they could get past the fact that it's a comic with a boob-ton of boobs flopping around on nearly every page. I quickly discovered that the magic bullet for that scenario was fun. Sure, I designed the Harlot to look like the stereotypical male fantasy, but she's hopping all over the place beating up bad guys and calling people buttholes. More importantly, she is actively enjoying her sexuality as she does those things. Add a bit of comedy and confidence to your pot full of wangs and hoo-has, and baby, you got a stew goin'.

Genejokewrote:
draw them without clothes.

This works too.

Posted at 4:04AM, Apr. 10, 2015

ozoneocean wrote:
Hahaha! Now apply that to comic characters! :D

lol I keep drifting from the fact we're talking about comic characters instead of real people!!! *gaaaahh… must concentrate on title* Oh well… any comic character that has the listed characteristics I'd find sexy too!!

Posted at 8:04AM, Apr. 10, 2015

But if no one has clothes the sexiness sort of fades. Look at Polynesia or ancient Egypt. People ran about naked or clothed very minimally a lot yet it wasn't necessarily sexy (except to uptight over dressed Westerners). The ancient Germans (among others) would have their women bare their breasts in contempt for an enemy not to entice him (no matter what Tacitus may have thought) Just because a culture has less inhabitiona and shame ovber how they dress does not mean they are more sexually open. Just better at compartmentalizing clothing versus sexuality. Remember some of the most passionate love poetry was written to a pair of eyes glimpsed through a berka and veil.

But Sway does make a great point. FUN. Fun is a big part of sexiness. A reasonably unattractive person that is lots of fun to be with becomes more attractive because they're fun to be with. Knowing how to have fun is indicitive of a postive attutude which can be viewed as a plus for potential children. Some guys have ended up having a long healthy relationship with that "sixpack" ten because she has a winning personality and can sire beter and more viable offspring than Miss Distant but Gorgeous (who may be distant becuae of personality problems that could damage potential offspring).

And all of this feeds into any work of fiction especially those that seek to create or recreate a world different from our own.

Posted at 11:04AM, Apr. 10, 2015

To me, sexiness is mostly about the balance between power and vulnerability. I have seen many dancers who are technically flawless, but so are so aloof that the audience has no emotions to hold on to, so the performance becomes cold. It's the same with comic book characters. I want to create characters that are hot, and heat requires a willingness to take on outrageous risks that may destroy you. Heat requires competence, but humor, humility, and silliness too. It requires forceful power, but also the ability to open up to the feelings of others, and thereby be touched by others. It requires the valor to stand up for one's principles, and maybe ending up being undone by them. A sexy character is someone who takes responsibility for her/his own sexuality on his/her own terms.

Comic book characters that I find attractive would be Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical character in “Persepolis”, any number of characters from Giovanna Casotto's short stories, John Howard's title character from “Horny biker slut”, and John Blackburn's Coley from “Coley running wild” (don't Google those last two at work!)

I have no idea why the type in the second paragraph is blue

Posted at 5:04PM, Apr. 10, 2015

fallopiancrusader wrote:

I have no idea why the type in the second paragraph is blue

Because some of the content was?

Posted at 7:04AM, Apr. 11, 2015

A short-cut to creating a really hot female character is to have her going through menopause.

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 13, 2015

bravo1102 wrote:
A short-cut to creating a really hot female character is to have her going through menopause.

Taking a pause from men… seems like a good idea…

Posted at 8:04PM, Apr. 13, 2015

If i want to make a character to be sexy and attractive I'd have to make a drawing of what I see in the mirror… But seriously, as Kim mentioned, there's the animal physical/sexual attraction, the instinct. Sway and Bravo mentioned being fun as a good trait, yes. Also, I think it was Ocean who mentioned it, it's going to be the other characters in the comic who should feel atrsacted to the "sexy" character. My opinion is that if you need to make a character attractive or sexy, you have to decide what you mean by that, and for whom this character should be attractive or sexy. For your readers, another character in the story, for yourself?… Now, excuse me, I have to look in the mirror and admire my sexyness…

Posted at 9:04PM, Apr. 16, 2015

For female characters: legs. That goes a loooong way. ^_^
Also big lips.
For males: broard chests.
Also square jaws.

- Just thinking about the sorts of features they have in ultra simplified art in newspaper strips. You know, something like Wizard of Id, Crock (hahaha showing my age here). Those are comics that slim eveything down to its essence to make it easier and fast to draw but it STILL works.
That's sexy AND efficient.

Posted at 10:04AM, Apr. 17, 2015

ozoneocean wrote:
Also square jaws.

Who would you think of in real life as having a square jaw? I'm not sure that I'm a fan, but I'm sort of thinking of those exaggerated superhero square jaws.

Posted at 11:04AM, Apr. 17, 2015

Robert Z'Dar… but that was freaky. :)
In reality it translates to big chins I think, like Bruce Campbell, Kurt Russell, Kurt Douglas…
On real people I don't think it's a sure fire indicator of masculine atractiveness, but it's a good visual indicator for a simplified representation.

It's the same as real women with huge lips and really long legs, big busts etc can look really weird, but those exagerations work perfectly ok for a normal atractive female figure in a stylised cartoon.

Posted at 10:04AM, Apr. 19, 2015

I once heard cartoony sexiness described as being simply the "S" shape of the boobs and butt with lipstick. Men where a the football goalpost shape of the shoulders, and chest and a "V" for the abs and crotch.

The crossdressing of Bugs Bunny follows the same route.

And then there is a real bunny girl. Bugs Bunny's girlfriend Lola.

Posted at 2:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

And hair and eye lashes. Sometimes female sexiness can be reduced to a wig, lipstick and eyelashes especially when dealing with anthropomorphized animals? Or is that really a product of 1940's Hollywood just the same as the hourglass is actually from the Gibson girl of the late 1800's? So female sexiness is actually the curves of boobs and butt/hips and males just broadness of the shoulders?

Is there a universal that can be glimpsed under all the layers of culture? In women Boobs and hips, in men shoulders and firmness of jawline? And a sort of proportion between them all as an indication of overall health?

Posted at 3:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

I think you have to be careful about making universal assumptions…
I like your point that certain things come from traceable origins- Hollywood, Gibson girls etc.
A lot of what we see as beauty or even male and female is cultural rather than universal:
So dresses and long hair were once the main symbols of feminitity in a lot of the Western world, while in China at the same time maybe it was small feet since the woman had their hair all bound up and wore trousers?

Even with big broad chests and massive jaws that we look on now as being very masculane traits- back in the 18th century it was tiny chins, soft round faces, bumpy noses… in the 17th centry it was lots of long flowing hair and big calf muscles! - Which gave rise to the use of the high heeled shoe as a fashion item (for men) instead of just something for riding, because it showed off the calves so well.

If we go right back we get the fettish sculptures like the Venus of Willendorf- a big round fat apple figured woman with gigantic boobs, fat legs and short curly hair.

But for now though, in this day and age, yes: long lashes, big lips, boobs, bum, thin waist for ladies, big chests, shoulders and jaws for the men.

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

ozoneocean wrote:
I think you have to be careful about making universal assumptions…

To an extent, but Bravo is right about about boobs and hips in women, and shoulders and chest in men… It's hardwired in us - these are our evolutionary species' indicators of general health, ability to bear and raise children and protect the group. Our genes urge us to mate with the people that have them, therefore these things will always be sexy. The preferred proportions can vary by culture, but the general 'look' really is universal
.
Of course, we humans have thinking brains and we do make other accessories sexual, but underneath all the bling the basic stuff remains, and it has an effect on us whether we like it or not…

Posted at 6:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

But for the examples I mentioned above I don't think those are universal or as "hard wired" as we tend to think, because we have evidence to point to in the form of idealised images of beauty for many thousands of years.

Look at acient Greece:
- There were two main "atractive" body types for women; the maiden and the mother.
The maiden type is almost boyish, with small breasts and slim hips. She's a developed woman though, just.
The older figure has wider hips and a bit of a small belly.

- For men There's the "wrestler" and the "runner" figures.
The wrestler type is very large in figure, heavily muscled and usually always bearded. His chest is only as wide as his stomach though generally, not wider. He's just one solid muscle slab.
The runner type has a lot less muscley, a lot smaller and leaner, no where near the muscle definition of the former type. He had a broader chest compared to his tummy, also unlike the former type.

Earlier imagry from the same culture had men and women appearing much alike; both had wide shoulders. The woman had relatively slim hips and small breasts.

In the 1920s the masculane idea was a pidgeon chested profile for the men: wide when standing sideways, but slim in most other ways. Jacket shoulders weren't really padded much if at all and torsos were slim.
For women it was slim and boyish all the way down, with taped down tits and dresses that draped low on the waste, designed to de-empasise the waste to hip ratio.
-Which was a huge contrast to the 1910s when the corsette and the hourglass shape was in…
In the 1930s hips and wastes came back, but the shoulders were emphasised way more.

———————

If we're to garner any "universal" truths from the evidence, I would say that people simply gravitate towards the cultural gender norms of the time (whatever they are), and those are associated more and more strongly with that gender - and we tend to view everyone else from other cultures and points in history from the lens of the views of our current culture.

Posted at 8:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

I know I've posted this video on this forum before, but this BBC documentary suggests that there are some universal factors in attractiveness, and a certain amount of it is mathematical and symmetry-based. The whole thing is worth a watch (it was suggested to me by a professional character designer), but here I'm linking to the part about beauty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DivDzQkhNdY

It doesn't account for personal taste though, which can sometimes run counter to popular opinion. Sometimes I've seen people that I knew weren't "conventionally attractive" but I thought there was still something cute about them.

Posted at 8:04AM, Apr. 22, 2015

I saw that series years ago and I was very disapointed in it at the time. It seemed very superficial, mainly be based on popular texts, and relied heavily on extraporlating modern western taste on to all periods, cultures, and ethnicities (just like the point I ended my last post with). I even felt it was a little racist.

THAT was my reaction at the time… It made me lose a lot of the respect I'd had for John Cleese.

But you make up your own mind.