A Cast Full of Attractive People...

I realized that I tend to design ALL of my characters look very attractive.

What would be the negative thing about that? I know that something's not right with that but I just can't put it in words.

Is this for a comic?

If it's for prose, then as long as you don't call attention to it and infodump descriptions of their beauty I don't think anyone will notice. If you see them all as attractive in your head that's fine.

No, it's for Light Novel-ish book. I guess if it turns into Manga, I'm visualizing that the cast would look like Full Metal Panic, Kara No Kyoukai, Black Butler, and CLAMP works.

Thing I didn't mention includes that many of the attractive people in my story is high school students who are below 17 years old. Anything wrong with that?

Like you said, I hate how sometimes there are prose describing how attractive characters are.

Don't worry. It's a common occurance in manga to have only one body type for teens. However, try to through in a fat person here and there, even if he/she's just used once.

And at least some side characters older than 30.

And, if this is taking place in a non racially-homogenous culture, minorities.

Homo/Bisexuals, too. Don't make a big deal about it, though. One reference is enough.

Well, I rarely go into detailed description of the characters, and attractiveness is different for everyone, just because the love interest is tall and brunnete doesn't mean you're writting an unnatractive character, personally I tend to evade adjetives like "attractive", "pretty" or similar (unless it's a character, my observer narrators would never describe anyone like that).

And anyway, there's nothing wrong with your cast being attractive, as long as you don't spend a whole chapter just to describe how pretty your characters are

edited 30th Mar '11 5:00:15 PM by redpyro

Are they all the same type of attractive? @_@ I also tend to skew attractive, but I try to toss manly men in with the pretty boys and have a weird tendency to find some features attractive as drawings but terrible on real human beings so it kind of evens out? I consider lots of them great to look at but nearly no characters get described as pretty in canon aside from love interests and crushes who are a biased opinion.

Well, there's always making them attractive but not unbelievably so... Looking pretty takes some general upkeep and good health. Someone who doesn't sleep enough and doesn't attempt to cover their bags and goes out in whatever they woke up in is probably not going to look perfect...... Minus L, I guess, he seems to have lots of fangirls. >_> Meh, attractive is a subjective term.

Hmm, let's see here:

• The Hero is a very feminine but pretty muscular in a compacted way. People sometimes mistakes him as a girl.
• The Lancer (yes, that guy), in comparison to The Hero, is noticeably more muscular, but still counts as a Bishōnen, at least above his shoulder.
• The Chick is...hmm, she...looks like one of those girls from Dating Sim, I suppose.
• The Smart Guy: It's actually a she and she's a Bifauxnen, I guess?

Drawn people are almost always going to be attractive, due to the fact that they are symmetrical, and the art styles most people use are not detailed enough to capture imperfections most people have.

In drawn works, The Beautiful People usually isn't a problem.

I know, right? Sometimes I'm confused whether I want to write a novel or manga.

Btw, art style of which works, anime and manga, do you people think of when you hear of The Beautiful People?

Practically all of them, though I don't watch anime or read magna.

Now video games, interestingly enough, have been experiencing the opposite problem. So many have been going for hyper-realism (in terms of graphics), and, in my opinion, just about all of them end up in the Uncanny Valley. Even good looking people look off if you stare at them for to long, and the eyes-Oh God, the eyes!- always seem dead.

edited 31st Mar '11 9:03:10 AM by Archereon

I suppose that's decent enough variation.

I tend to think of shojo work and Yuki Kaori when I think of pretty people in anime/manga.

>_> Video game characters can get really odd sometimes... I literally can't play some games because the characters are too uncanny valley for me.

Oh, and would it make sense for the cast to engage in really physically violent and gruesome activity and still be The Beautiful People*

In the case of the Power Trio (it's supposed to be a spoiler but seeing how people would forget it by the time I publish it anyway...), The Lancer and The Chick/Dark Action Girl has several scars all over, The Lancer due to being a leader of a gang and The Chick due to her extremely violent/practical training as an assassin, their bodies except faces have a lot of scars.

The Hero, while going through just the most dangerous thing a teenager could do, doesn't have any noticeable scar because his mentor happened to be an extremely proficient healing magician...with degrees in chemistry and medicine.

edited 3rd Apr '11 6:44:13 AM by dRoy

Well, at least Beauty Is Never Tarnished would be averted by having the characters covered in blood and dirt while fighting.

Plus, people IRL soil themselves when they die, so yeah...

Seinen is the only genre that regularly averts Generic Cuteness.

@Mr. AHR: Bags under the eyes can be drawn with a few simple curved lines under the eyes (e.g.: L). Most skin blemishes (as well as freckles) can be represnted by dots of various sizes. You can increase or decrease facial features. Wrinkles and scars are usually simple lines.

It's actually pretty easy once you get used to it, to give people realistic flaws while still drawing in a simple style.

Even if you're doing The Beautiful People out of Author Appeal, you can still add a few flaws to side characters.

edited 3rd Apr '11 8:17:39 AM by Wheezy

Well, the problem with things like bags is that if you have a style where only the hardest of facial lines are emphasized, the more subtle lines will either be REALLY obvious and gonkish, or better off not drawn. The thing with L is despite the bags under his eyes, he's still pretty much symmetrical.

Symmetry has almost nothing to do with it. Most people are symmetrical in everything except skin blemishes. We have 2 eyes, two nostrils, matching wrinkles on each side of the face... But you can still draw people in wildly different styles while keeping to those rules.

Take a look at the page image for Cast of Snowflakes, for example.

The problem that in manga, the noses are suppose to be small, most characters under the age of 25 don't have any wrinkles, and blemishes look strange on them.

And then there's Disney...

Well, most non-seinen manga anyway.*

And if you want to, you can fix that by putting your own twist on the animesque style.

edited 3rd Apr '11 9:44:59 AM by Wheezy

That what I'm trying to do with my sketches, by trying to make the eyes unique (along with mixing the nose, mouths, and chins around), but I'm bad at shading the eyes with the glare and irises so once I get to finally editing them I might have to edit the glare on.

I have too many attractive characters too, and all of my teen male protagonists have the same type of hair (brown-haired, combed to the side)...

I have the exact opposite thing going on. I'm writing a story that's partially a deconstruction of Teen Drama) with a Cast of Snowflakes , and almost all of the main characters, except for the Parody Sue from the Story Within a Story are Ugly Cute (or plain-looking) at best.

And do you ever draw from photos or life? That would help that problem.

edited 3rd Apr '11 9:56:26 AM by Wheezy

No, I just draw from my mind. They turn out fine, although I need to practice more for consistency.

Check my Deviant ART gallery. Let's take discussion there.

edited 3rd Apr '11 9:59:29 AM by chihuahua0

Any examples you could show me?

(Sorry for the derail, OP.)

edited 3rd Apr '11 9:57:15 AM by Wheezy

No prob.

I personally like an ugly person or two among the cast. Not necessarily hideous, but at least plain. Someone I can relate too. It'ś even worse if the main cast is all attractive While normals and/or baddies are evil.

Both What Measure Is a Non-Cute? and Beauty Equals Goodness bug me a lot, one of the reasons I have a hard time enjoying most manga/anime. It'ś becoming increasingly prevalent cross genres though, and I really don like this.