What Makes Me Love OCs

A struggle that OC artists have is getting people to love them. They require more marketing and work in success than drawing fanart of pre-existing characters may have. The extra effort is a frustration that many artists are facing every day, wondering how they can get people interested in the characters they have put so much love and effort into creating.

While I can’t speak for everyone, I can speak for myself on what draws me to OCs. So, as personal as this list may be, this will hopefully bring a little more insight into what can bring more attention and love to your characters! After all, if one person likes these things, then billions more people likely will as well. After all, it’s not like my opinions are super unique or special, and that is a good thing in this instance.

Anyways, we should move on before this intro spirals out of control and into a different topic.

Art Style

The first thing that catches my eye is the art style. If you think of an art piece like cake, then the art style is the base. If the base is dry, crumbly, or gone wrong in other ways, then the rest of the cake won’t be good. And just like with baking, a good art style takes a lot of time and practice to develop.

I am personally a fan of cute cartoon styles with exaggerated proportions, cel shading, and vibrant colors with lower amounts of small details, but there are a variety of fantastic art styles that millions of artists use. Some styles will be easier to achieve than others. For instance, realism requires an intimate knowledge of texture, proportions, and lighting that most artists simply don’t have, while faux anime/manga just requires knowing why your favorite Japanese animated show looks the way it does and how those elements work together.

This does not make one style inherently superior to the other. They both require a lot of effort, time, and learning to achieve something that looks even half-way decent. Someone who is pursuing realism has vastly different goals for their art than someone who is pursuing something more stylized.

Either way, if you are in that ugly beginner phase every artist goes through, don’t be too hard on yourself if people are ignoring you. Instead, enjoy having fun and improving your skills. In fact, being ignored is a blessing compared to the bullying that many beginners are going through on the modern internet, and your art will start leaving that rough phase sooner than you think. This is a time for learning; your audience will start coming as your art grows.

This is my fursona, Charlie. He is here to be an example of what I’m talking about.

And as you can see: I have a cute-sy cartoon art style.

Good Designs

Now, for the icing: the design of the character. Having a strong silhouette, a lovely color palette, and an overall appearance that looks amazing will help your character stand out. While characters who look like your everyday person can work, adding a touch of whimsy can help your character stand out and be unique, even if it’s as simple as hair dye.

However, that can be my taste talking. I love cute and whimsical things! It’s exactly why I’m a furry and my fursona is…the way he is. There may be people who hate those things and prefer down-to-earth designs that look like a pet their neighbor could have, or a potential passerby in the streets. While I may find their tastes odd and boring, such people likely find my taste garish and that I need to “grow up.” Nobody here is incorrect!

Designing characters is its own set of skills, and it’s something you will get a feel for after making a few designs. A fun exercise is trying to make fan characters that fit into the setting of the IP you enjoy. All media is made with different audiences, and thus different tastes, in mind.

Nothing but whimsy here, folks!

Silly/Meme Art

Now that you have an appealing art style and a good character design, you’re not done. Not even halfway nor a third of a way there. They now need to have a personality, and an easy way to express their personality is through silly sketches. You can recreate memes, make a short comic about a humorous situation your characters would go through, explore dynamics, and so much more.

That’s right, you may just be at the beginning, but you are now at the fun part! You have made yourself a simple sandbox. Give your OC friends, enemies, activities…a life! Getting people to love your OCs takes so much more than good art and good designs. It is the life part that is extremely important.

The cake analogy doesn’t apply here, since you can make people laugh with beginner-level art and awful designs. In fact, if you are new, your lack of skills can be used to your advantage. The fact you’re not skilled yet and just learning can be used to elevate comedic art such as meme art. Being funny is why low-effort sketches tend to get more social media attention than high-effort finished pieces. People love silly art, myself included!

My fursona is named Charlie, named after Charlie Bucket,

a protagonist from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I decided

to have them interact because I thought it’d be funny.

My fursona’s hands are god-tier, and I don’t know why.

Those hands are the only reason why I bothered to ink

and color it.

Larger Plans

Finally, it helps if you have a larger plan in mind for your characters. Either it be a comic or a show, giving your character more than a void and a simple life can bring them from a personal thing with value only to yourself and a story that many people will enjoy. That, or you can do what I did with my fursona and slap your character into random projects for fun.

Either way, making your character a part of something bigger is the ultimate way of getting people to care about them. Every popular character started as an OC the artist wanted people to know, so they told a story, even if that story is a series of episodic short stories. Spongebob wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular if it was just him in isolation. People love Spongebob because of the world he’s in, his personality, and the supporting cast he interacts with. Well, that’s why people love the early seasons of the shows he’s in. The people who enjoy him in modern seasons likely do for other reasons.

Conclusion

These are the reasons why I love someone’s OCs. While the reasons listed are broad and simple, it would be difficult to articulate more specific reasons without analysing specific OCs that I enjoy. In reality, many OCs I see on my feed and interact with can either have all of these factors, some of them, or none at all. Even my fursona who I used as an example is missing the “larger plans” aspect, as I typically just enjoy drawing him for fun and yumeshipping. (note: No, not with Charlie Bucket. They are friends that share a brain cell, much to the exasperation of everyone else.) The biggest plans I have for him is worldbuilding his species so people can make their own, a fursuit, and potential merchandising.

But that goes to show that there is no “one-size-fits-all” for getting people to love your OCs. There is no silver bullet, nor a clean-cut answer that would work for everybody. If there is anything that you should take away from this article, it is this:

Be your own target demographic. Create what you are passionate about and brings you joy. Even if your tastes are niche, there are other people out there that align just enough for your OCs to appeal to them as well. Post about your OC, interact with other artists and their OCs, and interact with community things such as the art shares you can find on Bluesky. 

I know that tastes vary, so I’d love to hear from you! Please comment under this post (or under the promo-post of the platform you came from) what about other people’s OCs that appeal to you! And, if you can, share an image of your OC so people can appreciate them!