Complete analysis of the super strong character of Ghost Slayer

Hello everyone, my name is Piruko. I like to do some ACG analysis. In this article, I want to share the character design of Ghost Slayer!

I believe that you will sometimes hear someone say that the character design of an ACG character is very powerful. What exactly is a character design? Where is the strong personality?

How does Ghost Slayer increase the influence of its works through super-strong characters, and then cause social phenomena?

Persona

Character design, that is, the character information we can get from a character, includes:

• Appearance (Styling)
• Personality (mantra, way of speaking)
• Life Story (past, choices made)
• The world view of the work

This article is going to discuss the most intuitive appearance, which is the shape design . A good shape design can see the other three items, and these three items will also interact with the appearance.

Look at Tanjirou first, and you can immediately catch his characteristics:

• scars on the head
• earring
• Haori in green and black plaid
• carrying a box
• holding a knife

The amazing thing is that if you draw one of these features, you can tell it's Tanjiro. (Don't take offense that the pictures you draw are ugly XD)

It is said that Tanjiro is very successful in appearance design, and uses simple accessories to leave a strong impression on the audience. The so-called strong character is strong here.

So, how to design such an excellent character shape~?

A good design has the following characteristics:

1. To be good-looking, the target audience must like it

Handsome, beautiful, or impressively ugly are all good styling designs.

In addition to being handsome and beautiful, Ghost Slayer's style of painting also has a feature that the proportions of the characters' facial features are very cute.

Cuteness can attract girls, and parents will be willing to let their children see this work.

Cuteness is Demon Slayer's secret weapon to attract customers other than teenagers.

2. Be special

The appearance of the character must have features that others do not have, and are simple and memorable.

Before the ghost, no one knew about the black and green plaid. After the ghosts are extinguished, the black and green plaids are equated with Tanjiro.

The characteristics of the appearance cannot be messed with casually, and must be closely related to the background of the character. Let's come back to see Tanjiro,

He's a brave, positive man -> personality as you can see from his movements and expressions.

From the clothing, it can be seen that the time and place of the story is Japan's Taisho era -> world view.

And showing the character's life story in appearance is the most difficult.

Tanjiro's life has two goals, and these two goals run through the plot of the ghost from beginning to end:

• exterminate ghosts
• get my sister back

He carried these two most important goals with him, namely the sun wheel knife and the box on his back.

Tanjiro's shape represents his life story. So this is a very powerful character design, and we can see a lot of character information just by looking at the appearance.

Let's look at another example where the character design was not done well. In the single book of Ghost Slayer, the author's original drawing of Tanjiro was included.

It's a pity that there are no features, no memory points, and I really forget it after seeing it.

But after the careful design of the crocodile teacher, Tanjiro has become an unforgettable protagonist from a passerby.

So the particularity of the appearance is really super important, to give a few more examples.

Many ACG characters have iconic appearances, and you can definitely see them with a few simple strokes.

Some don't even need to draw, express with words, and immediately know who is talking.

• Cross scar on left face
• Jade cabbage head
• boar head

It doesn't mean that a good character can be simplified. But the appearance of the characters that can be simplified in this way has a very powerful and impressive particularity.

Here are a few examples of good characters whose appearance is not easy to simplify:

And there are so many ACG characters, when it comes to character design, it is the most basic to help the character design the appearance that can be remembered by the audience. If you are doing ACG creation, you must pay attention to this!

Ghost Slayer's group design

The more people there are, the more challenging the creator's design skills are. On the one hand, it is necessary to maintain the consistency of the team.

Let's take a look at the four little powerhouses of Ghost Slayer.

Tanjiro is a green, gentle color.

Nezuko's kimono is pink, which is a favorite color for female audiences, but she wears a dark brown haori outside, which makes her overall color scheme gentler, giving people the feeling that Nezuko is a ghost, but everyone doesn't need to be afraid. If the color is too bright, it can't be reassuring.

The bamboo that Nezuko is biting on is also a very distinctive god design, and it has a practical function to prevent her from biting. It is also a switch for Nezuko to switch the battle mode.

As for Shanyi, children like yellow, and yellow also makes people happy. It's not hard to see that Shanyi is a little yellow idiot.

idiot sketch:

Inosuke's visual sense is also very strong, and the beautiful boy wearing a wild boar head is really amazing. His tattered sun blade and bare upper body also showed a chaotic personality.

We can see that the author shows the personalities and clear role positioning of the four people through colors, patterns, and simple accessories, which is very powerful.

The shape of the column is also well designed.

They have a uniform black stand-up collar uniform, but the details are different, with leggings, feather weaving, Japanese swords and colors, creating a variety of character personalities.

For example, the big brother is very hot-blooded at first sight

rock pillar is sad

Xia Zhu is an ethereal character.

Because of the space, I won't explain everyone's shapes one by one, but the insect pillars, rock pillars, snake pillars and Tanjiro are the same, the shapes on their bodies represent their life stories, which are very powerful designs!

The visual characteristics of Ghost Slayer characters are different, they are all good-looking, and the Japanese elements are used very well, making them unique among ACG characters.

Their shapes are very special. Ghosts have produced all kinds of image products. Even if the characters do not appear on them, you will immediately know who they represent.

This is a very, very difficult thing to achieve. The character design of Ghost Extinguisher is really amazing! And this kind of strong visual sense of Japanese elements is very helpful for promoting the work. Super strong character design is definitely one of the important reasons why Ghost Slayer can have today's status!

above! I hope it can help you understand the character design. Whose character design do you like the most in Ghost Slayer?

I'm probably Inosuke > Insect Pillar > Nezuko, in fact, it's hard to choose XDD, everyone looks good.