MegaMan X Character Design Tips

References Are Your Best Friend

Now that we got some of the important stuff out of the way such as personality, alignment and occupation, you are ready to go ahead and draw your character, right? Just take an existing character and give them a new color scheme or make them the opposite gender, right? Actually, you will want to take one more step before you dive head first into sketching your new character. What you want to do is take a look at how the characters look. Figure out your own character's silhouette. An effective character design will enable viewers to recognize who your character is based off of the character shape. You may even look at other characters for inspiration too. You want to make your character look like they would belong in that series. Are you trying to make your character stand out? One way you can do this is adopt a motif. A lot of Maverick bosses such as Sting Chameleon and Spike Rosered do this by taking an animal or plant and a weapon or power and make design choices based off of that. You could make a design motif out of any character type in history, mythology or any kind of fiction such as knights, fairies or magical girls. You identify elements of the design motif that you chose and figure out what makes them unique. Afterwards, you want to figure out how that element would translate into a design element in a MegaMan X character. If you can't really find what you are looking for, don't sweat it. You could use elements in MegaMan Classic or MegaMan Zero designs.

For example, I don't really see many martial artist type characters around. I figured this would be a good opportunity to make a unique character.

Sukaji: Remember me from The Silver Scourge Within?
I based Sukaji off of a Martial artist to be sort of a rival character to my other Martial artist character, Alpha (I promise you'll see her later.). He has a similar arm design, having black limbs, spherical shoulders, ans braces around his arm. His gi is cloth based, similarly to Berkanna's robes. Although he is a character that was made in the early X era, he has some Zero era characteristics such as fingerless gloves and undersoles on his boots. He is helmetless just like how Iris, Layer, and Palette do not wear helmets per sey. Not to mention that there is a fading Maverick symbol on his back to indicate alligmment.

Of course, your character does not have to be a martial artist. Your character can be anything you want him or her to be. Do you have a character that likes to cook? Why not give them a chef motif? Got a character that is very stealthy? Use a ninja motif.

Have you considered who your character usually interacts with or any familial relationships? You could try making a character a sibling by borrowing elements from an existing character and apply it yo your character. For example, if you wanted to give X a sibling, you could borrow color palettes and make something new, or use design elements such as his chestplate pentagons as a belt or his helmet crystal as part of a headband.

Ship children designs can be fun to do. It's all about finding different design elements in the ship parents and applying them to the child in a unique fashion.

In this case, this is a Zero x Iris ship child.
This outfit is modeled around overalls, which gave the perfect opportunity to turn Zero's chest orbs into buttons. She is also twintailed as a nod to Zero's ponytail. Design elements adopted from Iris include her skirt frills into the shorts and similar beret styles.

Lastly, things should be placed on for a reason besides "it looks cool". The majority of elements in a design should either have some symbolic value or practical use. If your character has a scar somewhere, explain it.

Going back to Sukaji, he has a common oc troupe, heterochromia -having two differently colored eyes. One of his irises is green and the other is purple with a black sclera. The reason for that was because he removed his left eye to use powers he obtained through the black eye. He keeps that eye hidden with his bangs -another common design troupe. Oftentimes characters donning a style like that convey an air of mystery or secrets. As stated before, Sukaji wears braces on his biceps, which is a symbol of strength and discipline according to Sunrise Warrior beliefs. The fading symbol on his back is indicative of his former alignment with a faction. His black belt is a symbol of discipline and dedication to martial arts and also serves to hold his gi down.