5 Reasons Your Character Designs AREN'T Cute (And How to Fix It)

Technically cute and visually innofensive is what gave us boss baby.

I don't know why I assumed that the horrible characters painted on daycares walls only were a thing in my country. All humanity shares that trauma and that's beautiful.

I think animal crossing is a great example of how greatly character design affects likeability. The villagers only have one of 8 personalities, but players often treat two of the same very differently.

The one dislike is from a knock-off Mickey Mouse painted on the side of a daycare.

You talking about forced, saccharine cuteness instantly brought Gideon from gravity falls into my mind. A cute and inoffensive character design on its own, but accompanied by that nasty, obsessive and deceptive personality he becomes a very interesting character despite being intentionally very dislikeable. It's cool how these character design tips work both ways!

Baby Yoda is genius because they combined the cuteness of babies and elderly people successfully

Your point about kids who try to be cute vs. kids who are cute organically is so spot-on. There's a cynicism behind artificial cuteness, and that's what makes it ugly. When it comes to character design, I call this the Littlest Pet Shop Effect. That's also why I'm not 100% on board with the conventional wisdom on Them Big Ol' Eyes. First off, dot eyes are almost always cuter IMO. There's a reason you can get dozens of Pokémon plushies with Ditto faces. And of course, Kirby. But when I think of cute big-eyed characters, their eyes tend to be mostly pupil, or at least rather dark. Baby Yoda of course, but also Baby Groot, the Eevee family, movie!Pikachu, Stitch, Lucas the Spider... of course, this has to do with the fact that a larger pupil-to-sclera ratio is typically what we see in other mammals. Cats are a notable exception, but the contrast between a wary cat's slit pupils and a happy cat's dilated pupils just adds to the charm. This is used to great effect with the dragons in HTTYD, as a shift in the pupil size signals to us immediately when they're menacing vs. when they're happy. But then, there are wide-eyed characters with smaller pupils that still appear cute to most people. That said, I think this design type tends to be more used for comic effect, and in tandem with a more distinctive personality. To go back to Pokémon, Slowpoke, Psyduck, and Magikarp all have big eyes with tiny dot pupils, which immediately communicates vacancy. They're not necessarily that cute in a vacuum, but the way their eyes emphasize their dopey haplessness makes them very endearing. I guess this circles back to your point on purpose and appeal: characters whose cuteness is a result of multiple organic elements will always be more appealing than characters who are made to be cute to sell themselves.

If big head and big eyes were enough to make a character cute, the colossal squid would be the cutest animal out there, objectively.

The “cute” kid in the thumbnail looks like one of the body snatchers from Spongebob that hated mayonnaise

Cute characters are, well, cute definitely. But too much cuteness can really sway me away from it, even to the point of disliking. Moe girls for example; way too many of them nowadays, BUT some works like Lucky Star.

LOL Surprise dolls fall into the uncanny valley for me, usually I like chibis but those things look like they're about to eat a part of my soul.

I will not stand for this anti Pietro propaganda smh

This video reminds me why I love the Ugly Cute trope: a character may have sharp teeth, huge eyes and look overall like a gremlin, but if you embue them with personality, this character becomes incredibly appealing despite not looking conventially cute. It is indeed the reason, like you said, why Baby Yoda and Stitch work so well. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, as a series, was able to create a lot of adorable characters that had unique traits to them that aren't inherently cute, but were deeply tied to their personalities.

I'm so invested in the character development in Brookes' Cardigan Arc

This reminds me when Jazza tried to make this cutest character and failed because in his words "You can't have cuteness in a vaccum".

8:38 So true. I was wondering why everyone looses their minds over "cute" pop figures while for me, they looks boring, not cute

I don’t even have this issue but I’m watching it in case I ever need it.

I see kirbo in the background and it's cute

Biko is such a charming character; he's got this kind of floppy eared bull dog look to him that makes him appeal to cuteness in the same way a dog would, so his design actually gives that endearing feeling without having to lean on the "cute aesthetic." Like you said with baby Yoda; it's a more genuine cute because it reminds us of something we already love!

"Lack of interest" zooms in to baby Yoda Baby yoda: •^•