What Are The Worst Character Designs You Have Ever Seen?

[Y2K Baby]

They look really fucking bad. Especially considering that Sailor Moon (what it ripped off) came out three years before. How does your predecessor have better designs than something that came out 3 years later?

Edit: Forgot to mention this manga uses an abundance of those "uwu" soft highlights that take up half of the page. It's really annoying.

Sailor Moon came out in 1991. This came out in 1994

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In comparison:

Spoiler: I can't believe I'm comparing this to Sailor Moon

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I like it. It's good.

 

[El Porko Fako]

Probably not going to make any fans with this one, but Neptunia's art is hideous as sin. This poster sums it up pretty well. Aesthetically displeasing moe garbage with the bright, obnoxious color palette of what I can only describe as an autistic child's Easter-themed birthday party. Yucky!

 

[Y2K Baby]

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Probably not going to make any fans with this one, but Neptunia's art is hideous as sin. This poster sums it up pretty well. Aesthetically displeasing moe garbage with the bright, obnoxious color palette of what I can only describe as an autistic child's Easter-themed birthday party. Yucky!

@A Hot Tranny

 

[A Hot Potato]

View attachment 525468

Probably not going to make any fans with this one, but Neptunia's art is hideous as sin. This poster sums it up pretty well. Aesthetically displeasing moe garbage with the bright, obnoxious color palette of what I can only describe as an autistic child's Easter-themed birthday party. Yucky!

no u

 

[Y2K Baby]

no u

HE DID IT, BOYS.

 

[El Porko Fako]

no u

Happy birthday @A Hot Tranny, and a Merry Easter too.

Spoiler: Kill Me Please

 

[A Hot Potato]

Happy birthday @A Hot Tranny, and a Merry Easter too.

Spoiler: Kill Me Please

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Much appreciated!

Thank you <3 <3 <3

 

[UnKillFill]

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

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To be honest, this isn't a bad group shot. It's just kind of bland. Everyone has this thick black outline around them making them stand out from background instead of being apart of it. The characters are really standard and generic and the posing is really amateurish. The guy in the red shirt doesn't look like he's hopping. He looks like he's standing still in space. The perspective is also really warped too. The characters don't even look like they're on the ground.

This looks more like a fan project than something professional. And yes, while "professional" works have had awful artwork (12 0unce mouse) I feel this needs to be touched upon. Especially if you want this to be crowd-funded.

Nothing will be worse than 12 ounce mouse though.

Spoiler: Who approved this?

 

[Y2K Baby]

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The Asians are a greasy-looking yellow and the austistic man playing in the street is a clear stand-in for Enter. The next alt-right killer's manifesto?????????

 

[NARPASSWORD]

I keep forgetting to bring up the emoji movie for this thread (though that's probably because I'm desperately trying to forget it's existence)

 

[Bread Fetishist]

I keep forgetting to bring up the emoji movie for this thread (though that's probably because I'm desperately trying to forget it's existence)

I must say, I never liked how much of a clusterfuck this poster is.

 

[NARPASSWORD]

The Secret of NIMH 2 was a direct-to-video "sequel" that was everything wrong with DTV sequels. I could go on about every horrible thing about this POS, but this thread is just for awful character designs.
(Un)Luckily for us, it has a excellent example of a shitty design.

Spoiler

Spoiler: And yes, this is a real movie

Worst part about this is that they somehow roped Eric Idle to be in this.

 

[Trilby]

The Secret of NIMH 2 was a direct-to-video "sequel" that was everything wrong with DTV sequels. I could go on about every horrible thing about this POS, but this thread is just for awful character designs.
(Un)Luckily for us, it has a excellent example of a shitty design.

Spoiler

Spoiler: And yes, this is a real movie

Worst part about this is that they somehow roped Eric Idle to be in this.

I could vouch for this too, those designs really do bring down what made the original film worked (especially that "spider").

 

[NARPASSWORD]

I could vouch for this too, those designs really do bring down what made the original film worked (especially that "spider").

It certainly doesn't help that the animation is like a particularly shitty saturday morning cartoon, and especially since they showed footage from the original film in the beginning of this garbage, making the downgrade in quality even more obvious.

 

[Trilby]

It certainly doesn't help that the animation is like a particularly shitty saturday morning cartoon, and especially since they showed footage from the original film in the beginning of this garbage, making the downgrade in quality even more obvious.

It was just rancid the first second I saw it when it showed up on Nickelodeon one day (someone was desperate to air this). I think what made the first film work was how grounded it was to the 'reality' of it's setting and characters. This just comes off as a complete flip of that.

 

[NARPASSWORD]

It was just rancid the first second I saw it when it showed up on Nickelodeon one day (someone was desperate to air this). I think what made the first film work was how grounded it was to the 'reality' of it's setting and characters. This just comes off as a complete flip of that.

You mean like how NIMH went from being a animal research facility to a group of mad scientists with a literal frankenstein's castle? Or how about how one of the children from the first film suddenly became evil, which somehow also gave him a british accent (and voice by Eric Idle, of all people)?
Or, you know, just the simple fact that they made the sequel to a dark and serious movie into a bouncy and happy saccharine musical that rivals My Little Pony in its tripe BS.

 

[Trilby]

You mean like how NIMH went from being a animal research facility to a group of mad scientists with a literal frankenstein's castle? Or how about how one of the children from the first film suddenly became evil, which somehow also gave him a british accent (and voice by Eric Idle, of all people)?
Or, you know, just the simple fact that they made the sequel to a dark and serious movie into a bouncy and happy saccharine musical that rivals My Little Pony in its tripe BS.

It's all of that, it's like someone at MGM either hated the first film (or didn't see it) and/or was told to make it this way. The sequel to All Dogs Go To Heaven was the same way. I'm sure a lot of it came down to simply needing more content for kids/families to watch when they didn't have much after losing most of their library to Turner in the 80's.

 

[Swedish Fish]

We're going into pretty cure territory?

I'm gonna state that Suite probably has some of the better designs in Pretty cure. Melody just has a lot of pink but only because most of the lead cures are pink. They probably had to compensate somewhere with Rhythm who has more of a white motif.

I will agree however that the splash star outfits are terrible. The gaudiness of Bright and Windy didn't bother me much as a kid, but as someone who is interested in design it just hurts to look at now. What made the Futari Wa (Original) and Max Heart work is that they added on some needed flair to some bland designs. Splash star takes everything gaudy about the original outfits and cranks it up to 11.

Spoiler: Good Design, Bad Design

Some example of good design is from Heartcatch and Yes 5 go go.

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Simple streamlined designs for their time. For the top, the director of the season apparently worked on Shonen anime before Heartcatch and it shows. The characters have that look with very simple, but cute designs. They have good choice for the color palette and they all feel different without coming off as samey. It has a clear flower inspired look, but it doesn't feel overly complicated (not saying I don't like those designs, but too much is not a good. Thing. With Yes 5 Gogo It's the same thing, only with a butterfly motif minus the last character. Each of the characters have the same look, but it doesn't feel too samey.

That can not be said for the original Yes 5 team:

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I didn't make the markings on these ( it was the only image with all of them I could find easily) but yuck. They look super outdated. I want to cut them some slack considering this was their first team of 5 cures, but it really looks bad. All the characters have their own colors, but that's completely mitigated by the overwhelming abundance of white and a that god-awful yellow tint. It's probably harder to see here, but every character has an awful yellow tint to their design. Why the designer though this looks good I have no idea.

I feel that each character has some sort of awfulness to their design, but I feel cure Mint (the green one) got the worst of it. Not just an ugly hairstyle, but having so much of a mix-matching of green that it looks off-putting.

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Let's not forget Smile, aka "WE WANT THE MOE AUTIST CROWD"

Suite was just always a tad bit too busy looking to me. Does a skirt truly need 10 layers of ruffles in different shades and pleat width? After Fresh's very similarly colored designs it just felt like too much to me.

Oh, the Glitter Force. I'll never forgive the hair. It looks like 100 lbs of heavy putty piled on their heads, ready to snap their tiny anime. That plus the flimsy cheap looking outfits made for a bad contrast. I liked the shoes a lot tho.

Heartcatch will always be my favorite, the style is great, the designs are lovely and follow their given theme perfectly. I also really like the characters, the main/pink girl is self conscious and unsure of herself, something I'm not used to seeing in those characters.

 

[Shokew]

To be honest, this isn't a bad group shot. It's just kind of bland. Everyone has this thick black outline around them making them stand out from background instead of being apart of it. The characters are really standard and generic and the posing is really amateurish. The guy in the red shirt doesn't look like he's hopping. He looks like he's standing still in space. The perspective is also really warped too. The characters don't even look like they're on the ground.

This looks more like a fan project than something professional. And yes, while "professional" works have had awful artwork (12 0unce mouse) I feel this needs to be touched upon. Especially if you want this to be crowd-funded.

Nothing will be worse than 12 ounce mouse though.

Spoiler: Who approved this?

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Humble disagreement time:
12 oz. Mouse is a stoner's overlooked gem. Growing Around is pure raw sewage that we should be thankful to whatever higher power we believe in doesn't exist as a real thing. Never forget that.