Distinctive Appearances: Difference between revisions
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* You have a [[Five-Man Band]], a group who is defined by their roles and quite often their physical size and appearance. You want these characters to be memorable, so you make them as different from each other in appearance as possible. [[The Hero]] is muscular, [[The Lancer]] is slender, [[The Big Guy]] is really huge, [[The Smart Guy]] is really small and oversized glasses, [[The Chick]] has [[Curves in All the Right Places|all the right curves]], etc.
* Have it all be [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]]. [[Power Rangers]] has survived on this for years, the Red Ranger is the leader. The Pink Ranger or Yellow Ranger is the chick. Not bad for a team costume that covers their face, huh?
* Make it a [[Five-Token Band]], even if all you know about the guy is that he's "The Mexican one" that's a lot better
* [[Clothes Make the Legend]]
* [[Dress-Coded for Your Convenience]]
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' made the main cast all very distinctive, with the slender Spike, muscular and bearded Jet, curvy Faye and waif redhead Ed. Apparently the designer even said that he avoids drawing characters with perfectly symmetrical appearances and that is why Jet had the mechanical right arm and the metal piece under his left eye.
* This is probably one reason why the main character in a ''[[Gundam]]'' show always pilots a Gundam - to stand out from the crowd (and sell more model kits). Only 08th MS Team subverts this by giving Shiro the same MS as his comrades... until it's badly damaged and he gets a customized unit.
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* Oda, the creator of ''[[One Piece]]'', goes out of his way to make sure every non-mook has an appearance distinct from everyone else (except for a pair of [[Single-Minded Twins]]).
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' has the title character wearing her trademark [[Odango Hair]] with long [[Girlish Pigtails|twintails]], making her very distinct and recognizable throughout the whole Magical Girl genre.
** The other main characters also have distinctive hairstyles: Mercury is the only one with short hair, Venus has her ever-present hair ribbon bow, Jupiter has an upswept ponytail, and Mars is the only one with long hair and no hair adornments at all.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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== [[Fan
* Anyone who has tried to illustrate ''[[My Immortal]]'' has run into this problem. Everyone is deathly pale. Everyone has dyed their hair black. Everyone wears the same "goffic" clothes. All the distinctive aspects of any character's canon appearance (Harry's glasses, for example) are soundly eliminated.
== [[Film]] ==
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Subverted in the ''[[Knight and Rogue Series]]''. Fisk and Michael are both plain looking. So plain looking that people trying to catch them have an easier time trying to ask about their horses. However, Michael happens to have a scar on his face that, in the second book, is faked by a framer so that everyone will be on the lookout for that particular distinguishing feature.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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** In the episode where J.D., Turk and Carla all got scooters, they matched the colour-coding of their scrubs, in what might have been a mild [[Lampshade Hanging]].
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' did an iconic color coding of their uniforms, along with different insignias and patches that indicate which department they are with. TOS had Operations wear gold (actually a lime green, like Kirk's wraparound tunic, but the lighting on the standard uniform fabric made them look gold), Engineering and Security [[Red Shirt|wore red]] and Science and Medical wore blue (McCoy even had a short sleeve tunic to make it clear he was a doctor). Starting in TNG, the rank was designated by pips on their collar and the department colors changed: Operations wore Red, Engineering and Security wore Gold and Medical and Science wore blue as always (Dr. Crusher often had a blue lab coat).
** When ''[[Star Trek:
** They also introduced a special captain's uniform to make them different from other operations staff. Kirk had the green wraparound tunic (acknowledged with ''Enterprise's'' [[Mirror Universe]] episode). Picard had a two layer outfit with a velvet jacket over a gray shirt. ''[[Star Trek:
** Admiral Uniforms also tended to be different, often with more insignias and a front zipper. ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[[Green Wing]]'' does something very similar to Scrubs, at least to a certain extent, which obviously makes sense when they're both set in hospitals. Oddly, while all three wear green scrubs in the operating theatre, Mac will continue to wear his while Caroline and Guy change back into their white lab coats.
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== [[Web Comics
* Due to their unique accessories, and the careful design of their fur and tails, no two characters in ''[[Bittersweet Candy Bowl]]'' have the same silhouette.
* One chapter in ''How to make Webcomics'' (By Kurtz, Straub, Guigar, and Kellet) even went so far as to describe the (black-and-white) layouts of the different characters in ''[[PVP]]'', pointing out the different areas as light and dark, and how no two characters had the same arrangement.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Transformers]]'' does this most especially when the toy designs were actually for the franchise and not repackaged from other toy lines. There are still some things you don't mess around with, such as Optimus Prime's chest windows. In fact, since most of the other Autobots have the front grill of the car become their chest, having the front windows become his chest is what makes him visually unique and thereby the leader. With ''[[Transformers Animated]]'', the design is so unique that all you need is their outline and you can see the Autobot line-up.
** It should be noted that the "law" of Prime design has been averted on three occasions: once, in Armada, where he was a long nosed cab and instead his grill formed his chest, and then later in his Alternators and Alternity incarnations, in which he was portrayed as having a chest formed from the front end of a truck and car, respectively.
* ''[[Gargoyles]]'' come in all shapes and sizes. None of the main crew have the same color scheme, same wing design, or even the same face. In fact, seeing that Angela had Goliath's coloring but Demona's appearance tipped Elisa off that she was Goliath's daughter.
* The original character design for ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' required the family to each have distinctive silhouettes (only Maggie and Lisa have the same hair). Most other characters could probably be recognised by their silhouette too.
** It's actually one of creator Matt Groening's rules that the character design department
** This can also be seen in ''[[Futurama]]'' where Matt Groening described Fry's "hair horns" as being particularly useful in maintaining a unique silhouette.
* The ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' creators used to work on ''[[The Simpsons]],'' so they designed the major characters based on the same concept. The title characters are the most obvious examples, especially Phineas, who has a triangular head.
* [[Adult Swim]] had a between-shows promo that mentioned this, with silhouettes of the cast of ''[[Futurama]]'' clearly identifiable.
* Even if Henry and June from ''[[
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