Not a fancy art guy, certainly, but I suspect the reason characters in drawings wear different clothes than people in real life has little to do with what the artist would actually like to wear and much more to do with creating distinct, visually interesting pieces.
Also, another big reason for characters to wear fancier clothes than people is because people have to dress themselves. For an exercise to demonstrate this, try putting on one thing for every nicknack on a character, and then imagine having to do that every day for the rest of your life.
AWildDomino
Hey there! I totally see where you are coming from with art and how people just seem to grow a fanbase no matter what they draw. To be fully honest, I believe any character design has potential to be “good” character design. It just depends what you do with the character.
Lewd girl ocs are very common and easy wins but they are also very cleverly made as once they gain a following, the artist can do whatever with them and they’ll have fans to support it.
I have a lot of ocs that are just one-offs and I don’t do anything with them besides giving them additional side doodles or putting them in different scenarios but I’ve found that it works! I am not at all a popular figure, but across all my social medias and constant art postings, I have experienced growth. It’s not rapid, but still growth. My best luck (before NG) has been Instagram, I drew a lot of fanart for parappa when I was first into the series and I have gained a small fanbase from it. And even my main account too has gotten some fans from me just posting ocs!
There’s a lot to take into account when posting original art, such as how the algorithm will bless or tarnish your post. Which from every social media I’ve used, the algorithms aren’t the best (Twitter being my worst luck) but Newgrounds is good! I like how you can sort specifically for “Latest” content and that’s how you can see a lot of small accounts who are also trying to grow a fanbase so I always support them :>
But I have to be honest. It is a very “pay-to-win” method kinda, but becoming a supporter has a lot of perks and one of those is being able to feature whatever project of your choice to the front page every week. I utilize it for my proudest work and it’s what gets them the most publicity! So I’m very thankful that more people get to see my work that the algorithm isn’t doing much justice. Because not everybody looks at latest postings since the featured tab is always prioritized.
As for your character designs, again, I think any design is good! It just depends on what you choose to make of the character and if viewers like it enough then they will also like your character :>
I am self taught with everything so I don’t know much of anything about color theory or colors in general… but I have some personal techniques I use to make my stuff pop like shading with more intense colors or making sure every color has a pair so that way it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.