Spin the Wheel OC Challenge: 120 Design Constraints: how it works
This spin the wheel OC challenge holds 120 design constraints for drawing an original character, sorted by what they restrict: color, time, the character itself, shape, medium, or the story on the sheet. Tap a group, spin, and draw inside the rule that lands. Every entry carries a how-to note.
Stack two spins for a real brief
One constraint is a warm-up. Two from different groups make a brief: Zorn palette plus Silhouette first, or Swap the species inside a Ten-minute design. Spin once with Color limits selected, then tap another group and spin again. Two rules from one group can cancel out, since nobody can obey Warm colors only and Cool colors only together. Keep the first and respin the second.
Run a drawing swap or a week of prompts
For a group, switch to Elimination so no two artists get the same rule. Each person spins, then posts the finished character with the constraint written on the sheet. For a solo week, spin seven times in Elimination on Sunday. The 16 time limits suit a daily habit: ten 30-second gestures take five minutes.
Tips
Write the rule in a corner of the finished sheet. A three-color design looks unfinished to anyone who does not know that was the point.
Art block? Filter to Time limits. A ten-minute timer removes the option of getting it perfect.
A rule that needs two characters, such as Two OCs trade outfits, works with a friend's OC. Ask first and credit them.
Questions and answers
What is an OC challenge?
OC stands for original character: one you invented, not one from a show or a game. An OC challenge is a drawing prompt with a rule attached, such as a limited palette, a time limit or a redesign. Artists post the result with the rule beside it so others can try the same one. The wheel replaces the numbered list where a friend picks a number for you.
Do I need a character before I spin?
Only for some of it. The 24 entries under Swaps and redesigns need an existing design, because Redraw as a villain has to start from somebody. Color, time, shape and medium rules work on a blank page. With no character yet, spin a species, a name and a personality on the sibling wheels first.
Can I put my art club's own challenges on the wheel?
Yes. Tap My list and type one challenge per line, up to 100 lines. It is saved in this browser only and never sent to us. A share link copied after a spin carries the entries inside it, so the whole club sees the same wheel and result.
10 min, 1 min, 10 secDraw the same character three times: in ten minutes, in one minute and in ten seconds. Whatever survives into the last drawing is the core of the design.
2-minute thumbnailsSix tiny versions, two minutes each, none bigger than a matchbox. Circle the best one and only then start the real drawing.
20 heads, 20 minutesTwenty different faces for one cast, a minute each. By head fifteen the easy ideas are used up and the interesting ones begin.
3 redesigns, 5 minTake one existing character and redesign them three times in a quarter of an hour. Each version has to change something big.
30-second gesturesTen poses of the character at 30 seconds each. Pose only: no face, no costume. You learn how they move before deciding what they wear.
5-minute color passThe line art gets as long as you like. Color gets five minutes, flat fills only. It forces a palette decision before you start.
Finish it tomorrowTen rough minutes today, then close the sketchbook. Finish tomorrow with fresh eyes and a 30-minute limit.
Five-minute designFive minutes, one character. Expect three big shapes and a face. If you are drawing buckles, you have run out of plan, not time.
In half the timeRedraw a design you have made before in half the time it took. Note what you dropped: it may not have been needed.
One a day for a weekA new character every day for seven days, 20 minutes each. Spin once more and keep that second constraint for the whole week.
One song, one designPut on one song and design until it ends. The track sets the mood as well as the clock: a slow song and a fast one give different characters.
One-hour finishSixty minutes from blank page to colored design. Spend the first ten on thumbnails, or the last ten go on repairs.
One-hour lineupFour characters who belong to the same story, side by side, in 60 minutes. That is fifteen minutes each, so share a palette across the cast.
Pass the page, 3 minIn a group, each artist draws for three minutes and passes the page on. Nobody erases what is there. Four passes make a character no one would have designed alone.
Ten-minute designSet a timer for ten minutes and stop when it rings. Settle the silhouette first, because there will be no time to rescue it with detail.
Three 5-min passesFive minutes of silhouettes, five of inner shapes, five of detail. When a pass ends you may not go back to it.
Color limits 20
Analogous trioThree neighbors on the color wheel, such as yellow, yellow-green and green. One leads and the other two support it.
Complementary pairTwo colors from opposite sides of the color wheel, such as blue and orange. Give one most of the design and save the other for accents.
Cool colors onlyBlues, greens, violets and cool grays. A cheerful character in a cool palette is harder than it sounds, which is the exercise.
Earth tones onlyOchre, umber, sienna, olive and clay. Separate the parts of the outfit by value, because the hues will all sit close together.
Flip the valuesTake a finished design and reverse its lights and darks: pale hair goes dark, the dark coat goes pale. The hues can stay.
Friend picks colorsAsk someone for three colors and do not negotiate. In a drawing swap, each artist picks for the person on their left.
Grayscale onlyNo hue at all. Painters call a picture made only in grays a grisaille. If the character still reads, the values are doing their job.
Monochrome designOne hue only, in any tint, tone or shade. All the contrast has to come from light against dark, so push the values further than feels safe.
No black allowedNo black lines and no black fills. Darken with deep blue, purple or brown and see how much softer the design gets.
One accent colorNeutrals everywhere, plus a single saturated color used in no more than three places. Put it where the eye should land first.
One-season palettePick a season and take every color from it: frost blue and bare-branch gray for winter, rust and gold for autumn.
Palette from a photoOpen the last photo you took, pick five colors from it and design with those. A dull street photo often gives a more usable palette than a sunset.
Pastels onlyEvery color mixed with plenty of white. With no dark accents, a menacing character has to get the menace from the silhouette.
Spin the colorsSpin any color wheel three times and design with what lands, even when two of them fight. Making them work is the challenge.
Split-complementaryA base color plus the two colors either side of its opposite. It keeps most of the contrast of a complementary pair with less clash.
Three-color palettePick three colors before you sketch and use nothing else. Black and white count toward the three, so choose with care.
Triadic paletteThree hues spaced evenly round the color wheel, 120 degrees apart. Red, yellow and blue is the best-known triad.
Two colors plus whiteTwo colors and the white of the page. Let one color carry the big shapes and keep the other for the places you want looked at.
Warm colors onlyReds, oranges, yellows and warm browns. A character who should feel cold now has to show it through shape and expression.
Zorn paletteYellow ochre, vermilion, ivory black and white: the four paints the Swedish portrait painter Anders Zorn (1860 to 1920) was known for. Black and ochre mix into an olive green.
Shape and silhouette 20
All asymmetricalNothing matches left to right: one glove, one long sleeve, a hard side parting, a single pauldron. Balance it by weight, not by mirror.
Big, medium, smallSplit the figure into one big mass, one medium and one small, such as a huge coat, a medium head and tiny feet. Equal thirds look static.
Bottom-heavy buildPut the weight below the waist: wide trousers, heavy boots or a full skirt under a small, neat upper body.
Chibi proportionsMake the head between a third and a half of the total height, with stubby limbs and very little detail. Keep the one feature everyone knows them by.
Circles onlyBuild the whole character from circles and ovals. In the shape language most character design courses teach, round reads as friendly and soft.
Heroic proportionsDraw the figure eight and a half heads tall, the proportion used for gods and superheroes. Most of the extra length goes into the chest and legs.
One line of actionDraw a single curved line first and hang the whole pose on it. A C curve or an S curve works. Bolt upright does not.
One shape repeatedPick one small shape, such as a diamond, a crescent or a hexagon, and repeat it at least five times: earrings, buckles, pupils, pattern.
Open negative spaceLeave gaps between the arms and the body and between the legs, so the pose still reads when filled in black. Closed poses turn into a blob.
Perfect symmetryMirror the design exactly down the center line. It suits royalty, robots and priests, and it makes any small break in the symmetry stand out.
Reads at thumbnailShrink the finished design until it is two centimeters tall. Anything that vanished was decoration, not design.
Remove three thingsFinish the design, then remove three details. If nobody would notice one was gone, it should not come back.
Silhouette firstFill the character in solid black before drawing anything inside. If you cannot tell who it is or what they are doing, fix the outline, not the details.
Squares onlyBlocks and rectangles from head to boots. Square shapes read as sturdy, stubborn and dependable, so lean into it.
Start from a letterPick a letter of the alphabet and hide its shape in the silhouette: the S curve of a cloak, the A of a wide stance.
Start from a scribbleClose your eyes and scribble for three seconds. Then find a character in the mess and tighten it up.
Tiny and huge duoDesign a pair who must share a frame, one under three feet tall and one over seven. Give them one matching detail.
Top-heavy buildPut the visual weight above the waist: broad shoulders, big hair, a wide hat, all on narrow legs.
Triangles onlyPoints everywhere: shoulders, hair, hem, chin. Triangles read as fast and dangerous, which is why so many antagonists are built from them.
Triple one featureChoose one feature and make it three times bigger than is sensible: the collar, the hands, the hat or the eyebrows.
Medium and technique 20
Ballpoint pen onlyAn ordinary ballpoint, nothing else. Light pressure gives gray and heavy pressure gives near black, and nothing can be erased.
Blind contour portraitDraw the character from a reference without looking at the paper, in one slow line. The exercise comes from Kimon Nicolaides's 1941 book The Natural Way to Draw.
Cross-hatching onlyShade with layers of parallel lines set at angles to each other, more layers for darker tones. No smudging and no solid fills.
Cut-paper shapesCut the character out of colored paper, or out of flat shapes on a screen. There are no outlines: every edge is a cut.
Design it as a stickerA thick outline, a white border and a pose that reads at the size of a coin. Crop nothing: a sticker is cut round the whole silhouette.
Finger or mouse onlyNo stylus and no pencil. Draw with a fingertip on a phone or a mouse at a desk, and let the big shapes do the work.
Flat colors onlyNo gradients, no shading and no texture. Each area is one color, as on an animation model sheet.
Line only, no shadingPure line art with no fills and no tone. Vary the line weight to show what is near, what is heavy and what is in shadow.
No outlinesShapes of color only. Wherever two areas meet, they need different values or the edge disappears.
No undo, no eraserEvery mark stays. Draw lightly at first, commit with a darker line, and let the wrong lines become part of the texture.
Non-dominant handDraw with the hand you do not write with. Big shapes survive and fussy detail does not, which is a useful lesson in itself.
One brush, one sizeChoose one brush at one size and do not change it. Pressure is the only variable left.
One continuous lineNever lift the pen. Plan a route round the figure before starting, and double back along a line when you need to travel.
Oversized brush onlyBlock in the design with a brush too big to draw eyelashes. It keeps you on shapes and proportions for longer than is comfortable.
Pixel art, 32 by 32A 32 by 32 grid gives 1,024 pixels for the whole character. An eye is one or two of them, so identity has to come from color and outline.
Stained-glass styleFlat panes of color divided by heavy dark lines, like the lead strips that hold a window together. Every shape must be one a glazier could cut.
Sticky-note canvasThe whole character has to fit on one three-inch sticky note. Full body, not a headshot.
Stippling onlyShade with dots alone, packed closer for darker areas. It is slow, so keep the drawing small.
Swap your mediumIf you draw on a tablet, use paper today. If you draw on paper, go digital or pick up a medium you have never tried.
Woodblock-print lookBold outlines and flat, unshaded color, the look of Japanese ukiyo-e prints from the 17th to the 19th century. Limit yourself to five inks.
Story and sheet tasks 20
3 poses, blank faceDraw three poses with the face left empty. If a friend can name the mood of each one, the body language works.
Add a companionA small animal or creature that echoes one color from the character and contrasts in shape: a round owl for an angular wizard.
After a very bad dayThe same outfit at the end of the worst day of the adventure: torn hem, mud to the knee, one glove missing, tired shoulders.
Cast height lineupStand the character beside three others against ruled height lines. Different heights and builds make a cast easier to tell apart at a glance.
Design a relativeDraw a parent or sibling of an existing character. Share two features and change everything else.
Design from a birthdaySpin a birthday. The season sets the palette and the star sign gives you a symbol to hide somewhere in the outfit.
Design from a nameSpin a name and design whoever it belongs to. Decide what the name sounds like (soft, sharp, old) before deciding what they look like.
Design from emotionMake one emotion visible in the whole design, not only the face: the posture, the palette and the way the clothes hang.
Design their rivalReverse the shape language and the palette temperature but keep the same height, so the two look like a matched pair face to face.
Design their symbolA personal mark simple enough to scratch into a wall in five strokes. Then find three places on the costume to put it.
Draw their roomNo figure allowed. Draw the desk, the shelf or the bunk, and let a viewer guess who lives there.
Five-word brief firstWrite five words before drawing a line, such as retired lighthouse keeper, hates water. Design only what those words justify.
Front, side and backDraw the character standing straight from the front, the side and the back, lined up on shared guidelines so the shoulders and knees stay level. Animation studios call this model rotation.
Hands at workThree studies of the character's hands doing their job: gripping, mending, casting or counting. Add the wear the job would leave.
Make one flaw visiblePick a flaw such as vain, careless or stubborn and show it without words. Careless might be mismatched buttons and a trailing lace.
One mark, one storyA scar, a chipped tooth or a mended sleeve. Write one sentence about how it happened and put it on the sheet.
Six-expression sheetOne head, six moods: joy, anger, fear, sadness, disgust and surprise. Keep the head angle the same so only the face changes.
Tarot card frameDraw the character as one of the 22 Major Arcana, numbered 0 for The Fool to 21 for The World. Tall frame, number at the top, title at the bottom.
Their coat of armsA shield with one animal, one object and two colors that stand for the family. Keep the shapes flat and bold, as on a real shield.
What is in their bag?Draw the character and the seven things they carry every day, laid out beside them. One item should surprise the viewer.
Swaps and redesigns 24
Age them up 30 yearsHair, posture and wardrobe all move on. Decide what happened in those 30 years and let one item from the old design survive.
Draw them aged sevenShorter limbs, a larger head for the body, and clothes someone else chose. Which habit or feature was already there?
Formal and off-dutyDraw them dressed for a wedding and again for a slow Sunday at home. The gap between the two says a lot about them.
Four-season closetOne character, four wardrobes. The cut and the favorite color should stay constant, so all four look like the same closet.
Fuse two charactersMerge two OCs into one. Take the silhouette from the first and the palette from the second, then pick one feature to blend.
Gender swap redesignRedesign the character as another gender. Keep the personality and the color scheme so it still reads as the same person.
Humanize an animalChoose an animal and design the person it would be. Turn the markings into hair, freckles or clothing, not ears and a tail.
Humanize an objectA teapot, a lighthouse, a city bus. The material becomes the outfit and the function becomes the job.
In a friend's styleWith their permission, draw your character the way a friend would. Study how they build eyes, hands and folds before you start.
Make them an animalPick the animal that fits the personality, not the hair color. Carry over the palette and one accessory so they stay recognizable.
Make them an extraRedesign your lead so they would vanish in a crowd scene. Whatever you had to remove was doing the work.
Mirror-world twinDesign the version of them from a world where one decision went the other way. Same bones, different scars, posture and wardrobe.
Move to a new genreFantasy knight to space pilot, detective to pirate. Carry three recognizable features across so they are still themselves.
Move to another eraShift the character 200 years back or forward. Look up what people of their trade really wore then, and keep one anachronism on purpose.
New job, same personGive the character a different trade and redesign the working clothes. A knight who becomes a baker keeps the posture, not the armor.
Opposite personalityFlip the main trait: shy to loud, careful to reckless. Change the posture and the wardrobe to match, and leave the face alone.
Redraw as a villainSame face, same name, opposite morals. Sharpen the shapes, mute the palette and change what the character is proud of.
Redraw as the heroFor an antagonist: what would they look like if the story were on their side? Open the posture, soften one edge and keep the rest.
Redraw your oldest OCFind the oldest character drawing you still have and redraw it next to the original. Improve the drawing, not the idea.
Swap signature itemTake away the thing they always carry and hand them a tool from another trade: a ladle for the sword, a wrench for the staff.
Swap the speciesKeep the personality, the palette and the outfit, and change what they are: human to merfolk, elf to android. Work out what the outfit has to do differently.
Swap their elementA fire user becomes a water user, or stone becomes wind. Change the motifs, the palette temperature and the way the hair moves.
Two OCs trade colorsSame designs, exchanged color schemes. It shows how much of each character lived in the colors and how much in the shapes.
Two OCs trade outfitsTwo characters swap clothes. The interest is in the fit: whose sleeves are too long, and who looks better than they expected?
How this list was compiled: An original list of 120 design constraints written for this site on 2026-09-18, so there is no outside list behind it. It is sorted by what each challenge restricts: the colors, the clock, the character itself, the shapes, the tools, or the story the sheet has to tell. Art terms and the few facts in the notes were checked on 2026-09-18 against English Wikipedia: the color scheme definitions and angles at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_scheme, the Zorn palette and Zorn's dates at /wiki/Anders_Zorn, grisaille at /wiki/Grisaille, blind contour drawing and its 1941 source at /wiki/Blind_contour_drawing, chibi head sizes at /wiki/Chibi_(style), the eight-and-a-half-head heroic figure at /wiki/Body_proportions, cross-hatching at /wiki/Hatching, model rotation at /wiki/Model_sheet, the 22 Major Arcana at /wiki/Major_Arcana, lead strips in stained glass at /wiki/Came_glasswork and the ukiyo-e period and look at /wiki/Ukiyo-e. The remarks about round, square and triangular shapes describe a teaching convention in character design, not a measured fact. Every line was checked against the site's family-friendly rule. Licence: own work