i'm not looking to do anything too complex but i don't want all characters to look the same either is there a simple way of doing this?

Check out the videos on this YouTube channel. I've included one that might answer the question directly.

Brookes Eggleston - Character Design Forge

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJklo0Zl5tLV9kkk_Jd81EA

If your characters are all the same then you need to change that. 

Take a look at Street Fighter 2.  Understand that the initial cast of Street Fighter 2 were gaming's first equivalent of a list of Hollywood A Stars.  Here's a hint - they all come from different countries and have different class backgrounds - two of which already have history with the first game in the series.

So, does your game have a varied enough world to allow your characters to be different?  How is their location within that world affecting their lives? Why are they there?

35 minutes ago, ObjectivityGuy said:

i don't want all characters to look the same

BTW, this is known as 'same face syndrome' so you can Google on that and get a wealth of information.

You can set most of the larger details with 2 questions; what does s/he do, and how does s/he do it?

The rest of the details depend on how the character fits within the given setting.

guys i mean the players characters

6 minutes ago, ObjectivityGuy said:

guys i mean the players characters

Are you asking about making concepts? Or is this a technical question about the workflow in actually making game ready characters? If so, is this a 2D or 3D question because both work flows are different.

6 hours ago, ObjectivityGuy said:

guys i mean the players characters

I think you are talking about Character Creators. Like in an MMO. That is quite complicated, I don't know a lot about the subject, but i know you need to know modelling, create your base concept a baseline that  CANNOT be modified.Then delineate the parameters and the specific areas that you are gonna allow the player to modify, for example the player is allowed to make the eyes smaller or bigger, but only to a certain point. The player is allowed to change their character height, all those things, its quite a lot to get into.

If you are talking about characters in general, you just need to be creative, come up with your own, diverse concepts  and bring them to life. Again, you need to know modelling or at least drawing to do this.

10 hours ago, Infu1989 said:

I think you are talking about Character Creators. Like in an MMO. That is quite complicated, I don't know a lot about the subject, but i know you need to know modelling, create your base concept a baseline that  CANNOT be modified.Then delineate the parameters and the specific areas that you are gonna allow the player to modify, for example the player is allowed to make the eyes smaller or bigger, but only to a certain point. The player is allowed to change their character height, all those things, its quite a lot to get into.

 

If you are talking about characters in general, you just need to be creative, come up with your own, diverse concepts  and bring them to life. Again, you need to know modelling or at least drawing to do this.

yes that is what i meant, but how do i do it on blender do i use shapekeys and morph targets or what?

6 minutes ago, ObjectivityGuy said:

yes that is what i meant, but how do i do it on blender do i use shapekeys and morph targets or what?

There's probably a lot of ways of doing this, especially clothes, and it will be highly dependent on what engine you are using, what are you using? Just to give an example (which may not help too much) in my jungle game I was creating simple native variations by:

• starting with a base model, boning and skinning as usual in blender,
• then I duplicate the mesh and modify it to get extremes (fat, thin, muscular etc) without change the vertex count / connectivity, only modifying the positions of vertices (you may also be able to help do this with shapekeys, it is a while since I used them so I cannot vouch for this)
• Then export each of these skins,
• and in the engine you can either pre-blend between them by relative weights, or do it on the fly in game.
• I also do a mix and match of texture UV islands from a set of similar UV maps with different clothes etc.
• You may also be able to blend between different blend weighted rigs, which might help in some situations - I didn't do this

If you are relying on a third party engine, first call would be to see whether it has direct support for this kind of thing (or an addon), if not you may have to add support yourself, which may be challenging to attempt if you are really a beginner.