There are several styles to shape figures of Datong Shadow:

　　flat style with a general image of the half face design; art style with a combination of abstract and realistic designs to make costumes and characters faces charm and vivid, with concise color use to achieve clear and bright visual effects posted in light;

　　cartoon style with a combination of eleven parts including nine joints by manipulation to make mechanical dynamic performance;

　　drama style with design forms of Sheng, Dan, Jin, Mo, Chou, whose costumes and facial paintings are from the theater but beyond the theatrical stage. The shadow dolls of Datong Shadow are generally 40-50cm, slightly larger than the mainland shadows, in particular for outdoor performances.

　　Datong Shadow character modeling is designed according to role in the drama play, Sheng, Dan, Jin, Mo, and Chou, with the rigid masks to show the beauty and ugliness, good and evil, whose lines are beautiful and vivid properly. The overall effect is concise and not empty. Such as the elegant Sheng and Dan, are generally with no carved faces, to show innocence. For the painted face, Chou, is usually with the use of incised real face, in order to facilitate a variety of facial outline and colors. From the point of view sculptures, there are two ways of shadow carving. One is to take out skin and keep the line, using lines to form different faces. It is also called "empty face" or "net face", most for Sheng and Dan. The other is to take out lines and keep the skin, using skin and colors to form faces. It is also called “full face” or “rich face”, most for color-faces, Jin and Chou. The two methods are sometimes used together to make a greater color contrast in the video screen showing, such as the color-faces, bad-faces, resulting in a more prominent artistic effect.