- eyeballs are an eyeball width apart - ears align with the top of your brows to the bottom of your nose, and are the center-point of a profile view - lip corners line up to the center of each eye - hands are roughly the size of your face - feet are the same size as your forearm - elbows are aligned with your belly-button - your hands reach down mid-length of your thighs - both upper and lower legs (individually) are roughly the same size as your torso (this is all rough estimates for proportion! feel free to add more to help others)
YOU ARE A FUCKING SAINT
- the length of your legs + feet is about the same as the length of your torso + everything above it
- collar bones extend directly from the shoulders
Obviously these vary by style (I know my mouths extend waaaay far and some of my eyes are oversized) but really awesome things to remember!
Also, hilariously, I was taught the center of the body is roughly the belly button in one class… And the pubic bone in another. They are around the same area I guess and vary by person but please, MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
Character design and drawing are tome-sized topics and even if I had all the answers (I don’t - I have a lot to learn), I’m not sure I could communicate them effectively. I’ve gathered some thoughts and ideas here, though, in case they’re helpful.
First, some general things:
- Relax and let some of that anxiety go. This isn’t a hard science. There’s no wrong way, no rigid process you must adhere to, no shoulds or shouldn’ts except those you designate for yourself. This is one of the fun parts of being an artist, really - have a heady good time with it.
- Be patient. A design is something gradually arrived at. It takes time and iteration and revision. You’ll throw a lot of stuff away, and you’ll inevitably get frustrated, but bear in mind the process is both inductive and deductive. Drawing the wrong things is part of the path toward drawing the right thing.
- Learn to draw. It might seem perfunctory to say, but I’m not sure everyone’s on the same page about what this means. Learning to draw isn’t a sort of rote memorization process in which, one by one, you learn a recipe for humans, horses, pokemon, cars, etc. It’s much more about learning to think like an artist, to develop the sort of spacial intelligence that lets you observe and effectively translate to paper, whatever the subject matter. When you’re really learning to draw, you’re learning to draw anything and everything. Observing and sketching trains you to understand dimension, form, gesture, mood, how anatomy works, economy of line; all of the foundational stuff you will also rely on to draw characters from your imagination. Spend some time honing your drawing ability. Hone it with observational sketching. Hone it good.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do this sort of thing better than Claire Wendling. In fact, character designs emerge almost seamlessly from her gestural sketches. It’d be worth looking her up.
- Gather Inspiration like a crazed magpie. What will ultimately be your trademark style and technique is a sort of snowball accumulation of the various things you expose yourself to, learn and draw influence from. To that effect, Google images, tumblr, pinterest and stock photo sites are your friends. When something tingles your artsy senses - a style, a shape, a texture, an appealing palette, a composition, a pose, a cool looking animal, a unique piece of apparel, whatever - grab it. Looking at a lot of material through a creative lens will make you a better artist the same way reading a lot of material makes a better writer. It’ll also devour your hard drive and you will try and fail many times to organize it, but more importantly, it’ll give you a lovely library of ideas and motivational shinies to peruse as you’re conjuring characters.
- Imitation is a powerful learning tool. Probably for many of us, drawing popular cartoon characters was the gateway habit that lured us into the depraved world of character design to begin with. I wouldn’t suggest limiting yourself to one style or neglecting your own inventions to do this, but it’s an effective way to limber up, to get comfortable drawing characters in general, and to glean something from the thought processes of other artists.
- Use references. Don’t leave it all up to guessing. Whether you’re trying to design something with realistic anatomy or something rather profoundly abstracted from reality, it’s helpful in a multitude of ways to look at pictures. When designing characters, you can infer a lot personality from photos, too.
And despite what you might have heard, having eyeballs and using them to look at things doesn’t constitute cheating. There’s no shame in reference material. There’s at least a little shame in unintentional abstractions, though.
Concepts and Approach:
- Break it down. Sometimes you have the look of a character fleshed out in your mind before putting it to paper, but usually not. That doesn’t mean you have to blow your cortical fuses trying conceive multiple diverse designs all at the same time, though. You don’t even have to design the body shape, poses, face, and expressions of a single character all at once. Tackle it a little at a time.
The cartoony, googly eyed style was pre-established for this simple mobile game character, but I still broke it into phases. Start with concepts, filter out what you like until you arrive at a look, experiment with colors, gestures and expressions.
- Start with the general and work toward the specific. Scribbling out scads of little thumbnails and silhouettes to capture an overall character shape is an effective way begin - it’s like jotting down visual notes. When you’re working at a small scale without agonizing over precision and details, there’s no risk of having to toss out a bunch of hard work, so go nuts with it. Give yourself a lot of options.
Here’s are some sample silhouettes from an old cancelled project in which I was tasked with designing some kind of cyber monkey death bot. I scratched out some solid black shapes then refined some of them a step or two further.
- Shapes are language. They come preloaded with all sorts of biological, cultural and personal connotations. They evoke certain things from us too. If you’re ever stuck about where to go with your design, employ a sort of anthroposcopy along these lines - make a visual free association game out of it. It’ll not only tend to result in a distinguished design, but a design that communicates something about the nature of the character.
Think about what you infer from different shapes. What do they remind you of? What personalities or attitudes come to mind? How does the mood of a soft curve differ from that of a sharp angle? With those attributes attached, how could they be used or incorporated into a body or facial feature shape? What happens when you combine shapes in complementary or contrasting ways? How does changing the weight distribution among a set of shapes affect look and feel? Experiment until a concept starts to resonate with the character you have in mind or until you stumble on something you like.
If you don’t have intent, take the opposite approach - draw some shapes and see where they go. (It’s stupid fun.)
- Cohesion and Style. As you move from thumbnails to more refined drawings, you can start extrapolating details from the general form. Look for defining shapes, emergent themes or patterns and tease them out further, repeat them, mirror them, alternate them. Make the character entirely out of boxy shapes, incorporate multiple elements of an architectural style, use rhythmically varying line weights - there are a million ways to do this
Here’s some of the simple shape repetition I’ve used for Lackadaisy characters.
- Expressions - let them emerge from your design. If your various characters have distinguishing features, the expressions they make with those features will distinguish them further. Allow personality to influence expressions too, or vice versa. Often, a bit of both happens as you continue drawing - physiognomy and personality converge somewhere in the middle.
For instance, Viktor’s head is proportioned a little like a big cat. Befitting his personality, his design lets him make rather bestial expressions. Rocky, with his flair for drama, has a bit more cartoon about him. His expressions are more elastic, his cheeks squish and deform and his big eyebrows push the boundaries of his forehead. Mitzi is gentler all around with altogether fewer lines on her face. The combination of her large sleepy eyes and pencil line brow looked a little sad and a little condescending to me when I began working out her design - ultimately those aspects became incorporated into her personality.
I discuss expression drawing in more detail here (click the image for the link):
- Pose rendering is another one of those things for which observational/gesture drawing comes in handy. Even if you’re essentially scribbling stick figures, you can get a handle on natural looking, communicative poses this way. Stick figure poses make excellent guidelines for plotting out full fledged character drawings too.
Look for the line of action. It’ll be easiest to identify in poses with motions, gestures and moods that are immediately decipherable. When you’ve learned to spot it, you can start reverse engineering your own poses around it.
- Additional resources - here are some related things about drawing poses and constructing characters (click the images for the links).
Lastly…
- Tortured rumination about lack of ability/style/progress is a near universal state of creative affairs. Every artist I have known and worked with falls somewhere on a spectrum between frustration in perpetuity and a shade of fierce contrition Arthur Dimmesdale would be proud of. So, next time you find yourself constructing a scourge out of all those crusty acrylic brushes you failed to clean properly, you loathsome, deluded hack, you, at least remember you’re not alone in feeling that way. When it’s not crushing the will to live out of you, the device does have its uses - it keeps you self-critical and locked in working to improve mode. If we were all quite satisfied with our output, I suppose we’d be out of reasons to try harder next time.
When you need some reassurance, compare old work to new. Evolution is gradual and difficult to perceive if you’re narrowed in on the nearest data point, but if you’ve been steadily working on characters for a few months or a year, you’ll likely see a favorable difference between points A and B.
Most of all, don’t dwell on achieving some sort of endgame in which you’re finally there as a character artist. There’s no such place - wherever you are, there is somewhere else. It’s a moving goal post. Your energy will be better spent just enjoying the process…and that much will show in the results.
Here is a very simple little app I wrote in AutoHotkey for Windows to help productivity. The artists I’ve attempted to give this to were horrified and sickened by the idea of it.
It floats in the corner of your screen. You tell it what programs you use for work/productivity. Whenever you’re using those programs, it turns a pleasing shade of blue and times you. If you alt-tab over to something that is not one of those programs, like Chrome or Spotify or 3D Pinball, or if you zone out and don’t move the mouse for too long, it turns red and stops the timer until you resume proper grown-up behavior.
This way, you have a constant peripheral reminder of how little of your day has actually been spent on important things like “doing what you’re supposed to” and “not having fun.”
Some snippets from a Hat Drawing Tutorial I just posted to Patreon. I may share it openly, eventually, but for now it’s available to all patrons, $1 and up!
A theory on gaining visibility with art depicting original characters
(Disclaimer: The following article is based on personal
observations, both as a self-taught hobby illustrator and as a graphic
designer working in the
advertising field, hence I do not guarantee any scientific accuracy.
This is a follow-up to my previous article as I’ve gained further insights on the topic.)
I
assume that most artists are, by now, familiar with some of the
articles going around on which time frames are best for posting content
to social media and other similar helpful advice. But despite all effort
to follow the advice, many artists who draw personal art of their
original characters seem to be stuck with a one- or low two-digit amount
of notes on their work. While posting at the right time and selecting
the fitting social media channels are undeniably important, I’ve come to
the conclusion that these factors are secondary when it comes to art
focusing on original characters. In this article I’m going to present my
theory on why, and look into ways how to generate reach.
Why nobody reblogs your art
Super
Mario, Batman or The Lion King—all heroes of our childhood are
someone’s original characters that have gained enough popularity to come
to life as graphic novels, games or animated movies. We grow up
idolizing these characters and eventually come up with our own original
creations and dreaming of them eventually becoming equally popular. We
therefore post our art to gallery websites and social media for people
to see and share, hoping to generate watchers and maybe the occasional
commission—and end up disappointed when our work doesn’t meet the
recognition it deserves, some of us even to the point of questioning the
quality of their art or losing all motivation to draw in the first
place.
After all you’ve spent years practicing and improving your
art skills and put your heart into writing your characters’
backstories, fine-tuning their design and building a world around them.
Your stuff is top notch—so why the heck does nobody reblog your friggin’
art?
Here’s why: Because nobody cares about your original characters except you (yet).
Think
of the trope of enthusiastic young parents posting nothing but baby
photos for months on end. See, to them, their kid is the raddest thing
since sliced bread, and naturally, they want to share their happiness
with the world. But if you’re not very close to them, would you be
genuinely interested in their photos? Most likely not. Some close
friends and relatives of theirs certainly will, but you’d scroll right
past. Why? Because you’re not emotionally involved. It doesn’t matter
how good the photos are or how pretty the baby; the content is simply
not relevant for you. Now replace the baby with your original character,
and their appearance with the visual quality of your work: it works
exactly the same way.
Why relatable content is key
The
main reason we are using social media is for self-display. The entire
concept of social media is based on our natural urge to express
ourselves. (A convenient platform for companies to harvest personal data
and use it for targeted advertising—but I digress.) Hence, people will
only reblog things that are either relevant for self-expression or
provide other personal gain. Sure, there’s always a few good Samaritans
who reblog art with the main intention of helping a fellow artist gain
visibility, but let us, for now, focus on the majority of social media
users.
Examples for content relevant for self-expression:
Comics or memes you relate to and/or which reflect your humor
Images that fit a personal aesthetic (e. g. goth, rainbow, vaporwave etc.)
Political content that reflects your views
Content by or about your favorite band, game or movie that reflects your personal taste
Examples for content providing other personal gain:
Raffles that require a reblog to enter
Content created by idols that you reblog in hope of getting noticed
You
know that cringy thing where companies copy popular memes, or awkwardly
use teenage slang in their headlines? Or that one year every second
company raffled off iPads in exchange for personal information because
they were the new big thing? That list up there is exactly the reason
they do this: they’re trying to make their content relevant or relatable
for the audience, which greatly raises the chance of being shared and
talked about—and therefore expands their reach.
What this means for your art
Contrary
to some of the well-meant advice you might have received, it’s not
about getting more practice. Rest assured that the visual quality of
your artwork is secondary. I’ve seen a lot of art with questionable
anatomy, inconsistent style or off-looking shading that still had a
four- to five-digit amount of notes, simply because the depicted content
resonated with the audience in some way.
So forget everything
they told you about swimming against the tide: If you’re looking to
expand your reach, step one is to let go and to go with the flow. Latch
onto the latest hypes and broadly discussed topics: draw fan art of the
new Marvel movie that just hit the theaters, draw little cartoons
addressing current political issues, do a commission raffle—as long as
it’s something the audience can use for self-expression or engage in for
personal gain, you’re on the right track. This is the kind of stuff
that’ll earn you visibility and reach. It does not mean to give up on
your original characters—far from it! Keep world-building, refining,
designing—and post them in between. Use your mainstream content as a
catalyst for your personal art. The visibility generated by your
relatable content raises the chance of your personal art to be seen, and
in return, your original characters become a familiar and memorable
sight to the audience, which might eventually result in them building up an emotional connection to them.
It might not work right away, and it might not
work the next few times either, but try to not let that get you down.
Keep going. Eventually you’ll create something that hits a nerve, and
over time, you’ll have figured out what works best for you and your
audience.
Yes, this probably kind of feels like self-betrayal.
But as much as it clashes with your noble ambitions to go from zero to
hero with nothing but your own original creations like our predecessors
did in the ancient times before the internet, it’s an important step to
gain a foothold in a social media landscape that has never been as
immensely oversaturated with user-created content as it is today. Back
in their time, only few had access to a way to display their work
publically, and most of them only did because they knew somebody who
knew somebody. So due to the sparse amount of available user-created
content back in the day, almost anything that saw the light was
automatically visible in some way. We need to come to terms with the
fact that this no longer works in today’s society unless you have the
necessary connections, and adapt our strategy accordingly.
The
good news is that it has never been easier to display your work than it
is today. However, the downside is that it’s equally easy to remain
unseen among the vast quantities of user-created content people are
flooded with every second and have the possibility to choose from on
their eternal quest for self-expression. The key is to give them
something relatable, remain persistent, and keep trying—ideally while
sticking to the known advice on timing, channels, tagging and
interacting with your audience—and eventually your work will receive the
visibility it deserves.
I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.
I’M DRUNK OR JUST BEING WEIRDLY EXPRESSIVE FOR A POINT/SARCASM Hooted Howled Yowled
I WONDER Pondered Voiced Wondered
OH, YEAH, WHOOPS Recalled Recited Remembered
SURPRISE BITCH Revealed
IT SEEMS FAKE BUT OKAY/HA ACTUALLY FUNNY BUT I DON’T WANT TO LAUGH OUT LOUD Scoffed Snickered Snorted
BITCHY Tattled Taunted Teased
Edit: People, I’m an English and creative writing double major in college; I understand that there’s nothing wrong with simply using “said.” This was just for fun, and it comes in handy when I need to add pizzazz.
