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Art by Mahea Rodrigues

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Art by Mahea Rodrigues

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#reblog #characterdesign

Notes for a young character designer

Dear E. 

Thanks for your email.

I don’t work at Cartoon Network any more. But I’m going to give you a very quick portfolio review in hopes that you find it helpful! Here are some things I noticed when looking at your stuff - lessons I learned from brilliant people while working on AT for two years: 

 1) AVOID SYMMETRY. Humans are organic, randomly shaped animals. Perfect symmetry rarely exists in nature and if it does, it’s conspicuous - it’s the exception rather than the rule. Find interesting ways to throw your characters off-balance. 

Don’t repeat objects in twos - (buttons or rips or whatever) - it feels prescribed - cluster things in threes or fives if necessary. 

 2) AVOID CONCAVITY - I don’t know what else to call this. But it’s those lines that go “in” rather than “out”. You are using inward sloping lines to describe many of your characters. As an exercise, try using outward, rounded, voluminous lines to draw EVERYTHING. Humans are fleshy lumps connected together by other fleshy lumps. Each mass is either in front of or behind other masses and as a designer, it’s your job to tell the animator where it is. As a designer, you are providing a technical blueprint for the location of masses. 

Only occasionally allow a concavity to connect two convexities. Look at the work of Robert Ryan Cory (spongebob), Tom Herpich (Adventure Time) or Phil Rynda (AT / Gravity Falls) - master character designers - for examples of this. If you need to, trace a couple of their drawings and you will see what I mean. 

 3) AVOID GRAPHIC DETAILS - Some shows use a graphic style; it’s very appealing and looks clever when done right. But in animation, everything needs to move in space - so if you use a graphic element - it needs to correspond with an actual 3D thing that can move. Therefore it is better to start with a voluminous style and then revert to graphic elements where appropriate. Art directors will look for this. Do not jump straight to graphic representation if you do not yet know what you are representing.

Look at the work of Tiffany Ford and Jasmin Lai for amazing examples of volume expressed graphically.

 4) STUDY JAMES MCMULLEN - To truly understand volume, and fully respect your subject, you should read very carefully High Focus Figure Drawing by James McMullen. Slow down and think about drawing “around” your subjects. It’s a truly meditative experience when you get there. Think about the weight and mass that your characters, props and effects are experiencing. Many students from SVA - Tomer Hanuka, Becky Cloonan, Rebecca Sugar, James Jean - studied under McMullen’s philosophy and you can see this common richness in their work. 

Jeffrey Smith, a top student of McMullen’s now teaches life drawing at Art Center. These are two of the best illustration schools in North America - anyone who is interested in drawing living things, should probably read his book. Also look at the work of Andy Ristaino or Danny Hynes - two other character designers’ whose work is seething with volume. 

I hope this is useful and I hope you have a wonderful career. 

Warmest,

Matt

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NOTE: one type of fold will rarely appear on its own - they interact with each other quite a bit! for example, spiral folds might define the outline of a pant leg, while the interior folds might be zig-zag folds.

i’m trying to re-learn how to draw clothing, so i made this little guide to the most common shapes of folds that appear. hope it helps someone else too!

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HEY ARTISTS!

Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:

OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–

There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)

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Thank you to the anon who suggested this, hope it was helpful!

- patreon - commissions -

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Fantasy Classes series by Forrest Imel: Warrior, Warlock, Priest, Paladin, Druid, Mage, Ranger, Thief

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How to draw INTERIORS tutorial by STUDIOBLINKTWICE

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Hey guys, here’s links to EVERY ONE of my first 75 how to THINK when you draw TUTORIALS, now in ALPHABETICAL ORDER! Enjoy, link, pin, share! Cheers! Lorenzo! How to draw ANGRY EXPRESSIONS How to draw BIRD HEADS How to draw BOOKS How to draw BREAKING GLASS How to draw CABLES and WIRES   How to draw CATERPILLAR TRACKS How to draw CHARACTER SHAPES How to draw COMPOSITION How to draw EARS How to draw FABRIC How to draw FEET & SHOES How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART ONE How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART TWO How to draw FOREGROUND MIDGROUND BACKGROUND How to draw GIRL’S HAIR How to draw GRASS How to draw HORSE HEADS How to draw IMPACT DEBRIS How to draw IN 3D How to draw IN-WORLD TYPOGRAPHY How to draw JUNK HOUSES How to draw LIGHTNING and ELECTRICITY How to draw MECHANICAL DETAILS How to draw MUSHROOMS and FUNGUS How to draw MONSTER TENTACLES How to draw NOSES How to draw PERSPECTIVE BOXES How to draw PLANES How to draw ROBOT ARMS How to draw ROCK FORMATIONS How to draw RUNNING FIGURES How to draw SAUSAGE DOGS   How to draw SMOKE EFFECTS How to draw SQUIRRELS How to draw TREE BARK How to draw VEHICLES How to draw WATER How to draw WOODEN HOUSES

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+40 Pixel Art Tutorials

A growing collection of animated Pixel Art Tutorials by Pedro Medeiros (@saint11) of Studio Miniboss (they previously worked on TowerFall and are currently working on Celeste and Skytorn)

All +40 Pixel Art Tutorials can be found on blog.studiominiboss.com/pixelart (10 Pixel Art Tutorials are posted below)

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Jade Tutorial by fhelalr

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My old tutorial! Wanna share it with you)

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Happy Tuesday! Today’s tip is a very easy one to remember – VARY Your PROPORTIONS!

Characters that has varied proportion within their shape tend to be more dynamic and interesting. The ones with equal proportion tends to be more static; there’s definitely time to do this; ie. when you want to emphasize the staticness or boringness of a character. In general, I tend to give variety within my proportion and avoid to divide things in half or equal mass. I always keep in mind to use the rule of 1/3 2/3 and S-M-L.

Have fun! Griz

Also on a side note, anything looks cute with 2 dot eyes and a smile! #griz #grizandnorm #tuesdaytips #grizandnormtuesdaytips #characterdesign #cute #kawaii #arttips #tutorial

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Tuesday Tips - Drawing Through Put the guesswork away and draw through the forms to create lively characters and express solid volumes. -Norm #tuesdaytips #100tuesdaytips #grizandnorm #drawingthrough #drawingtutorial #drawingtips #arttutorial

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Hey friends, Meg here!

Welcome to Day Two of TUTOR TUES-WEEK! Today we’re gonna take a look at how to draw different hair types and textures! I have more tutorials covering the hair here, here, and here! If you have any tutorial recommendations send ‘em in here or my personal! Keep practicing, have fun, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

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Hey friends!

It’s Meg here for TUTOR TUESDAY! Today is part one of drawing trees. I’ll do a tutorial on painting trees next time! This was a recommended tutorial, and if you have any tutorials you’d like to see just send em in here or at my personal! Have fun, keep practicing, and I’ll see you next week!

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Hey friends! Meg here for this weeks TUTOR TUESDAY (*cough*on Wednesday*cough*) Today we’re taking a look at some exercises on learning to see objects as forms when drawing them and not just outlines. This is Really Super Important to making accurate, dynamic pieces! If you have any rec’s send ‘em in here or to my personal! Now go forth and I’ll see you next Tuesday!