Transcripts
1. Quick Class Intro: Hey everyone. My name is Lisa. I'm a full-time
illustrator and teacher. I also create digital resources
for creatives like you. One of my favorite
things to draw a cute little animal characters. But I also know how
hard it is to inject personality into your
character drawings. As we all know,
personality is super important to help bring
our characters to lie. In this class, I'll show
you three techniques that really help with adding personality too cute characters. The three drawing principles
we'll be exploring, or the character's pose,
expression, and accessories. So the great thing about these principles
that you can decide how much you want
to focus on and how much you want to
add to your drawing. I don't want to overwhelm you with too much technical stuff. So although we're only focusing on the basics of
these principles, you'll see how just thinking
about them and incorporating these basics into
your sketches can have a huge impact
on your drawing. By the end of this class, you'll be armed with three
techniques you can apply to any character drawing to really bring your
characters to life. I can't wait to see all those cute characters
you'll be creating. So I'll see you in class.
2. Materials Used and Class Project: I'll be using my iPad and Procreate to sketch
my character. But you could use a
pencil and paper or any drawing material you
feel comfortable with. You may want to have a piece of tracing paper on hand if you're using pencil and paper to
place over your rough sketch, when we move on to the
refined lines, if you like. But today isn't about
creating finished artwork. It's rather about exploring three principles I mentioned
with some sketches, will be creating two drawings today of the same character. I'll be drawing a cute little
piggy who loves dancing. And in my first drawing, I wouldn't be thinking too
much about the principles. I'm just going to
start sketching my piggy and see
where that takes me.
3. Sketching Our Basic Character: Okay, So I'm gonna start with very basic shapes so
you can follow along. And I'm just using a
pencil in procreate. And I'm starting with a circle. But I want to make this top
part a little bit like, almost like a bond, bond shape. And you'll see that my
lines incredibly rough because at the sketching stage, I don't put pressure on myself. I just want to massage
out some shapes. So that would be your head. And just kinda
working on her body, which is a circle. And the reason why I allow myself all this loose line work, just so that I can
start getting a feel for the overall shape
of my character. I find it far less
stressful, working this way. Then trying to get
the very first line that we put on paper
to be perfect. Okay, So we are working on the legs and they kinda
come down to a V. And then shall we? I'm
holding her hands up. If you can imagine, she's
in a little ballet pose. So these are arms
that I'm just very roughly getting an idea of
where I want them to be. And we want to add some, is again, very simple shapes. We just going for a
little triangles. The thing was sketching out
your rough is that there's no pressure so you can
change position of things. I'm just that's the snout, so I'm just adding that and
I'm getting an idea of that. And I'm probably going to add just a skirt to give the viewer an idea that she is
a little dancer. So if you can remember, we chatted about
those principles, which I'm not really
thinking too much, but I do know that I want to add some accessories just to give the viewer an idea of
what she is doing. And we need to obviously give as much information
as possible to the viewer for them to get an idea of the character and what they are
actually doing. That kind of gives
me a good idea of the position that she's in. So I'm going to
create a new layer. And I'm just going to turn
the opacity down a dash. Again, sticking with a pencil. I'm just going to start refining
my shapes a bit better. And as mentioned, we are just going for sketches
at this stage. You can decide if you want to
later on finish your piece. But for the session, we just going for
some rough idea. And again, you'll see
that I'm not using one stroke like that. Although you can. I'm allowing myself again just to feel
the shake as we work. Okay. So obviously I've already made I'm kind of like an arrow because this is
where the arms go. So I'm just going
to delete that. And let's add in those arms and her
funny little trotters. Okay. So don't like that angle. We just wanted to kinda
like in the same line. And her skirt is going to
come around like that. Who? Big tummy. And I just wanted to get an idea
of sort of frilly bits. And where her legs come down. And again, some cute trotters. And now for the fun bit, we're going to add
in little face and very simple eyes. And she is very happy. I think I wanted quite
close to her snot. And maybe we want to see
a little bit of a chin. Just going to turn off my sketch layer and
see where we're at. So we've got an idea
of our little piglet. And although I think she
is obviously quite cute, I mean, she's definitely, that's definitely a good
starting point. I think the pros can
definitely be improved upon. And I think we can convey
a better message about her personality and the kind of little piggy that she is and how much
she loves dancing. So that's a good foundation for what we want our
character to look like. So now I'm going to
start considering all those elements that I
spoke about earlier on. I'm gonna think about
the character's pose and think about how much I can add a dynamic pose
to her personality. And I'm also going to start thinking about her expression. Can we do more with
her expression and what other accessories can we add to enhance the
actual character?
4. Adding Personality: Pose: Before we begin
our next drawing, I want to give the character's
pose a bit more thoughts. I would like to pose
to be more dynamic. And this is the best
way to add life and energy and personality
to our character. So what I mean by dynamic
pose is to create a position for the character
that imitates movement. I think our first
piglet was cute, but her drawing was a
little bit too static. And I want to change
it for the next one. Even if the character
is standing, you can still create energy and movement through the
dynamic position. The pose goes a really
long way to convey the personality and also
bring your drawing to life. So the easiest way to inject movements in your pose is to use a principle that
animators use all the time called
squash and stretch. But I don't want you to get
too freaked out about that. You can keep this principles
super simple like I do. Essentially by squashing and stretching portions of the body. You're creating
movements in the pose. You can have the squash and stretch happening
in the same pose. Or just the squash on its own
or the stretch on its own. I use the squash and stretch together a lot in my drawings, and I'll be using that in my little piggy drawing
that I'm doing now. And I want to pose to
be more energetic. So we're gonna be making
her lead through the air, which should be a lot of fun. Okay, so I'm going to start
by drawing out my pose. Just by drawing a very
simple bean shape. And if you think about it, we've got kind of a
strange thing happening here and a squash
thing happening here, which is exactly what we want. And I'm not going to
get too stuck on that. It's just a very simple, basic thing that I'm applying to give my character a
little bit more energy. And he's, so that's the
main sort of body position. And now we just want to
think about her head, which is probably going to
sit something like that, if you can recall. So I want to jumping
through the air. And the reason why I'm doing
that, because I want to, I want to give some energy to her character
and I want to show the audience how excited
she is about dancing. And I think doing
a kind of a Jetta here would be a good way to kind of get that message across. So there's a stubby little legs. And we're now thinking
of arm placement. So that would be her shoulder. And if you're getting into a position where
you start getting stuck and overwhelmed because now the position is a little
bit more complicated. Always break things down to where the joints B and that would be her
shoulder over there. But other arm and shoulder would probably be
something like that. As you can see, it's
behind the head. And I'm just using
that as a guide. So that helps me not
feel so overwhelmed. So using that as a guide, other arm is probably going
to do something like that. And this is why
your rough sketches need to really be
for exploration. And these are just
to allow you to get a feel for your
character's position. And because your pose is really important to the final result, don't be scared
to spend a lot of time and do a lot of sort of sketching work is
no rule about how, you know how many times
you're going to be sketching and how many lines you're going
to have in the end. As long as your
results are good. Okay, So we can start
seeing shape happening. So that's obviously your
hip joints over there and work on her face. So I wanted to kinda be
looking more upwards that way. Hou middle line will sit
probably something like that. And snot position
will be about there. And we're going to go
for some eyes and smile. And if I just think
about her little is. So who won if? How are we gonna be there? Yeah, on the side. Okay, I'm starting to get
an idea of my character. In the next lesson, we started
looking at her expression.
5. Adding Personality: Expression: Expression is another
great way to convey the character's personality and what they're experiencing
at that moment. It's a really
wonderful way to draw the viewer in and get them
to feel part of the drawing, or at least feel what the
character might be feeling. At the time. I often find myself
pulling the same phase as my character that I'm drawing
completely involuntarily. I think as humans, we connect with the
emotions of others. This is an important aspect to consider when drawing
your character. The great thing about
drawing emotion is that simple lines
convey so much. So you really don't have
to have complicated facial features to
convey emotion. A good tip is to start
with the basics and then think about how you
can amplify that emotion. For this piggy,
I'm gonna be using a big smile with an open mouth. And this is going to convey the joy and delight
she is feeling. And in a much more
amplified way. I'm ready to start working
on my cleaner lines. And I'm going to start
at the head again. And again. As I mentioned, we're not going for a finished piece of artwork. Just twisting that so I can
get an idea of my placements. So here's snuff nostrils are probably gonna be
something like that. So we're not going
for a finished piece, we just going for
sketches at this stage. I want to really give the
impression that she is super excited about
jumping through the air. So I've made her eyes wider and almost kind of
mannequin away. Because I want to give that
impression that she is almost surprised yourself that she's managed to
jump through there. Okay, so we're going
to add his smile. And you'll notice I've taken it quite far up is almost
in line with the eyes. Which obviously in real life we don't ever have that
happening to us. But this is a great way to really accentuate
that, that emotion. And we opening her
mouth as we discussed. So instead of just
a simple smile, just by adding an open mouth, gives it that kind
of joyful feeling. Very roughly just shading that. The next thing we're gonna
do is add some accessories.
6. Adding Personality: Accessories: Accessories are another
really cool way to add more interests
to your character. And the other great
thing about accessories, which is why you shouldn't
just skim over them, is they can help you convey the character,
story or activity. If you have movements in your character's
position like mine, they can assist you in
accentuating that movement. Okay, so if we were
drawing earlier, Todd, I'm actually going to use that same shape that we used for her shoulder line and
just bringing it round. And again, I'm using
the same shape I use for her hip area. And that's a little bump, a little trotters. And we're going to
add a little chins. Just for now. I'm going to add leg sort of lines. We can see what's going on. And the other cute
thing or humor that I'm adding to this pieces
that I'm giving a really, really tiny feet, which is totally out of
proportion to her body. And that adds to the
humour or our character. And if she had leg warmers on, they would obviously
be a lot puffier than her actual legs. The best way to tackle
that is to draw your, your kind of beginning
and your end lines. And just working
from slightly above. Now we know what
we're dealing with. Just going to delete those
lines that we originally drew. And working just slightly above. We just going to
add some ripples. And just adding that
area gives the, the viewer the impression
that the leggings are bigger. And her legs, which is
obviously true in real life. Working on a little feet first. Okay. So because we have an idea
of how the leggings work, I'm going to dive right
in, humming above. And we're going
to add our skirt. So that would be the band. I'm just going to turn that off so we can see what's going on. And the front of
her dress would be, as I mentioned, you
could actually use it as a way to kind
of show the movement. So that would kinda
be pressed flat against your body if she was
jumping through the air. But what I actually
want to do is I want to show the elevation. So I'm gonna keep it lifted. And which is why as I mentioned, you can really use the accessories to continue your story that you're
trying to create. And certainly add o ecco should I say the movement
of your character. So what I wanna do now
is add those ribbons. So that gives the viewer the impression that the ribbons
floating through the air. Again, echoing our movement. And let's give her rosy cheeks. Just going to add some shading
just to finish it off. So skirt is see-through, which is why lifts
those lines underneath. And what we can do is to show
the elevation even more. I just want to angle here, but we just going to add a shadow that would
be the ground. And it gives the viewer the
idea that she is airborne. If you really want to, you could add some kind of movement lines that go the same direction
and not what I did. And that gives the viewer even more idea that
this movement, and I just want
to add some color to Juliet charges that you can see a differentiation
between the two. I'm just using a
watercolor brush and you use a lighter brush. Then we have our cute character. She's now in a
more dynamic pose. And the viewer gets a much better idea
of her personality, where she is absolutely
over the moon to be flying through the
air during her belly.
7. Quick Recap: Let's do a quick recap. First, we thought
about the character's pose and how to add movement and energy by making
the pose more dynamic, we use squash and stretch in a simple way to
create movement. I recommend starting
a Pinterest board with examples of
interesting poses, especially ones that show
squash and stretch of the pose so that you can refer to it when you need a
bit of inspiration. Next, we amplify
the expression of our character to convey
a much stronger emotion. Unlike animation, we
don't have the help of moving parts or words
to convey a message. So you want your
character's face to be full of life and expression
way possible. And finally, we had some fun adding
accessories to miss piggy. Remember to use accessories
to echo the story, the movement, and personality
of the character. If you want your drawing to
read as a specific character, like a doctor or a farmer, for example, I recommend doing a quick Google search
to get an idea of some of the accessories you
can add to convey that. I hope this course inspires you to explore these techniques, how you can incorporate
them into your work. I'd love to stay in touch. So hop over to Lisa glands.com, where you'll find a
bunch of drawings, tutorials, and tips for
creating characters. Don't forget to upload your cute characters
to the project area. We'd all love to see
what you create. Thanks for watching
and happy drawing.
Lisa Glanz, Illustrator & surface pattern designer
