A Beginner’s Guide to Animal Character Design

1. Welcome to class: Welcome to the beginner's guide to Animal character design. My name is Nina Rycroft. I'm a children's picture book illustrator, and I absolutely love drawing and illustrating animal characters for picture books. And I want to show you just how easy and how much fun it can be. Whether you're an aspiring picture book illustrator or you just love animal characters. In this class, I'm going to show you some real fundamentals that are going to help you draw any animal character for any project that you do in the future. In this class, there are going to be four different lessons. In lesson one, I'm going to show you how to draw four very different animal characters. We're going to draw a crocodile, a hippo, and a flamingo. In lesson two, we're going to transition from observation to illustration. And as a picture book illustrator or anyone interested in adding human personality to animal characters, this is a really important step. In lesson three, I'm going to show you how to break any animal character down into six key elements. And finally, in lesson four, we're going to bring this cast of animal characters into a single scene. And we're going to build a simple illustration just to show you how we can start interpreting animal characters and making them more into a picture book illustration. All you're going to need for this class is a pencil and printer paper. If you like, tracing paper will really help. And if you want to, you follow the same process and use your iPad. So grab your paper and pencils, your iPad, and let's dive in. 2. Draw animals with basic shapes: Welcome to the beginner's guide to animal character design. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can draw any kind of animal character, and there's an approach to this, which I'm going to walk you through. Lesson two, I'm going to show you how you can transition from observation to imagination. In lesson three, you're going to be discovering the six key elements to animate any animal character. And in lesson four, we're going to bring your cast of animal characters to life in a scene. So now that I have my four animal characters, let's get started. When designing human characters, you can start by following the basic body proportions based on age, such as the head and body ratios. And even if you exaggerate the limbs or features of the character, it will still be recognizably human. In contrast, designing animal characters offers infinite possibilities with so many shapes and sizes and structures, whether you're sketching a flamingo, a hippo, a zebra, or a crocodile, the challenge is deciding where to begin. In this lesson, I'll guide you on where to start and demonstrate how to construct four very different animals, each with their unique features and personality. So I'm going to start off drawing the hippo. And to me, a hippo is quite short and stout and quite chunky. And so I'm going to be drawing an oval for the body and just starting with that. So you can see I'm drawing sort of rough circles or rough sort of ovals and circles, and here I'm drawing the head of the body, and I'm drawing rectangles or just simple shapes to start with just so I have a basic structure to work with. So here I'm drawing the front leg, the back leg, and I'm now going to draw the snout of my hippo. You can see I'm using a brown pencil, and you could use a brown colored pencil. And then later on, once I have established sort of the general shape of my animal character, I would then draw with a more permanent pencil, whether it's a graphite pencil or pen. But for now, I'm just getting familiar with sort of the idea of drawing a hippo character. So at the moment, I'm drawing a side view, and you can see that I'm drawing where the eye would go with the eye socket. I'm also drawing a very small ear for the hippo and I'm not looking at any reference at this point. I'm just trying to remember in my mind what a hippo looks like. So now you can see I've drawn the head of the hippo, the body of the hippo, and now I'm working on the front legs, and shoulder. And as you can see, I'm drawing this as a unit. So here I'm drawing the knee of the hippo, and I might kick this leg back. So this front leg is going to be up in the air. And I'm just trying to get an understanding of how my hippo is standing. So now I'm just coming in and making the neck almost like a fold of volume, I guess you could call it, and just sort of figuring out sort of what the snout, the nose, the mouth may look like, and then coming back, and I'm drawing that second front leg, and I'm really pressing it into the ground. So now I'm ready to start on the rear leg, and I'm kicking back the knee, so I'm just going to work out where that knee is going to be. With the hippo, it's quite a large round section, and you probably wouldn't see too much of it because of the weight of the animal. There's a lot of meat around a hipo's leg. I'm going to work my way around the back of the hippo, adding in the tail, little snub at the tail, and just bending and moving. Can you see the shoulders have sort of a lump on the top there? So you can see how I'm using the shoulders and front legs and the hip area. They all sort are sections of these animals. So I'm just coming in, outlining what I need to, and I think I'm pretty much there as far as my sort of initial thoughts and ideas for what a hippo may look like. So now that I've finished drawing a hippo, let's move on to drawing a zebra. So I'm going to start off with quite more of a rectangle shape for the body of the zebra, and my rectangle is obviously going to have softer edges. But this is going to be the starting point of my zebra. Once I've established the body, the mass, the large mass of the zebra, I'm going to start thinking about the legs, and you can see how I'm kicking back the legs just like with the hippo, except the legs of zebra are thinner, more slender, and they taper down. So I'm not going to focus on the hooves, the feet, the details. At this point, I'm just going to be drawing just my initial thoughts of the shapes, proportions, and sizes of zebra. So now that I've got the hind leg done, I'm going to move to the to the front legs and the shoulder, and you can see, again, I'm drawing a straight line up and down, sort of recognizing where the knees are going to be placed. And I'm just getting a feel for where, you know, how the Zebra's legs are going to be placed. And you can see that the front leg and shoulders are being drawn as a unit as well. And so I'm going to be coming in with just a slight shadow for the legs behind, just darkening them ever so slightly. And now it's time to draw sort of the neck area of the zebra, and you can see that the neck will come out from the body, and I'm going to draw a circle to represent the head of the zebra. So just like I did with the hippo, I'm drawing a circle, and then I'm going to draw the snout of the zebra as well. So I'm lowering the snout, like you can see the hippo snouts facing up. This zebra snout is facing down. Within that skull area, the circle area, I'm drawing the eye of the zebra, and then I'm drawing the ears of the zebra, which are sort of a cross between the size of a horse ear and a donkey ear. They're a little bit longer than a horse ear, I think. Again, I'm not looking at reference with this. I'm trying to remember and recall what I remember as being zebra. So I think this is also a great technique to use when it comes to designing animal characters. You know, if we were to look at reference, you might get caught up in the reference to the point where you're just coping. And when it comes to having to recall your memory of what that animal looks like. It can actually make, you know, your character more unique. So as I work my way down the body of the zebra, you can see, I'm going to be adding a bit of a tail, which will swing back. Tails are an extension of the spine, so we don't just stick the tails on the back. They are going to have the same kind of movement and look like they're attached to the spine, as well. Then, of course, zebras needs stripes. And again, this is just a very quick sketch of a zebra. When it comes to doing the more finished artwork, we then spend more time, possibly look at reference and spend a bit more time with the details like the stripes on the body and the legs of the zebra. But for now, I'm quite happy with the general shape. So let's move on to the next animal character, which will be a crocodile. Again, I want to show you how each one of these animals are completely different in proportions. So with the crocodile, it's going to be longer and more horizontal than the hippo or the zebra. So I'm drawing sort of longer rectangle to start with, and I'm going to be drawing shorter legs. So I'm still going to draw the rear legs and hips and the front legs and shoulders, but I'm going to draw them much closer to the ground. So the knees are going to kick back, similar to the hippo. And I'm going to really plant those legs into the ground. So here I'm looking at the shoulder and the legs and the feet and sort of always drawing those as a unit. So here I have sort of my basic idea of how I want the legs to go, and now it's time to draw the head and the snout of my crocodile. So just drawing a circle to start with. And I'm going to then from that circle, draw a longer snout. So I'm just trying to work out how this will work. And I don't want to draw the head of my crocodile upright. I've chosen to draw the crocodile more elongated. So I'm just drawing literally triangles, rectangles, circles for, you know, the different sections of my crocodile. I also want to have a two toned area, so the underbelly of the crocodile is going to be lighter than the top area. So yeah, I'm quite happy with this general shape. So what I'm doing now is just going to I'm going to add in sort of where the eye of the crocodile would go. So lifting up that eye socket and drawing in the eye and then coming around and just adding a bit more detail. So you can see similar similar to what I did with the hippo, just a pointier snout. And again, I'm not looking at reference. I'm really just trying to recall what I think crocodile would look like. So moving around, and I'm going to put a bit more of a chin or a gullet on the crocodile and, again, the underbelly. I really want to have that as two toned. So I want to keep these as animal characters suitable for picture books. So I want even my crocodile to look slightly friendly. So, you know, my animals tend to smile and look adorable, even though they're they could be quite deadly. So that's just the way it is with me. And once you have the general size, shape, and proportions of your animal character, you can then go back and look at reference and get more, you know, ideas for how you want to render, you know, the underbelly or the spine or any other detail with the character. So I'm happy with this. So let's move on with the flamingo. And instead of a large chunky oval or rectangle, I'm going to start off with a circle shape, very simple circle shape. And again, my flamingo is a bird. It's not a four legged animal, so I'll just be drawing two legs. But the same idea, I'm going to be drawing a body, the neck, legs, and tail, just like all the other animals on this page. So here, I'm going to be drawing very long, elongated legs with simple triangles as the feet, and I'm going to kick back this back leg and have it bend at the knee as well. So I'm going to bring that forward, and I'm going to draw that second foot down here. And for now, I'm just drawing triangles for the feet. So I'm drawing the neck of my flamingo, and I'm not exactly sure. Again, I'd have to look at reference to make sure that I'm on the right track. But I'm just going to be drawing a long bending neck, a very snake like looking neck. Um, a circle for the head, and I'm going to draw the beak of the flamingo, which is quite large. So I'm just working my way around the neck, and I want to continue that line as far as the beak is concerned. And I think the beaks sort of are this shape, and they are black at the tips from memory. And yeah, I'm quite happy with the flamingo. I feel like the legs could be longer. Or the head and neck could be the head might need to be smaller. But in general terms, it reads as flamingo, so I'm happy with that. So as you can see, I have drawn four very different looking animals using the same kind of format, starting with drawing the largest body mass, followed by the legs, whether it's the two legs of a bird or the front legs and the rear legs of a four legged animal. And then we draw the tail, and we have four completely different looking animals, but we've drawn them in a very systematic way. So I hope you've enjoyed this lesson, drawing a zebra, a crocodile, a hippo, and a flamingo. And I will see you in lesson two, where I'll show you how we can transition from observation to imagination. 3. Give animals human qualities: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to move from observation through to imagination. Before I do that, I want to run you through the difference between sketching from life versus sketching from reference. When sketching from life, you need to be able to capture the animals in their natural habitat quickly, and you get to see them interacting with each other and their environment. Sketching from life is probably the best way to learn how to draw animal characters well. But not many of us get the opportunity to be able to draw a rhino in its natural habitat. So the next best thing is to head down to your local zoo. You can take notes, you can sketchbook, you can take photos, video, footage, and use that to form an idea of your rhino character. And if you're unable to do that, the next best thing is to do that Google search. So once you've established the basics of what that character looks like and their characteristics and personality, you can then start sprinkling in your imagination and bring that character to life. When it comes to designing animal characters for picture books, you want to find that sweet spot between sketching from life and bringing in your imagination. So, grab your pencils and let's get started. I'm going to show you how you can bring human qualities to any four legged animal. We're going to bring them up onto their hind legs and just add a little bit of a human touch to them. So what I'm going to do first is move my zebra from standing on all fours to standing on his hind legs. Now, you can choose to use your iPad or you can follow along with me and use a sheet of tracing paper. So we're going to start drawing the torso, but instead of drawing it horizontal, we're going to tilt the torso of the zebra so that it's almost vertical. So you can see the shape here is almost like a jelly bean shape. And really, this shape does a lot as far as movement with your characters. Because I'm tilting my zebra, I just want to show you I'm going to then have the legs here. The tail would stay, obviously, in the same spot. And the arms. Well, the shoulders, I should say, 'cause we are moving the arms and shoulders together. You can see that I have up until the the bend in the arm, and then I'd bend the arm up, possibly. And then I might even the wrist I might bend that down. So there's the arms. Looks like my zebra is going to be falling, so I'm gonna put a second leg in behind, you know, in the background there. So you can see my zebras coming together and you can see that I can just pop in the neck. So it really is just taking the side view and tilting the torso. And I might even do a second arm in the background. My zebra could be, I don't know, holding something like a flower. You add in the details, you add in the stripes, and then you have your zebra, character looking a lot more human. So let's have a go at drawing this same zebra, but with more energy. So I just want to bring a little bit more life to this zebra. So the way to do that is to bend the torso. So I'm going to start off with the torso, the same length, the same width. Here we are. And imagine the torso having an oval there, an oval there. But I'm actually going to curve this torso out here like this. I'm going to have one leg down just like we did before. So you can imagine quite easily how this leg would come in from back here. I've got the knee joint, and then we have the tail can flick up a little bit more, maybe. Alright. But what I'm going to do now is rather than having the leg standing, I'm going to kick one of the legs up. And I'll kick the leg up forward. So this is the leg that's sitting in the background, so it still sits within the hip joint, but you can see that I'm kicking the leg up. There we go. So all of a sudden, there's a lot more movement to this zebra. I'm then going to keep the neck where it is, the head where it is. You can see all these pieces coming together. But I might just lift the head up. And my zebra is going to be looking up. And of course, you can add expression on the face. The moment it's looking quite worried. I don't know why. Big sad eyes. And you can see, what do I want to do with the arms? So this is something you can play around with. Let's try and move one of the arms backwards. So we've got the shoulder. So you do want to be aware of where the shoulder is. And I'm just going to add the hoof of my zebra. That's one arm. And I'm going to add the other arm I'm just looking. Can you see how you can just sort of play around with where you want that second arm? Do I want that second arm up? Do I want it forward? Where do I want it to go? So I think we're going to go we're going to go forward. So again, I've got the arm and the shoulder, got the joint here, and I'm just going to so really, the tracing is just to keep keep tabs on the length of the limbs. And just to keep that consistency going. You can see already I've got the nose almost too thick. So I'm just gonna come in, narrow the nose down. I'm also going to add some of these Ooh Sorry, I got lost in the trace. We can come in and we can just add the stripes to our zebra to make it more zebra like. But you can see how you can go from your drawing of your zebra on all fours to drawing your zebra standing upright to making the movement and the position. Oops, sorry. I'm just coming in here. I just want to fix this part. Much more dynamic. So you can see how just by simply moving the limbs, understanding the shoulders, and you don't need to draw all the shoulders. When it comes to your final piece, you'd just be drawing this much of the arm you try and create that roundness of the zebra. And you can just play around with moving your animal characters arms. You don't want to, like, distort them too much when it comes to positioning your animal characters, or it won't be believable. I'll just do one more. But instead of curving the spine this way, so I'm going to draw the front and the side position. I'm actually going to Really stretch the zebra's body the other way. So you can see here the jelly bean shape or kidney bean shape was this way, and now it's the opposite way. Let's see what that does. Again, I'm going to put this leg down on the ground. And what I want to do is I want to just try, yeah. Go. Moving the leg a little bit forward because I want to kick one of the legs back rather than forward the whole time. So we have one leg on the ground. Here we go. And then I'm going to come in, and I'm actually going to I want to have the belly and the leg sort of continue out. Let's see if we can create this. So I'm looking where the hip joint would be, the legs, the arms. So this is the back leg. So I'm just going to just shade that in a little bit, and then we'd have the tail as well. Alright, so all of a sudden, my zebra looks completely different. So I just want to turn this around and you can see the shoulder. And I want to lift this arm up. Again, I'm just looking at it from height, and I'm going to so I really do have this Of of the zebra, doing this. Alright. Already, I quite like this. So I've got that arm up. I'm going to have this arm down. And again, I've got the shoulder. But what I want to do is I want to bend the arm at the elbow, much like I did with this one, and just soften it a little bit. So what do I do with the head of my zebra? I'm going to have the neck continue. So here I've got the spine, and that's another thing. Really think about the spine and the tail. Now, I had my tail tucked in, but I'm actually thinking I might kick the tail up here because I think it has a nice line across here. So look for the pose, Alright, so that's what my zebras looking like. I'm just gonna rub this part of the tail out, just so I don't get confused. There we go. But I like how this is going. But now it's all about where the head is going to go. So do I want my head up? And I think I do. I think I want my head up. So, again, I'm lifting the head up. And I'm drawing the snout of my zebra, and my zebra might have their eyes, clothes. Go. Just coming around here now. And I think, here we go. I have my zebra, really dancing, moving, looking very regal. And then, again, you can come in and do facial expressions and that sort of thing. But this is how you get your animal characters moving. So we've gone from zebra on all fours to zebra in a sort of placid position. To a zebra, moving forward. And we've also changed just by moving the arms, the legs, the torso, twisting the torso from forward to back. We've really opened up the idea of being able to move our characters in any which direction that we need them to be. And it's just so much fun bringing animals to life like this and being able to move them as you wish. And I hope this has helped with bringing more human qualities to your animal characters. Make sure to join me in the next lesson, where I'll be showing you how to use the six key elements to animate any animal character. I'd love to see what you're up to, so please share, and I will see you in the next lesson. 4. Six key parts to move animals: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to use the six key elements to animate any animal character. We're then going to apply the six key elements to a crocodile character, a hippo, and finally a flamingo character. At the end of this lesson, we should have four characters a zebra, a hippo, a crocodile, and a flamingo ready for our next lesson where we place them into a scene. Let's go back to our original sketches of the hippo, the zebra, the crocodile, and the flamingo, for animals that are completely different in appearance. The hippo is bulky and round. The zebra, side by side with the hippo is quite chunky as far as its body goes, but it has much thinner, longer limbs, a much longer neck. And a horse like snout. We then have the crocodile, which is similar in size as far as the body goes, but much shorter limbs, much longer snout and longer, larger tail. And then we have our flamingo, two legged, not four legged, so slightly breaking the rules here, but we have a small round body, and then we have the long elegant neck and legs. So despite their striking differences, these animals are all constructed from the same six key elements. They each have a head, a neck, front legs and shoulders, the body being the largest mass on each of these animal characters, the rear legs and hips, and finally, the tail. I mean, look how different these tails are. With the crocodile, you've got this enormous large, long tail that juts out from the body. Compare this to the tiny little flick tail that the zebra has and the stub of a tail that the hippo has. Knowing how to break your animal characters down into these six different parts will help you be able to illustrate and animate any kind of animal character. Using this method, you'll be able to make your hippo sit, your zebra stand, or have your crocodile walk across the page. So now let's start drawing and animating our animal characters, like we did in the last lesson with the zebra, I'm laying a sheet of tracing paper over my original sketch. But with every animal character that we do, we always start with the largest mass, and that would be the body. You can see here I've tilted my crocodile's body into a more vertical position, and I'm about to work on the limbs. And the quickest and easiest way to do that is to tilt the page underneath, and you can see that I'm making room for the hip joint, and I'm just literally tracing the knee, the leg, and the foot of the crocodile. So here I'm drawing an ellipse underneath the crocodile. And I want to draw that left foot of the crocodile. So I want to place that backfoot within that ellipse shape. And the ellipse is kind of allowing me to sort of think of the crocodile in more of a three dimensional kind of shape. So I'm just tracing in the back foot, darkening it up, and I'm really happy with that result. So now it's time to draw the tail, and you can see that the tail is an extension of the body, and I'm just adding the spines and connecting everything together. So far, we have the body, the hind legs, and the tail. So next, let's work on the head. So with this, I have a circle and then from that circle, I'll draw the eyes, the eye socket, and I'll draw the long snout, just tracing from the drawing from underneath. I'm then going to attach this to the body and just make sure that I have everything in the right place. Once I've done that, I add the spines across the body and head to finish it off. And now I've got to think about where I want the arms. And you can see I'm rotating the sketch underneath. I want to have a bit of a wall here, so I want the crocodile to be peering around the wall. I have that back arm really stretched out straight with the fingertips just bending around the corner. And once I finish this, I start on the second arm, the one that's closest to us, and I start with the shoulder. And I'm just using the image behind to get the correct length and width of the arms, helps keep everything in proportion. Also helps keep the character consistent. So if I was to draw this character over and over again for, let's say, a picture book, I'll be able to use that original illustration to keep everything in proportion. So now that I've completed my crocodile character, I'm going to move on to my hippopotamus. Like we did with our crocodile, I'm going to start with the body of the hippopotamus. Want to change the shape of the body and arch the back and arch the belly. So I'm just sort of bringing it in. So it's more like a jelly bean shape, as you can see here. So now I'm ready to do the legs. I'm going to focus on where the hip would be, and I'm just drawing an oval to mark that. I want to know where the knee is and also the placement of the ankle and the base of the foot. So here I have the first leg. And now I've got to try and figure out what I want to do with this second leg. So I'm just having a little play. And with that first leg planted into the ground, what I'm thinking of doing is kicking that back leg up and back. And I think that'll be quite a dynamic pose for this hippo. So I'm just having a bit of a bit of a play around with how I want to animate this hippo. So you can see I've got the back leg kicking up and that front leg planted really nicely into the ground. So far, I have my body my hind legs and the tail, and now I need the fore arms and the shoulders. And that's the thing. When you're animating animal characters, you want to be able to see the arms and the shoulders as one unit. They're not just stuck on like an afterthought. And also, when it comes to anthropomorphosizing your four legged animals, you want to make the arms as thick and as long and as wide as the legs. So make sure to refer back to your original sketch of your animal character and keep those proportions the same. Now I just got to work out where I'm going to put that back arm. And when I'm thinking about the back arm, I got to think about the shoulders and the length of the arm as well. So here I have my hippo complete with one leg down and one leg kicking back. He's fully animated, but his size and proportions are still the same as the original. Now you can see side by side, my hippo and my crocodile are completely different in shape, size, and proportion. But we've managed to break down both of their bodies into six different parts, the head, the neck, the front legs, and shoulders, the body, the rear legs, and hips, and finally, the tail. So now let's move on to the last character, which is the flamingo. So I want to redraw the side view of my flamingo. I like the one that I did before, but I want to have much longer legs. So I'm doing a smaller shape for the body, drawing a side view, and then a front view. So now I have my egg shape. I'm going to draw the tail and bring that around. And then I'm going to start thinking about the length and the size and the shape of the neck. I'm bringing it up from the body, and you can see I'm using a soft curve, almost like an S shape. And I'm just going to bring the neck up and around, and I'm creating a circle for where I want the head. And from the head, I then draw the shape of the beak, really simple eye. And now I'm going to draw those really long legs. The legs are about the same length as the neck and the big combined. I've got an ankle and then the large sort of paddle foot and make sure to draw the knee in, as well. So I'm happy with this basic structure. Here I'm just doing the bent leg, and I'm just going to drag that across and do a very simple triangle for the foot of my flamingo, a few extra feathers, and we've done our side view. Now we're going to move on to the front view of our flamingo. And what I'm doing here is dragging across the basic size and proportions of where those main things are like the bottom of the foot, top of the head, the body, and you can see how I'm drawing a circle to mark the space where the body is going to sit and also where the neck starts. Now, you won't see the curve of the neck with the front view. You might see a slight curve. The head is going to be in the same spot as the side view. And I'm just, again, drawing the length of the neck. Uh, down into the body, and then I'm going to draw the front view of the flamingos head and the heads facing upwards as well. So just working on where the eye would be and a side view of the eye, you wouldn't see very much of it. I'm just going to work my way down. And now it's time to draw the legs. So the legs come from these little triangle areas. I'm going to mark where the knees are. And rather than drawing legs going straight up and down, place them on an angle and kick that knee in and then bring it out again for the ankle. You can see I've got the knee there. I've got the area where the leg extends from the body, and I'm going to ground that flamingo into the ground, so it looks like it's balancing. So I'm ready to start on the second leg, and I'm just tilting the body up a little I'm then going to draw the top part of the leg. So let's do the knee first. And then I'm drawing the legs going back, so there's going to be a little bit of perspective here, and then I'm going to draw the ankle and the foot. Here we go. There's the ankle, connect to the shin, and then I'm going to draw that foot to the same length as we have on that side view. And here we have it. We have a side view and a front view of our flamingo bird character. So now that we have animated our four animal characters, despite their differences, these animals are all constructed from the same six key elements, the head, neck, front legs, and shoulders, the body, back legs, and hips, and the tail. As an illustrator, knowing these six key elements is really going to give you the freedom to animate and pose your characters in any way you like. So looking forward to having you join me in the next lesson, where we're going to place our hippo, zebra, crocodile, and flamingo into a scene. Oh 5. Draw a scene with your animals: In this lesson, we're going to build a scene using our hippo, zebra, crocodile and flamingo characters. In Lesson one, I randomly picked four animal characters, and we drew them using simple shapes. In lesson two, we moved from observation to imagination, adding human qualities and making our zebra character stand, walk, and dance across the page. In lesson three, I showed the easiest way to animate any animal character by breaking down the subject into six key elements. We then use this technique to animate our hippo, our crocodile and our flamingo characters. Uh, so what we're going to do now is we're going to take all the sketches that we did earlier. And here we drew the flamingo side view and front view. We drew different variations of our character, and we're going to start with this idea of the crocodile. So now that we have the basic structure of our animals, we're going to start thinking about how we can create a scene, and you might even decide to change your characters. You might want to add a little bit more detail. So this is your opportunity to understand and refine your characters. So we're building in story. So to keep it as simple as possible, what I've got here is the crocodile appearing around the corner. So I might even pop in another eye there, so that he's really stretching his neck, and all you see is his arm and hand. And again, we're going around the corner here. So again, we want to perhaps understand a little bit more about the details. This is kind of the opportunity to spend a little bit more time um, refining your animal characters. So I'm not going to complete the tail of my crocodile because I want to have other animals coming in behind. So my crocodile is in the front. And I don't know how I'm going to position the other characters around my crocodile. And you can see the knee here. I can see that I want my crocodile to be the first of the bunch. So his hand is already around the corner. I might even put a little thumb there. I want to make him a little bit more human. And, again, this is where you can start spending as much time as you want to need to how do you want to illustrate your crocodile? Like I said, I'm not going to complete the tale of my crocodile until I know what my other characters are going to be doing. And I want to start building this story of the crocodile peering around the corner. What's he doing? Why is he doing it? And start thinking about this storytelling aspect of your illustration. What I'm going to try and do is bring in my zebra. My zebra is going to be standing right behind the crocodile. I almost want to make my zebra 20% shorter, smaller, that sort of thing. I can move this arm to fit the story, and I might even move the head, as well. So let's just try and get the zebra to fit what we'd like to do. So here I have my front leg of my zebra. And the hoof. And again, I got this idea of the leg of my zebra might even bring that further out. So my zebra's standing in front of the crocodile's tail, which makes sense. So I want to make my zebra a little bit smaller and shorter by shortening the torso, so I'm just gonna bring the torso down a little bit. There we go. And we have the zebra coming in. And then you can see that that will be the torso there. So I've got the hind legs, the torso, and now I'm going to work on this arm. Now, for me, this arm is sticking out too far. It's not connecting to the crocodile. So what I'm going to do is draw so you want to imagine that we have a shoulder as well because, you know, it all connects. But what I might do is I might actually place the arm onto the crocodile's hand, almost like he's holding the hand. So I'm just going to erase some of the crocodile here and draw the zebra. And there's the elbow, the wrist. And then we have And then we have the front arm of the zebra really leaning in. So what I want to do now is draw the neck of the zebra. And again, I like the idea of following this shape of the crocodile, as well. So let's just do that same thing with the neck. Here we go. And I want to bring the zebra in front of the crocodile. So what I'm going to do is here I'm rubbing out again another piece of the crocodile. But I want to have ze zebra almost like really leaning in. And again, my zebra's gonna be 20% smaller. So I'm just gonna be aware of that. There we go. And my zebra's eyes there might even lift a little bit of the eye up here. And do I want to have the ears forward probably? Like, everything's on high alert. And then we have, maybe the ear in the back there. And zebras have that sort of mohawk style down here. I'm also going to just bring in a few stripes. My zebra is going to have stripes all the way down here. I think the hard part is actually the arms and how do you connect all the stripes? And again, we'd have stripes along the legs as well so that it reads zebra. Alright, so we now have a crocodile and a zebra. And do I finish the tail of my zebra? I'm not sure. I'll put something in for now, but I can always change it. Alright, so there we go. Crocodile zebra. The zebra's connecting with the crocodile. I might even bring a second arm here. And the spines of the crocodile are there, too, and I like how they're connected. These two are up to something. All right. So now my next character is going to be the hippo. So let's go back to this sheet. And I can see straight up how am I going to do this? So we're looking down. There's my pavement. And I want my hippo, so I got I've got my crocodile sitting here, my zebra sitting here, and I think I want my hippo to be sort of standing here a little bit in front with that front leg. Alright, so let's tuck him under, and let's see what we can do. So you can see they're not exactly because we've been just randomly drawing them. We haven't exactly drawn the connection between the two. So what I might do do I want to have my hippo really leaning in? He might be too heavy for that. So I might, I might tiptoe my hippo, as well, a little bit more. Okay, let me just draw the body of my hippo. So I'm going to draw the torso, which I really quite like the hippos torso here. We have the arm of my hippo. And I might draw the elbow of my hippo over here. So this arm can come down. And I might just try and connect my hippo to the zebra just here. So just leaning on the back of the zebra. Now, you can see that it's almost too heavy to have the weight of the hipo's head. So I might just tilt. There we go, like this. And I'm going to draw My hippos a baby hippo, but still a lot, um, a lot larger than the others. A lot heavier. And to make it look more baby, I've probably made the snout a little shorter. And I'll worry about the eye and what that looks like in just a minute. I'm just going to draw the shape of the head, so the head's gonna sit in this area here. And the hippo has little snubby ears. There we go. And he's got folds of skin, because he's nice and rotund. Alright, in the arm, you probably wouldn't see all that shoulder part. You just see this section here. Alright, so now I need to understand the leg of my hippo. And I'm thinking that my hippo is really going to be reaching out, like leaning up almost on tiptoes. So this seems to work. This works well, and I think it's in line with the zebra, as well. So before I start, I'm going to just draw the backfoot of my hippo. There it is the hind leg. And I'm going to draw the hippo on his tippy toes. There's his knee. And there's his, you know, we really want to see that leaning in. And here he has his leg. And you can see now, I'm glad I didn't finish my zebra. I think I'm going to bring the tail around here like this for the zebra, just so it's not overlapping the hippo. So I just want to, you know, sometimes things like the tail, you might want to just hold back and do those sorts of things last. So I really like that. So let's say they're all looking around the corner. They all want to get a really good view of what, you know, what's coming around the corner. They don't know. There's a lot of anticipation in this illustration. Do I want to show both eyes with my hippo or just the one eye? Maybe I'll show both. Alright, so I really like that. I really like the leaning in. Let's just get clear about this hand. Do I want a big clunky hand of my hip? I think I might just soften and make the hand less heavy by just putting a few digits in there. There we go. And that's my hippo, maybe a few bits of hair fur. Now, while I have this, I'm going to go back to my crocodile and the tail of my crocodile. Now that I have all my other animals sitting behind, where do I want the tail to go? So this is really just piecing together all these different animals and making them connect with story. So here we have the crocodile. I might even bring the crocodile's tail around and behind the zebra, there's the two toones of my crocodile. Again, I can come in and add all the details that I need to. So my crocodils sitting behind. So I would probably just do that. Let's see what we have here. Alright, so this is looking good. I want to add a few more details. We've got some shadows to do. Here we have a shadow of the zebra. And we've got the shadow of our hippo, as well against the wall. All right. That looks good. Now that we've got the shadow of our zebra there. That works and the shadow of our zebra there. And then this is all crocodile with the zebra's hand. So it's just a matter of moving through and seeing if you've got all your characters in place. Do you have the facial expressions, exactly how you want them? Let's have a look. We've got the wall here. Do you want to show a little bit of, you know, weeds, that sort of thing growing on the wall? How does that wall look? And we now need to look at what's coming around the corner. What's this story all about? How can we finish this illustration and make it into a really fun story? So what I'm thinking is that we have the flamingo completely unaware of what's around the corner. But the flamingo is going to be just walking, and we know what's coming, but the flamingo has no idea. So I'm just drawing, you know, a little bit more detail around the the hoofs of my zebra. Alright, that makes sense. That reads well. And I think everyone's looking great. All we now need to do is draw our unsuspecting flamingo. So what we have here is flamingo walking. I think my flamingos way too big, so I'm going to draw my flamingo, much smaller. Okay, so I'm going to draw my flamingo in this spot here. To make it smaller, I'm going to draw the body of my flamingo smaller. So half the size. I'm then going to just very quickly draw the knee, the leg, draw much more like this. That's it. That's about it. Feet planted on the ground. One knee up, leaning all his weight into this part of the leg. Let's just really lift up this side of the leg as well. The knee, there we go. We had the foot up and around with the ankle here, so the ankle was a bit higher than this ankle. Gosh, that's too thick, isn't it? Yep. Nice and planted. And then we had the ankle coming back a little bit, so a little bit of foreshortening. And then we had the leg back here. So that works. Alright. The leg goes up, and then we had the neck sort of protrude from here. So what I want to do is I want to probably turn the head more to the side, just so it's a little bit more interesting. And I want to make the length of the neck the same as the legs. So I'm going to go here. I'm going to bend the neck. And just to keep up with the shapes that we've got here, we've got, you know, the pavement coming this way. Got the pavement there. So I might even draw the flamingos head sort of over here like this. And I might even draw my flamingos eyes closed. So they really aren't. They're just walking confidently, not really taking much interest in what's around. And here, I've got a much longer leaner neck, head, color this part in darker. And I might just make sure I've you know, we've got Flamingo absolutely unaware of what's about to happen. Um, there's flamingo sort of in this spot here. There's a little indication of crocodile. And friends, about to pounce or at least scare our flamingo. I'm just gonna make the claws of my crocodile a bit smaller. We have now created a scene where our animal characters have come to life story. I hope you enjoyed this drawing session, and I hope it's made drawing animal characters a lot more simple, and I can't wait to see your final artwork.