Character Design: Create a Character from any Animal

1. Introduction: Hello, everybody. This doesn't work. Hi, everybody. My name is Hayden Aube, and I'm an illustrator, and graphic designer. More importantly to you, I love to create characters, and I love animals. That's what this class is all about. It's learning how to draw an animal, and then turn it into a character design. The way that we're going to do that is I'm going to introduce you to step by step process that you can apply to any animal to learn how it works, and then turn it into character concept, and then have a final character. This process involves taking a dive into how the animal works, and what the anatomy looks like. Then from there you're going to learn to draw from photo reference in a way that actually has you internalize the information, and not just copy what you see. From there, you're going to get some information about how to come up with interesting character concepts. Then we're going to take one of those, and finalize it into a finished line drawing that you could apply any design style to that you would like to, now for this class, I have chosen three specific animals that were going to be drawing. This is the bear, the dog, and the horse. I've chosen these ones because they are great foundational animals that by learning a bit of their anatomy, and how their limbs work, you're going to be able to apply that to almost any animal that you learn in the future. This is a really good foundational knowledge, and if you're someone who wants to learn how to draw animals, not just well realistically, but understand them to a level where you can actually invent your own characters based off of them. Then this is the class for you. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you there. 2. Getting the most out of this class: In this class, we are going to be going over a step-by-step process for learning how to draw animals and then turn them into characters. We're going to be doing this for bears, for dogs, and then for horses. The steps that we're going to be taking are, we're going to first learn about the function and the anatomy of an animal. Then we're going to learn how to understand it while we're drawing it from photo reference. Then we're going to come up with character concepts and then we're going to choose one and make it into a final draw. Before we get into the first animal, there's just a couple things that I want to go over to make sure that you get the best that you can out of this class. First of all, my recommendation is that you do all three animals. If you just want to do one of them, that's okay. You're still going to get benefit from it. But it's by doing all three that you're going to get an overview of pretty much all the land mammals and that's going to really help you for any animal that you want to draw on the future. That's what I recommend. The next thing is that for each animal, I want you to watch all the videos and then do them yourself. If you watch them all first, you'll get a really good understanding of the entire process and then you can do it on your own. Also, I want to mention that it's very important that you actually apply what you learn in this class. Just by watching the videos and you get some information but until you actually do the work yourself by drawing these animals and trying out the process that we're taking. It's not until you do that, that you really understand it and you really get it and it sticks with you. If you watch it now, and then try to apply it months down the road, you're probably going to forget it. Then everything that you do create, upload here to Skillshare. That way I can see it, all the other students can see it and we can give you comments and feedback on your animals. I also really want you to take your time while you're doing this and to really try and get curious about the animal you're drawing. One of the things that I find is that if you're rushing something, it's almost never fun, and it almost never produces the result that you want it to.But if you slow down, take your time, and really try to get interested in the animal you're drawing, you're not only going to have more fun, but your characters are going to end up that much better, I promise. Also, don't stop when it gets hard and this is a really big one to behavioral science tells us that when we're doing things that are really difficult, that's when we're actually improving. If you're having a hard time drawing animals or drawing one step of this process, that's a good sign that you're getting better. That's how you know that you're improving. Everything you do is just easier if you're just drawing things that you've always drawn before, you're not going to get better doing that. If this is hard, that's a really good sign and I want you to keep pushing through that. Finally, if you say, you know what, bears, dogs, horses, they are great but I want to do something else I want to do a raccoon or something, that's totally fine. As I said, this process will works for any animal, so just follow along as normal and then when it comes to actually drawing your own animal, just pick whatever you want. Now that you know everything, we can move on to the first animals, which are bears. 3. Bears: Anatomy & Function: So before we start actually drawing, we're going to do this with this animal as well as all the other ones, is we're gonna get some understanding of the basic anatomy and function. In order to do this, we have three simple questions that we're going to ask for all of the animals. First one is what locomotive class does this animal belong to? The reason that we're starting with bears is because they actually fall into the same movement class size, and this is the plantigrade class. So because of this, they're the easiest to understand. Each of the three classes of land mammals, which you can see here, are characterized by what part of their limbs at the walk on. Plantigrades are their entire foot like you see here and that is us. Digitigrades they walk on the toes, and we'll get more into this once we get into those animals. Whereas the unguligrades are things like horses and hooves animals, they walk on their tiptoes. Again, we'll get more into that as we get to those animals. So a good way to remember plantigrade is that they plant their whole foot on the ground as they walk. That's at least how I remember it. Just something to know is that since plantigrades are using their entire foot, they are much more stable and they're able to bear a lot heavier weights. This is pretty helpful for bears, especially grizzly bears, because they can weigh up to 900 pounds. We walk around on two feet, so we're not as stable as four-legged animals however, we are more stable because we're flat-footed as opposed to standing on the balls of our feet. If you just imagine somebody trying to push you over, it's going to be much easier for you to resist them if your whole foot is on the ground than just, the balls of your feet. The final thing that you should know about plantigrades is that, among these three classes, they are typically the slowest. The second question that we want to ask is, how does this animal's anatomy compare to us? Bears are much more similar to us than you may think. To get a sense of that, there is just a comparison here between a human and a bear in a very similar pose. So one of the first thing that we're just gonna look at is just the comparison of the actual bones and you can't see the muscles, but we're going to mention that as well. Without going into all of them, because there are a lot of bones, we can actually see that there is a lot of similarities here. Right here, the femur bone in the man. Yeah, there it is, right there in the bear. Same bone, same location and then we can see that when we get into the bottom here, we have the same bones as well. Same with the kneecap here, that's the patella, that's also there. As you enter the foot it is more or less the same exact bones. The main difference you're going to find is that, they're different lengths, different sizes but more or less the same bones are there in bears, in humans, in all sorts of, especially mammals, we can see too that they have the spine going on the top. Then it's the rib cage, the scapula or shoulder blade. Again, you can see it's a bit bigger here and the bear but, again, in the same spot. We see that in the front legs too, they bend the same way. So here would be the equivalent to the bicep of the bear and of the human. Then the form, is exactly the same as well. So not only do we see that the majority of the bones are the same and again, so are the muscles but they also move in the same way. So if you can imagine how a human would move, so for instance, this forearm here, we can imagine coming up here and then maybe the wrist. Crude drawing but that's okay. So you can imagine the forearm coming up and then the wrist bending like that. That same motion can happen in the bear. If you can visualize yourself in this pose and how you would move about, you can actually get a really good indication of how the bear would move as well. So here would be his forearm and then his front part here. Again, moving in the same way that a human would. There are a lot of similarities here, but there are also some differences, these are different creatures. One thing I do want to mention that is very individual to humans, and apes, and some mammals, is that we have a collarbone. You can't really see it here but bears and a lot of other mammals do not have a collarbone. Collarbones are really helpful because they allow us to stretch our arms. So if you just have a person with their arms out like this, being able to do that is because we have this collarbone here and we have muscles that then attached to that and allow us to move now away. A bear cannot stretch its arms out like that. A bear's range of motion for the limbs, it would be just this way, kind of back and forward. However, because they don't have a collarbone or a clavicle, they have much more range of motion in the shoulder area. So our shoulder blade attaches to our collarbone and it makes it a lot more fixed and rigid in here. So we can move in that helpful like spreading arm motion. We don't have the shoulder flexibility that a bear or a lot of other mammals do. The shoulder blade here isn't actually attached to any other bone besides the arm. It's only attached to the rib cage through just muscle and tendon. So because of this, there's a lot more range of motion that this can make. It slides along the rib cage. If you've ever seen a tiger, as they walk, you can see their shoulder blade sticking up really sharply, this is because of that range of motion. Ours do stick out, but just not as much and this helps them to run faster to get through tighter spaces and just overall be a lot more maneuverable. The rear limbs and then the front limbs. First of all, you can see again the similarities here. So the front legs of the bear, very similar to our arm. You can see the kind of bone here, the print comes into the elbow, it's the same here. Again, if you were to look at the muscle groupings as well, they're quite similar as well. They are the same muscles, they're just obviously a lot bigger in the bear because they need a lot more strength than we do mostly to support their weight and do the different things they do but again, it's very similar anatomy and the movement, as I've mentioned, is the same. Other similarities that we can see here are just the number of fingers and toes. We got five toes, we got five fingers, so do the bears. I guess the main differences here mostly are, as I said, the size and again, the range of motion that they can't really spread out. So because we have a good understanding of humans, I mean, if you've done some anatomy research, that's great but otherwise you are humans, so you kind of have a sense of how you can move and what we look like. So by understanding the comparison between the animal we're drawing and ourselves, we are really arm ourselves with so much information that's going to help us with our drawings. The third question we want to ask before we move on to the drawing is, why is this animal design the way that it is? Nature is very efficient, rarely does any single feature exists on an animal that doesn't serve a purpose. By taking the time to understand why an animal looks and moves the way it does, we can already start to get a sense of what kind of character that it can become. A great way for you to do this is to ask yourself questions about the animal you're drawing. So in the case of bears, what did they eat? Why do they stand up sometimes? How fast can they run? Just really getting curious about what you are drawing is going to help you when you actually start drawing. In these lessons I am answering these questions for you but when you're learning an animal on your own, the next step would be to take these questions that you've asked, go out and research and find the answers for yourself. While we're gonna be learning about the animal as we draw it, doing research beforehand will not only give you a great starting point, but gets you more invested in the animal you're drawing and you can have fun with it. Animals do some pretty bizarre and funny things. So the more you get into it, the easier you might find that it is to just get trapped on a bunch of Wikipedia pages. Since we're going to be drawing grizzly bears, here are some interesting characteristics that can help get you into the zone. These facts might even inspire a character idea too, and we haven't even started drawing yet. So I was wondering how fast bears run, and apparently it's quite fast. Bears are actually really great sprinters. They can run up to 50 yards in just three seconds, which is about 40 miles per hour. That's faster than a race horse, let alone any person. So I guess that's why they typically don't tell you to try and run away from the bear. Male grizzly can be up to 50 percent larger than females. So already I could imagine a character or a pair of characters that's like a husband and wife of bears and just have the male being really really big and the female being very very small. In the winter their fur is long and thick, while in the summer it is thin and short. So again, thinking about characters, I can make a bear on the beach and just give him a really short fur maybe he's even bolden. I was also wondering why bear stand. That is because apparently they can see a lot further and they could smell lot better when they're standing. So it's great for us surveying the area and in order to do this, they actually have to have very powerful hind legs. So that's why when you look at a bear, they just have bigger buts and there are a lot larger in the back and part of that is, so that they can do this. So again, I could apply that to a character. I can maybe create like a child bear that's stretched out really tall, trying to reach a jar cookies or something. Another interesting thing is that they have long curved claws and they are about the same length as a human finger. They are also omnivores so that eat meat and plants, and they will prey on something as small as a fish or as big as a moose or black bear. Grizzly will roar if they're injured, they will also chomp their teeth if they are warning other bears of danger. Finally, grizzly bears have exceptionally large hump on their shoulders, I'm sure you've seen this. This is all muscle. That's because grizzly dig more than any other bear. They dig through the ground, they dig through logs and when they're looking for food, and often they'll be in very rocky places when they need to dig their den to hibernate. So they need a lot of shoulder strength to do all this powerful digging. So again, if I wanted to apply this fact to a character, I could create something like a bear bodybuilder that's really, really strong in the neck and maybe not so much everywhere else. If you have any other burning questions about bears, I encourage you to go and answer them for yourself. Otherwise, feel free to move on to the next video where we're going to start drawing. 4. Bears: Learning While Drawing: Now that we have some basic understanding on bears, were going to start drawing. What we're going to be doing here is just going online, finding some reference photos, and try and get some variety. Here you're going to see I have a bunch of different poses. These are poses that I like, but I'm also trying to get some different angles as well. You can see with this guy here he's straight on, a lot of side ones, but this is like a three-quarter view, which is a really good one. Again, I'm also just trying to find examples of some of things that we found earlier. I got the bear standing over here. I got these claws in case I want to learn some more about those, and I was really looking for a lot of poses with that shoulder hub because I really like that. Really what I'm going to do is I'm just going to start drawing from these references and I mean, it doesn't have to be like, so I think it's important to know that this part is not about making something that looks good. This is about learning, about trying to find out visually, like we learn a lot of information about bears, and again some of the visuals but through drawing it, you can get some new visual understanding of the animal, and that's like so whenever I want to learn a new animal, I usually will do a lot of this depending on how much of it I want to learn. Again, we're not going for accuracy, we're for understanding and you might even notice here too, I'm bringing it down in some more basic shapes. Here's the form, or sorry, this biceps kind of like a cylinder and the form is another cylinder. The entire body again is like a cylinder, and why I'm doing this is because it's going to make it easier for me to draw it later on when I'm coming out with my character concepts. If I have some basic understanding or if I have knowledge of the basic shapes that go into making a bear. The simpler that you can break it down, the easier you'll be able to remember it, and the easier it will be able to position it in new poses or to do things like shading. If I know that the leg is like a series of cylinders. When it comes to shading it, there's like a light coming from here. I know, I just got the shaded as I would a normal set of cylinders and then from there it's not a stretch to put the fur on it and turn it into something more detailed or stylized however you want to stylize it. Again, I'm just drawing the shapes. Getting a sense for the pose is how, that's one thing that's different between animals and us is that they're going to stand in different poses. So it's kind of helpful to find some poses that you like and they might help you when you're coming up with some character ideas. For instance, this one in particular, I really like how stretched out this bear is. It's also gets pointing. You see a lot of like pointer dogs, like different hounds like beagles. Actually no, I don't think beagles are pointers. Regardless, I really like this pose. That's why I chose this and remember this point, you're not really copying. You don't want to just focus on getting it accurate or drawing it just like it is in the photo because there are different skills. If you're just focusing on replicating, you're not really understanding the animal as much and that's what we're trying to do here, is we're trying to understand what we draw and to do that it's why you would break it down into basic shapes. It gives you a different understanding than if you would just do outlines and try and draw the individual hairs and copy it exactly. It'll be great if that's like a piece that you're trying to make, like you're trying to make a realistic drawing based on a bare photo, but that's not what we're doing. We're going to be creating our own characters and what's going to be really helpful for us in doing that is if we understand the makeup of the bear. Two ears. I'm just trying to figure out like where things are placed. I can see that you're really trying to make observations as you do this like, oh, like, the ears are placed quite far back on the head here, on the snout really swoops down like this. It seems like the fur stops around here, release the thick fur and that really thins out on this part of the face, and there's a little bit of a belly here. It tapers around the chest area, and then gets bigger and the legs, yeah. They look a little stumpy, at least from here. I do know that there are these claws you can see from here, but that's also what we do in because we're going to be making stylized characters and stylizing really does get into simplified. That's what we want to do here, just figure where the simple forms of this bear just got as pop up like this. If you have the opportunity to draw the animal from real life. Maybe you're drawing like a dog or a cat that you have at home or maybe you're at the zoo drawing animals. That's always the best because when you draw from photos like this, it's really easy to just draw them flatly, just have a very two-dimensional look like this one here because photos are very two-dimensional things. But when you're drawing from real life, it's constantly moving. You can see from different angles, and it just gives you a better impression of the three dimensions of it because that's something we want to do here too. Let's find out the three-dimensional shapes, not just that, this is a rectangle, but that again, it's more of a cylinder. It's three-dimensional, and then we can move that in three-dimensional space when we are creating our characters. That's why poses like this are very good because this is a three-quarter view. I can't just draw it sideways like I have for these ones. It's actually going to force me a bit to understand some more of the three-dimensions of it and this is where like. Just understanding, just the practice with three-dimensional shapes, moving around in space is good. It's why they say, perspective is a fundamental skill that you continue to work on because you'll need it even when you're doing stylized character, you need to understand in 3D how they would look even though your character is like a flat, kind of stylized illustration, it's still got to have some dimension to it, which is really nice. So here this head is like a sphere. It's like a sphere, and then it has this like rectangular triangle thing protruding from its face, the snout. He's got these little eyes. I'm going to remember that. Again, we're going to be making characters. So we want to pinpoint certain things that we might want to get across in a character. There's something I could probably do with tiny eyes or these little round ears and then again the hump. I really like that hump. It comes down, that's a bit big. Here I'm noticing this rhythm goes in this way and then it goes at that way. That's a nice little thing that I can maybe include if I did a character that had a similar stance to this one here. I noticed that the forums here seem to taper around the paw of the wrist. it's a lot bigger out here. I think it's because of that build up of fur but also the forearm muscles. It's bigger here, tapers in. Again, that's another observation that I'm making as I'm doing this. I know from looking at the anatomy that this is the forearm bone. I forget what the one that's here but it's where your bicep is. Then it's going to come into the shoulder. Then here is, I don't know the actual muscles, but this is a big massive muscle that will likely be attaching to the shoulders and then attaching to the rib cage and possibly been pulling the neck as well. This helps me in positioning these things. Then it comes up to this big butt. Again, another thing that I'll probably want to remember for when I'm doing my characters. I've noticed this in the other ones too, the belly seems to have a lot of fur just hangs down from the belly here. Again, that's something I'm going to want to remember. As we're doing this, again, you're making different observations. Continue to ask questions like what we were doing before and then try and answer those in your drawing. Like what is this shape here? The paw. Let's see, it's like a rectangle like this if I had to put it in perspective. If I remember this shape for the paw, it's going to be a lot easier for me to position it when I'm doing characters later on because as long as I can draw this shape, whatever perspective I can draw this shape in, I will then be able to draw the paw hand. Again, all of this takes a lot of practice and time and there's always things to work on, but that's all right. This is a great way to go about drawing an animal, and it also shows you some of your weak points. It tells you what you need to work on. Maybe as you're doing this, you're having a hard time putting shapes in different perspectives so that you know that, that maybe is a skill you need to go and work on. Let's keep going here. What also I really want to make sure I know about the bear before I move on to the characters. I got the standing one here, in case I want to do a character concept that has him standing. [inaudible] I'll do a quick one to get a sense of what that pose is like. That comes up and out, and there's the ears and you have the neck, this big hump and then from there it goes out. I think one of the surprising observations for me about this is just how long the bear looks when it's standing up like that. It really looks stretched out because we're used to seeing it hunched like that. Then the arms hang here, here's the elbow. Again, try to understand those shapes. It comes in and it's coming in and resting in front of the belly. This arms get the side and then it comes in front of the bear and then its paws hangs out here. It comes in, and it has this small area here whereas the legs come out. Again, we know the bear legs are like human legs. There's the thigh, there's the shin and it's got these little feet. Something I'm noticing too as I'm drawing these bears is that, they have these big thick furry limbs and then in comparison their paws seem to be small. That's something I can push and exaggerate in my character concepts. Or if I want even, I can make those a lot bigger and I can just be a different cake on a character. I'm just going to really try and get down the claw shape here the way it's like, he's stepping on it here. It's little like a corny gum drop shape almost. Then there's the five little claws. I say little, but we know from earlier that they're as long as human fingers. That gives us a sense of how big this animal really is. It's that these little things here are fingers. I'm going to leave that there for now. Continue to do this as much as you want until you have a really good sense of the bear, like the different shapes that's it's comprised of. You can even try at this point if you want, positioning it in different ways other than what you have in the photo. At this point, if I want to, I can even just try and draw a bear looking away other than the photo. It almost test my understanding of what I know. Again, as we move forward, you can continue to come back, look at photos, learn more. It's a back and forth process, so I hope this gives you an understanding of this part of the class and then once you're ready, we can move on to coming up with character concepts for the bear. 5. Bears: Character Concepts: Now that we've drawn some bears and we have some information about them, we're going to start moving into character concepts, which is where we finally, it's using all the stuff that we've been learning. Again is going to be very rough at first, so don't worry too much about making anything look perfect. It's just about getting ideas across. What I've done and I recommend you do is just come up with a brief list maybe of the things that you've learned about bears or certain things that really stuck out to you. The winter or summer for thing was something that was really interesting for me. I thought I could come up with a lot of different ideas from that. I liked the fact that they dig and that they get around by smelling and maybe that they're standing really tall to try and see something far away. These are all different things that I think can maybe lead to something interesting, so we'll just make a list of those characteristics. I'm going to do five different concepts. I recommend you do the same again, but feel free to do more than that. I definitely don't recommend you just do one and stick to that. It's often by just continue to push that we get something that's really interesting and different. A lot of the first ideas are more obvious ones. Yeah, so I'm just going to pick some things here and just see where it takes me. These are just quick, simple ideas. I'm going to start with the smelling one. I used to have this idea of a bear with its head really close to the ground, sniffing something. Maybe it's like the the sniffing dogs. Maybe it's like that. This is going to be really squashed against the ground. Because I'm thinking of dogs, I might even give it a bit of a dog look to it. Like I might give these ears really stuck up. Like it's a alert or something. I found that bears had really long neck, so this long neck against the ground. Here's its leg braced against the ground as it smells down. Just a big shoulder hump. I'll just move this and spots that big butt it's getting away up in the air. Again, I'm just focusing on simple shapes here. Again, it doesn't have to be, I guess it should be braising, but it doesn't have to be perfect. These are just all you need to do to get an idea across. Once we have a bunch, we're going to pick one that we like then we'll know where to clean it up. Add some more details. Make more of a polished piece. This again, is just concepts. That's all I really need for this one here. This sniffing bear. I'm just going to put a little, just for fun. A little blanket on him. It's like a be patrol. This starts to give me a sense of what a character might be. Not just a bear smelling, but maybe it is like a patrol bear that's on the hunt for something. They eat fish, maybe I can do a big fat bear having a fish dinner. Let me pick out a table in front of them. The plate with a big tasty dead fish on it. Fork and a knife because this is a civilized bear, so we are already getting the sense of what this character might be like. He's going to be very big. A good way to emphasize certain characteristics, so I'm really focusing on big here is to really think of contrast in terms of shape and size. To make his body seem really big, I can make the rest of him seem very small. I can give them these tiny little paws here. One there, one there, then maybe this little head. They can be simple, little beady eyes. Here's some raised eyebrows even though I didn't really see eyebrows. Maybe yes, you're looking down, just happy. Again, that's more of a dog thing, I don't know of bears but I think helps get the emotion across. Just this happy little bear looking at his food. Maybe instead yes, they are. He has the fork and the knife in his hand. He has this bivalent because he's going to eat. Maybe there's a fish pattern on this. I feel there is a lot of things we could do with this bib, like messages or designs or something. That's a final element to play with. But there, another concept, that bear eating some tasty fish. I can class rewind. Sweet, what else do we got here? Digging. Yeah, digging bear. Just a bear with this really big front paws for digging holes. Again, if I really want to exaggerate that I can have this bear with these really big paws. Make the rest of them maybe not so big to further enforce how just big these paws are. I don't know that you could do to all these fat things. Maybe they serve a different purpose. I feel like I'm just channeling dogs without even trying to. It always reminds of a Bulldog, but sure thing what can I do with something like this? Let's just say he does digs to earn a living. Maybe he has like a construction hat on. He's got one little safety vests. So is construction person, his job is digging. Maybe he doesn't like the job too much or maybe he's really tired because he's been digging all day, and it's no generally hot. I tried to get little things, and add some story to it. Like what's going on in here as a character? How are they feeling? It's really hot like this, and he's getting really tired, I might have his head drooped down more than it already is. Then maybe his tail is drooped a bit as well. Maybe have a lot of droopy bits. In front of them maybe there's a construction plan for all the holes he has to dig today, and there's still so much to do. He's oh, man why can't these still be over? Construction bear. Let see here, there's two more. I'm going to do the winter bear, and I'm just going to make a super furry bear. That is, it's super cold out, but it really doesn't matter because he's nice, and toasty. See me nice, big, and furry. Almost like he's wearing some winter clothing even though he's not. Some of the grizzly bears have lots of fur around their neck. This way I can do with that. He's wearing a scarf, just give him a really thick neck, so it looks like he's bundled up. I don't have the fur is going to do it alone, so I might even just give them some winter here. Standing here, I will just give him a big scarf. I just want to code on some of those big puffy ones that taper down here. Another down feather or something. In other words they have lumps, like the Michelin Man, and he'll have these little bear gloves hanging off his wrists. Some boots to be facing forward. Step at the toe of the boot, and give him a little hat just for fun. That was like a kid bear all bundled up, ready for school. That's winter clothing. So maybe that's something I'm reading in the story. It's super cold out, but he doesn't really care because he's excited to go to school to see his friends. Something sweet like that. Now for the final design, let's see here. I'm going to do some of the big butt. That'd be fun. Maybe it's a curvy lady bear looking up. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but that's all right. Some sort of glamorous pose here, a butt really big. My butt is a little weird. Something you do to a computer like me is you just move stuff around. Sure. Let me see how it looks. This one's working too well. Mostly the design of the body is a little strange. She should have a thinner face, so weird. Whatever. Again, it's just about getting the concept across. I think the concepts works. Our script is a little weird right now. Let's give her some hair, maybe some pearls, maybe she's a little fancy. Here, she's got a dress on. I think that kind of helped a bit. So you can really get a sense of those curves, and that big touchy, and these little legs, some little heels, maybe. It's not too bad, and then because it's fun, it's got fish pattern on it. Something really like saddle. She's just having a good time. Here's hairs flying around. So we've got, a lady bear. You can to go with these, and do as many as you like. Have some fun with it. Come up with some just things that are fun to make, and then once you have come up with a bunch of concepts, at least five, then we can choose one, and move on to the next video. 6. Bears: Finalizing Your Design: Once we've come up with the concept that we want to move forward with, we're now going to finalize it by doing some different iterations of it and trying to figure out how we can make it a bit more interesting. There's a couple ways that we can make our concept better. One way is exaggeration. Already, he's quite big and he has these little alarms and little head, but if we really want to, we can push that even further. I can make his head, maybe, I want to do a version where his head's even smaller and its body is way bigger. It's got these little arms, and the little utensils. Really gone between the big and the small. These little ears, and maybe his beard is very little as well. Again, really emphasizing, just really how fat this bear is. Then, I might also with that we want to emphasize his meal. Maybe he got to be this big because he doesn't want to see the one fish, maybe it's a whole pile of fish. Again, don't worry too much about the details just right now, and we're still trying to make this concept really stick. Maybe it has a couple glasses of wine. I'm not sure if that would make you fatter or not, but it hits on that it is, maybe he a bit of a pig, even though it's a bear. That would be another iteration of the chosen design. You'd also try and invent some more story behind this. I don't know, maybe the fish is alive still and he's looking up like, "Oh no, but the bear's going to eat me." That can be fun. Make it a lot more interesting illustration. We've got to do that. I want to make the bear not looking at the fish so the bear doesn't really notice. Let's do a version here where maybe our bear character is praying. He's, thanking for his food. Again, it's not perfect, we can iron everything out later. There's is his beard. Then, there's his plate and there's the fish. It's looking up at him. I'd really figure out how they design these fishes but, again, we're just dealing with the concept right now. There's the fork, knife, and wine. It's looking up at him. That's a bit more of a fun storytelling thing. In fact, I think that could even take that a step further, when the bear is praying and thanking for his meal, maybe the fish is praying for its life. I think that's fun, if they're both praying for different reasons. We have the fish here its hands together and it's praying here. Again, I think I can make the design of this fish a bit more fun and bit more clear. This isn't super clear. That's another thing, we'll always want to make sure there's this clarity in our drawings, that it's very obvious what's going on. I really want to make it obvious that this fish would be praying here. That's a direction that we can go with our concepts. Say we do one more iteration of this before we [inaudible]. May be the bear is big and fat because he's one of these rich, gluttonous, snobby types. Maybe, I can make him seem like a big guy. He's not smiling, he's a little, he's nose is high in the air. Maybe he's like, "This food, I guess it'll pass. " Our aristocratic little sometimes he still want his beard on. Maybe, he's just not satisfied through, maybe it's not enough. "Look how big I am, you think am going to eat this?" I think it has his arms crossed. Because I can, I'm going to give him a little top hat. He is like, "You expect me to eat this?" Using the power of contrast here, big table, big bear, metal plate of food. That really makes the plate look smaller when everything around it's bigger. A little fork, a little knife, a little cup of wine and so, this is not a pleased bear, but still, he got fishes on his beard. Once you've done a couple of different iterations I'd recommend at least three, you can choose the one that you're going to do for your final character. I'm actually going to choose this guy here because I really like how he's thanking for the food and then how the fish is really hoping it makes it through the meal. This is going to be my chosen design. Now, we just got to make our finished drawing of it. For this last section here, I've actually sped it up just because you don't need to see the whole process of doing this final drawing. But I do want to just mention a couple of things as I'm doing it here. One thing that I really want to mention is that the more versions of your drawing you do, typically the better it turns out. Something you'll notice is at this point, I've already drawn this bear four maybe five times. The more I do it, the more I get a feel for it. Just keep that in mind that if it's not quite working, maybe just try re-drawing your character and see if that clears some things up that maybe aren't working too well. Here, you can just see that I'm doing a bunch of different variations on the prank fish. I really just want to get that down before I put it into the main drawing. This all comes down to how much time you have for the drawing. You can do iteration after iteration, if you have limited time, but usually we don't and you don't really want to spend your entire life on one drawing. It's really a matter of getting it to a place that's good enough. I'm not going to be going over how to make a final design with colors and shapes and have plenty of other classes for that thing. But I am going to get this to a pre-polished pencil sketch, so that if I didn't want to take it to any of the different styles that I could do it in, everything super clear, and I would be able to do that. Because I can anticipate people asking which brush I'm using, this is the happy HB by Kyle Webster. It is a paid brush, but his brushes are fantastic and totally worth it. That being said, for things like sketches, I wouldn't worry too much about which brush you're using. Anything will work fine. Pencil and paper works almost better than anything else in my opinion. Here, you're going to see actually one final line drawing where I'm just going to go over and just again make it really, really simple, very, very obvious what the shapes are, so that if I do want to take this further or for anybody looking at this, they know exactly what everything is because, pencil can get really messy. I'm quite guilty of that. You'll see even at this point, I'm still making slight changes like the corners of this tablecloth here. You can even see here that I'm continuing to play around with the fish just to get it to the expression that I really want. It's very clear that he's struggling and he's really praying, like, "Don't eat me." I need to have a little sweat drop on his head to make it look like he's struggling a bit more. Then, am just add in a little bits of fur for some detail and some motion lines to again, get that fish looking like he is struggling. Then here, just trying out a little a couple different things with the face here. Change in the ears, and with that, we have our finished bear character. I hope that through this process you've got a good understanding for bear anatomy, how they work, their behavior, why their bodies are built the way they are, and you learned a really great process for coming up with concepts, refining them to get different variations. Then, creating a final line drawing that's ready to take into any illustration style that you'd like. 7. Dogs: Anatomy & Function: The second animal we're going to be going over is the dog. Now that you understand the general process that we are going to be following, we're going to move just a little bit faster. The first question that we ask is, What locomotive class does this animal belonged to? Dogs belong to the digitigrade locomotive class. What defines this class is that rather than walking with both toes and heels touching the ground, as with the plant degrades, digitigrades walk on just their toes. For those of you who are runners, especially sprinters, you'll know that it's typically beneficial to run on the balls of your feet. This is how digitigrades move. In continuing to think about when we stand on the balls of our feet, we can better understand the benefits of being a digitigrade. One instance, like I've said, is when you want to move really fast. By switching from running on our heels to the balls of our feet, we gain some springiness from the additional bend that are heal provides. This allows us to travel further with each stride and therefore faster. Because digitigrades are designed to always be in this position, they as a general rule are faster than plantigrades. A second reason that we may walk on the balls of our feet is when we're trying to be quiet. Having the extra bend and our bottom limbs that walking on our toes provides allows us to absorb more impact as we step. Along with that absorption, we cancel out more noise. Once again, as a general rule, digitigrade are quieter, which as you can imagine, can be quite useful in the wild. When I was mentioning bears, one of their benefits is that they are much more stable and able to bear a lot more weight. Because they're fully planning our feet. That means that for digitigrades, one of their downsides is that they can't hold as big weights and they aren't as stable because they are just, on the toes of the feet. A good way to remember the word digitigrade is by imagining these animals walking around on their digits or the fingers. The second question that we want to ask is how does this animal compared to us? Once again, here's a comparison between a human and a dog in a similar pose. For clarity sake, I've exaggerated the human a bit as this isn't opposed that we could so easily adopt. I'll be using a Doberman for my examples because of it's built and it's short far, really help with clarity and explanation. But there is so much variety in dogs that each one can lead to very different characters depending on the size, the look, personality, behavior. Really just feel free to choose any dog that you like for this animal. The most important comparison to make between us and digitigrades is the location of the knee. Without a bit of anatomy and knowledge, it's very easy to assume that this bend in the dog's leg is the knee, and then it bends opposite to us, but this is incorrect. Their knee actually is up here and bends the exact same as us. The bend we typically confuse for a knee is in fact their ankle. Which leaves this bend at the bottom to be the toes. By understanding this fundamental difference, we realize that dogs and all the digitigrades are a lot more like us than we think. For the most part, we still have the same bones, in the same place, with the same muscles and the same bends in the joints. Once again, you already know a lot more about dog anatomy just because you know what it's like to be human. Just as with bears, dogs are also without collarbones. This means a greater forward to backward range of motion in the shoulder, which helps with their speed, but then provides the inability to stretch their arms like we do as humans. Also, if you look at the curvature of the spine, you will see that to assume the position a human would need to curl in this way, which is quite limiting to mobility. The dog, on the other hand, is built to stand in this matter and maintains an arch in the opposite direction. Differences in limb lengths, muscle sizes, and so on, really varies from dog to dog. This is where it will be important during the learning or drying stage that we really identify the key characteristics of the dog breed that we've chosen. The biggest differences come down to what we've mentioned, the feet. Looking at the front limbs, there are two main difference I want to point out between a human hand in this position, and a dog's paws in this position. First of all, the location of the thumb. The thumb isn't as useful to dogs as it is to us, and likely would just get in the way when they're trying to run. Over time, it is migrated up the arm to be out of the way. In some dogs, it's not so high, and in another dogs, it's gone entirely. This is called the dewclaw, and the only real use it serves is that some dogs may use it to hold down things as they eat and chew. However many of you dog owners might know it as more of a hazard, since it can easily get caught on things and torn because it's so weak. Some dogs have a dewclaw on both their front and rear limbs. The second thing I want to point out is the actual finger bones. You can see here in the drawing of the human hand, that the fingers look all scrunched up. This is how the bones of the dogs paw are. But the difference here is that dogs have a pad underneath those bones that prevent them from getting damaged from the impact of standing and running on them, as well as protect them from things like hot and cold surfaces. This is called a metacarpal pad, and is located right here. Metacarpal is just a fancy way of saying relating to the bones of the hand. The final comparison between humans and dogs I like to show you, is the contact points of the hands and paws. The yellow areas indicate the surfaces that actually would be touching the ground as a dog walks. We can see that this includes the metacarpal pad, and the pads of the fingertips only. Now the third question that we want to ask is, why is this animal designed this way? The last step we want to take before drawing is to ask questions about why this animal is the way that it is. I'll ask and answer some broad questions about dogs here, but I encourage you to ask some of your own, especially if you have a one's specific to the dog breed you are drawing. Again, this is a great opportunity to really get curious about what you're drawing. I find the more you learn, the more connected you become with your subject. I wanted to know why are dogs thicker in the chest than in the rear? What I found out is that although this is definitely more noticeable in different breeds, like for instance, my dog, she's half English Bulldog and that makes her very front heavy. She really favors on front legs. But aside from that, all dogs in general have stronger chests than their rear limbs. So wide it is, is just due to a lot of the things that dogs do, much like how it was for the bears. They use their front legs to dig, to hold down prey, and to wrestle with other dogs and animals, and to really stabilize themselves. All of these benefit from very strong chest muscles. Additionally, dogs need a lot of neck and chest muscles to support their long necks and the powerful jaws that they have. I then wanted to know, what's a dog's vision like? It turns out that most dogs have vision that's very similar to red-green colorblindness in humans, which means that differentiating between those colors is difficult. They're also less sensitive to changes in brightness and darkness, and so overall they perceive much less contrast than we do. They also tend to be near-sighted. Now whether vision lacks here it outperforms humans in their ability to detect motion at long distances. They are actually 10-20 times better at doing this than we are. Which probably explains why often I think my dog is staring off at nothing. But it's probably just something that she's seen and I haven't. Finally, they are good at seeing during dusk and dawn, which are like the darker times of the day. Again, they might not have the most clear vision, but they are very well equipped for hunting. Then I thought, okay, I got down vision, how about dogs smell? This one was really, really impressive. Dogs are between 10,000 and 100,000 times better at smelling than we are, which is quite hard to comprehend. What this means is that if we can smell a single teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, dogs can smell a single teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-size swimming pools. What actually allows them to be this good at smelling? Well, they have 50 times as many olfactory receptors in their nose as us, and they have 40 times more brain power allocated to smelling than us. Their nose actually can separate scent from oxygen, so they can breathe without interfering with their smelling. Which again, this is really cool. Just thinking about this, there are already so many different characters that could come from this smelling fax. Something I was particularly interested in is why some dogs have floppy ears and some have perky ones. It turns out that there's actually four major ear types of dogs and they each have their own benefits. Prick ears, which is what I called the prick ones, are the best for detecting noise at distance. They can rotate their ears to capture sound from all around them, and it gives them the ability to detect noise without even moving their head, which again is pretty cool. Then there's semi erect ears, which are pricked ears, but they fold at the top. Usually find these in dogs at Borough. Because they're still want to be good at detecting sound, but because they dig, the ears need to be protected. It has a little folds to prevent, I guess dirt and things from going inside the ear. Then there are row shaped ears, which are these upright ears that have fallen to the side, and you can see these in fighting dogs such as Bulldogs and Bull Terriers. They're like that so it's out of harm's way when they're fighting. Then you also see them even further back on the head in breeds such as wickets in greyhounds, because it helps make them more aerodynamic when they run and those are running dogs. The final ear are drop ears and you typically find these in hunting dogs because they primarily depend on their smell. Again, dogs, their smell is like their number one thing. Being able to detect sounds at a distance for one of these hunting dogs isn't as important, all the emphasis is on the nose. After getting these basic facts, I just wanted to find out a bit about Doberman specifically. I asked what are Doberman specifically designed to do? It turns out that a Doberman was primarily bred to be a guard dog. Now knowing that prick ears or those upright years help the text sound from far away. It really makes sense to me that Doberman would have those, so that it can detect potential intruder from very far away and start barking or do whatever needs to do to alert people. Because Doberman are intelligent and high energy, they are often used in military work, in police work. Then again, there's still used for protection, and this really can help inspire a lot of different characters already. Then I just want to know a bit about the personality of Dobermans. I got that Dobermans are alert, they're loyal, they're intelligent, and that they're not very offensive, they're more defensive. They're usually aren't the aggressors, but the more keep the peace. Now that we've answered all these questions, and we have a solid understanding of dogs and hopefully our own breed that we're going to be drawing, we can move onto the first drawing step. 8. Dogs: Learning While Drawing: I've switched from Photoshop to Procreate on the iPad pro. This is just a comfort thing. I find that I am more comfortable drawing here then with my tablet in Photoshop. But I just want to mention once again that when it comes to sketching, it doesn't matter what you use pencil, pen, crayon, just use whatever is comfortable for you and don't get too attached to any one medium for this work. What I'm doing is the same with we did with the bear, is I'm now drawing from reference to try and learn more about this animal to build off the research that we did in the earlier steps. You can't tell as much with this drawing, but you will win the future ones. I'm really focusing on what are the basic shapes that comprise this animal. In particular, I really noticed here the breast muscles or the chest muscles of the dog had that really strong division in between the two front legs and then actually serves as a really nice center line for my drawing. It tells me where the center of the front of the animal is. Here I'm also just trying to get down the pose and just understand like how dogs actually stand, as well as just a bit on the pattern of this particular dog. Again, these drawings are not meant to be precious, the whole intention is to learn. If you walk away from one of these drawings, having learned something, it's a success. Don't worry about making it beautiful, yeah, that's not what this is about. Here you can see a bit more on the nose. I'm trying to really find out that shape. There's like a top plane as well as to side planes that make it up and that's going to be really helpful for creating characters because as I showed you before, I can then move in space a lot easier if I think of it as a simple 3D object. Then once I have the rough shape, then I can actually put in some of the detail like you're seeing right now. Just as with the previous drawing, I'm here, I'm trying to get a feel for this pose, how do dogs sit? I can see that they have the front legs are very very straight, and the back ones are tucked in. Here I'm noticing how the rib cage actually protrudes a bit from this angle and that's something I see a lot of the other angles too. Dogs are quite skinny, quite lean, especially this type of dog, so you can really see the form of the rib cage. That could be a potential thing that I wanted to incorporate in a character. Something I thought was really interesting with the foot here is when they're sitting like this, their back leg actually goes back to being very similar to plant degrades, so you can actually see the heel is planted just as we would plant our heels. For this photo here, I chose this because it gave me a really straight on look of the head, so I can really find out the design of it, the shape of it. This is something that you should do too in your own drawings. It's finding a lot of variety in the photos that you choose to draw from. Don't draw a bunch of the same pose or the same angle, try to get variety. You can also get certain photos that will help you to study a particular aspect of the animal. In particular this photo, it's just about me figuring out the head. You can even see I have these lines that I've drawn on the photo and then draw it on my own drawing, because I'm figuring out proportions. What I noticed is that if you were to cut the head in two thirds from this angle, the ears would be a third, the middle of the head to the snout would be a third, and then somewhere in-between that middle section would be the eyes. This is another great trick that you can use for figuring out the proportions of the animal that you're drawing. It's just trying to find out what those proportions are. You'll see that I'm using a lot of wrapping lines in this one here and that's me really trying to figure out the form. Again, this is about learning, not about making something that's super accurate, and so right now, this drawing looks a bit like there's a long fur on the nose of the dog, but we know that there isn't. Those lines are just there for me to help figure out what the form of that nose is. You can see that again right here in the forehead I'm doing these diagonal lines because that's how the form of the skull beneath the skin feels to me. That's what it looks like. Here I really want to focus on basic shapes. You can actually see that main body. I've just made a cylinder that is bigger at one end and smaller at the other. Then the legs are also thin cylinders with little egg-shapes at the joints. Then like ramp shapes for the feet. I'm thinking of very simple shapes here. This is a really great trick for simplifying whenever you're drawing. You can see I'm using these wrapping lines to really tell myself, okay, this is a cylinder and this is how it's moving in space. Then once I'm starting to get in these basic shapes in their correct positions, now you can see I'm starting to add a bit more detail to the outlines of the shapes so that those basic shapes are like my foundation, and now these darker lines are the actual line drawing of the animal. Again, the neck is like another cylinder shape, and the head here I've just used a sphere with a block coming out for the nose. Again, keep it really really simple, and then worry about detail later. Here I noticed the neck was long, so I just selected it and brought it down. That is just a perk of working digitally. That's it for the drawings that I'm going to do. I encourage you to do as many as you need to, to get a good foundation for this animal, because the more you do and the more you learn, the easier it's going to be to create your character. 9. Dogs: Character Concepts: So now that we've learned all that we need to, about the animal, we're going to start with the concepts. So once again, I'm going to be doing five concepts and I have sped this up just like I've done the other dog video. You can see I've also created that list of attributes just for me to work from so I came up with things like powerful smell, the prick ears, thick chest, defensive, boil, intelligent. Just a lot of the things that really stuck with me about this animal as I was doing all of my learning stages. With this particular drawing, I'm really thinking of the defensive, loyal dog, with the big chest and I just started drawing a dog that was exaggerated a bit with the chest and very quickly it became like a super dog. It seemed like a very heroic pose and so as you'll see, that's where I took this concept. So you can see it really helped me to do all of those drawings of poses of dogs because I was able to draw on that knowledge for this one here. Because I really want to emphasize the chest in this character. You'll notice that everything else is a lot smaller. Again, things are only bigger-small as they relate to everything else around it. So if I made the chest big and then the head big and then the legs big. The chest itself wouldn't seem that big anymore. It's only because it's surrounded by smaller things that it seems that way. So this is the point where I decided, okay, this is going to be like a superhero dog and I'm putting a cape on it. I figured I would include a superhero mast to go along with the cape, as well as some little braces on the wrists and the ankles. That will be my first concept there and again, I'm just doing five but do as many as you'd like. I would recommend you do at least five just to get some variety in but don't feel limited by that number. So here I'm actually playing with the guard dog idea and how a lot of these dogs will be police dogs. Rather than make it very strong and slender and what you usually see, I was thinking I would make this Doberman, a big fat police dog and so that's why in his hand he has a little cup of coffee and he's very round. You can see for the body, I pretty much just stuck with a big circle. Now I'm figuring out, okay, how does that circle actually turn into the body. Even though as years usually are up, I thought it would make more sense for this character to have them going down and I did see a couple of Doberman that were like that. So I know it's possible but also it's my character so I can do what I want with it. So it's going to have these high waist pants. You can see his little police hat on. He's got a badge. Again, just like the previous drawings, don't be super precious with these ones either. While these are going to turn into our final characters, at the concept stage they don't have to be fantastic, they just need to get the idea across. You can worry about making it look really nice at the very end. Here I decided to give them a doughnut because police officer with a doughnut makes perfect sense. Then I decided to change his eye so he's looking at it. So that will be the second concept. Next, I really wanted to play on the idea of it being very intelligent and so we're at the bottom giving this one some glasses. His ears are very straight up. It makes him seem a lot more alert and a bit curious, I thought and I'm giving him a big long tall neck sweater. He's like an academic type and so from there I decided to give him some books in his hands. You can really see how just starting with a simple idea to being able to drawing, it starts to really come together as I'm drawing. If I'd sat here and try to think out the entire thing before I started, I don't think I'd have the same success. You need to go in with a rough idea and then just play around with it as you go. Even here, I didn't know how I quite wanted this legs but I found that by making him on the smaller side, I really liked the body type there. I still was able to give them a thicker chest like these dogs tend to have and then I brought it up to his chin So it's like he's in deep contemplation. Now I'm going all in on the strong concept. You'll see here I'm doing some real anthropomorphism where it's a dog but it's very much a human too. You can even see already I've put it in a collarbone and as we've discussed, dogs don't have collarbones but I'm breaking the rules here to make a human-nee dog character. So I'm just putting the mouth a bunch muscles. Again, right here I am leaning on a lawn of anatomy knowledge and that's where the more you know about humans, the more can help you with any kind of character. Making his eyes hidden, small little ears and as I'm creating this character, once again, I'm starting to get ideas about who we can actually be. He has this very kind of Rambo, looked to me like an army commander and so I started to give him clothes that are like that. I gave him a muscle shirt, some camouflage pants, big belt buckle and as you'll see I also included some dog tags like he is a military dog. Again, this isn't what I was planning to do when I started the drawing and this is just what happened. So for the final concept, I really just wanted to focus on that powerful smell. So I thought I would just make a dog sitting like normal, like that pose that I practiced and just give them a big nose and make them really smelling at something. So here you can see his nose as the big feature on his head and that's because that's the part of the character that I'm really trying to emphasize. Again, as I'm drawing this, I'm noticing he looks a little sad so I'm kind of putting his ears down to work with that sadness. I'm not sure why just yet. But then again, I'm thinking, okay, he's smelling, so maybe there's a big piece of food dangling in front of his face that he can have. A lot of time I've seen my dog really just beg for food and so that's what I was channeling here, is there's this big stake hanging on a hook and here he is looking sad, wishing he can have it and some drools coming out of his mouth. So these are the five concepts that I've created and I'm going to choose one of these and refine it into a final drawing. Again, feel free to do as many of these as you'd like. 10. Dogs: Finalizing Your Design: Of my concepts, I liked the police officer the most. This is the one that I'm going to be taking to the final drawing stage. What I'm doing right here is just doing a different iteration of it where I'm going to figure out a lot more of the things that are to figure out as well as make some changes. Here I'm just angling his head a bit differently. He's really looking straight at the donut. That was one of the immediate changes that I knew I wanted to make. But also from there I am doing some other things as I go along, like make this belt buckle rounder. Surrounded forms are a lot friendlier, nicer, and this is a very kind of simple friendly character. I'm trying to use more roundness than hard edges. You can see I'm really wrapping the center line of his shirt around this sphere to really give it form. If I just did a straight line, it would make the drawing look very flat. But because it wraps around the sphere, it gives it a very good three-dimensional property. One of the things I mentioned during the bear drawings was that the more that you draw your concept, the better typically becomes. I think this is a good example of that where I'm really just taking the drawing of the top-left and recreating it with more intention and figuring out some things out that I haven't yet. The result is that it's looking a lot better already. Here I'm giving his hat a visor and making it tipped up a bit. One of the things I really noticed here is that top lip on a dog really starts to actually look like a mustache, which really works well with police character so that was a happy little accident. Again, for the pants, you can see that I am following that front line for the zipper on the front to once again wrap around the sphere and really give that dimension. I really want to keep his legs small, again that's to emphasize this big round body. Little arms, little legs. The more that you can contrast things like big and little thin and fat, the more you can exaggerate these things, the better that that concept is going to come across in your character. I just quickly try to see what it looked like with those prick ears that corporate ones, and quickly decided that it was not good for this character. The ears going down really works well for his personality. You'll see that I play with the placement of the feed a couple times just to really get it down. Between the initial drawing in this one, you can already see again so much more dimension. This is where we are refining the drawing and we're starting to figure out things that are going to appear in the final. But that still doesn't mean that you should get super tight with it, you want to keep it loose and give yourself the freedom to keep changing things and do different iterations. If you remember the bear drawings, I did a lot of different versions of that one element of fish just to make sure that I got it the way I wanted. Don't be concerned about doing it too many times. I'm here, I'm actually using the scale tool to squash it. The whole drawn because I thought it might work out, is just a nice little trick that I like to do. I found that I actually liked it a lot better this way. Now I am using this as my main base for the drawing. Here I'm moving the arm around to get a positioning just how I want it, and decided that he's seeing this donut in front of his face, it looks delicious. I'm going to make him smiling. He looked a little confused before, and I think this should really be a happy moment for him. In fact, let's just make him panting. He just can't wait to dig into this donut. So open mouth, tongue out. I believe I even throw in some drul. Again just another little change, I decided to give him a tie. Because he's happy I wanted this tail up and put some little motion lines in so it looks like it's kind of shaking with excitement. Now I'm going to do a final drawing with this version that I just created. This will be the final line drawing that I will use to then create a final stylized piece. What's really important about doing this final drawing is that I'm really making a clear decision about where every single line goes, where all of these shapes are defined. There's no like really sketchy lines that leave me guessing at what something is. Everything is super super clear. I'll point out even at this point, I'm still making changes. That's something that is always going to do in each version is find ways to improve it. Here I noticed that we can see underneath the visor was hat, why don't I put some hair in their, given a bit more of a human look by giving them a nice little hairdo. Here, I decided to make his hears both going out straight to the side. I thought I'd just really worked well with the kind of excitement that he has right now. All the other stages were rough, loose, trying to figure things out. This is finally where we get tight with a sketch. This is where we finally have clear defining lines about what everything is. Up until this point, you shouldn't be worrying too much about how nice your line work looks or how clear anything is, as long as you understand what you're drawing. This is something you can do digitally, you can do it with a pencil. A line drawing can be done with just about anything. I wouldn't worry too much about what I'm using or what you see other people using, just stick to things that work well for you, and that serve the purpose of giving you a clean line drawing. You can see that I've added some other details. Once again, even in this final drawing, I've put some lumps going over top of the belt to indicate some of his weight. That's just a new thing that I've added in this particular drawing. I also decided I didn't like the design of the cap. I changed it. I can still change things at this level in the drawing. Again, I'm really making sure I use these form wrapping lines that really give a sense of the three-dimensionality of this character. Try stay away from straight lines, especially when its lines for clothing, because that really just makes your drawing a lot more flat. Whereas if you have these curved ones that really hug the shape of something, it really tells people the dimension that's there. To this point, I took away the drawing underneath and just decided to do some final changes. These are just a couple of details. Some dotted lines around the seams of the pants. I got rid of those little punch holes in the belt. I thought they're distracting. I just darken up a couple areas, just for my own sake. I'll even try putting a little pattern on the tie and decided I didn't like it. But that there is my final drawing. Feel free to do as many iterations as you need to in order to get to a drawing that you like and to figure everything out that you need to. I hope that going through this section is giving you a lot of information about digital grades, about dogs, about the whole process of learning how to draw something and then create a character from it. Next up we're going to be doing the same thing, but with horses. 11. Horses: Anatomy & Function: The third animal we're going to be going over is the horse. Horses are one of the toughest animals to learn, yet one of the most commonly drawn. If you want drawing animals to be a part of what you do, you'll need to be able to draw them, because you absolutely will be asked to. Again we're going to be following the same process as the previous two animals. That starts with asking the question, what locomotive class does this animal belong to? Horses fall into the category of Unguligrade. I don't have as good of a memory trick for this as the other two, but I can help to think of a horseshoe looking like a U for unguligrade, as it's hoofed animals that fall into this class. If plantigrades walk on their heels, the balls of their feet, and their toes, and digitirades walk only on the balls of their feet and their toes, unguligrades only walk on their toes, and in fact, it's just the very tips of the toes. It's very similar to how a ballerina might stand. When we compared plantigrades and digitigrades , there was an increase in speed due to the extra bend in the limb. There is once again increase in speed between the digitigrades, and the unguligrades for the very same reason. This is due to the additional bend at the ball of the foot, or the knuckle that provides an extra amount of springiness. As a result unguligrades are generally, but not always the fastest of the land mammals. This additional bend in the limb allows the animal to absorb each step better making them even more silent. Being the quietest, and the quickest will make sense when we consider that most unguligrades are prey animals. Elk, zebra, and deer are examples of animals that need to not only be silent to avoid detection, but when they are detected they need to be able to outrun their predators. The disadvantages of being an unguligrade aside from most likely being prey for another animal, are a lack in strength, and structural support. That's not to say that there aren't some really solid unguligrades like rhinoceroses, but when compared to animals of a similar size, of a different locomotive class, they're going to be much less sturdier. The second question we ask is, how does this animal's anatomy compare to us? I really had to exaggerate the human in this comparison, as we definitely could not walk around in the same way that horses do. The most important thing to note with horses just as it was with dogs, is the location of bends in the leg as they compare to us. Horses, just like us had the same bones which bend in the same direction. It's very easy to mistaken this joint for a knee, and think that it bends opposite to us, but that is the ankle. To be super clear, here's the hip, the knee, the ankle and then the toe joint. This is why I elongated the feet, and hands in the human, so that you can really get the impression of how the horse is designed. As with the other two animals we've studied, it's important to really notice how similar horses, and all mammals are to us. You can find the same bones in the same locations with the same muscles for the most part. Knowing human anatomy can really help your understanding of animal anatomy. A notable difference is a missing collarbone. By now we understand that this provides more mobility in the shoulder which gives the animal a longer stride. This is a really important in unguligrades because they definitely need to run fastest of all animals. Something you'll notice in the horse, as well as any animal with a long neck is that their vertebrae is much larger. This is because the longer your neck, the larger the muscles that support it must be. Since those large muscles need something to attach to, the vertebrae must be bigger. I hope this doesn't make anyone squeamish, but this is a photo I took in Montreal this year of a real giraffe's anatomy on display. Notice how thick the muscles are at the base of the neck. This is what I'm talking about. Because giraffes have exceptionally long necks, you will also notice a very large hump on their shoulders as the muscles there also provide neck support. Back to horses though. The last thing that I want to mention are the hooves. How can horses walk around on their tiptoes? That sounds quite painful. Well, over time, the five toe bones in a horse have changed to be quite different than us. They're middle toe grew overtime while the toes on the side shrank, and ultimately disappeared. The result is one very thick toe bone. To make sure that the horse isn't just walking around on hard bone, they and other unguligrades developed hooves. Hooves are very similar to our toenails, only they are strong enough that the horses can actually walk, and run on them. They also have a slight cushion under their toe bones, similar to digitigrades, to further protect those bones. The third question we ask is, why is this animal designed this way? As we've done previously, we will now take a moment to get curious about the animal we're drawing. Because the more that you know, the more inspiration you'll have for your characters. We know that horses have large vertebrae, and strong muscles to support their head, and their long neck. But I wanted to know why did they have long necks in the first place? It would seem that it's most likely for reaching food. As horses have evolved the ones with longer necks were able to reach more food than the ones with shorter necks. It makes sense that the ones with the longer necks were at an advantage, and more likely to survive into what we have today. Next, I was curious about how fast they can run. While at differs from breed to breed, the typical horse can run 40-50 kilometers per hour. Since this is full speed this would be considered a gallop, but horses have different gaits which involve them moving in very different ways. From slowest to fastest, these are walking, trotting, cantering, and then galloping. Next, I wanted to know why do horses have long faces? It turns out that it has to do with spending a lot of time eating lower sitting vegetation. Since they have to lower their heads to eat this way, a long head means that while they're eating, their eyes can still set up high enough to be aware of their surroundings. A long face allows horses to eat and be at look out at the same time. Speaking of vision, I want to know how good is theirs. Well, it turns out it's pretty good. Horse eyes are amongst the largest of any land mammal. Being placed on the sides of their heads as opposed to the front, horses have 350 degrees of vision. This again is very useful in being aware of their surroundings. This being said, horses do have a blind spot directly in front of them, and behind them. As show horses jump over obstacles, there is actually a moment in time where they can't even see what they're jumping over. This idea of having really great vision, but just a few little blind spots is something that could inspire a character. I know that there are a lots of different types of horses, and each has their own pros and cons, but to help inspire some character designs, I wanted to get a sense of some of the common ones. One horse is a Draft horse, and these are also called Dray horses, which actually comes from the word to haul or to pull. It's no surprise that these are workhorses used for pulling loads, plowing fields, and other forms of labor. Next there are Ponies which most of us know are smaller horses. They are mostly ridden by children, but some of the larger breeds of pony are actually ridden by adults as well. Since they are small, and sturdy they have been used in labor doing things such as, puling carts of coal, and mines. They are considered to be intelligent, friendly, but sometimes stubborn. Next up is the Mustang. Mustangs are specifically the wild horses roaming the American West. While there are some domesticated breeds that have been bred with Mustangs, the true ones are free running, and are considered a very important living symbol of the old West. Then there are Thoroughbreds and these are the typical horse used in racing. These horses are considered to be hot blooded, and known for their speed, their agility, and their spirit. Finally, because I'm a huge fan of middle ages and all things and medieval, I wanted to know what horses and knights used to use. It turns out that there were three main horses called Chargers that Knights used to use. Of these types there were Rounceys which are all-purpose horses that were used both in battle, and for getting around. There were Coursers which are the most common for battle as they were very fast and very strong. Then there were Destriers which I might not be pronouncing correctly, and these are less common, but more prized of all horses. They were most often used in jousting. Now that I have an idea of a few different horses, I can only think of different characters that might come from them. Once you feel you have a good grasp on horse anatomy, and I've taken the time to satisfy all your questions about them, we can move on to drawing. 12. Horses: Learning While Drawing: Since you've got to see a couple animals drawn already, I'm going to be speeding up the segment a bit. What you're going to see right off the board is that I am using very simple shapes for the first drawing of the horse. The horse is a very complicated animal to draw, especially because of all those bends in the legs. I think it's very helpful to think in super simple terms. I've made a cylinder for the body and this wedge shape here for the chest. These aren't just shapes that you need to use, these are ones that I have created right on the fly that work for my own understanding. If you'd like to use different shapes, by all means do that. Now, here I have noticed that the neck is a little bit shorter than the body of the horse. This is something for me to remember in terms of proportion. For the rear end, I've come up with a square shorts almost looking shape. It doesn't look super clear in the drawing here, so I actually redraw it on the side. But again, this is something that just makes sense for me and makes it easier for me to understand how I would move the different pieces of the horse in three-dimensional space when I want to pose my characters. Here you can see those three-dimensional shorts that I was talking about. This is a much easier shape to remember than the actual detailed rear end of a horse. Now I'm using cylinders for the limbs and then these spiracle egg shapes for each of the joints. Again, these aren't super accurate, but they help me remember and it's going to be really helpful for posing. I can always come back later on with detailed reference photo and add the details in later. The hooves themselves are these disc shapes. Now I'm just going to continue to slot in some of the cylinder and egg shapes just to draw the front legs. Now, the head is also quite complicated, so I will be touching on it more after. But just for right now, I'm going to do some super-simple, and it's this flat diamond shape on the top with a little snout poking out. Now, one thing I also noticed is that the distance from the eyes to the top of the head is the same distance as the top of the head to the top of the ears. Once again, this is a nice little comparison to remember when I'm going to be thinking about proportions later on. I take a moment and hide the photo. You can see that already with these basic shapes, it does look like a horse. This is all we really need when we're coming up with our concepts later, as we can always just add the details on later, like I'm going to do right now. Now, while this was rushed notes, a little bit messy, especially with that one leg, you can see how using those basic shapes as a foundation can lead to a much more detailed drawing. Next up, we have the head of the horse. As I mentioned, I wanted to do a bit more detail on this because it is complicated. The front of it really is this flat, diamond shape or kite shape. Then protruding from it is the snout like you're seeing me do here. When they're actually noticed doing this is that horses have really large nostrils. I wasn't quite aware of that. Again, that's something I'm going to look for when I'm doing characters. You see there's this rounded jaw piece at the side, takes up about half of the head. The eyes stick out to the sides. You can actually see the brow bone of the horse sticking out to the sides, as well those lines I drew are four, and then the eyes just go there. I'm also really paying attention to where I place these ears. As I've mentioned before, this is one of the things that I need to work on, is getting that just right. This drawing here is a bit more detailed than the last. What I've done before and I'm doing now is putting in some hatching lines just to tell myself of the different directions that the planes of the head are going. While I'm getting a bit more detailed with this drawing here, remember that it's not important to focus too much on all of the details. That's just where I need to focus on the most personally. Now, before I do this last drawing, I just want to point out how on the front legs it looks like the elbow, or you could call it the knee is bending opposite to us. This is an example of what's actually bending the same to us. If I just draw in where the shoulder would be, so that's right here. Then the next joint would be the elbows. That's the real elbow right there. Then that comes in to the wrist, which is bending just as our wrist is able to, and then that would come down to the knuckles. That'll be the last joint. Then remember that horses have this one finger bone and that's, the other finger bones have gone away and there's just one left and then the hoof just like a nail. Now if I describe the back leg, there's the hip, then that pointing right there is the knee and it comes down into the heel. That's what that other pointy bit is. Then we have the ball of the foot, or a tone knuckle, you could call it, but that's not very technical. Then again, there's just one toe bone that goes into the hoof. Again, the horse's limbs bend just like ours. Now I'm actually going to draw out this horse in this position. I would recommend doing several drawings in different poses as it really teaches you how animals actually stand and how they actually move. This pose in particular is one that I saw quite often in horses running at different speeds. It's a really good one for me to know. Another thing that I wanted to mention just as I'm doing this last drawing is not to worry too much if your drawings aren't turning out exactly how you'd like them. For one, this is about learning right now. Making beautiful work is not the intention and so you shouldn't really worry too much about that. But also, it takes a lot of time to get good at drawing animals as it does drawing anything else or just drawing in general. I spent a lot of time drawing animals and going through the exact process we're going through today. I would hope that my look a little good because I've sunk a lot of time. Just as with anything else, it's a matter of time spent working on it. Yeah, don't worry too much about it if you're not quite where you want to be right away. Once you've done enough drawings and you feel comfortable with the animal, with the horse, then we can move on to the concept phase. 13. Horses: Character Concepts: Once again, I'm going to be doing five concepts of horses. I'm going to be using all of the information that we learned in the previous two videos to come up with these ideas. You can see on the left I have a list of certain attributes that really stuck out to me during our research process. I'm going to be referencing notes as I make these. Where I'm coming from in this first concept is I'm really thinking about like warrior horse. I was really enjoying the different courses, the horses that knights used to use, and so I really wanted to have a Royal warrior type horse. That's what I'm thinking about with this dance right here. I'm going to meet, I'm making him looks like he's fending off against someone. I'm also figuring it out as I go to. I think it's important to recognize is that I don't have everything figured out as I'm starting. It's a process of putting some idea down and then seeing that one thing, it looks like another. Here I was like," Oh, actually the stance that makes them seem like maybe like a knight or a warrior himself." That's where I start to put on this armor. I give them this big plume mane. Now I'm giving him a sword. Because of the stance, it really gave me a good idea of the rest of the character. I think I also should mention that this is all sped up just in case you weren't aware. I do not draw this fast. Now this give them a cap. Now he's got this almost like a Roman soldier look to him. I think. Again knight to have a Roman soldier. There's something there that I can work with. For the next concept, I'm going to be thinking about how the ponies worked in mines never to make this minor character, and so I'm making it really short and stout but really thick. Because the ponies are like that, especially the ones that we learned were working in mines like pulling carts of coal. It can be short, squat. I gave him like really big feet just because I thought it would look funny. They aren't really playing with big and small with the really, really small ankles and then the big hooves. It makes for really great characters. I'm going to give them a pig acts here. Give them a mining hat. Then he's just going to be holding his overalls. One thing I found was quite difficult about making horse characters and still do is that you can't really make them whole things very well because they don't have fingers. Even with the previous concept, it's like, okay, well, how is he holding that sword? Because he can't really wrap his grip around the handle. That's where you going to have to decide how much you want to exaggerate the actual animal. But back to this character, I'm giving them like overalls. He has a bit of a MO-YO Look to me because of it, and just a little dirt splotches on him and that thing. But that's enough for, for that concept. Just as I start with this third one, I also want to mention once again that even though we're getting closer to the final character, you still don't have to make this a perfect, beautiful drawing. Right here, we're really just getting down ideas and it's much better to get down a good quantity of ideas than it is to get just one or two really nice looking ones. We can make it look prettier later. For this idea, I'm really thinking about the draft horses, the ones that we're pulling different loads. I wanted to make a horse that's like really struggling to pull something. I don't know what that is yet. But I came up with this yeah, this really exaggerated pulling motion. Then now I'm thinking of, okay, like what would it be? What would be interesting for me pulling, or what would it be funny for him to be pulling? It was changing his stance around a little bit. Again, these are details that aren't super important at this point. I'm putting one of those little grips in his mouth to be pulling from. Suppose he has a harness. Then I just came back to the mining idea and thought, okay, maybe he's got like these little mini mine cart with a big rock in it, and so maybe that's what he is pulling. Again, playing around with that small and big concept that works really well in characters. This big exaggerated contrast. But then I didn't like it. I'm like, "You know it already that a mining character, what else could he be pulling?" Then that's where I thought, okay, maybe it's like a sword in the stone scenario, and so maybe this horse is actually trying to pull the sword from this stone. You know, the whole like Excalibur story. That's the concept that I settled on for this one. Now for the fourth one, I want to make a very muscly macho man horse. and her macho horse. Just because they are when you look at them, I feel like the closer you get to a horse, the more you realize like how muscly and lean they are, and so I thought it'd be fun to do a character that really plays on that I was giving this almost this like Romeo Hunk vibe. He's really muscly he is very proud of himself. He's got this smug look on his face and on the hip. That's what I'm going for with this concept. Then it only made sense that if I do that, I give them these long flowy locks. I think I just make them a bit more curly and yeah. Then the same thing with his tail. It' also curly and just nice and flowing. Since he has this big macho romantic, I figured he'd be like handing off a rose to someone know like professing his love. Again, playing on the Romeo thing. Now for the last character, I really just wanted to exaggerate certain features caricature. I wanted to give it this big chest, these really thin legs, and then a really long neck, and then these really big nostrils. I'm really playing with the big small, the long and the short. That was the whole idea with this character concept here. Oh yeah, and they have really big butts I find. Again, I'm really exaggerating that big butt and so that's just the starting off point for this character here. Sometimes that's all you really need for a character it is just to really exaggerate the things that define it. Then decide to give them like these little hair. He has this concern look in his face and almost looks like his mane is like a mullet. But yeah, this is all I'm really doing for this concept here. Again, I recommend you do as many concept as you like, at least to five just so you get some variety. Then once you have one that you really like, we can move on to the last video, the horse section, where we really finalize it and turn it into a great character. 14. Horses: Finalizing Your Design: Just like I've done with the other two animals, I'm now going to finalize this character. One of the ways I'm going to do that is by actually just redrawing my character. Sometimes it's really tempting to just continue to draw on top of our character or to continue to refine the one drawing we've already made, but I really encourage you to try actually redrawing your character. Because I find that almost every time you redraw a character, it ends up looking better. You figure out new pieces of it, you refine other elements, and it just ends up better. Here I found that I'm already able to add a lot more movement into the character because I already know the general pose so I can really exaggerate certain curves of it. So here I'm also focusing a bit more on the anatomy and making sure that that it's actually correct because I wasn't too sure about at least that right leg in the front one. Again, I'm still keeping this quite rough, as I will be refining it at the very end with a final line drawing. But right now I want to loose enough that I can still kinda play with the design. One thing you can really see is that the curves of the cape are really lining up with the curves of the left side of the body. That's me really trying to match that movement to give the whole feeling look like there's a flow that kind of starts from where the top of the head is, and curves down and to the right. Here you can see I'm playing with that leg. Like I said, I really wasn't too sure that I had this correct, so I continue to toy with it until I get it looking, what I think is proper. This is also a great opportunity where you could go back and grab your reference images, and make sure that your anatomy is on point. Here I'm really putting in those big nostrils and I'm really focusing on the expression that I want to give him, and it's kind of this like almost like the Rock, like one brow down one brow up. But he's kind of looking like bring-it sort of attitude. Now I'm going to give him this helmet. You'll notice the visor of the helmet there. The curve of it is actually matching the curve of is eyebrows. It dips down and then it comes up just like his brows do. One brow goes down, one brow goes up. There's another way for me to really exaggerate that expression. I'm just giving him a little bit of a main, and again, this is where you can really continue to refine your drawing, find the parts that you don't like and change them around. Here I'm actually drawing in some lines to really try and figure out where the anatomy is like, where exactly the knee and such be on this leg. That's just me putting it a bit more construction lines to figure things out. I gave them a really pointing toes, so it looks like they're really planted into the ground. This is his sword holder, scabbard, it's called? This time, I'm really trying to figure out the correct anatomy of this arm. I'm using the iPad and Procreate to make this, but for sketching and line drawing, it does not matter how you do it. I thought he looked a bit more Roman than he did medieval, so I'm putting this kind of Roman sort of Maine on top of the helmet, like you see. That goes really well with this cape and his armor. Then I'm giving him a short sword instead just because I felt like the sword was getting too close to the top of the helmet. Again, we really want to make sure that our drawings are clear and nothing is super messy or anything, particularly so when we move to the final drawing, but even at this stage, we really want to make sure that everything is readable. Here is his tail. Once I have a pretty refined sketch like this, now I can go to the final line drawn. This is where I'm actually just going to draw over it and make everything super, super clear and figure out everything that I've yet to do. Again,what you want to remember with this final stage and your character drawing is that this is going to be the drawing that you would use if you were going to make a final colored or final designed piece. So any potential design style that you would do this in, this is going to be the drawing that you would work from. You want to make sure that every line is clear, every object is obvious, and that there's no figuring out of the drawing while you were doing the final color. I'm still making decisions at this stage in the drawing. One thing you'll notice is that I change around the design of how the blade fits into the handle of the sword a couple of times, and that's because this final drawing puts me in a position where I really need to figure out exactly how everything is going to look, and that was one of the pieces of my drawing that I hadn't yet done so well. You're more than welcome to continue to figure things out at this stage. You just want to make sure that you've figured out most of the main stuff at this point. Like you're always changing his pose right now, that would be a really big change. But small design elements like this sword don't prove too much of an issue at this point in the game. Once again, you're going to see that I'm confronted with figuring out how is he actually holding the sword. What I decided on is that his hoof is just going to be placed flat against the handle, and that's going to be how he holds it. Obviously in real life that wouldn't work, but for a character such as this, it does. I really like the design of the face, I'm not really changing too much there. Again, I'm just making it super clear where all of the lines are. If you come to any spots where you quite don't understand how things fit into one another, that's where you really got to figure it out, like I was doing with how the top piece that helmet joined into it, I really needed to make that decision. That's what these really refined line drawings are good for. This is where you could go and grab some reference photos of horse anatomy and really make sure that the different bulges in the leg or where they're supposed to be. This point, I don't really need the under drawing anymore, and I can really just see my line drawing as a whole and continue to add in some darkening certain lines for clarity sake, this is just something that I like to do. Then I'm also going to be adding in a couple of finishing details. It might be hard to see, but what I'm doing is I'm darkening the lines where I want them to appear closer to the viewer. That's just a nice sort of line quality legibility thing. There you have the finished horse character. Now we've gone through the three main locomotive classes of animals. And that's going to put you in a really good position to work on all sorts of different animals. That's actually what I'm going to discuss in the next video, so you can move on to that when you're ready. 15. Going Forward: Now you have a process and foundational knowledge that's going to allow you to learn to draw any animal and to turn it into any character you'd like and something that you're going to notice is that as you move on to other animals, the three that you learn in this class are really going to help you in learning those new ones. For example, learning how to draw bears is actually really helpful for learning things like beavers and raccoons and hedgehogs and even a lot of lizards are very similar in their anatomy. Learning how to draw dogs actually helps you a lot with cats and wolves and coyotes and even birds and dinosaurs and then finally, learning how to draw horses helps you to draw just about anything with hooves. That's moose and deer and goat and sheep and rhinoceros. This is really good foundational knowledge that you now have and it's really going to aid you in drawing animals in the future. Once again, all the work that you create in this class, be sure to upload it here on Skillshare to your project. But not only to do that but if you're uploading it to like Twitter or Instagram or something, be sure to tag me because I'd really like to see it. [ LAUGHTER ]. I will put my things over here somewhere so you can do that. Now if you are hungry for some more animal stuff, I do have a couple of recommendations. First of all, I actually have another like five hours of recorded video of me doing this process in a bit of a quicker way. These were just live streams on Twitch than I've done before. I'm going to link to those, I'm also there is a book that was really, really helpful for me for not only learning how to draw animals but to turn them into characters and they make them really fun and animated and that's called Force Drawing Animal Drawing by Mike Metesky. There's also a course online on school.com called Creature Anatomy by Terryl Whitlatch which is very, very good. She just so you know, like she creates creatures for Star Wars. She created a job at HUD and unfortunately Jar Binks but she's really, really good at what she does and so if you really want to get into the anatomy, I would recommend her course. The final thing I would recommend is just to draw a lot from life. If you have a dog, draw that, if your neighbor has a cat go over and draw that, go to the zoo, it's by drawing from life a lot actually is really, really useful. Much better than drawing for photos. It can be more difficult. But because it's right in front of you and it's three-dimensions. You get such a better understanding of how it's built. You saw in the class that we really got into building things in three-dimensional shapes, drawing from life really helps you to get better at that. If you have any questions or comments or anything, you can leave those in the discussion here on Skillshare. But other than that there is the vector friend Slack channel and you can go there to get feedback about your work, to ask questions, all that things. I will link to that as well. Finally, in addition to the other class is a half-year on Skillshare. I also do a bunch of one-minute tutorials on happy faces on everything.com. If you want more of this stuff but like really, really quick, I would recommend you check that out. There are some things that are too and then I just want to say, thank you for taking this class. This is one that a bunch of you guys has asked for and I've even tested certain parts of it with some of you guys and like I love doing this and I'm happy to do this and I really appreciate that you guys are getting lots of the class that you're doing the assignments and I hope that this continues to help you. If you have any other future classes that you'd like to see, there are a million ways to get in touch with me, do that, and I would love to hear. Thanks again and take care.