Draw Fun Animal Characters

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Nick. I'm an artist and illustrator. In this class, we'll be using the basic principles of character design to draw fun animals with plenty of personality. I make my living by drawing quirky animal characters, as well as other things, which are sold on all sorts of products around the world, from greetings cards and stationery to clothing, home decor, pet supplies, and more. I'll take you through my process from distilling down the characteristics of an animal to what makes it recognizable. Different ways of drawing features and expressions, using simple shapes to map out your sketches and different ways of creating your final piece. You'll be following along and creating your own fun little bestie. When you're finished, you'll be able to confidently come up with your own fun creatures adapted to your own personal style. Of course, there will also be plenty of tips and tricks thrown in as usual. I'll be using Procreate to demonstrate some of this, but you could use another app if you prefer or just a pencil and paints on paper. The ideas and principles will be exactly the same. There are a whole bunch of cheeky characters waiting to be discovered though come on in and let's get started. 2. Your Project: Your project for this class is to follow along with me and create your own animal character. As I said in the introduction, I do make my living drawing these we beasties, please don't copy mine or anyone else's. Your own ideas will be so much better and reflect your personality and your way of working. Post your finished character in the project section of the class as either an image, photo or screenshot and include any process sketches if you want to as well. It's really fun to see how you progress from your initial ideas. Can't wait to see what you come up with. I do always look at your projects and I love seeing them. With all that out of the way, let's go. 3. Simplify Your Animal: M. Let's start by looking at how we can make our animal instantly recognizable. You can do this in any app or on paper. It doesn't matter. I'm demoing in Procreate. I'm going to start by drawing some circles for the faces. If you want a perfect circle in Procreate, you can hold down the pencil at the end of your stroke until this ellipse or circle choice appears at the top. Then you can tap circle. I must say I prefer my drawings to be a bit wonky because it adds character and interest rather than starting with a perfect circle. I want them to look like a human has drawn them as opposed to AI. Choosing whichever way feels best to you will be part of what makes these characters uniquely yours. That's really what we're aiming for. Next, we need to pop in some dots for the eyes. Don't overthink this. We'll be going back to specific features later. Now just those two dots on the circles already make them look like faces. The human brain is finely tuned to recognize faces even from something as simple as this. Now let's make them look more like animals. Certain animals have very recognizable characteristics. By adding a minimal amount of detail, we can really bring these to life. A pair of long ears turns this one into a rabbit. Here's a cat, and a dog. This one could be a bear, but lots of other animals have cute rounded ears too. It could also be a mouse, for example. You could add a muzzle and a big nose or a pointy nose and whiskers to make it look more like a mouse. Onto the next one. If we move the eyes up on top of the head, it becomes a frog. And a wide mouth adds to the frogginss. Big ears and a long nose make this one an elephant. So it's your turn now draw a page of simple animal faces using just the minimum amount of detail that you can to make them look like a particular animal. 4. Main Characteristics : Now I've got the idea of using as little detail as we can to make a recognizable animal. I want you to write down some different animals you might like to portray. You don't need to finish all of them for this class, but it's useful to get you thinking more about which ones you'd like to take forward. Bear in mind that if you're not used to drawing animals, it will be easier to start with something obviously recognizable features like a cat or a lion rather than something more obscure like a capybara. One could be your pet if you have one. The others are up to you, but try and make them quite different from each other. Well this next bit seems really simple. It's important because it does help you to distill the most obvious bits of your creature to include. Think about how you describe your animal to an alien in the shortest way possible. What is the most striking feature of this animal? Is there something really obvious which defines it and makes it instantly recognizable. What would you absolutely need to include for someone to know what your animal is? An elephant's trunk and big ears, a rabbit's long ears and fluffy tail, a lion's mane. A squirrel needs a fluffy curvy tail and some perky little pointy ears. This one could also be a fox, so we could give him a nut to nibble as a prop or some squirrel teeth. A mouse's tail. A giraffe's long neck. This main characteristic is what you're looking for. Then have a look at what color this creature is. Does it have a recognizable pattern? Here's a horse, but the stripes instantly make him a zebra. If we take away the lion's mane and give him some stripes, he turns into a tiger. Or we can give him some spots and make him into a led. 5. More Features: Et's have a look at some more features, starting with the ears. What shape and position are the ears if they're visible? Are they rounded? Are they on the top, or at the sides of the head? Are they pointy? Are they perky? Are they big? Are they floppy? Let's have a look at some noses. What nose does your creature have? A little cute triangle nose, pointy snout, some whiskers maybe, a bare nose. How can we make that bare nose look long? Has it got a long nose like a horse or maybe an unusual nose like an elephant or a tapir? What kind of mass does it have? Is it wide like a frog or a hippo? Is it long and spikey like an alligator? Does it have prominent teeth like a rabbit? What shape is the body? We're not looking at the details here, just a very simplified shape. For example, a bear has a rounded, quite plump and not very defined shape, so you could use an oval or circle as a starting point for its body. Most animals on four legs can be started with a rounded rectangle of some sort. But it's good to have a look and see if your chosen creature has a particular shape you want to include. For example, a greyhound has a little tiny waist. Cow is quite angular compared to a horse and so on. What kind of legs does it have? Does it stand on four legs or maybe two or eight or many. Does it have pads or claws or maybe hoofs. Or perhaps cute toenails like an elephant. Are there big thigh muscles like a horse or a kangaroo? Does your creature have a tail? Is it long or short? Is it wide or thin? Is it scaly, maybe it's curly. Is there anything else about your animal, which you would need to include in order to make it obvious what creature it is? Maybe it has tusks or horns or something else that we haven't mentioned here. 6. Personality and Expressions: In this exercise, we're going to look at ways of bringing faces to life with different details and expressions. Draw along with me and try all these possibilities to see which resonates with you. Start with the eyes, and we're not going for realistic animal portraits, so you can take artistic liberty here and really add some personality to your drawing. There are so many ways to draw eyes, so let's try some out. The easiest are simple dots or circles like we did in the last exercise, you really can't go wrong with these. If you make them bigger and wider apart, your eyes will look more childlike and cute. Little curves give you closed eyes or turn them the other way up for very happy eyes. Draw circles for the eye whites with smaller circles for the iris and pupils. Because there's a lot of white showing this one looks a bit surprised. Have them looking straight ahead or in another direction. Chameleon eyes can see in two directions at the same time, which is a very cool superpower. Change the shape of the eye whites to give different expressions and looks. So animals have different shape pupils like cats or goats. You can pop in white dots to represent the shine on the eyes and make them look a little bit more realistic. You can add some eyebrows to give different expressions too. Even though this is generally more of a human thing, if you're making your animal anthropomorphic, which means giving it human characteristics, this works well. Make them surprised, angry, or suspicious or worried. Noses and mouths are next and people noses are easier in a way. The animal noses will be very different depending on your creature. We already looked at some very simple noses, those could just be a little button nose or a pair of dots or circles for the nostrils. Cat nose could just be a cute little triangle and that could also be a bird's beak. You might want to draw in a shape to represent the whole muscle area, for example, for a bear. You could make the nose side on even though your animals facing forward if it looks right. We often do this with people. On the front, you might not even be able to see the nose very well. If that's an important feature, it might make more sense for you to draw your animal's head side on, for example, with a crocodile. Or you could have your animal's face just turned slightly to the side so that you get the outline of the nose and face shape. Then you can decide to include just one or both eyes and ears. This can be trickier, so it's really up to you how you choose to do it. If you're going to illustrate one character in a number of ways, for example, in a book, you need to be able to draw them in lots of different views and positions. But let's just pick one for now and keep it simple. Go with what looks best for your animal or what is most appealing to you. The mouth can be fairly realistic and you can choose to attach it to the nose if it makes sense, or you can keep it separate. You could make it look more human and give it human expressions. An upturned mouth is a classic happy smile and a downturned one is angry or sad. A tilted line is neutral or maybe confused, or it might be a rice smile. Circle for a mouth makes your character look surprised. Do you want to add some teeth or tongue? Or maybe some leaves poking out to show that your animal is eating. All these details are up to you. We covered ears earlier, but ears can give your animal a lot of personality. Cat ears often point at whatever they're concentrating on. Here are the same dog ears, but changing their position suggests different moods and breeds. Draw a page of different faces and expressions for your character. Sprinkle in some extra bits of your own. There are endless ways of drawing features. You just have to look at a few children's book covers to see what I mean and your choices and preferences will be what makes this uniquely yours. Just a few more decisions to make before we get sketching. Think about the type of personality your animal naturally has. Is it feisty and fierce? Is it friendly and cute? Is it quiet and shy? Sometimes it's fun to flip this and have a fierce mouse or a cute crocodile. You're the boss. You need to decide if you want your animal to look and behave fairly naturally or to be more anthropomorphic and people like, for example, a cat standing up right on two legs, doing a human thing, maybe even wearing human clothes, such as a dress or a suit or boots and so on. And you might want to add fun accessories. Would your animal be wearing a hat or a tie or scarf or bandana? Will they have some prop like a cup of tea or a bag or something that shows them doing a human job, for example, a stethoscope for a doctor or a tutto for a ballerina. You may also want to experiment with different poses and positions for your character. Should they be sitting or standing, mid jump? Just choose a pose that highlights your animal's personality. And lastly, are they going to be in a particular setting? If your bar is in the woods, you might want to add a tree and so on. Now you should have a whole world of possibilities for your character. 7. Sketching: Now that we have all the ideas in place, it's time to begin sketching our chosen animal. I'm going to start with the horse for this one. If I'm working digitally, I like to use a different color for sketching to my finished art so that it's easy to see, although sometimes I do end up making the finished art the same color as the sketch anyway. Remember, it's okay to start rough. Sketching is all about working through your ideas on paper or on screen and refining them as you go. Start by blocking in the basic shapes. You can use ovals, triangles, rectangles and circles to mark out the head, body, and limbs of your creature. My horse's body is a rectangle. Then the neck leans forward a little and his head is sort of rectangle but narrower towards the nose. And you can already see that this is going to be a horse or something similar even from just a few shapes. So I'll add in his legs, his ears, and a tail. Add in your animal's most distinctive features, and don't worry about getting the proportions perfect right away. This is all about experimenting, adjusting as you go and seeing what works. As you sketch, remember that the more relaxed you are, the more personality your character will have. Playful with your lines. And if you're stuck, you can look at your reference photos, but don't feel tied to them. This is your chance to exaggerate, simplify or stylize your animal to make it uniquely yours. Once you've got your rough shapes and proportions mapped out, move on to refining the outlines. I'm adding some curves to make my horse a bit less blocky. You can now add more defined details like the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, using the facial features and the expressions we explored earlier. My horse just looks neutral, but here's another possibility. I'm going to draw another animal as well, and this one is a squirrel because I am a squirrel. I'm going to have him standing up so he's not going to be acting like a real squirrel, he's going to be anthropomorphic. His body is an oval shape and smaller at the top where the head will be. His head has a pointed nose, but it's also quite rounded and I've made it proportionately bigger than a real squirrel because this one is more cartoony, so I'm exaggerating some parts. Obviously he needs a fluffy tail. He's going to be in a three quarters post, not front on, but not completely sideways either. You can see more of the animal this way, although front or side view is simpler to do. I've given him floffy curved thighs and little feet, some ears with cute tufts on the end and his little paws holding a nut to keep the facial features simple, he does look very pleased with himself. Here he is cleaned up and ready to go and I've given him a cozy scarf as it can be a bit chilly in the forest. In the next video, we'll be adding some color and texture. 8. Add Colour and Texture: Now that we have our outline finished, let's move on to adding color. With this step, you can either stick to realistic colors or you can get creative with your palette. It's entirely up to you. Remember your animal doesn't have to look like a photo. It can be as quirky and imaginative as you like. You could even fill the animal shape with a pattern if you want to. You can use any app program or art materials on paid Perl, whichever works best for you. There's so many different ways of doing this from just black cartoon outlines colored in or flat areas of color with no outline to watercolor or textured paint. Remember that the shadows and highlights will make your character feel more three dimensional. You can use shading or you can use lighter and darker shades of your base colors to give your character depth if you like. You don't have to overdo this. Just a little bit of shading in the right places can make a big difference. The shadow underneath will anchor your character to the ground, which is great if you're putting them in a scene. Don't forget to add any finishing touches that help tell the story of your character. Maybe some rosy cheeks or a cute look or a bit of dirt on the paws to show they've been busy. Might want to add fluffy fur or smooth scales or feathers. This can be done just with simple marks, or you can use brushes in Procreate or any other program that mimic different textures. Experiment with different marks, brush types, and art materials to see what gives the effect that you want. You can even add texture afterwards digitally. For example, here's my flat squirrel and I brought him in to procreate. I'm going to add a new layer on top and I've got a pale color selected, but you can also try dark color and I'll show you both in the brush library in the industrial section, and then to use the concrete block texture and you can experiment with all different fun brushes. I'm going to paint the texture to cover up the squirrel. Obviously, this doesn't look good right now. I'm going to go back into the layers and I'm going to tap the little N at the right. There are lots of choices which all give different looks. Scroll down to overlay, which usually works really well for this and you can play around with all the other blending modes too. This is what he looks like with exactly the same texture and settings in a dark brown. If you think the texture looks too strong, you can tap on the layer where it now says over overlay and slide the opacity down until you're happy with it. That's a really quick and simple way of adding texture. Here's my flat squirrel. Here's the pale texture and here's the dark texture. Now for my horse, I'm going to keep him really simple. I've decided to make him blue because why not? I'll start with a layer of blue watercolor. Then I'm adding some simple lines for the head and leg and also the mouth and nostril and then add in his eye and his man again, just with a few lines and just going to darken his hoofs. It doesn't need to be complicated. You can keep it nice and simple and still get a really effective illustration. Now it's time for you to finish your animal character and make it uniquely yours. 9. Final Thoughts: That's it. You've successfully designed your very own animal character from initial concept through to finished illustration. I hope you enjoyed following along and creating your own quirky creature. You've learned how to use basic shapes and minimal details to make recognizable animals. You've explored how to give them personality and you've played with color and texture to bring them to life. Now got a whole library of animal characteristics, expressions, and ideas for future characters too. Like everything else, the more you practice, the more confident you'll get at creating your own characters. The skills you've learned here can be applied to any type of creature real or imagined. Keep experimenting and having fun with your designs. Don't forget to post your project and feel free to share on social media and tag me at Nick Squirrel so that I can see it. I do share some of them in my Instagram and Facebook stories. If you enjoyed the class, please could you leave me a review? It really does help me and it helps others to find my classes as well. Follow me here on Skillshare to be kept up to date with my new classes and discussions. Thank you so much for taking this class with me. I can't wait to see all the wonderful characters that you come up with. Bye for now.