How to create a simplified Character Design

1. Introduction : Do you find it hard to design cartoon characters? And you wish that was easier way. Well then you've come to the right place. I made this course for you while you're going to learn to design a very simple cartoon character in digital tool. You will learn how to finalize it. But not only that, you will learn to know how to pose the character and how to add more life to it. Using the same principles, you'll be able to design different characters. And drawing will be fun from now on. Sign up for this course today. And let's have some fun. 2. Easy design of a Cat: Choose a pencil that you're comfortable with. Our choose one from the inking and start drafting a very, very easy shape, something that is easy to you. I'm going to use a shape that reminds me of a tea bag. Just one single shape that will be above the body and the head. Okay, Let's find the middle line. This middle line is going to split the face and body into two parts. So this is where we're going to place the nose, the eyes. And we're going to use that as a guideline for the features of the cats with tiny lines. I'm going to draft the cats front leg because the cat is sitting. The back leg will be somewhere around here. And I'm going to just dot the back leg that are hidden in the fluff up the cat. We're going to draft the tail and the ears very easily, very lightly. Don't push too hard. The playful in this stage. Now, let's find where the North is going to be. It lays on the cross of two lines that signify the middle of the face. And we can draft a small mouth. Now, let's place the eyes on top of the perpendicular line. And on both sides of the middle line. That splits the face and the body into symmetrical parts. Let's draw the pupils. Or a cat immediately gets a character. Now we have the cat is pretty much done as a draft. Now we can continue refining the features. This is a very, very easy matter to find and draw different characters. It can be a bunny, it can be a bear, it can be anything. Just use very simple shape and try to give them character thinking of the features of this certain animal that you're drawing. Now, I'm going to just define the lines even though I might not use them. I want to make sure my cat is something that I like. And I do like this design, simple n-cubed denture thing. So now let's continue with the coloring in the next lecture. 3. Coloring the Cat: So we have our design ready. Now, let's think about what do we want to look like, what kind of graphic elements we want to have and what kind of a view we want to go to the first layer and choose another layer, make another layer. Go back to the first layer where the sketches click on the letter M on the layer and drag the opacity down forests layer. Now let's go back to layer two. That's going to be where our color is going to be. And let's go on color palette and choose a color. So I decided my cat to be blue because it's fun, it's interesting. So I'm going to drag around at the blue color and pick a color that I like, something I'm comfortable with. Now, let's choose a brush. I'm going to go with air brush because I want to have a nice base first for the cat. And now I see that I paint on top of the drawing layer. I'm going to drag the color layer beneath the sketch layer so I can see the drawing on top of it. This is my guideline after all, and start sketching. Now I don't like this brush so much. I'm going to choose a medium hard brush and increase the pencil size. And let's try it out. Now. That's looked to transparent. So let's go back to another brush, maybe hard brush, not medium heart. Now, I'm happy without it has this kind of watercolor it look as well that I am happy with. You can do that. You can try any brush you like. There are no rules to what you have to use. Let your imagination guide you. It's never going to be wrong. So let's go and counter the shape of this cat to start with following the lines that we already create with a black pencil and outline the area that we want to fill in. Now, this didn't work to drag and drop. So I'm just going to continue painted. It's going to be even a nicer effect because it's going to give me this slightly airy watercolor brush. At this stage, when we have the design ready, we can really experiment where the color, and that's what we're going to do here. And I want you to follow me in this exercise because you will see how nothing is really set in stone. Everything is about experimentation and just finding the right style as you go along. And that's the most fun. Now, let's go ahead and choose a darker color. And I'm going to add this darker color on the tail. One thing to make an object look farther away from another object is to add a different color or rather darker color of the same color. As if it's farther away. It creates perspective. It creates volume. It looks like that this shape is behind the shape or the shape that is in front of us. So that's why I'm going to make the tail a little darker color. And you see that it doesn't appear to look as if a different color, but it appears to be in shade. So I'm going to choose now a white color and I'm going to fill in the eyes on top of them. The blue color. You see that I don't do another layer. I paint everything in the same layer. You can have different layers if you want to. But I want to have the freedom, the feeling of freedom when you design characters. And a part of it is to leave the technological advantages behind and just work as if it's just pen and paper. I'm going to choose this slightly darker color to add the ears so they stick out. We have this graphic elements that make the silhouette after cat better because we have just this teabag. We can have head, we don't have real body. It's really just a blob of a cat. So that's why it's so important when you add colors to use the shapes that are within the cat that are going to be in perspective or something. And it's going to disappear in the shape of the cat to add a stronger, darker color. So they can stick out. And basically they will describe the movement and the silhouette of the cat. That's why you do it. So now we have the leg, the front legs, and the ears in the same color. And now I just picked a color, a darker color of blue to add some shading around. The so-called the niece of the cat, to have more depth of this gap. Now I'm going to go and choose black color. And also I'm going to change my brush. I'm going to choose a more artistic brush like inking and have more of a fuzzy brush because I want to give this artistic look for the catalysts graphic look. And I'm going to draw the pupils and the nose. I'm going to trace on top of the shape that I already have, but I'm going to try to have a little more defined shape, something like triangle. And be more concrete here. And draw the mouth on top of our sketch. You'll see that this gage didn't matter. It is just about guiding us towards the shape you want to have. Because that's where the digital tool, and even with other tools, even if you draw in pen on paper. This is, you have to start with a rough sketch on top of which you can draw. And now I can go and hide the sketch. And you'll see that we have a funny little cat here. And we can now start to refine them. I'm going to choose another inking brush that was just doing straight lines. I'm going to go and choose other brushes. There's such a huge variety. You can just go ahead and experiment with brushes. I'm just experiment in front of the camera. So you can, you can do that too. It is never about the technological tool. It is only about your intuition, you feeling of how you want your character to, your drawing to look like. And I'm going to start outlining a little bit the eyes of this cat. You can choose to live them like white spots like that. But I want to try to have more definition, to have the eyes stick out more and be more obvious for my audience. So defined dots. And you see that such a simple measures and you have your already fun character design ready? I'm going to go ahead and do the same. Add some definitions of the legs as well. They already given, we have drawn them now two times. Each time we draw them, they get more and more defined. And I'm going to use what the brush gave me this small white spots to have it as the cats torts. And this is just happy accidents. And use this happy accidents for your advantage. That's why you don't have to fear drawing. Because sometimes the drawing in the process gives you something that you wouldn't have thought about. So everything is just good, just start without fear. The most important thing is that you get rid of your fear. Now I'm going to choose another brush and I'm going to play with the shape of the cat. Here. I'm going to add more definition. But on this side, I'm going to just drag it on top of the layer and add more fluffiness, more four of the cat. And because the airbrush has this quality that it just leaves white spots as if you drag it a little softer. It gives you a little different texture of the paint and it makes cat look for a year. So why not? I want to experiment with these two and add more undefined four of my cat using the digital tools. Try it out in a different way. And again, you'll see how easy it is if you follow me in this exercise. And now I'm going to go and choose another brush. Let's choose a drawing. Drawing brush and experiment with a jitteriness and see what we can do more with this gallium or characters basically just done here, we just experiment with texture. So I'm going to add more hair on top of what the texture I got from the airbrush. And I'm going to give more defined strokes of hair. You see how the cat becomes more graphic, it becomes more interesting. It is just completely new design. Just adding this very, very simple, simple tools on top of that and simple brushes. And I'm doing that just by deciding. To do that and deciding to experiment with the tool without any fear of failing. This is, this exercise is also for you to experience this feeling because this most of all will lead you to become a good designer. Something that is stopping you is that you think that things have to be in a certain way, that people that draw they know this certain way. So now I'm going to pick the color for the tail to choose the same color. And I'm going to do the same treatment for the tail and more roughness and foreignness for the tail of the cat. So now I'm going to use this base color as a base and choose some lighter blue and decrease the size of my pencil and just add some brighter hair chunks on top of the dark shade of the tail. And you see how these four becomes more obvious and the tail looks fluffier. I'm going to play with the pressure of the pencil. That's nice with Procreate, that you have different pressures. But even if you use different digital program, you can have the same effect. And you can even have some better tools. There are different who have different design. I'm going to do the same for the body of the cat. I'll just choose a brighter blue color, bluish white color. And I'm going to add some brighter strokes with a lower size of the pencil. Just do, make more interesting the fluff of the cat and add more volume to it. You'll see that the cat looks more rounder. As soon as we add this brighter chunks of hair, it looks as if it's a real far because that's how light reacts. It lights just on certain places. And an illustration is just interpretations of the world. You observe what you see a new child and you try to interpret it in different ways and you try to simplify it. And in cartoony drawings, in character design, simplifying and simplicity of a character is basically one of the most important things. And this is also in your advantage because it gives you the possibility to succeed every time you draw. If you strive France for simplicity, you don't have to know complex. These are complex drawing, complex anatomy of a character. You just have to observe and find your own way. And that's what gives you interesting characters. You see, or a cat getting cuter and cuter and becoming more interesting. We have basically two different designs from the beginning to now. You can decide to stop the beginning. But we evolve as more and more. Now I picked a color from the tail and I add more Fori, hair around the eyes that will make the eyes pop out even more. As soon as you have more contrast. If you add white against the darker color, black. But I don't want to have black here because the eyes will disappear. So whatever you want to have more contrast, you want certain elements like the eyes that are most important to stick out. Add more contrast in color just next to them. And you will get that effect. This is just a simple trick to remember. If you want to have focus on certain elements of your drawing, of your designed dark against light gives you contrast. And now I added just to white, shiny dots and it gives the ice immediate volume as if the light is bouncing on the ice. And now let's draw some whiskers on this gap with another brush that gives me more straight strokes. You can choose to have a more wiggly whiskers as well. That's also nice. Okay, so now go and create another third layer and drag it below the color layer of the cats, the layer two. And here we're going to add shadow, a drop shadow of the cat on the ground that will have the cat stand on the ground and will be more Forum. It gives more volume to the cat. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. But we want to have an illustration that you can just put on the wall and it's ready. So I'll start with the black color and with the air brush, pencil with a slightly larger size and paint below the cat very roughly. Add another blackness just very close to the body of the cat. And now again go to the layer, click on the N, and drag the opacity down for the shading to have it less strong. And now keep on working. So to have the shading the shadow stronger, what is closer to the cat and tuning out farther away it goes from the cat. Just it gives this error, has this nice transparency, the farther away it gets and it spreads out. So we have our cat basically ready. Congratulations on your nice character design. Now, let's play with this character and placement in different poses. In the next lecture. See you there. 4. Creating poses with the Cat: Now we're going to create different pulses with the cat. I have created a duplicate of the cat. And how I do that is first I duplicate each layer separately for the cat and also the shade, the shadow. And then I move the layers that I want to merge closer to each other. And I select the layers I want to merge. And I pinch with two fingers and, and unify them. Now I have a single image of the cat, and I also have a backup of these three layers in case I want to do some changes. So I'm going to hide the extra layers and I'm going to select the merged image of a cat and not this backup layers. And then I'm going to select the arrow here to activate the transformation tool. And I'm going to click on Uniform and scale down the cat. I'm doing that because I want to have the cat as a reference all the time while I draw the other poses of the cat, it is easier to follow the proportions and the character of the cash when you have it in front of your eyes all the time. So now I have its place in a good position. And now let's go ahead and create some bows. Go-to brushes, and choose a heart blend airbrush. Now with the pencil hovering over the color blue of the cat. Press this little square over here to select the color blue of the cat. Now, let's start drawing some shapes, some very undefined shapes of the cat. Start by drawing different shapes of this tea bag. So what do we have? We have a tea bag, a part of the shape that is smaller on the upper part and that is junky around her and wider on the lower part. So try to keep those proportions of the shape. Imagining that it is a teabag. You don't have to be super precise. Just play around with it. Just use the cat that we have on the site as a reference to approximately keep the size of the shape the same. Now, I see that the shape I painted here is a little bit too long. And I'm going to delete the top part and try to help. It's a little more chunkier and smaller at the end, so it matches the shape of the cat we already drew. And you see that when I have this airbrush, it leaves some nice watercolor feel to the painting, to the shape. It feels like a fluff already. Now, let's draw a pose where the tea bag is on the ground as if it's laying on the ground and just very freely try to match the size of the original cats again. And let's go another one. Let's have one from the front. If the cat is from the front, we are going to see the round shape, the bot like one round shape. So let's do that. And let's pretend that this cat is stretching up trying to catch something. This means that our tea bag now will be stretched. The opposite of what I've been saying now. But imagining that this cat is standing on its to fit. So let's have a longer shape. Now. Go again to our hover over the tail of the cat. Again. Click on the little square on the side and pick that blue color, the color of the tail. Now let's go to the first shape and starch with just a sphere, and drag down the sphere with a pencil to find the shape of the tail. We are already establishing that dispose of the cat is what a cat is pending in front vowels and the tail is a little bit behind it. It's chunkier around on the top and gets thinner at the end. And now let's do the same for the spouse. Dispose it feels like the face of the cat is on the floor and back, the rounded part is up. So let's draw this ball here and less even start with the next pulse. We don't need to finish it right away just to leave them. The shapes where there are, just to find the right position as you go along. If you can't imagine how that would look like. Now, let's go back to the previous balls and finished the tail over there. Now let's have the tail coming from behind because we probably seen this guy cat either from the back or from the front. The one that the last pulse we have, the stretch that it's obvious that the cats behind is on the ground. So let's place the tail approximately where we think that the cat, the cats, but it's going to be defining the little better. Now we have the shape of our cat here. Let's continue with the rest of the cats in the next lecture. 5. Finding the poses: Welcome back. Now we have our purposes. Let's start defining the cat and finding the buzzers. Go to the color palette, the little circle at the top, and choose a slightly bluish color, bright or white color, but slightly bluish. Now, let's decide where the head of the cat is and just draw the eyes as two white dots. So we'll have the eyes of this cat over here. You'll see that the brush is smudging the color a little bit. So I'm going to add more white inside these shapes. But I do want to have this brush because it leaves a nice watercolor filter it. And this cat we said the face on the status on the ground. Let's put the eyes here and they're going to be a little bit of an ellipse shaped, not quite as as round as the previous, because we have a little bit of a perspective. We can already guess the pulses just with this simple shapes and symbols. Simple things that we did. Now let's go ahead with the next pose. And let's have this cat laying down, so the face being upwards. So we are going to have the eyes being here. And let's go with the round cat. And the round shape is going to be the cat looking straight at us. The other steps are going to be rounder. Let's go with a stretched out and have the eye shape being somewhere over here. Now go and pick the black color and choose an ink brush. I want to have a stronger color and a better definition here. Because we need more precision. We're going to work where the pupils and the facial of the cat. So let's draw the pupils. And I'm going to make the cat a little bit cross-eyed because that's make the cat look cuter. It is because it reminds us as small children. Small children, such large eyes that sometimes it's appear that they are crossed out even though they're not. But that's how we've humans experienced them to be cuter. And let's have the cats have his mouth or her mouth open. Like it in an expression. And let's have the pulse of the cat, the front paws being banned in the air in front of the cat. And the Bolsa adjust very simple shapes is just a round shape and basically a stick figure. That's how designing very simple designs. You can use that to create an interesting shapes and not be limited by, by the shape. So I decided to go back to the heart, blend, brush, airbrush because these pens is good for the facials. But I want the pulse to be in the same style, a little bit like the body to have more fluffiness to it. So I'm just going to start with a round ball for the poll. And just a stick figure, a line that is a little bit band. And the lower legs are just two dots there just disappearing in the far, in the fluffiness. So I'm just going to do to slightly elliptical shapes. And now we can clearly see the pulse of the cat. So let's move on to the next character, next spouse. And it's kind of suggests that what kind of balls this is going to have? It is laying on the ground. Eyes wide. It's going to probably catch something in the catch pulse. And I'm going to make the distance between the eyes a little bit more by choosing the blue color again and painting in-between the eyes. And now I can draw the nose and the mouth is going to be just visible a little bit on the ground, just to give the character more character. If we see more of the facial features, we experienced the character better, it gets better silhouette. So let's have this cat actually actually stretching forward. So I'm going to have a line for the leg and a sphere on an ellipse. Pulse, very simple shapes. And we are going to have the back legs visible a little bit just as a little dot as a shape behind. Let's move on to the next shape and find a nose and the mouth, maybe this cat we're going to yarn. So just make the mouth shape a little wider, open. And the pupils will be rather an ellipse rather than a whole sphere. And again, the paws are banned in the air. Steady your cat and see what kind of post that's due date yet, we are trying to do as cats do here with our pencil and paper or an iPad or whatever it is. So because the shapes are so simple, is just a sphere or a ball and a line. You can, you can study your cat and just apply those features to your one leg stretching the air and one band for the back legs. And this cat is staring right at us. So let's do the mouth and feel balls very wide as it's tearing it, as trying to jump on us. The cats do that when they're super excited. And let's go ahead with the last guy, with the last pose. And this one is going to be stretched up so we can choose to have the eyes looking at something in the air. Because this cat is not in its normal shape, it is just stretched to catch something and use that pulse to design this, this catching pulse. And I'm going to have just a small dose to define that. It's clause of the cat. It is so simple. It doesn't need to know anatomy. You just need to observe your cat and tried to signify whatever you care to. A very, very simple strokes and simple shapes. To make your life too hard. Just do simple drawing, simple shapes just to get used to the movement of your character. And also it gets much cuter. And now I'm going to pick the color of the ears of the cat. It slightly darker blue, in the same way that we did with every color. By choosing the color on the cat with the small square. And just add the ears, each shape of the cats. And now it's just obvious where the ears are going to be. When the cat is lying down, one year is going to be up front and the other one is going to be behind the cat. The 11 is looking straight at us. It's going to be on both sides. And the one that is stretched, it's going to be one is going to be bigger in front of us and one is going to be a little smaller behind the head cats. So now we have our poses ready. They look cute and nice. But let's add some fur and some details as we did to our original cats. And we're going to do that in the next lecture. 6. Refining: Welcome back. Now we have or poses and the cat looks like the original data, but with even more life to it. Now let's add the details like the for the whiskers, the shading. And we're going to do that by picking the color of the four, the light for, and start drawing it on each pulse of the cat. And very roughly just a little bit inside the cat and more around the contour of the cat. This is a very enjoyable process when you add the final touches and you'll see your character come to life. It is very giving them very satisfying. So let's go ahead and add dots on the next pose, the next cat. The brush that we've chosen, gives some different kind of texture to the four, which makes it looks more random and even more water coloring. So that is just beneficial to our design. You see how sometimes it ends, it adds a thicker color by the end of a pencil and sometimes a brighter color. It kind of like erases the shape of the form, which is good because this is the happy accidents I'm talking about. It gives you character design more life and more randomness. We don't want to have too stiff and to calculate it, character design. So we're going to add a four on all the poses. So they start to look similar. Start to look at it is the same, kept the same design. The poses look even more lively because now we have learned how our character behaves, how our character is. Even. Sometimes, when you draw the buses, you can go back to the original design and redesign and redraw it. So it looks more like the poses. This is a very normal process of discovering your character. You are not going to hit the right character right from the start. Sometimes, even often. In the process of designing, the process of creating the poses. You're going to see that the character becomes better and better. So you'll have to redraw your original drawing. Now, let's go ahead and do some detail work where the whiskers, I'm going to choose the black color and choose an inking brush. I'm going to choose the mercury brush. I'm going to choose smaller cell. And just jot some points where the whiskers will start from and draw randomly. Some whiskers going to draw even thinner lines. And let's go for the next character. This is the juicy details we are talking about when we have our poses done. And it is enjoyable to find the character adding more and more details, adding graphic elements that contribute to the look of the character. So we have data elements done. Now, let's add some glow in the eyes of a cat. Choose a white color. And I just small dots. Not as more, just a little bit thicker. And in the middle of the eyes, the eyes get immediately more life and more volume. Now, let's go for the next element. Pick the color of the tail, and start adding four on top of the tail. And the posers we did with this pencil have the tail a little bit more fluffy, a little bit more airy. So it is enough just to add the fluff with the darker color on top of the slightly brighter color dot the airbrush created. To describe this fluffiness of the chat. If you want to add more with a bright color, that's okay too. I mean, you see how easy it is. I'm just experimenting here in front of you so that you can see how you can go about when you design your character. The most important thing is to be brave. And the bravery comes with practice and comes with thinking about how can I be more playful? How can I make this design more interesting? Remember, this is a digital drawing. You can always start on you, you'll lose no information. But every time you allow yourself to be more playful with your design, you become better at it. So don't be too stiff and to reach it with any rules of your design. This is an exercise that can teach you just that. That's why I keep it as loose as possible and as simple as possible. It is only for your benefit. Now that we have this blue color selected, Let's go and draw around the shape of the eyes, the white of the eyes. Remember, when you have a dark color next to the bright color, the bright color pops out even more. So if you want to give the eyes even more definition and expression, instead of just going with a contour around the eyes, which I now think I'm going to abandon because this character looks even better without it. Just draw in a loose way shading around the eyes. You'll see that I'm just trying to simulate for here as well. So I don't have to have a color, but just fluffiness. So just draw a random small lines to describe just that for around the eyes. And I have kept everything here in the same layer. But if you want to have things separate, you can just go and create different layers. I want to have just a simple thing as possible here for you. Now because this cat is stretching towards something, I'm going to draw a little b. I'm going to draw with a black color. Now that I have that selected everything that is black. And now I'm going to choose a yellow color and another brush. And I'm just going to fill it in with some yellow, very sketchy be you don't have to do a lot to have the B looks at. It is something that the cat wants to catch just to complete this pulse. So we have all our pulses down. Now let's go and create another layer because we are going to need this one for the shading. We don't want to mess or cat, we want to have free space to draw an even shade. So I'm going to choose an air brush with a slight gray color. And I'm going to increase the size of the brush because I want to have more airy color here for the shading. And I'm going to add some shading below the cat. And to remember where the cat touches the ground, the shade is the darkest. So if you draw some spot, go back then and do another take on the shading very close to where the cat is having contact with the ground to have it look more solid and more realistic. And that is pretty much done. Here. I'm going to erase the shading because it feels like at the perspective is wrong. So the first pulse, so I'm just erasing some shading away. The one with the cat laying down on the ground, I need more solid shaded shading closer to the body or the body has contact with the ground. Now, that's it. And we have all our troubles us down. Or if the cat, we've designed a cat and we've created several poses just using undefined shapes. You'll see how easy it is. And the simpler you go with your design, the more successful you will be, and the more fun you're going to have. As a beginner, this is what you want to do really. So I hope you enjoyed this lecture and see you around. 7. Conclusion and Exercises: Basically, what we can do with this technique is draw any kind of animal. Here, I'm quickly showing you how you can draw a bear using this same principal. You draw a rough shape, and then you find features that are specific for this animal and you just get creative. And here I'm showing you how to draw a bunny using exactly the same principle. Just use the features for each animal you want to create and just be creative. You can find your own way to design the feet and the ears. And the rest doesn't have to be exactly as I do it. You are free to do whatever you want. And it is very, very easy technique. And also, by the end of this simple exercise, I'm going to give you two different shapes. And I'm going to ask you to complete them. What does this animal look like to you? Finish the rest of the body with your own design and your own final polish. To complete this design. To the end. In the second picture, you get all the features that suggest which animals yes. Redraw the features and the body and finalize even this design in the way you feel it's best. Thank you for joining me and have a very creative day.