Transcripts
1. Introduction: With Christmas
holidays approaching, you want to send the best Christmas cards and messages to your
friends and family. Hi, my name is Maria Bramova, and I'm an illustrator
and animator. In this course, I'm going how to draw fun and
cartoon Santa Claus. What you will learn here is not only to draw Santa Clauses, but how you draw a well known
design in new approach. This is a course about
character design. What are you going
to learn here? You're going to learn how to draw a character
from simple shapes. How to add different features to a well known
design and costumes. How to personalize
your character. How to put emotions
on your character. You will also learn how to a specific design and
put it in motion. You will learn how to break
your boundaries and fears. And design daring, cute,
and creative characters. Let's get you started diving in this course and less. Have fun.
2. SANTA DESIGN 1 - SKECTH: Hello there to this Christmas
special edition of drawing. Here we're going to learn how to playfully draw different
designs of Santa Claus. I'm going to start with a very
simple design right away. I hope you warm up your
hands before that, different lines like
that and draw freely. But let's get started. Now, if you have
been on my lectures, you know that we draw a lot
of designs with spheres. Let's start by drawing
a large sphere. This Santa Claus is going
to be just a large ball. What I want to show
you here is that there are many different
ways of designing character. Starting from a very simple one, you are very used to seeing
Santa Claus as this old guy, very advanced human guy. That's what you have in mind
when you say Santa Claus. But there are so many
different ways of drawing cute curtoni
Santa Claus. You can use them as your character design
for Christmas card. Or just playing
around and having fun designing characters
during Christmas and having the Christmas mood. Let's design the sphere. Now what we're going to do
is find the middle line of where the body and the face of the Santa Claus
is going to be split into. I'm going to choose a
design of three quarters, which means that he turned
a little bit on that side. We have a nice profile here. Just draw a middle line, just like an ellipse that goes around the whole character as
if this sphere is cut into. I'm not going to get
complex on that, I have covered that
in other lectures. I'm just going to tell you, just draw a middle line, something like that here. A curvature, not a
straight line because the character is going to be turned a little
bit on that side. That's going to be the
middle of our character. Now we are going to
draw a character where the body and the head
are stuck together. This place is going to be head. Let's design where the body is going to start draw
another curved line, like an ellipse, which
one goes around the body. But we are going to just
see this line that is going to be the body of Santa
Claus, the first one. Let's draw where the nose is. We're going to find
the nose here. Draw another ball or sphere
or an ellipse squash sphere. This is going to be the nose. Draw another sphere
around the nose. That is going to be
Santa Claus beard. Yes, these are just help
lines placeholders. Before you find your design, you need to have a sketchy
look of what your character or the main features of this
character should be or will be. The character is a process of discovering where everything is. That's why I draw
with the blue pencil. My sketch feels complete. I want the first stage of
my sketch to feel complete because that's how I have the freedom to mess
up, to make mistakes. And I'm going to show you
for those one new one, how you can refine the character later on
with a black pencil. Now this is or can close body. Now let's start reaching
out for some features here. Let's draw the eyes. And because this is
the middle line, we're going to try to make the eyes similar on both
sides of this curve, but because the character
is little turned this side, now we have slight perspective
changes of this eye. We're going to make this
other eye slightly more as an ellipse and slightly
closer to the eye. This is because of an
perspective change that happens as we turn
around in our body. Now let's have, yes, the pupils of the character. It's like shaping up. Now let's have the head
of our Santa Claus. It's going to be
approximately here we are, following this curve
here of the head. We are just extending
slightly on top of the head, this white fluff on the
head of the character. Using all these curves and
the sphere as guidelines, we're going to just
extend this curve. And this curve just follow
the directions of the curve. If you need to keep it straight, just draw some doodling so you get some shading
to help you out. We're going to have maybe a
sphere here to help us out, to draw even this curve and complete the triangular head of the character going in here, and wrap it up with
another sphere. Now we have the
head already there. Now let's continue to design the Santa Claus body
and hands and arms. We're going to have
this cute character, just a ball, turning
it into Santa Claus. Let's connect these
body parts here. Turning the Santa Claus coat, we have the middle line. The coat will split here
on the middle line, down. Here on the middle line down. Let's have the thickness
of the coat already. Here like that, We are following this curvature
here around the body. We'll connected and try to keep a similar space from this point and this point and
the same on the other side. You have to think also about
the perspective chain here. It can be a little bit
thinner than here, so let's do that on the
other side. And that's it. Now let's design the
arms, or Santa Claus. Now the way to make
something look large is to make some other parts of
the body look very tiny. We want this chunky round, cute Santa Claus to be, to look a little bit around
and soft and chunky. We're going to have his arms
being really, really small. We'll just go draw a sausage, bend on arms, and make the
fluff of the Santa Claus here. And we'll just his
hands rather in a fit. Here, we'll have
the other arm seen from behind, very tiny sausage. Let's have just another small
ball to signify his arm, also in the fist. We're going to make an easy
Santa Claus here, right? Let's design the legs. If we assume that
this is the middle of the body and he turned a
little bit to that side. Let's also tiny legs with
tiny boots finishing here. And the other one,
just a triangle, as if these are his legs
and tiny boots here, we just signify
where he's standing. We're going to
refine that later. We'll have the Santa
Claus here over here. And his hair, maybe just chunks of his hair visible
on this side. Now let's refine
his beard as well. We'll have a beard
coming down here. Within this shape, we'll find the mouth or
just the part of the mouth just rounding up
his mustaches on this side. It's easy when you have the placeholders to do
all these elements when you already have
the main features actually figured out and
you know how you do it. The guidelines to help you out, we'll have some eyebrows. Just triangular
shapes for eyebrows. You can vary this design
the way you wanted, but you have the
main features done. This is over a
little Santa Claus and with a blue
pencil shaped up. Now let's finish it off
with a black pencil and see how it plays out. I'll do that in the next
lecture. I'll see you there.
3. SANTA DESIGN 1 - REFINE: Hello there and welcome back. Now, are you excited to have
the Santa Claus finished? It does look cute. We're going to finalize it. We're going to draw the
features with the black pencil. And that will visually make
the blue pencil disappear. It's going to look
like a shading to you. I really, that kind
of drawing, really, I really like to
see the blue pencil underneath the black drawing. It just feels real
authentic and fresh. If you notice, for example, if you've seen Disney
cups with Disney designs, they have the main characters
that they've drawn on the cup leaving the blue
pencils underneath. That's what I've seen. Anyway,
when I was roaming around stores in that was nice
because this is really, really nice to have
the top process underneath the real
drawing later. You can just grab this drawing and clean it up on any tool. You can do it on another sheet of paper
or you can scan it, you can draw it digitally. And just trace this, drawing this line
one more time when you're done, basically color it. Now let's talk about
outlining this character. You see that I'm still not
just drawing one line, I'm searching still
for the character, but I now have the features. I'm just going forward and just discovering the elements
of these features, the nose and the eyes. I'm starting from
the face because I want to see character
popping out immediately. I want to see this
character alive. What better way to do that than just defining the eyes
and the facial features? It's like calling to finish, finish up your artist. I want to be a real Santa Claus. Maybe maybe this is a
real Santa Claus or this is someone's Santa Claus. As for the kids, Santa Claus is real. It's not. Dad's dressed up. But anyway, you can
find features of who Santa Claus Santa Claus is. Just give him more personality
by just drawing his face. Let's shape mustaches
and enjoy the process. Here is really windy outside. The first snow has fallen. Just right now I'm sitting here showing you
how to draw Santa Claus. That's Christmas,
this time of the year where you can sit down and you don't need to
rush out in the sun. Of course, if you're
not living in a sunny area or if you're
not on the other part of the world where winter
is and the winter means warm weather
and bathing suits. But anyways, Christmas
is time when you sit around the table
with your family and have some craft work done, sitting in a cozy atmosphere listening to some
Christmas music, or watching your favorite show, or you just concentrate
on this design. Small Santa, later on can put on Christmas cards for
your grandparents or for your closed ones. That's basically this
time of the year. Now I'm going to put here
even the Santa Claus belt, which I had forgotten. I'm going to put the
belt a little bit higher up and just try to follow the curve
of this curvature. And even this side, because you see this, this curve and this curve, are them almost parallel. They have slight deviation of Curvature or openness. But when you use spheres
for your design, this is going to help
you to basically even follow the rules of
perspective using spheres. I'm talking a lot about
it in all of my lectures. I want to make it easy for
you to be able to draw, because it is easy when you find a method
that is suitable for you that doesn't
demand a effort, it should be fun as well. If it is not fun, you're going to give it up. Everything that is not fun. People are just giving
it up. They should. Why would you do something
that is not fun? We are not here to
torture ourselves. We are here to discover, to have fun, to
enjoy the process. If you are here with me, you are one of these people
who just loves drawing and want to be better and want to do something fun
for their family. And what better way to be seen, really then to draw
Christmas cards with your own designs for
your family and friends. That's the warmest thing
to get during Christmas, Someone has put
thought and effort for you to enjoy to make
your Christmas better. You see that? While I'm talking, I'm just drawing on
top of the blue lines. I'm keeping this
vigilant, real speed. You can just draw
together with me. You don't need to pulse it. It's like we have this invisible friendship going on where we draw together. What's not more fun than
drawing with someone else. And you see the boots. I'm just doing some small
triangular shapes here. There's nothing
anatomical about it. Just connecting the boots
from this part to this part. Why I'm shading it is because
we don't have color here. We can define how the
color will appear by just shading the things
that are black or darker. And that's what I'm doing
here with the belt here. I'm going to have some
maybe belt element now. We don't see it. Just shade it. Make it easy
on yourself. Make it fun. Here we are almost done. What else can we do? We can bring up some
elements like maybe fluff on Santa's fluffy white coat or the fluffy part where
it's soft and fluffy. So we can just add
some materials on it, you don't have to
do it all the way, just a little bit
on this sphere, on top of his hat. Basically, that's
our first design. It was easy, right?
I hope you had fun. Let's go ahead and draw
some other designs. There are so many
ways to do this. Let me show you
some more fun ways to draw another type
of Santa Claus. I'll do that in the next
lecture. I'll see you there.
4. SANTA DESIGN 2 - SKETCH: Hello there. Welcome back. I hope you made some
warm tea or coffee. And you're ready for
our next section, where we're going to draw
another Santa Claus. Now we're going to
use different shapes. Just to show you there are
no particular rules in this. You can just discover
your own design. Here we are going to squares, we're going to triangulars
and rectangular. Let's just draw
even rectangular. What I want to show
you here is that an evenness is an
advantage to your design. It is not disadvantage. The more playful you are, the better your designs will be. We're going to draw the
squares anti close. Let's keep him
straight this time. Let's draw the middle line. The middle line is
always important because you want to see, if you want to draw
symmetrical things, you can just see from which
point the symmetry starts. It's going to be easy for you. Let's draw the head and connect this rectangular with
this rectangular. Let's keep it easy,
keep it flowing. And you'll say, well, I drew the sphere. How would that be a Santa Claus? That just looks like a block. That's right, but we're
going to put an eyes, a costume, a beard, and Ola. Let's create some
magic here, people. Let's do on top of
that Santa Claus hat, we're just going to extend that. Let's do different design
here. You can do anything. You can even start
the heat from here. But I'm going to pull it
a little bit outside. I'm going to create this here. Just draw another line. And connect this
line with this line, this heat dropping down and ending up with
a sphere like that. Now let's design
Santa Claus Beard. Let's start with the Nousse. Just play some tiny sphere. It can be a big sphere even. This is something that you can create later on and
design your own designs. Let's do the beard.
The beard will go from from one side of this
rectangular to the other. It's going to stretch down side. I'm going to round that up here. It's going to end up
here on the middle line. I'm going to do this,
chunks of hair. If you don't want to draw
all the hair in something, you symbolize it
with these chunks of hair that usually we
associate with hair. Let's draw these cute mustaches. I'm going to draw one
mustache here and one here. I'm just going to do them tiny. You can still do
mustaches over here. That's going to be
another design. But that's why it's so fun, because it's so playful. I'm going to do these
chunks of hair as well on the Santa
and smiling mouth. Now I'm going to do the eyes, one over here and one over here. And this one we look from the front and not from
three quarters as here. I'm going to try to keep the eyes a little bit on
each side of this line. I'm going to draw the pupils. Usually we draw the pupils
a little bit cross eyed. That's give the look a little, a cartoony look because it looks like kids
and small babies. They have such a big eyes, the look a little
bit cross eyed. As well as puppies, we associate them
with small children, it gives them more Cortona look because cuteness come from liking to look at young
or childlike creatures. We are basically biologically predisposed to like kids so
we can survive right now. Let's do the belt this time. I'm not the round belt, but I'm going to just
do a straight belt. This design can be flat, you can skip all
the perspective, just draw flat things. I'm going to give him the
element of the belt here. And I'm going to even
thicken the belt, make it a little
bit more uneven. I'm going to also
draw his costume, just make uneven lines. That's going to give him
even more personality. Let's draw his legs. And his legs will be just
sausages, just sticks. Can it be easy than that? Let's have the ground being over here and his boots just
landing on the ground. Now we can develop these boots. How do we want the
boots to look like? I can have boots like that, you can have maybe some
fluff on top of that. Some boots that are ending
up in triangular shapes. Let's draw the arms that are similar to the
boots to the legs, just sausages coming
from the shoulders down. And another one here. Let's around them up with
this fluff of the costume. The arms or the fingers. Let's not have an arm, let's just have fingers
just coming out of it. Just like small sausages. Sausage sausage, three fingers. And there you go. We have the other Santa Claus
looking cute, looking new. It's a brand new design. Let's go ahead and color it or outline it with
a black pencil. I'm going to do that in the next lecture.
I'll see you there.
5. SANTA DESIGN 2- REFINE: Welcome back. Are you ready to find out even more who
this Santa Claus is? Okay, let's start outlining with the black pencil and find out who this little
character is. It's fun character. Let's outline his eyes and come into his
personality right away. Just feel the cuteness
of this character. I'm going to have just smaller eyebrows
than the other one. When you start
discovering your style, you're going to start liking different features
more than others. And that's going to be
your personal style. That's what the world
is waiting for. It's not waiting for to see the same design
over and over. It's waiting for your discovery
of common features of designs and creatures
and people that we know to find your
own expression. Don't be afraid if your design
is not entirely like mine, that's just a positive thing. It's your take on
whatever you're doing, your creativity,
that speaks to you. You already now discover how unique you are in
your design work. Embrace that, and don't get discouraged if something
doesn't look like mine. Well, I hope it
doesn't later on, because we're different people and I want to see your designs. I want to see how
is your take on it. You see that? Right now
I'm just outlining. It's a lot of fun. It's the time when you
can listen to some music, maybe even call a
friend or just stay, just stay alone
with this process and enjoy the creativity. The flaw that comes into you and calm make you
create, make serene. That's what R does with us. It make us calm and
brings us into flow. Now I have done this line here that is overlapping with the line of
this Santa Claus. I just had to move
it a little bit because you have to
watch that lines from one object
shouldn't align so much with lines of
the other objects, is some rule of thumb. In designing, it just
creates better silhouette. I'm going to just
outline this belt. And the belt is, as you see, an even. And that is the
advantage of cartooning. And I have designed the
element here of the belt. Let's give it some holes. This Santa hasn't
gone all the way. That is on the last hole. It's like pre Christmas Santa. It hasn't eaten too much yet. Right? He has holes left to fill up later
on, past Christmas. That's an element
of his personality. You should think of
such elements and make your process be more fun. Who is the Santa? How has he worn his
costume? Where has it been? You can even make a beach. Someone that is on the
beach for you who watching that is too warm for the
clothes on the beach. We just make Santa with
beach design. Why not? It's the freedom to
design whatever you want that will bring you closer
and closer to who you are, you style, how you describe
your own characters. We have our own uniqueness, or some call it
craziness going on, especially as artists to
create these funny movies, the funny stories and
funny characters, you need to dive into
your inspiration. Inspiration is not a common way of thinking for
the normal people. Just embrace that, call that craziness or
inspiration. Just embrace it. Go wild, find something funny, something unique that
makes you giggle. I know when you live
among the society, the other people you
want to be accepted. You don't really share the crazy thoughts
with someone and said, well, I'm going to
draw a square Santa. There's like, what are
you talking about? It's not possible. How would that look like? Well, you've just And
does it look cute? It definitely does. Does it look easy? It definitely does. These fingers are just sausages. Just make a couple of sausages. And there you go. You have your Santos
hands already done here. We can make another
element and just draw a heel on the Santos shoe
just to play around with it. You can skip it if you want. You can add it if you want. There's no right and
wrong in this designs. Just how you feel about it. The feeling is always more important than any rule
that you will encounter, because breaking the rules is
what makes the designs new. We always create, we always have something
new to look forward to. New designs and new discoveries on top of the traditional
things of Santa Claus. Here we go, We have
this next Santa. I'm going to shade
the shoe black. And this one black. If you're coloring it later on, then you can put the
real colors on it. The red dress or the red coat, Black shoes, black belt, the white beard, the pinky
face of the Santa La. You're getting another
funny Santa design that you can share
with your family, with your kids, or
with your parents if you're a kid following
this lecture. Now we have two
different Santas. Let's go ahead and do
another one, this fun. I believe it was, it was for me. So I'll see you in
the next lecture.
6. SANTA DESIGN 3 - SKETCH: Hello, people. Welcome back. Let's design or third Santa. Let's just brainstorm. I even don't know how this
next Santa is going to be. Let's just put some
shapes in place. Let's say Santa is
going to be this big because we don't have
an extra paper over here. Let's keep this size. Why? I want to do
everything in one paper, it's just because
you can compare the santas and see how
different they are. Still there all look
like Santa Claus. Let's design. Let's
have a hat over here. Let's just talk about
what we draw and find a shape that suits it.
Let's have this approach. Let's draw a middle line
over here from the hat. Let's have this shape. We'll have this time
some a triangular shape. For the Santa, we have
all the shapes covered, right, triangular shape
and the middle line. What else can we do now? Let's have this Santa having his legs over here on
the end of the triangle, having some funny, funny
look this leg over here. Now let's design
the face this time. Let's give him a large
nose falling down. That's also funny. Designing funny creatures, funny things is fun, right? We're going to have his eyebrows being really thick and
really narrow to the nose. Let's have him just
have this eyes. Just dots, large mustaches, long ones just like the head. When we draw designs, we are trying to find certain shapes that are
repeating on the design. Like the large head,
the long mustaches, they all look sharp and
triangular, triangular legs. This is something
to think about. Now let's have him laughing. I'm just going to draw
a mouth over here. An open mouth, maybe one to it, is like a funny character. And have his lips
being over here. Let's design the beard
just flowing in the air. Triangular shape. Let's have it on this side,
not even symmetrical. Isn't that a relief? Like I can skip all the symmetry Now let's
have the fluff on the head. Maybe similar shape of
the heat like here. Not a sphere, but
maybe just some, a long shape here. Let's have also his arms
being really, really long, just draw a sausage or a curve where his
arms are going to be. Later on, let's design some
fluff here that are going to be either hands or
fluff of the costume. That is not so important. Now, we can place the, the belt over here, or over here, or anywhere you want because it's cartooning
and everything is possible. With every shape that you draw, you're going to get suggestions for where do you want
the next shape to be. I'm drawing belt over here and just getting the
belt elements here. We have that. Now I use a perspective shape
here, out of nowhere. Why? Because I can you, can you see that? You're going to get an
interesting design anyway, I'm going to extend
the costume here. I just come up with that
because I drew this, and now I have a placeholder
of my character. I can experiment. I can continue
this line here and have the code
flying on the wind. What else did inspire me? It was the mustaches
and the beer flowing in the wind and this curvature here that I thought
instinctively. What if it discontinues
down here on this costume? I'm going to be doing that. I now want to have his shoes, or his boots being very tiny, like really large,
and end up here with large boots like that. I signified with curves. Uneven curves. You see that? I don't draw one straight curve. I'm experimenting. What else do I want? Well, let's give him some
funny heels like that. That's it. This is
going to be his body. I'm just going to radio
fine his body right now. A little bit, I'm going to
push this line here down here, so it's like his pants. And that's why you
need a blue pencil. You need to be able
to experiment. You need to be able
to make mistakes and draw over them, redo them. If you have something
else in mind, you don't have to be stuck. I drew there, I'm stuck with it. You are stuck with, you can change just
about everything. I decided to have the sausages as his
arms, very tiny arms. Just hands in fists this time
can make it easier for you. Basically. That's
our next design, you see that went even faster and it's a
funny, funny character. Now let's outline it with the black pencil in the next lecture.
I'll see you there.
7. SANTA DESIGN 3 - REFINE: Hello there people. Let's redefine or Santa, and see how different
they are already. It's storm outside. The weather is perfect
for drawing Santas. Yeah. You love the bad weather. When you something nice, imagining Santa flying with the reindeers bringing presents. Right. And especially when
you create an image of Santa home in a cozy
home with warm tea, warm clothes, jumper, maybe
you have some company. Maybe you create
that with your kids, with your parents, with
your grandparents. This is time of the year. When is the best time to spend
with family and friends? Again, what I'm doing now is just following the
lines, the design. I already created refining it. Make it look better, make it look more fun. You see how we started. We have no idea how this
Santa was going to turn out. We just said, let's do
a triangular Santa. From there, we, let's do
a long nose this time. Why not the nose at like, let's do a long mustaches
and a funny mouth? Everything followed
up as we went along. We followed our instinct. We drew elements without
any particular rule. We played around with shapes, we played around with
our imagination. What we said is, let's do that, and why not? Why not is the magic word
for your designs? Why not? Everything is possible, And you should not
limit yourself with one particular image that said you have to do
things in a certain way. You don't. Only through why not. You can discover who you are as a character designer and find out who your
characters are. They want to get out. You just have to free them. And you do that by
freeing yourself from different perceptions
that people have set on us. That certain actually
designs has sat on us. And now I'm extending this beard over here just to connect it
with the head better. This is something that
I just came up because every stroke will lead you to discover how do I
want this shape to be? Why do I want this
shape to finish, and how do I complete this? It's fun. It's really, really fun when you
have the design already done with
the blue lines. When you have freed
yourself to create your own designs, just have fun. I don't know which one of
those designs you prefer. If you look at them, they all look cute, right? Because we have just been honest with the
drawing process. When you are honest, when
you like, quit obsessing. Doing the right thing, you're going to discover how
much fun designs you can do. I'm talking about that a lot in my other lectures if you
want to check them out. If you don't keep drawing
Santas with me here, it's like a boxing. But this makes us
keep things simple and to keep them to
just enjoy the process, the elements of the belt here, here we don't see the holes. We don't need to complicate our design with more
holes like that. Finalize the belt with
the black pencil. With each design you
get faster and faster. With each design you
get bra and bra. That's why I always
encourage you, just draw when you watch TV, just have an notebook doodle, some no strings attached. You don't have to show
these things to anyone. You can just discover things. Start from shape, start from start from anything
and doodle away. That is the best way for you to break of
your limitations, to practice your skills. You see how funny
this character is. Of course, this character cannot be walking
down the street. It's going to look weird. But in cartooning, the
worlds you design are real. They're following certain rules that you set for
these characters. Like this character walking
with his legs, like that. For example, the
rules you set for these characters will look completely real to
your observers. To your audience, don't be afraid that you draw something that is
anatomically incorrect. This is the rules that you set. Design character
design interesting is much more important
than anatomically correct in is also very free attainable. It's basically you, it's who
you are that's interesting. It doesn't matter that we have
one model of Santa Claus. We have so many different
ways of designing it. I hope by trying some of this, you've come up now with more ideas of what
you can do yourself and how you can experiment with this character that
is known to everyone. And basically has very
set up rules of cost, costume design, and clothing. It has to look like
a Santa Claus, but you can experiment
with shape and form. That's what's fun about it. This is, this is a third Santa. We have these three different
Santa Claus designs. Very fun. Now, in the next lecture, I'm going to choose
one of those. I'm going to show you how you can put these
characters in motion. Go take a break and I'll see you in the next
section. Bye for now.
8. SANTA RUNNING - SKETCH: Hello there and welcome back. Now, are you excited to get a
little bit more challenged? It's not going to be
that, but don't worry. I'm always going to try
to make it easy for you. Let's pick one of these Santas and move
it up a little bit. Design different poses
with particular Santa so that you have different options when you
draw your Christmas cards. When you create your
character, how to do that. I'm going to pick which one. I'm going to pick this Santa. Because it's very simple. It's flat. You don't have to worry too much
about perspective. Let's get started. I'm going to show you
how to use one design and create a couple of poses. I have this design
in front of me, which I also encourage
you to have. I'm going to try to have
the proportions right, but you don't have
to be super precise. Just poses will change and
the proportions will change. I'm going to draw this
character running. We know that he is
square from the front. I'm going to draw a
square here first. We haven't drawn
him from the side, but he has a square face. Let's draw a
rectangular as well. And we'll have his head. It is not the same as
in the front like that, but I'm going to try to discover how this character runs and how this character looks from
the site while running. Usually in a project, as a character design, as a character designer, you do that before you put
your characters in motion. You know how the characters
look in perspective, You know how the characters
look from the side, from the back, from above. That's what a
character sheet is. But now we're just going to be playful here. Character running. When the character run, we'll have a pulse because through the
run there are a lot of poses that you can pick
when the character is running, but we are going to choose
a pulse where it is very obvious that this character has speed and it's running fast. For that, I'm going to draw the leg as just a
line here, the boot. And I'm going to draw the
other leg farther away. And just with some lines
and the boot here, I'm trying to keep some proportions While
I'm giving speed to this character and being
faithful to the design. I'm going to approximately
the beard here is a nose. The nose is tiny
for this character, the beard is probably
floating in the air. I'm just going to draw a beard, blocky beard
floating in the air. And here when, if
we have one leg, if we say that
this leg up front, this leg is the one
that is closer to us. This means that the opposite
arm needs to be in the air. I'm just going to draw a sausage of an arm that is in
the opposite direction. And the arm closer to us
is actually farther back. And I'm going to just draw a line here to
signify the movement. And I'm going to draw the
large sphere here on his head. And here are the mustaches. Just signify them with the line. And I'm going to
draw the block of his face and the one eye
here and the eyebrow. This is a for pose and
because it's from the side, we have to see maybe
some of the hair. I'm going to draw a ear here and the other mustache is going
to be on the other side. And the mouth,
like approximately like this is very simple
way to describe motion, just using lines, using spheres, using just the stretches. You see that? I don't
really try to be neat here, quite the opposite. I try to be as messy as
possible. That's because A movement and proportions
at that stage is more important than clean
lines. So to say. We know that the legs
are like sausages. That the boots are
having this shape. I hope that you are seeing your character in front of you. We have this element
on his boots. And let's do the other boot. It has some slightly
triangular shape. This boot is like that. And we have a love looking
like that from the other leg. What we know is that this leg is something that we are
looking from the front. We'll have to push this leg behind another shape
of his trousers, and we'll have the costume. His costume may be here. And because this is flat, we don't have to worry too
much about perspective. We just have to simplify things. Simplify as much as possible. When we have the hands here on a knot and we
have the sausages, let's just draw the sausages
for the hands and the arms. And his fingers is like
blurry shape over here. It's okay to draw blurry shapes, especially even at that stage. We have the other arm here. Now we can clearly see a
Santa running on top of that, we can continue placing the features of the
Santa square face, like tiny nose, tiny
mustaches with that shape. Let's see, shall we see
some of the other mustache? Maybe a little bit, but it's up to you. You can just hide it. Just have one mustache because
this Santa is in profile. In profile, We haven't drawn this character
yet in profile. You'll have to figure out how
this looks like in profile. And that's why other things
are also allowed in this. At this stage, it's basically a new set of character
proportions. And so that you see
from that side, that is the first post. Let's refine that. I'm going to do that in the next lecture.
I'll see you there.
9. SANTA RUNNING - REFINE: Hello there and welcome back. Now let's go ahead
and refine our Santa. As you know, this is the
fund process When you start, if you scared to start, start from an element that
doesn't have big importance. For example,
confidence from there, start drawing from outside in because the character
is already there. You can see it. Now we can
draw this part of the head, and it's also a rectangular. Now we see how the character
is from the front. We've done a little
bit of a releve here. We've pushed the
face a little bit inwards and that makes the nose sticking
out a little bit, just to have a little variation. Basically, we draw just one eye, how easy it is, right? Then we draw one moustache here and keeping this
pattern of the ache, drawing chunks of
hair in that way, like a triangular shapes. And this mustache is here. And it's actually, so
that I'm going to skip this mustache that
I have drawn later on just to have his
profile look better. You can do that at any stage. And you see that as soon as you actually refine the character
with a black pencil, if you even leave out some stuff from the
previous drawing with the blue pencil, it's not going to look
like you left of something because the blue drawing
looks really just like a map. On top of that, I'm going
to draw this beard. And let's draw the hand is arm, the sausage of this Santa. Draw this element
that is square. Sometimes you can exaggerate
certain features, they don't need to be corrected. Santa has just fingers. We'll draw a finger here. In a fist, you can
even look at yourself. How does the fist look like? Okay, the thumb is up on top
of all the other fingers. You just draw a sausage here and just split the other three like that in cartoon
characters tend to draw just three fingers
or four with a thumb. Apparently one
cartoony characters, one finger is one too many. I don't know why this
proportion has gotten this way, but that's from the
old Disney characters, like Mickey Mouse had just three fingers and it
actually looked proportionate. I guess that works too. I'm going to make this
element of the belt. Let's have the belt
under the beard. The beard is floating in the air and overlapping
with the belt. I'm going to have now the costume also
flopping in the air. And the costume is
straightforward. Doesn't have any perspective. You don't have to worry
about a volume here. Like on the other
characters here, we can make slightly body
sticking out from underneath, maybe shaded another color. Do that if you want,
actually if you want, just have the legs sticking
out directly from this shape. This is also a good option. How you want to have reviewed
here in the running post, I drew the body because, well, actually I'm a little bit damaged of doing things
anatomically correct. You would have an advantage
if you don't know too much of anatomy from schooling to actually be more experimental
with your shapes. Sometimes an advantage,
I can tell you that let's draw this leg and
have this shape like that, some round thing and the
other sausage that is behind. One way you can do
to actually point out that something is behind something is to
shade it slightly. A shade pushes this thing
behind other things. Basically, this
is running Santa. You can also shade the belt. I shed it in the wrong way. Anyway, I'll shade
this belt even darker. It's a lot of lines coming up here so you can get confused. Where is the belt?
Where is this? Where is that? It doesn't
matter if you make a mistake. As you see, I made a mistake right on camera.
I didn't correct it. Well, I didn't era, I did correct it,
but I didn't erase. One thing that I want to encourage you is
not to use an eras. You don't need to
have the safety net. You need to be learning
how to make mistakes. Mistakes are good for you, especially when you draw
with the black pencil, especially when you draw
with the blue pencil. But even with the black pencil, it's actually good to know
that you can always correct things right on camera
and right on your design. This is the first of
our running Santa. Now let's draw
another pose here. I'm going to do that in the next lecture.
I'll see you there.
10. SANTA SKATING - SKETCH: Hello there and welcome back. Now in this pose, let's do skingant, the same one but
skateing in a funny way. What do we need to
do when it's skate? Well, when the capture skates, it basically holds its balance on one leg and one
leg is in the air. That's what we know
about this activity. Let's start with leaning
character on the side. That means leaning. This rectangular shape, maybe from the front,
a little bit from the side on one side. Having his face compensate
this balance here, because he's going to
be on just one leg. Let's draw the clothes
a little bit longer now drawing it rather the
motion than the proportion. They can be slightly bigger or smaller compared to one another. I'm going to draw the head. And here I can immediately
draw the motion. The motion I draw using only stick figure
thing like a line or something like eyeball. The proportions of
the leg here with the proportions of
the leg in this body. Even though this body
is slightly bigger, I'm going to do the scales
here and I'm going to have this leg finally in
the air like that. Santa is not a very sporty guy. Maybe I'm just going to make he kind of like
trying to skate. So this is his leg, his boots, and then we have shoes
on below on top of that. Let's draw because
he is leaning, he is not straightforward. So I'm going to draw
his face over here. The arms trying to
balance out his body. One sausage arm over here. The hand is going to be like
that, trying to balance. That's how we balance. How do I signify that
just with a line here? This is going to be the hand. That's all you need
to know for now, and this one is also
balancing on the other side. This is going to
balance over here and the sausage is going to bend
as to keep the balance. That's basically the
pulse for Santa. Let's refine. Let's refine while finding the design
that we have drawn. Maybe you will have
just a smaller body, smaller face to match this
original Santa will have. We'll have the head with this part of the head
in the air a little bit. Still keeping it blocky because that's what we decided with
this blocky character. And we'll have the
nose over here, we'll signify where the
eyebrows, eyebrows are. The beard is coming from here. And then he is like, oh, he's trying to
hold his balance. Let's make something
funny out of it. We'll have the small mustaches, we'll have the tiny eyes. They're scared. He's like looking
below just to make sure he's on the right
spot of the eyes. He doesn't fall this time. His beard is lean on this
side because he's falling. We can have the beard
slightly in the air, but on the other side with
the motion of his skating. Just experiments without beard. Nothing is set in stone and I'm going to make
the chunks of hair here. There can be new
chunks of hair on the other side, and that's it. So where is his belt?
Where is his belt? While his belt is over here, behalf of part of his body like he then he's
trying to lean, so his face is on this side, his body is on the other side trying to balance
the whole thing. Okay, so let's draw the belt and the belt sticker on this
side here we see the holes, the elements of the belt. We'll see, then we'll
know the belt here. The body, the costume
is ending up over here, and this one is over here. I can exaggerate it
even a little bit, just be playful with
those character here. I'm not going to draw a body. I'm going to try to keep, not to be academical
that's actually had. Use your advantage of not knowing all the
academical shapes to design characters that
are fun and easy. I'm going to draw the
skates over here like that. And something that signify these are skating boots
or skating shoes, let's do that on the other
side that he's trying to balance on the ice
with this shoe. The element is over here. Let's throw the skating shoe
on this side like that. Now let's draw the arms
in the air, the sausages, They can even look
slightly bigger, so you can really
push that movement. Exaggeration in cartooning is so much allowed is
actually preferred. Exaggeration. Describe how
this character is moving. Let's draw the sausages. We know the arm is
going to be here. We'll draw 123 fingers and
a thumb here on this line. Let's throw one finger on top of the two fingers from behind
and third finger and a thumb. The pose, basically we have the pose done
with that character. Now let's refine it
with a black pencil. I'll do that in the next
lecture. I'll see you there.
11. SANTA SKATING - REFINE: Well, hello. There we are back again. I hope you had some break. Some rest now. Let's refine our character
with a black pencil. Just keep it blocky again. You can keep it even.
Shapes like that. They're also very
organic, the head, and you don't have to keep the exact lines of the
initial character, but you have to keep
the design rules. The rules that we decided for this character is the blocks, the rectangular look and
some sphere over here. But overall, it's like no
perspective anatomy, really, just very simple character, very simple features based on the simplicity
and blockiness. We'll have to keep that going throughout our design
because that's a decision, the decision you take for how your character
should look like. You have to keep throughout
all of your drawings. Even though the shapes
can vary a little bit, the world you describe
has to be consistent. You can't just in the
middle of that process, draw a photo realistic
character and say, well, this is the same character.
It's not going to work. You'll have to keep the
rules that you've created, not the rules that are there. The rules that you've created. The character is scared. Let's draw the mouth and
maybe the tongue here. Shall we have a tongue? I have not decided. Just shade it a little bit. We have a consistent
and more simple shape. And we'll have the mouth here. Let's have the beard maybe here and the beard leaning
on that direction. Let's have the blocky beard, the hair chunks on this
side floating like that. And no perspective, no anything that's a
lot of fun and freedom. You can play around with all the features.
That's the thing. You don't have to worry about doing something that people will recognize as
anatomically correct. They will just
enjoy your design. They'll buy your design
the way you've designed it and they will enjoy it
and accept it as true. That's what we do. We would like to see the
creation of new worlds. We'd like to accept new
rules and new designs. That's why we like storytelling. It bends our minds and it
fulfill us in a different way. That's what you doing as well. For your audience, you're giving them an extra
layer of reality, a fun layer of
reality with Carson, You're not drawing
scary monsters, you're not scaring them. You're designing
something that is fun. You're introducing an idea of fun creatures and characters that your audience will enjoy. And we'll be amused and amazed. That's what we
humans want to have. We want to be am and
amazed all the time. All the time. That's why
we are scrolling up, down and up and down so
much in the social media. We want to be amused. We want to see funny cats. We want to see funny dogs. And most of all, we want to
hear funny and nice stories. Now the wind is really rolling. It is Christmas like lecture. Sure, I could continue
that on the other day, but I believe it just adds an extra layer of cousins to have the
wind swishing by. I don't know if you hear
it on this recording, but it's really getting
stormy out there. This is the leg and we'll leave the place for the skating, for the shoes, the ice
skating shoes like that. And then we'll just do some also very simple
ice skating thing. So to know that he
is ice skating. When you design character
that has that is in motion, there expression will
enhance the whole process, will enhance the situation. Whatever the character is doing, go under their skin and
feel how they feel. Can they, are they confident in skating
or are they afraid? I chose to have
this Santa a little scared of skating
because that's duality. You expect Santa Claus that is living in the cold place to be able to skate,
but he can't. That creates more empathy
towards the characters. Exposing them to tasks that
they should be able to do, but they can't is
creating empathy. We empathize with this
little Santa feel for him. It's amusing as well as it
is like a scared activity. It's not like scary activity. But for him as a cartoon, we feel sorry for this character basically that is
next of this Santa. That was that easy. Now let's do a third post of this Santa to give you an extra scope to design
your Christmas cards. So I'll see you in
the next lecture.
12. SANTA CARRYING A TREE - SKETCH: Hello there and welcome back. Now let's do another
path of this Santa. This little santa that you can use in your Christmas cards. And just write merry Christmas and send them away to
your friends and family. That's just easy. Now let's have this
Santa carrying maybe a Christmas tree.
What do we need to know? This character
will have a motion forward because the
Christmas tree is heavy, so he has to drag it behind him to create a motion forward. You'll have to
lean the character forward and the head
will be forward. Also, we need to decide the size because of the sheets
of paper that we have working with different sizes and challenging yourself to fit a character into a certain size trains your ability
for proportions. It is good that
sometimes you should limit yourself to certain size. Let's have the character
over here leaned forward. We have one motion forward, here we have one
motion at the side. Now we have a character
carrying heavy object. Let's design the head over here. This is like we are placing
where the character is. We decided the motion with
just a line to do it. Shade it, if you have to, we'll have this arm
that is visible on our side carrying
the Christmas tree. Why do we do that
is because it's a clear silhouette and we can clearly see what the
characters is doing. The Christmas tree
should be here. Now we designed an extra
element. Keep it simple. Again, let's have
the Christmas tree being just triangular like. The stop of the
Christmas tree is here that we decided that a
very small Christmas tree. Again, draw it with
several lines. Describe how it's
going to look like, where it's going to be to
have the motion forward. Now he has to have one leg
pushing him forward and another leg just pushing the whole weight of him
and the tree backwards. Let's just define that with the notion with just
simple lines like that. Before we even start
with the character, we'll have to match the
proportions of the character and its movement with simple lines. Let's just add this
element of the head. The head is basically, is going to fall down
because let's assume that there is no wind
like it is over here. He's going to walk slowly, he's not going to run, he's not going to skate. But this Christmas tree demands a little bit of
time to carry around. Let's have him look at
the Christmas tree. Because the head is
stuck to the body, we only have to do is just split the middle line where the body
is and where the head is. While the body is going forward, the head is slightly
turned this way. Let's use that as a middle
line to define that. Okay, his head is slightly
turned here, his eyes, he's watching the
Christmas tree, if it's following properly, and also bringing our attention
to that Christmas tree. Let's define where the beard
is going to be like here. Let's define the
mustaches over here. And also just define the lower part of the
beard very lightly. Now we have the hand, and this hand is actually rather stretched,
again, exaggerating. This movement will enhance the
whole movement altogether. And he's having maybe another arm in the similar shape is trying to keep the balance. When we keep balance, we spread all fingers. We try to Jain extra
energy and strength. Just a line. And this finger, let's decide how is his
body going to be turned. Decide the body has a
motion forward over here, no anatomy, no perspective
needed the belt. Is basically, this is
the middle line that the body moves forward with. This is the belt where
the belt is going to be. The belt can be
here a little bit and it goes under the beard. The costume, let's have
this costume goes here. And a rectangular and
all nice and uneven. Let's have his mouth struggling. Just draw a mouth shape of a mouth like as if
it's struggling. Now let's refine a little bit those sausages again
on top of the line. Just draw another line
again, as a sausage, you don't have to think about properly drawn knees
or calves or anything. It's just a band sausage,
that's what it is. Let's have his shoes here. Let's have another,
another thing happening. Let's have a slight layer of snow on the ground
covering his feet. Isn't that extra nice for skipping to know
where the feet are? Slight layer of snow which hides where the feet are contacting the
ground here as well. We're not going to
be cheating too much because you still want to
know how to draw the Santa, and then you can put
snow on top of that. Let's minimize him a little bit and have maybe a year over here. But he is nicely even
and there is no, a lot of perspective. We are right on track. Let's define the arms, same as here, just a sausage. This time the arm is actually
pushing more forward, downwards instead of upwards because this tree is
dragging him backwards. He's trying basically
to drag the tree. It's 12 fingers,
three fingers done, and this one is holding it. We have this part
of the tree over here and some
fingers dragging it. One finger coming
out of the body. Thumb and another finger. That's it, that's sausages. This arm is straight up because it chains momentum
with the dragging. How do you want this tree to be? You can have
something like that, similar to the,
similar to the beard. Just spikes that are
simplified of the tree. You don't have to have
it all the way up on some spots really like that. And here you understand that
this is a Christmas tree. That's it. Now let's refine
even this character, and I'm going to do that in the next lecture.
I'll see you there.
13. SANTA CARRYING A TREE - REFINE: Hello everybody,
and welcome back. Are you inspired to finish
you on this design? I hope so. It's going to be fun. It's going to be easy. It is already easy. Again, if you're
afraid to start, let's start from something
not as important. Let's start from the
hat and the elements of the heat go from there. I'm going to do
the square element of the head extended
a little bit here. Find some elements that
I haven't drawn yet, but I feel I want them there. Again, following
your inner instinct and your inner feeling about it. Now let's draw the nose, and let's draw the, the eyebrows higher up. Now this time the character
is struggling and the facial expression should imply that imply the
struggle of the little, tiny, cute Santa of how to drag this Christmas tree and
prepare for Christmas. This is basically
the busiest time for this guy of the year. Just looking down at
the Christmas tree, let's draw his mustaches that is basically a
little bit higher up. And this mustache
here like that, now we have the
mouth of the Santa. Like turn downwards like in, in a way that he's struggling. Now that's easy, that's done. And let's draw the beard. Just draw on top of the
blue lines and refine. Refine with something. You want to have
there something new, something better as an
element if you want. Here we have the sun turned. Let's have some hair
here from his hair. Let's draw this arm now that is struggling to carry a
heavy trees, Y tree. But again, this as another
element of sympathy. Santa should be able
to do these things, but he's struggling and
we feel sympathy for him. He's very tiny, he's very cute. Christmas is coming, and he
has to do all this stuff, he has to appear and skate, has to have this
winter activity, you can draw him even skiing,
that's another thing. Like him crushing in
a slope or something, crushing in the
tree on the slope. Like not being able to control all the Christmas activities. Because all he wants is to
sit at home in the coziness, drinking hot chocolate
or hot milk. Do nothing. Just enjoy his time. Wonder what is he doing
during the rest of the year? It is time for him to work. That's it for you to actually doing these
tasks and enjoy, enjoy drawing and enjoy Santa. Pointing your attention on it, just creating this cozy
Christmas atmosphere. Let's just draw the rest
of the body like that, All the lines has
direction forward. I'm exaggerating. Even that move forward, it gets an extra extra level
of difficulty for the Santa. Now, we don't have to
draw the whole leg, we can just draw
these lines that signify snow over here as well. Just this part of Santa's boots. And the other one is here, the rest is covered in snow. The sausage of this
leg here, like that. Let's signify the
Christmas tree as well. Well, these chunks of sharp chunks of what
Christmas tree elements have. Just these elements of
the Christmas tree. Just some of them. The branches and the
sharpness of these branches. Just in a very simple way, just a couple of them are
enough to signify that, okay, this is a Christmas
tree like that. And just add more snow. Now in this Santa, you can also have
snowflakes coming over him, just like small chunks. And spheres of snow
make them some big, some small to create variety. This Santa is basically skating. We've drawn all these things
in one sheet of paper. Basically, that's it. These are a couple of
poses I forgot to shade. I forgot to say the belts
the winter is roaming, you're having nice cozy time. And now you can
draw some Santas. Put them on my ipad, or just color them with whatever you have in hand and make small Christmas cards to
send to your family and friends and just write some merry Christmas
with your handwriting, which is more personal. Then you would use
something and you have a really nice Christmas card designed by you with the
help of this lecture. I hope it has been helpful. Really hope so. I hope you enjoy this time with us drawing. I have tried to keep it as
simple as possible as well as challenging a little bit with this puss should be
challenged to grow. When you've drawn out
you've already grown, your many steps ahead and the person that you
were before you started. I congratulate you for
that and I wish you a merry Christmas and enjoy and have fun.
That's all from me. Goodbye.
Maria Avramova, Illustrator/Animator/Filmmaker
