Skillshare teacher Ira Marcks

Have you always wanted to create characters like the ones in your favorite childhood cartoons? Learn all the skills and techniques you need to create your own world of fun, expressive characters. Join two professional illustrators and learn how to find inspiration, plan out your character’s backstory, draw expressions and poses, and put finishing touches on your designs. This workshop is a great introduction for beginning artists looking to take their first steps into character design. Everything in the workshop can be done with traditional drawing supplies, but you can also follow along in the digital drawing or painting app of your choice.

Workshop Timeline

Milestone 1: First up, join graphic novelist Ira Marcks in Cartooning: Drawing Faces and Expressions. Ira teaches you all the basic techniques for designing a cartoon face and breaks down the visual language of facial expressions by studying a wide variety of popular cartoon characters. Practice making a clean layout of a face, combining basic shapes to create distinctive emotions, and drawing your new character’s head from multiple angles. Share your drawings or sketches-in-progress in the Project Gallery by July 26th.

Milestone 2: You’ve learned the basics of drawing faces, now create dynamic, full-body characters with Melissa Lee in Character Design Crash Course: Dynamic Design in Four Steps. Melissa shows you how to study other artists, use visual references to improve your drawing skills, and develop your original character with backstory brainstorming and playful sketching. Get Melissa’s personal tips for lineart, as well as different coloring and shading techniques to help create your final design. Share your drawings or sketches in progress into the Project Gallery by August 9th.

Character Design Bootcamp: Draw Unique, Expressive Characters at Any Skill Level

Jul 12 - Aug 09

Character Design Bootcamp: Draw Unique, Expressive Characters at Any Skill Level

Jul 12 - Aug 09