starting a character design

A fun way to start a character design is to just make a shape and turn it into a character. It's like staring at the ceiling stucco and seeing a face in it.

Leading the eye

Composition is like a big figure drawing. In anatomy, every line flows off to hook up with something else. You never have lines just floating by themselves. They all rhythmically tie together. You can use the same principles in a composition.

Drawing with pure shape

sometimes it's fun to draw by just making cool shapes and not think about form.

"From Life Drawing to Cartooning" class at LAAFA

I will be teaching a class on how to make the transition "from life drawing to cartooning", or drawing from your head, at LAAFA this summer on Sundays from 1:30-4:30. The summer term starts July 6th. This class will be extremely valuable for anyone who wants to be a storyboard, or comic book artist. Feel free to post any questions here.

Here is a link to the summer brochure

the ball and pear with shapes

Once you understand the ball and pear, then you can try making cool shape designs.

Ball and pear

The good old ball and pear. I love this style of drawing because it's easy to make things very fluid and flowing. You can always change the "surface" features to make it look more original, but it's good to know the classic basics that lay underneath.

More torso stuff

Someone asked how to find the ribcage:

Torso

I will be teaching a "From Figure Drawing to Cartoons" class this summer that will start in July. I'll let you know when you can sign up and I'm allowed to announce it. This is the type of stuff we will go over.

More cartoon head breakdowns

There are a million ways to construct the head. Try mixing and matching as many different approaches as you can, and see what works for you. There is one thing that unifies all approaches. In the end, when you finally put your lines on top, you have to have good design principles.

Rescuers down under studies

Finished background design

So here is the final set. you can see how I changed the color around and modified the props. I never set anything in stone. There is always room for inspiration. I try to keep things very organic, in character design, comics, and storyboards. I also picked a down shot for this new location establishing shot because down shots are creepy and they are at a witches house. At the beginning of the comic, I used round shapes. The kids head and glasses are round. his desk, window, etc. Then the second kid shows up with triangles and a little bit of danger comes into the friendly round shapes. Here at the witches house, I tried to incorporate more triangles as the comic gets more dangerous.

new term at CDA

You can sign up for my class now at Concept Design Academy. I also recommend taking my friend Leighton Hickman's landscape painting class.