How to draw a person in cartoon style. "we draw semi-realistic portraits"

The pleasure of creating a cartoon character is immeasurable. Creating and developing a character involves more than just drawing their figure: each character has its own shape, personality traits and features. It's great if you're already familiar with the basics of head proportions and depicting emotions. But this knowledge is useless if you don't know how to draw a character's torso. The artist must take all of these details into account in order to create a character that will look believable in the eyes of the audience.

There are several in animation various styles for characters such as "chump" and "bully". Want to know more about them? This is what I will teach you in this lesson.

1. How to Get Started

By the way, the steps we will take today are very simple. First, draw the basic shape of the figure and then add features and other body parts. This is a procedure that should be followed regardless of whether you are drawing a person or an animal, or even an object that you decide to animate (for example, make a smiling cup).

Every drawing you make will depend on your work during the sketching stage. At this stage, you should improve your sketch until you are satisfied with the final result.

Once you've decided on the proportions, the next step is to develop expression in your body movements, arms and legs. Just one hand position can tell a whole story.

Hands are a vast and complex subject (even in animation) that deserve their own lesson.

In short, there are no secrets in the character creation process. 95% of artists create characters, and they do it by going through certain stages because it makes the process much easier!

2. Proportions

Proportions, one of the most important factors, which must be taken into account when creating characters. The artist must remember the relative proportions of the body parts, because on the basis of this we determine structural features our characters. For example, a bully has a warlike character, so he will have a small head, but his chest will be very impressive! His arms and legs are strong and well defined, as are his large cheekbones. In contrast, the modest character is based on the proportions of a child, with a larger head compared to the body. And all this in round shapes! Other parts such as the forehead and large eyes are responsible for determining the fragility of the individual. And so on...

Animation studios, for the most part, use rounded shapes to gauge a character's height. For example: A child's head is usually larger than other parts. But an adult character has different proportions, which depend on the gender and physical form of the hero.

Psychedelic cartoon? It looks like it.

When designing (or animating) a character's body, it is recommended to sketch on separate sheets of paper. This makes it possible to have before your eyes a sample of its proportions when sketching other poses and actions.

Rotation example

It is very important to draw a character in various poses, situations and situations. different clothes, until you find it for him perfect proportions.

Examples of drawings of a puppy.

3. The body is a pear!

A common practice among designers is to use a pear shape - or similar objects - to construct the body shape, due to common associations. In fact, this is a common technique in animation studios, as several different artists can work with one character, and at the same time they must maintain the correct proportions.

The example above shows the effectiveness of this technique. Using one template, you can draw several different characters! The reason why pattern-based drawing is used is because it creates an instant association in a person. Especially in the case of children, when everything should be simplified to make it easier to understand. Drawing the body in the shape of a pear allows us to maintain a dynamic look and makes our hero more interesting!

4. Adding a Skeleton

Now that we know how to define the shape, we need to define the structure of the skeleton. If you are drawing any character in cartoon style, you need to understand the basic differences in muscle and skeletal structure for different categories such as cats, birds and humans. This knowledge is important and leading for determining the position of the hero's joints, such as elbows and knees.

Pay attention to the main elements: rounded shapes - pear-shaped body - position of the joints.

When it comes to animation, it's important to remember that we have to tell a story in every scene we create. This doesn't matter as much if we're talking about photographs or realistic image. For the reason that people are amazingly able to hide their real motives.

In animation everything is different. Physical condition and pose, your character should be able to "read" well without any dialogue or environment. It is for this reason that it is so fascinating and charming artistic style!

Learn to tell a story in your sketches and you will become a successful cartoonist.

To sum it up:

Estimate your character's proportion using round shapes;
Summarize the body using the famous pear rule;
Follow the guide lines that show the basic position of the creatures;
Finish building your character by adding the final elements to the basic structure you've built.

5. Pear Turn

Does the pear rule apply to all the characters we create? Not always. If we flip this shape, we will give a feeling of strength and power to our hero! Look at the examples below:

Fragile little man: pear-shaped body. Strong man: body is an inverted pear. Easy, isn't it?

Can you find the differences in the “pears” in this picture?

Another interesting analogy that characters can be based on is objects that resemble certain physical forms, as in the example below:

In principle, we also use the pear rule. We just use different shapes, relying on the same technique. You, as an artist, can use the method that works best for you!

6. Character Blockhead

A "boob character" is one that walks on two legs (even animals) and looks stupid, clumsy, and generally lazy.

This character is often portrayed as a coward. They usually try to stay out of trouble than everyone else. He can also be presented as a nerd or a frustrated guy.

There is a template that can be followed when creating this type of character, but it is not a defining rule, and can vary depending on the character of the hero.

The heads are thinner;
Large noses (or muzzles, if an animal);
Big teeth;
Narrow shoulders;
Virtually no chin;
Pear rule (never upside down, always up!).

Basically, these are the basic elements needed to create a dummy. Play around with it until you perfect the technique enough to apply it to any character.

What? A lion on two legs? Wait... is that a lion dunce?

Not all animals that walk like humans are "boobs." Many of them have a sarcastic or ironic tone. As an example of such characters, we can recall Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny.

7. Let's Apply Our Knowledge: Creating a Heroic Character

Now we will draw a character together based on what we have learned. Let's get started!

Step 1

I'll start by drawing as a very rough sketch. Don't be afraid to sketch until you find the perfect proportions. It's like a game!

We started by drawing the head and body using round shapes:

Notice that we determined the proportions of our character without much effort.

Note that we used the inverted pear rule here because... our hero is strong!

Step 2

Now let's add lines showing the position of the skeleton joints. Notice that we are giving our hero a common pose where the body weight is transferred to one leg.

It is very important to mark the pelvic area in a bowl shape because this will make it easier to see the movement. This movement in the hips will add dynamics to the pose.

Step 3

Great! Now let's add facial features and muscles for our hero.

My mouth is watering... And this is just a sketch!

To build muscle, you need to have a basic knowledge of anatomy. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to properly add volume in the places where it is needed.

Step 4

After general structure determined, we can add clothes.

Great! Our hero is finished! By adding a costume and some great accessories, we achieved a great result. Can you tell a story with this picture?

Great Job, You Done It!

Well, that's all! We went over the process of drawing a character's body in a cartoon style. Moreover, we learned to use round and oval shapes to shape the character's body. We also learned the differences that make up the heroic/strong/bully type and the helpless/fragile type, and how to apply the punching bag technique to achieve these results. And finally, we discovered how to apply the boob technique to people and animals. And to top it all off, we created a heroic character from scratch!

Are you already convinced that you can draw a cartoon character from head to toe? I'm looking forward to meeting him! Share your drawings below, and if you still have any questions, I will be glad to answer them in the comments.

I already have a lesson on my website about how to learn to draw cartoon characters in manga style. It is made using a simple pencil technique. Unlike the previous lesson, this manga-style drawing on a tablet is very bright and colorful.

Drawing Girl's Eyes in Anime Style
Eyes drawing cartoon characters in anime style is the basis of this style. All the characters of girls drawn in anime style are distinguished by their huge eyes - black, green, but always huge and expressive.

The beloved cartoon character Sonic the Hedgehog is the symbol of Sega's children's video game. This game was so loved by children that Sonic the Hedgehog “moved” from the game into comics and cartoons. I offer you a very simple one online lesson, how to draw Sonic. Thanks to the fact that the lesson is done in stages, you can easily learn how to draw Sonic the Hedgehog.

Want to cheer yourself up? Then take a pencil and a piece of paper and try to draw the main character of the cartoon about the funny bear Winnie the Pooh. Paint Winnie the Pooh It’s not difficult at all step by step and you’ll definitely get a good picture of Winnie the Pooh.

Pictures of Spider-Man attract with their dynamism and brightness. Usually pictures from the movie "Spider-Man" make a good theme for your computer desktop, but not everywhere you can download them online for free. Let's try to draw Spider-Man ourselves.

Iron Man is a cartoon and comic book hero from the Avengers series. To draw an Iron Man you need to be able to draw not only cartoons, but also a person.

Winx are popular heroes of the popular cartoon. To make a cartoon drawing more impressive, you need to color it with colored pencils. But first, learn how to correctly draw Flora, the cartoon character from Winx, step by step with a simple pencil.

In this lesson we learn how to correctly draw cartoon characters in manga style with a pencil. Every anime fan wants to be able to draw manga, but it is not easy for everyone because drawing a person is difficult.

There are various types anime used to draw cartoons, such as the well-known Pokemon cartoon. Drawing cartoon characters about Pokemon is very exciting, because the picture turns out to be contrasting, even if you draw the cartoon only with a simple pencil.

Patrick - character children's cartoon"SpongeBob" He is SpongeBob's neighbor and is close friends with him. The cartoon character Patrick has a rather funny, awkward body. Patrick is essentially a starfish, which is why he has a five-pointed body shape.

In this section we will try to draw SpongeBob or SpongeBob step by step, as you like. Spongebob or spongebob is a cartoon character who lives at the bottom of the ocean in the city of Bikini Bottom. The prototype for it was the most common dishwashing sponge.

In this section we will learn how to draw a cartoon Shrek. But first, let's remember that Shrek is a troll who lives in a swamp. He has a large body and large facial features, larger than normal humans.

Every girl has tried to draw at least once. beautiful pictures girls. But, probably, not everyone succeeded. It is very difficult to maintain exact proportions in a drawing, because drawing a person’s face is very difficult.

There are different dolls: Barbie, Bratz and just dolls without a name, but it seemed to me that it would be more interesting for you to draw such a doll that looks like a princess. This doll has a princess-like dress with lots of decorations and a high collar, huge eyes and a smiling, kind face.

Drawings of cartoon Smeshariki should be colorful and bright, it is not necessary to complete the last step of the lesson, shading Krosh’s drawing with a simple pencil. If you know how to use paints, then color the Smeshariki bright colors or colored pencils.

The drawings of the cartoon characters Krosh and Hedgehog are united by one common detail - the shape of their body is made in the form of a ball. A black and white sketch of a Hedgehog, made with a simple pencil, at the last step you must color it with paints or felt-tip pens, draw a colorful landscape around it, and then your drawing from the cartoon - Smesharik Hedgehog will be like a frame from a cartoon.

This drawing is dedicated famous character cartoon about Pokemon - Pikachu. Let's try to draw a Pokemon with a simple pencil step by step.

Character design

The technique of creating characters and the characters themselves in cartoons, comics and products with a wide variety of manifestations of character and emotions

Author
2 April 2019, 17:45

Creating cool, memorable characters is easy if you know certain rules. This post captures some simple but useful aspects of the creation process.

Tell a story

simple stories

Shapes and lines

famous characters

Silhouettes

Proportions and exaggeration

small details

appearance

Expression

real life

in a good way

good advice

Posture and position

Scale

small character

Color

Shadows

Texture

That's all the main points, this list can really help and be useful even if you only implement some of the points.

Author
18 December 2016, 14:35

Sometimes we need to draw animals that look like people and there are some very simple ways that allow you to achieve this goal. The technique of humanization is especially often used in children's books and when creating mascots. There are several degrees of anthropomorphism (humanization).

1. Animal with human emotions - when animals remain animals, but have human emotions and facial expressions. Human poses can be used to enhance the effect.

2. The animal performs human actions - the effect works great in contrast with the technique above, when one animal only has emotions, and the other performs some actions. At this stage, animals may or may not wear clothing, but they usually have paws rather than arms and are usually not wearing shoes. Very often this technique was used by the famous English illustrator Betrix Potter (this is her illustration on the cover of the post).

3. Almost complete coincidence with humans - at this stage, in addition to the points above, animals wear clothes, shoes, usually walk on two legs and act like people. Sometimes such characters look like people with the head of an animal.

Here is a clear illustration of all degrees of humanization. The first penguin is just an animal, the second has emotions, the third becomes more and more humanized, but remains a penguin for now, and the last one is completely human-like.

I hope now drawing human animals will be simple and easy for you)

Honestly, I thought about this question for a long time, because the answer “everywhere” categorically did not suit me. As a result, several clear areas have come together, taking into account the features of which you can develop characters specifically for something.

Cartoons/animation
The success of cartoons largely depends on the uniqueness and originality of the character, so the image is usually not taken out of thin air, but carefully worked out. Cartoons can be 2D or 3D - it depends on how to draw the character. The character is accompanied by a set of diagrams for its subsequent animation (front view, profile, map of emotions, and so on). The introductory task is prepared by the film's directing group. Usually in feature films the artist works on the character throughout the entire shoot.

By the way, many large studios, after the release of cartoons, release art books with the work process and a lot of stuff with the character.

Promotional videos
Usually short and with an emphasis on what is being sold. All the character's actions should be built around the product being sold. Essentially a cartoon in miniature, only with fewer poses, environments and scenes. With the development of motion design, they are often made from vector characters with a combination of different transitions and frame changes. Just turn on the TV and wait for advertising - the characters there are very different.

Computer games
The starting point is the general theme of the game, its plot, setting (the environment in which the action takes place) and the role assigned to this character. For example, you need to create concept art of the main character for a shooter, which takes place during the 2nd World War or during crusade. Before starting to draw this character, the artist must carefully study the clothing of that time ( military uniform, if the hero is a soldier), samples of weapons, etc. It is also important to work out every action of the character, how he runs, shoots, dies, and so on. Something like this.

Mascots
Mascot characters representing the company, brand, sports team, team and so on. Mascots are often used as characters that represent products and services to consumers (for example, Ronald McDonald the clown). For street advertising, as a rule, they hire a person and dress him up in a mascot costume. Very bright mascots are also usually used for Olympic Games and on sports competitions(in the video below is just one of the symbols of the American basketball team). Even car brands can have their own mascots - for example, a Ferrari horse or a Lamborgini bull. At the same time, the character does not have to be cartoonish; a stylized brutal version can also very well be a mascot.

Book graphics/comics
As a rule, there is a lot of development required here. different characters and their interaction with each other. Behavior, character and environment are closely related. How brighter character, the easier it is to build a story around it. Comics in general are a separate large trend, very clearly represented in eastern countries like Japan and the USA, but with a different style. Here's a great video on how to make characters different.

Here's a rather long but interesting tutorial on how to make a character cute.

Figurines
Usually this collectible series with game or cartoon characters, but it happens that the character is initially created only for a sculpture in a small edition. With the advent of 3D printing, the impossible becomes possible even for amateurs and it is not necessary to make a huge print run at once.
By the way, I have several figures from Game of Thrones, excellent characters)

If you know other interesting examples of using characters, share them in the comments.

Author
15 February 2016, 20:44

I decided to summarize all the useful tips that are recommended famous illustrators to create high-quality and recognizable characters. The main thing about a character is his recognition and readability. Accordingly, it is difficult to achieve this without a clear silhouette. Therefore, the first thing to do is fill the character with black and check how he generally looks as a spot. For example, here are a few silhouettes - of course you will recognize them immediately.

Denis Zilber works very cool with the silhouette, for example, the sequence of drawing his character and you can clearly see how he changed his pose in favor of the readability of the silhouette.

Lots of options

The environment is also important

Why and for whom is the character created?

for a long time

And finally

characteristic features

interesting characters

Do you know any important points, which should be taken into account when creating characters?

Children are the main audience for watching various kinds of cartoons. A good cartoonist is one who can extract the main features of an object or person and simplify them to attract a child's attention. Masters such as Walt Disney, Hanna and Barbera, Chuck Jones, Jim Henson, Walter Lantz and many others, by studying children's opinions and perceptions, achieved the charm of the whole world with their magical and timeless characters. IN this lesson we will look at how to easily and correctly draw cartoon characters, which both children and adults will be delighted with.

The final version will look like this:

Lesson details:

Complexity: Average
Estimated completion time: 2 hours

Understanding Human Perception

Man is a creature who has very interesting feature- we can transform parts that form a very complex structure or object into a fairly simple form.

Can you tell that the two images below represent the same object?

It may seem strange that you can look at an image and say it's a car.

What happens to most people, except artists, who cannot retrieve from their memory all the details of a car, the appearance of a dog, or the facial features of a child? They begin to associate very simple and primitive shapes with specific features of each object. So, for example, how many children came home from school with a piece of paper like that in their hand and said, “This is Mom and Dad!”?

You don't want to draw like that, do you? If you don't want to, let's pick up a pencil and start drawing!

1. Creating your first character

The basic shape of a cartoon shape will be a circle. A circle is all it takes. From the circle you can determine the basic proportions of the character's head.

Swipe vertically and horizontal line, which intersect in the center of the circle, as in the picture below: