Character Design Crash Course: Designing Animal Characters

Welcome to Character Design Crash Course, a series of illustration classes meant for beginning cartoonists or intermediate character artists looking for a refresher. In this class I'll take you through my entire process of designing and illustrating an animal character, starting with finding inspiration and reference, then moving on to sketching and developing your concept, and finally, rendering it in Adobe Photoshop. I'll also talk about the fundamentals of character design, and the importance of using reference and learning from other artists.

(ETA July 2024: Lessons 7 & 8 are somewhat outdated now unless you use an older version of Photoshop than CC, as it is updated and improved yearly. I also now almost exclusively use iPad drawing apps (namely, Procreate and Adobe Fresco) to color my digital artwork. That said, most of the techniques taught in this course are still applicable to the apps I use currently, but you will need some basic understanding of digital art programs going into those lessons.) 

What You'll Learn

• Finding Inspiration and Learning from Other Artists: I'll talk about studying the styles of other artists, how it helps you build your versatility, and the importance of being influenced by more than one artist.
• Using Reference: I'll talk about why using reference is key to improving your drawing skills, the best ways to use it to benefit yourself, and why it's particularly essential when designing animal characters. 
• Developing Your Character: from rough sketches to more developed concepts
• Rendering in Photoshop: blocking in base colors manually and with the pen tool, using the radial gradient tool to shade and highlight, using paths to make selections, and how paths and the lasso tool can aid in coloring
• Color Adjustment and Texture: how to use color adjustments and texture tools to add interest to your drawing

What You'll Make

Once finished, you'll have a fully illustrated animal character to add to your portfolio. :D

***

Adobe, and Adobe Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries.