Shape Shifting

Lines. Shapes. Volume.
Every week I review with my art students the "secrets" to drawing anything. You really only need to learn 3 lines, but it's how you combine those lines that creates your masterpiece. We use these 3 lines to draw shapes, and then transform those shapes into volume.

Our recent lesson has been on Character Design, and I have the students begin with shapes to explore the look of the character they are designing. So I thought I would post a little Work-In-Progress (WIP) of my own, for a project currently in development.

Starting in the upper left corner and moving clockwise around the page, I started with basic shapes to work out my design elements. From there, I began posing this character into the 5 poses at the bottom. There is still work to be done but I thought you'd enjoy seeing how I "practice what I teach" with this fun character.

"Toon"Into VoogDesigns by Email

VoogDesigns Volunteers

I believe that the gifts we are blessed with are meant to be shared.
Beginning on September 30th, VoogDesigns will be volunteering their time every Friday at Saint Augustine Academy in Ventura, CA to offer a 45 minute class that will explore the following subjects to students of all grade levels that are interested in: Cartoons, Animation, Caricatures, Illustration and Comic Strips.

Soul Sketching

 A Sketchbook. What is it for? I was once told that you need to get through 10,000 bad drawings to arrive at your first good one! In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes this point with The 10,000 Hour Rule. He provides specific examples to illustrate a common denominator for many of the most successful people in history; that their breakthrough was not achieved before reaching 10,000 hours of practice.

With various projects in development, my sketchbook becomes filled with ideas, searching for the heart (or soul) of the characters I'm creating. Below is a slightly less "cartoony" approach to the Friar character, in the upcoming book, Feathers and the Friar, attempting to add more distinct features from whom this character is based on.

Make Living a Habit

What's your passion? It is very easy in today's world to be distracted from making the most of our God-given talents With 24-hour news, Smart Phones, and 1000 television stations, they can easily occupy our valuable time from making a difference. It's OK, I've been there too. One suggestion- Turn off the T.V. Why?

Because there are only 24-hours in a day. Something happens when you finally realize what you were meant to do and how you can positively impact society with the talents you have been blessed with. Once you discover that, mornings become filled with a vibrant energy!

VoogDesigns received an exciting e-mail yesterday that could potentially take the "Feathers and the Friar" project global! Enjoy this new character design sketch of one of the two main characters from our upcoming book.

Faces of the Friar

An exciting book project that VoogDesigns has recently been assigned to takes the reader through the travels of a St. Francis Friar. Without releasing too much yet, here is a look at some designs showing various expressions of the main character.

Strike a Pose

Whenever you are developing your character, it is always a good practice to draw your character in various positions. Try to capture them in different attitudes by focusing on strong silhouettes in their poses like this Lil' Ninja is showing us.

How Do I Look?

Before leaving the house, most of us will take a quick look in the mirror to make sure we aren't missing anything. The same is true for the characters we create. A great exercise when you are creating new characters is to do what is called a "turn-around".

Start by drawing your character in an interesting pose. Now imagine that your character is a statue on a rotating platform that you can turn around. What would your character look like from the front? The sides? The Back? How well do you know your character so you can draw them in poses you rarely use? Try it. And if you are having a difficult time drawing the backside, take a little more time to think about the smallest details of your creation so that you aren't missing anything.

Wild Kingdom

One of the great things about taking human and animal anatomy art classes, is that once you have studied the basic skeletons, muscles and proportions, you can then begin to believably draw animal characters in poses that they would never be able to do in the real world. This exercise not only challenges your imagination, but it helps you to really "flesh out" a character due to your new found knowledge of anatomy.

Personality

One secret to creating animated characters that are so believable can be found in the lyrics of the old Lloyd Price song, "Personality."

♫ Cause you've got (personality). Walk (with personality). Talk (with personality). Smile (with personality). Charm (with personality). Love (with personality). An' plus you got a great big heart. ♫

Keep this in mind while roughing out your scene, and your drawings will come to life!

Creative Space

When I am assigned a project, I always ask the client what design style they are looking for. Disney looks different than Looney Tunes, which looks different than Nickelodeon. Some of my most favorite projects are the ones in which a client allows me the creative freedom to take their idea and adapt it to my particular style of drawing. On the left is a drawing of their concept character, and on the right is my design.