Character Challenge - Day 3: All About Eyes

Day 3 - All About Eyes

 

 

This is day 3 of the Cha-Cha and so far we have worked on head shapes and sketched some 2-4 year old characters. When you are working on a character, the eyes are a super important feature to give attention to. It isn't just the shape of the eyes that has emotional impact for the viewer but also their location on the face. The eyes can be high, in the middle, or low. They can be giant or small. They can be set far apart or close together. We learned yesterday that eyes that are large and low on the face give the idea of youth but eyes that are centered, small, and far apart can also give the impression of youth.

 

 

Large oval shaped eyes that are open give a look of wonder while eyes that are asymmetrical present a quirky, funny expression.

 

If your character is being sneaky, make the eyes more narrow and darken the lower eyelids a bit.

 

If your character is goofy, tilt the ovals or egg shaped eyes toward each other at the top or push them close together.

 

Female eyes often have 2 or 3 eyelashes tilting up toward the outside of the face.

 

Here are 8 pages of cartoon eye reference for you. Try out some different eyes on your characters and don't forget to try a pair of glasses on your characters, too. For more eye reference, check out the thousands of pages of eyes on Google images. Keep working on toddlers today and check back here tomorrow for a new age group to play with.

 

 

 



Character Challenge - Day 2 - Tackling Toddlers

Day 2

 

Welcome to the ChaCha (pronounced Kah-Cha!) or if you want the full name: Character Challenge!

ChaCha began yesterday with trying out different shapes for heads. Viewers subconsciously associate emotions and ages with different shapes used for the head, body, and features of a character.

The first characters to work on are 2-4 years old. These small humans are known as Toddlers and they have big heads. When they get measured at the doctors office, the doc is looking for an almost equal measurement around the head and around the chest. Their legs and arms are short. Hands and feet are small though playing with the proportion of these features will add humor to a character. While an adult's arms with fingers outstretched can reach to or even past their mid thighs, a toddlers reach might just get to or past their hips. In looking at traditional drawing technique, while an adult is 7-8 heads tall, a toddler might only be 3-4 heads tall. For characters, these young ones are typically only 2 or 3 heads tall. Their hands and fingers are also different from older characters in that their fingers tend to be chubby and their palms less defined. Often these characters are only shown with a thumb and three fingers because the chubbiness is bulky when trying to squeeze in a fifth finger.

Circles usually work well for very young children because they tend to make a character look young, cute, or retro. Placing the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears low (but not looking down) also helps to make a character look young. Christopher Hart states that, "The lower you put the features on the circle, the cuter the character will be."

Look at some real toddlers (or check them out on Google images or Pinterest) and note that their eyes are large and their noses are small. Big eyes makes a character look full of wonder and gives you the chance to play with eye shapes and angles to make them expressive and give your little boy or girl emotion. Tomorrow's post will be All About Eyes.

Play with head shapes and trunk (body) shapes. Play with hairstyles for little ones - is her hair in pigtails? Is his hair spiky? Maybe he or she doesn't have much hair yet. A hairstyle can help a viewer understand the age of the character.

Does he or she have freckles? Play with posture, standing, sitting, running, leaning, bending.

Here are some reference pics for you...

 

http://www.zebtoonz.com/proportions.htm

 

 Have fun!

 

Share your Toddler Character doodles on the Facebook Group page for Doodle Day HERE.

 

Come back tomorrow to check out the post All About Eyes!

 

 

 

NEW Character Challenge!

Welcome to the kick off for the Character Challenge! I am hosting this challenge as a tag on to Doodle Day with the theme of the doodle posts being characters - human characters. Remember, these are still doodles so don't spend a lot of time trying to turn them into portfolio pieces, the idea is to spend some time figuring out how to make a 2 year old boy look like a toddler and not like a 7 year old or a 9 year old girl look like a 4th grader and not like a Kindergartener or a Middle School student. There are subtle differences to show in your character design that will help a character look the right age for the story that he or she is connected to.

Here's how the challenge will work -

On Monday (tomorrow), Wednesday, and Friday of this week and next week, I will post the character prompt for a specific age group (which I will share here) along with tips on how to create characters that look that age. On Tuesdays and Thursdays - I will post other tips for character design (eyes, noses, mouths, body shapes, ...) but these are not additional prompts. You will get 2 days to work on each age group and then on Sundays, you can work on whatever characters you want or take a day off. Below is the list of prompts and the days they will be posted. Now that you see this list, you theoretically don't need to return here but I will post about each age group and share tips from well known character designers about how to create characters who are specific to this age. Keep your drawings loose and try not to get hung up on any one design. Create a page or more of loose sketches of characters while giving attention to the details of body shape and proportion that will make him or her look that age.

Monday, Sept 9: 2-4 year olds
Wednesday, Sept 11: 5-8 year olds
Friday, Sept 13: 9-12 year olds
Monday, Sept 16: 13-17 year olds
Wednesday, Sept 18: 18-25 year olds
Friday, Sept 20: 26-40 year olds

For today's doodle exercise, think about and sketch some head shapes. Yes, you can make a bunch of circles but think outside the circle and look at the people in the grocery store, on TV, in your own house. Not everyone's head is circular - draw some ovals, draw some squares, draw some eggs. Christopher heart has the page (shown below) at the start of his HUMUNGOUS BOOK OF CARTOONING. Notice that he points out 9 different head shapes. In the following pages of his book, he explains that stocky characters are shown with no neck, evil characters have a light bulb shaped head with the narrow side being the mouth and chin (go ahead, try to doodle something cute with a light bulb shaped head).

For today, all I am asking you to do is play with shapes for heads - round, narrow, oval, square, light bulb, etc...

Here is the page from Christopher Hart's HUMUNGOUS BOOK OF CARTOONING:

 

After playing with different shapes for heads, you can add some sketch guildelines for placement of the facial features. Don't worry about he features yet. The placement of these lines will make your character's head look three dimensional. The center lines helps give reference for where the nose will be. The horizontal line can be placed low or high depending on where your character is looking. Many characters in picture books, comics, and cartoons look flat (on purpose) so if you want your characters to look flat - don't worry about these lines.

 

When you are done sketching - you are welcome to post your doodles on the Doodle Day page on Facebook. If you haven't joined it yet - go ahead and join! There are over a hundred doodlers there already. Not on Facebook? No problem! If you want to share your character doodles (which you don't have to do), go ahead and post them on your own blog and share the link in the comments on this blog.

 

Have fun!

 

Don't forget to tell friends about this challenge!