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!

 

 

 

Doodle Day Update and a NEW Challenge

Doodle Day started May 1st and never stopped! It was all May long with a new prompt and a new blog post daily and the group of participants on (Facebook in the Doodle Day May group) just grew and grew. We were at 60+ doodlers by the end of May. Doodlers continued posting their daily doodles throughout June and the number of participants continued to grow (even though the challenge was technically over). In July, (at the request of many doodlers) we started posting prompts again. All new, every day! Thanks to the fabulous and dedicated doodlers, I had guest posts for more than half the month. These fantastic guests posted doodle prompts, samples, reference photos, and suggestions on my blog and theirs and our group of doodlers continued to grow. We are now 21 days into August and the Doodle Day participants is at 106! If you are interested in doodling with us, there is a list of August prompts posted in the files at the top of the group page on Facebook. WOW! More than a thousand doodles have been posted with many more locked in the privacy of doodler's sketchbooks. (You are not required to share to be a recognized participant in this challenge.)

As Augusts is coming to a close, we have a new drawing challenge approaching. I have been giving hints and talking about it all summer. This new challenge will run from September 8-21 and here it is...

Character Challenge

which you can call ChaCha! (pronounced Kah-Cha)

 

 

Here's how it will work -

On Sunday, September 8th - We will kick off the ChaCha with a post and a drawing exercise to help you prepare for creating new characters.

 

On Monday, September 9nd - I will post the first Character Prompt. This will be a specific age group to focus on. You can create male or female characters at this age - we are focusing on humans for this challenge. We can work on animal characters at another time. You are not expected to create final, portfolio quality characters. This is an exercise in creating new characters. First drafts, sketches, loose drawings. You will have two days to work on this age group. After you sketch out a view you like, try the same character from the side or the back, 3/4 front or back if you have time.

 

On Sept 11th, 13th, 16th, 18th, and 20th - I will post a Character Prompt with a different age group to focus on. You will have a couple of days to work on each character design/age group. I will not post new prompts over the weekends so you can spend time going back to the characters you were developing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week. In each blog post, I will give suggestions for how to approach drawing a character of that target age. This information may include tips about body shapes and head shapes, websites with reference information, book suggestions, video tutorials from other artist about developing characters, etc... For this challenge, we will be focusing on characters who are younger than 40 years old.

 

At the end of this challenge, you should have at least 6 new characters you have worked on.

 

If you have questions, please post them in the comments below and I will address them. If this challenge sounds like a TON OF FUN, let me know that, too.

 

Until then...Keep Doodling

 

Hope to see you at the Character Challenge!