How to Draw Sugi Style Animals

Sugi is a style of anime art

Sugi style art is a style of drawing named for Ken Sugimori, the artist and character designer best known for his work on the Pokemon television and manga series. Sugimori's style is characterized by smooth lines, flat shading, and over-emphasized features, like much of anime art. To draw animals in Sugi style, you will need to reduce the animal down to its component shapes, and exaggerate those shapes to get a cartoon-like feel to your drawing.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper

Instructions

1. Start with a basic round shape that will comprise the torso of your animal. Sugi style animals are extremely exaggerated, so take the form to the extreme.

2. Add another round shape for the head, and draw bubbly legs, arms, and paws in the appropriate places.

3. Fill in the facial features using simple shapes. Emphasize the size of the eyes; one major feature of Sugimori's style of art is large "anime" eyes.

4. Clean up the pencil lines so that the drawing is smooth and seamless. Erase any extraneous pencil marks for a clean drawing.

5. Shade in and color the animal using simplistic, flat colors and minimal shading. Shading should emphasize the roundness of the animal's shapes, and avoid giving the drawing too much weight, in order to get the cartoon feel.

References

• HallM3: Sugi-style Tutorial
• Yayster: Pokemon Art Style Tutorial
• Light of the Stars: Ken Sugimori Art