How to Make a Cartoon Character

Video Transcript

"Joel Hickerson, GrinDog.com. Today we're going to learn how to make a cartoon character. The first thing you want to think about is what is it going to be, a male or a female, is it an animal, what their personality is like are they aggressive, are they docile, what activity they're going to perform. For the sake of a quick look, let's say we have a dog, a male dog. So we build our dog and we think about what makes this a male dog versus a female dog as far as an activity, maybe he can be thinking about something, maybe a little thought bubble over here. I think he's going to be a male so what makes this dog a male? It could be just the fact he's got a heavy brow, you know. So we're going to build our dog, our basic construction elements of our dog in pencil. You'll see I've got about a million lines around, well that's okay because I'm going to come back with a dark marker and just pick the lines I like and another thing that might make him a male dog is if we name him something like Rex. A happy male dog, there's another emotion we can think about, his tail is wagging, he's in the yard. Alright what could he be thinking about that can make him happy, maybe a bone. All this is very basic, your dog and your character may be much more complicated than this one. Then I come back with a marker, pick out just the lines that I want to keep and I acknowledge that and subtract the lines that I don't think I need, heavy brow keeps him a male doggie, muzzle, collar. It's a very simple dog, your character may be more complicated. Once you get the lines in place that you want to keep, then you come back, working your eraser and you erase all these construction lines that you chosen to do without. If you drawn them lightly enough they should, they should come off easily and leave you something that you can come back and you can shade and color. That's how you make a cartoon character."