How to Sketch Comic Book Characters

Video Transcript

"Alright folks in this clip we're going to be learning how to sketch different cartoon characters. The thing about sketching is, sketching is the time and place where you really get to experiment with shapes and not have to worry about the consequences of drawing in the lines. So what you're going to do is allow yourself the creative license and freedom to be just a little bit more sloppy than you feel necessarily comfortable being. Don't worry about it so much, these are not permanent pens you are using. This is why we use pencil, just get the ideas out. Now, the thing about sketching, one thing you want to primarily do when you're sketching is really learn to establish the shapes of the, what will end up being the final drawing. Just kind of experiment with different dimensions and shapes, things that you like, come to find the poses that you're going to want to use and yeah, just allow yourself to take the creative freedom to just explore different poses and designs for different characters. This is the way characters are developed. Really allow yourself to just kind of get in there and experiment with the, just with the, mostly with poses, I would say, sketching is primarily for figuring out exactly what kind of poses you want to use in your particular drawings, not necessarily about finding the clothes or the specific look that you want because all that I would say would come later. It's more about finding the exact position that you want each character to have and then just kind of building off of it from there. Obviously, there are many, many ways you can go about this. The thing that's amazing about sketching and one reason that I love it so much is literally, there are endless possibilities, it's literally a complete and total blank page, you don't need to feel any pressure whatsoever to get it right the first time. You're literally just kind of see the characters come to life in front of you. Allow yourself to really learn how to draw peoples' different positions and expressions that they take just in regular life. Figure out what it is that causes people to move and stand the way they do. Really learn to see the shapes in the world, look at the world in shapes especially when you're learning how to sketch. That is the most important part discovering the shapes, angles positions of everything that you ultimately end up doing. Obviously, you can go back and clean things up later. I wouldn't worry about it looking neat, especially at this stage. Learn how to sketch people, sketch a few characters and then move on from there. You can clean things up later."