Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver, Part 3

The third lesson in Stephen Silver’s Advanced Character Design course was all about caricaturing. Stephen stressed how strengthening your caricature skills can help you design more interesting characters. So our assignment was to take a celebrity and caricature them.

I kinda cheated on this one and turned in two. I started with Josh Gad, but he felt too easy. His features are pretty easy to caricature. He was fun to draw, but what’s the point of taking a class with Stephen Silver if all I’m going to do is turn in work I know is a homerun? I'm in this to push myslef! Here’s my Josh Gad sketches. He’s a fun guy to draw: 

After that, my wife suggested I try Jon Stewart (after hearing me lament the end of his Daily Show run all week). I’ve been watching The Daily Show for years, so I felt like I understood the “feel” I needed to hit. That’s something Stephen pointed out in the lesson, by the way. If you can see the subject you’re caricaturing in action, you can pick up quirks that can inform your drawing. If the likeness isn't spot on, but the "feel" is, you're good to go. 

Turns out Jon Stewart was pretty hard to nail. I spent a couple sessions just watching his show and sketching him, trying to pick out the features that made him Jon Stewart. Then I sat down with a ton of still images and started narrowing it down. Here are the sketches I posted on Instagram.

And here’s the final image: 

I included my sketches when I turned in my work so Stephen could see how I got to my final picture. Here’s the feedback from Stephen:

I’m not going to lie, it feels kind of awesome when someone like Stephen Silver says you did a great job. I think he definitely helped refine it a bit more. I struggled a bit on the final image with the age. When I first finished it, Brooke said it looked like Jon Stewart from 2005, not 2015. So I kinda went in there and sagged a few things down. It sorta worked, but I think Stephen’s tweak to the nose is what really sells it.

That’s it for week three. Lesson four was all about drawing women. Our assignment was to draw one waitress with three body types. I’ll have that feedback up next week along with a bunch of practice images.