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.

Batman Knows Everything

I generally like Batman, though occasionally the absurdity of his existence, and his entire broody-guy know-it-all shtick are hard to ignore. 

I was playing playing Batman: Arkham Knight and something started to bug me. The Arkham game series gives you a grim-dark "mature" version of Batman, growl-speaking words like "Batcomputer" with a straight face. That in itself is enough to break the whole thing into ridiculous pieces. But what really got under my skin was the way it casts Bats as a complete know it all. He literally knows everything about everything and not a single person--not Alfred, or Robin, or the Penguin, or anyone--calls him out on his bullshit. 

No one ever says, "How do you know that?" Or, "No Batman, I can't do that for you, creating a cure for a genetic disability takes more than two hours." How is he an expert detective, a super black belt ninja, a software developer, an engineer, an architect, and also built like a linebacker? If Batman were software, he'd be suffering from some major feature creep. He can do it all! 

I think I can buy Sherlock Holmes knowing everything because every take on the character spends significant time on the things he actually doesn't know. They show you the downsides of his hyper intellect, and make a great case for having Watson around. But Batman knows everything and needs no one. He's kind of a douchebag. So I made some comics about that in my spare time, then slapped them all together in the above image. Enjoy!

Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver, Part 2

The assignment this week was to draw a character to fit into a show of our choice. Stephen said art directors want to see that you can conform to a show’s style. So this assignment would be good practice.

During the lesson, Stephen showed off the styles of several shows he worked on, as well as some character development concepts he’d done in the past. At one point he pulled up a random picture of a 1920s business guy and drew him in the Kim Possible style. Then he redrew that same guy in the Danny Phantom style. Watching him just flip between the two styles was kind of amazing, plus it served as a great example of how some very small established rules can ripple out to create a cohesive style.

As an animation fan, and a father of two small boys, I’ve seen a lot of cartoons. I ran through several that I thought about trying—Gravity Falls, Rescue Bots, Kung Fu Panda. Before committing to one for the assignment, I decided to try a style out for fun. I went with Fairly Odd Parents, a show that I’ve always thought had a really clear style, and drew this picture of Taako from The Adventure Zone podcast.

That was a fun exercise, but I wanted more of a challenge. While that picture doesn’t fit perfectly in the style of Fairly Odd Parents, it’s pretty close. One more iteration and I’d get it I think. I wanted to take on something a little tougher. Something with rules that were a little harder to define.

So I went with the Mickey Mouse shorts on YouTube. My oldest son and I watch at least one of these a day. I love them. They’re so weird, and charming, and the way they stretch and pull such classic characters in crazy ways is fun to watch. Also, the backgrounds are gorgeous.

Before working on my characters, I did some research. Most episodes have at least one or two random side characters with unique designs, so I pulled screenshots of several of them. Like Stephen did in his lesson, I started tracing over some of them to try and break down the style.

Research

It was hard.

Unlike the straight against curve design of Fairly Odd Parents, there wasn’t an easy baseline theme that all the characters adhered to. And yet there was definitely something, because they all fit.

So I designed three characters: a boxing kangaroo, a landlord bulldog, and a traveling lama.

I was as eager to hear Stephen’s feedback as I was to see him break down the style too. I was not disappointed. Here’s the feedback:

See what he did with that kangaroo? Amazing right? It’s clear he’s been doing this kind of work for a long time. When I drew these, I was focused inward. I drew the general shape of the character and filled it with detail—because from my research, they all had really clear silhouettes, and I wanted to maintain that. But Stephen pushed outward, and his ended up fitting the wacky (a great word for this style) tone even better.

After watching his feedback, I went back and re-watched a few Mickey shorts and could already see how his interpretation of the style would work. I’m definitely going to try to do some more. It’s a good skill to have, and seeing him so easily break a style down and produce something that would fit made me want to polish my skills so I can do that too someday.

That’s it for this week. Our next assignment is to caricature someone, because being good at caricatures can actually be super helpful when designing characters. I’ll have that feedback next week!

Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver, Part 1

Two weeks ago I started Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver over at Schoolism.com.

Stephen Silver is an incredible character designer and it’s a real treat to get to learn from him.

Our first assignment was to draw a cowboy using the things he went over in the first class (basically an overview of Character Design 1, which I skipped). He talked a lot about the golden ratio of 1:1:1.68 and how to use it to get an appealing design.

I first drew a bunch of cowboy faces to loosen up and play with some different shapes.

I knew I wanted a cowboy villain after I explored that one on the bottom left. I also knew I wanted him to wear a cool duster jacket.

So I did some research and started iterating as seen here:

I turned in the image below along with this description (because a character isn’t just a drawing):

I wanted him thin and sleazy, the kind of guy who thinks he's put together, but wears an old duster he stole from a man he killed 10 years ago. He might look refined to criminals, but he's still a dirt bag.

Stephen liked where I was going with it, and offered some tips on how I could push things—his arms, his hat, etc.—to make him even more appealing. He also helped eliminate a few tangents.

Here’s the full video of his feedback. Pretty cool how just a few minor tweaks make a picture dramatically better. I feel like this guy was probably just one version away from hitting the mark, so I’m gonna consider that a win.

Because art directors want to see that you can work in an established style, our next assignment is to create a character and draw it to fit in a show of our choice. I’ll have that feedback in another week or so.

Ant Man Posters

I made these Ant Man posters because...well, I don't really know why. I have no real affinity toward the character. I just thought it would be fun. And it was! You get it right? Because he's like a bug. 

Anyway, feel free to grab any of these as a background, or if you want to buy a print, let me know and I'll put them on my Society6 shop. 

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize