Developing a Character

So for those of you who don't know, (and if you read my blog you probably already know me in person, so you SHOULD know by this point anyway) I consider myself a bit of a cartoonist.   This meaning I draw cartoon characters.  A LOT. 

So for the hell of it, I decided to go over what goes into creating an awesome cartoon character by showing you folks how it's done.  Without further ado, let's do this!

CARTOONING WITH NICK

So to begin, let's come up with what we wanna draw.  After opening up my faithful "ToonBoom Studio", I decide I want to draw an adorable little bunny wabbit.... wearing a gas-mask.  Why the hell not?

As you can see here, the first thing I do once I have my idea set is draw the basic shapes that will make up the character.  As you can see I usually draw this framework in a light blue color, so I'll be able to distinguish it clearly from the complete drawing once I begin building it over this drawing layer.

Now I've added the basic framework for the whole bunny rabbit.  Ears, little bunny paws, even the basic gas mask overlay.  It's all here.  Now comes the fun stuff...

NEW LAYERS!  Every element in my characters usually comes with its own layer.  As you can see here, our first goal will to create the bunny rabbit's head.  Some cartoonists may start with the body and whatnot, but I tend to start with my character's heads because they're more fun.

After looking up a few reference photos of what a typical gas mask looks like, I begin to build up a more defined mask for our bunny wabbit to wear over his face.  Since this is technically part of his head, I won't create a separate layer for the mask this time.

Adding the fine details to even simple things like the wrinkles on the bunny's mask always makes for a better looking picture in the end.  So let's add a few of those for good measure.

Now we're starting to build the ears on our character.  You may have noticed at this point that I have changed the outline color for the ear portions to a dark gray as opposed to black.  This helps to make the character look less like a jumble of black lines and more like an actual character.  Although this is simply a matter of personal taste.  I'm also beginning to thicken the lines around the ears, to better define their outline.

Now we start the colorizing process.  The first time we color we won't worry too much about shading, so we'll just paint bucket the big stuff first with our most basic palette.

I thought the bunny's eyes looked kind of weak with just simple black lenses for his gas-mask eyes, so I decided to give him some bad-ass red lenses instead.  Oh yeah and I threw in some temporary light reflections in his lenses for good measure.

Let's make sure our bunny can breathe, so let's give his mask a few of those gas-mask breathing holes.  Details details.

Moving on from the head, I'll start fleshing out some of the other body parts as well.  So let's add some little bunny arms.  But wait what's this?  Something about the joints in our bunny's arm looks odd.  Could it be that the lines are too consistently thick and thus it looks kind of funny?  Well let's fix that with some good old fashioned line sharpening shall we?

Now that looks better doesn't it?  This little trick usually helps the drawing look less flat, and gives joints and corners a little more edge.  I achieved this by simply erasing some corners off the edge of certain lines.  Now that that's done, let's move this drawing along shall we?

Repeating the process of drawing, sharpening, and colorizing, we finally have ourselves a fleshed out version of the bunny rabbit framework.  Now we just have to- hey wait a second, something is wrong here, why doesn't the bunny have a tail?  Did I forget to draw one onto the framework bunny?  Well shit let's fix that!

30 Seconds Later...

 

There we go, NOW the bunny is complete.  Nobody said I was perfect.  Now then, let's begin the next phase: adding a bad-ass background for our bad-ass bunny.

BAM!  Now how's THAT for a bad-ass background?  Relatively simple yes, but effective and fitting for our little furry friend here.  But we're not quite done yet, because now comes the wonderful process of SHADING and OUTLINING to define the bunny's features and create a stronger focal point.

First- the outlining.  While it may not seem terribly important, outlining our character usually helps make him stand out more against the background.  You may have noticed I used a similar method with my Hitler vs. Mickey picture, in order to highlight the characters against the zany orange background.

And now for the shading.  By far the most tedious process, I usually put on some music at this point to make things go by faster.  Unfortunately something was going on with my iTunes at the time, so I suffered through this lovely process in silence.

Several tedious minutes later, I finish the basic shading and decide to open up a new layer in order to add some cool "scratches" around our bunny fellow, to give him a little more depth and edge.  You may notice the shading is not visible here, that being because I hid the layer momentarily in order to scratch him up.

And FINALLY...

HE IS COMPLETE!  After some final tweaking to the black background to give it more of a "glow" effect, I sign the picture and export it into a .png file!  For comparison to how this whole thing started out, I also exported a version of Gas-Rabbit with only his framework in tact.  Big difference eh?

Oh Gas-Rabbit, how you've grown...

Well that's it.  That's my magical cartoon-making process.  I hope this has been interesting and perhaps helpful. Until next blog post, peace out bros and gals!