Cartoon Character Design for Beginners

hi my name is Christopher Hart I'm a cartoonist and author of many books how to draw cartoons a manga figure drawing animals tons of stuff I'm glad you're visiting me today and my YouTube and I'd like to show you how to draw a type of character I really enjoy and that's a cartoon genius a kid who's a genius so I'm going to just sketch a minute first and then we'll darken it in and I start with a very big head a vertical oval that's because he's got so much brains that we have to make room for them I'll give them a little kind of rectangular body underneath very slight like so and I'll divide that and a half so that he's he's wearing shorts and we'll bring really skinny legs down together right down the center here's the center line of the whole character The Head and the body taper those legs down a little bit like so down to oh give them some socks straight line across and some shoes definitely not sneakers because he has no athletic ability we're using stereotypes here what we think a genius might be I think Albert Einstein set the mold Albert Einstein great guy I really love his work well it's all relative sorry sorry I should do this whole video over again because that terrible joke okay so there we go we have a lot of them are all right and uh we'll also give them a little collar here and because he is he's already a nerd which is nice I'm just going to shave this in a bit and because he's very slight and doesn't pose with a lot of authority we'll put his hands behind his back I'm going to slenderize this a little bit like that make that slightly concave so that we take away any width to the shoulders we'll give them oversized sleeves if he's swimming in his clothing then it makes him look even more slight so you know we have to caricature not just the face but the clothes and the pose that didn't mean to eye on that I did not mean to rhyme that don't give me any credit for that all right so we're going to now make kind of noodly arms I actually put the hands of the pockets and the reason the arms are noodles because we want to make it look like you know he's got absolutely no muscle tone now let's go with the face I'll give a few buttons down okay we'll start with the nose the bridge of nose really small down here very pointy and we're going to give them gigantic glasses I'll make them round coming just just off the head I'll darken these in a minute just touching the parameter of the header just a little bit a little Beyond it still go a little Beyond it okay that should be fun and we'll give him a little small smile a little tiny smile and we're gonna make know-it-all type of eyes which are like so just simple closed eyes each one is the shape of a u H like that and we'll give them little eyebrows but inside the glasses let's connect those glasses like so and now we'll darken that in give me a minute to hang with me he's got to have some thickness on the rims okay now the other one and you can use a template if you want to make the circles perfectly circular but you know it doesn't really matter it may matter in animation if you were to animate the character you want to always be consistent but for our purposes we can do this and and really everyone will be fine with it alright so he's a real nodal let's bring the face down into the collar don't you don't you just hate him I mean this kind of kid teacher you forgot to give us homework I still have a resentment toward that person all these years later okay so let's give a part on the side like this I'm going to erase this by the way get this out of here and now we'll give a lot of curly here but with big bumps not small we don't want to be subtle this is a cartoon and a cartoons subtlety isn't always an advantage you really have to shout it so let's make these his hair look really curly like this I'll darken that a little more and I'm going to bring the elbow bend a little further down that's better same thing on the other side needs to be symmetrical and now bring this part out right the shirt into the shoulders and I can erase the top here let's quickly do this just to give it some tone and a line here for this for the ground notice that it doesn't go across the socks sock line is above it otherwise it'll give the illusion that it's cutting through the legs all right so there is your kooky crazy genius and hope you like it thank you for visiting me and I have new videos uploaded each week I hope you subscribe bye bye I'm the author of many popular how to draw books on everything from cartooning to Manda I upload new videos each week so please subscribe and enjoy

Channel: Christopher Hart

Views: 1,809,784

Keywords: video, draw, design, cartoon, characters, personality, brainy, genius, learn, techniques, drawing, school, kid, simple, shapes, exaggeration, proportions, pencil, tips, cartoonist, Christopher Hart, Beginners, lesson

Id: 61qUZgdH-aI

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2016