How to Draw CUTE! (Character Design Course Sneak PEEK)

you everybody my name is Aaron blazing for the last couple of months now I've been working on a new character design course for my website creature art teacher dot-com now many of you know already that I was with Walt Disney Feature animation for over 21 years during that time I did a lot of character designs I did a lot of animation for films such as The Lion King Aladdin Mulan and so I thought it would be kind of fun to put together this course that kind of covers everything that I think about when I'm doing character designs like I said I've been at it for several months now so there's a lot of stuff in there the course is really growing it's over 20 videos many many hours of content where I just like I said I cover all the different aspects all the different things that I think about from you know using shape language to different types of design a finding finding appeal finding line of action all those different things that I think about when I'm designing my characters the other thing that I'm going to do that I'm actually in the process of doing now is I'm going to take you through my entire and you're going to be sitting over my shoulder basically we're gonna videotape the whole thing where I'm going to take some characters right from the beginning and start designing them and go all the way through finished designs model sheets color all that kind of stuff and that's what I'm in the process of doing now so there's a lot there I think it'll be a lot of fun I think you guys will enjoy it but in the meantime what I thought would be kind of interesting is just to take one of those videos and give you guys a little taste of what's going to be in the course and so one thing that I struggled with when I was starting out doing character designs was how do I design cuteness cute was always tough for me to do and so I have a video on how to draw cute and so that's what I'm putting out and giving you two guys today I hope you enjoy it and in the next couple of weeks I'll be finishing up this course it'll be available on my website like I said creature art teacher dot-com over 20 videos lot lots of content for those of you that have gotten my other videos are my other courses in the past this one will be just as full just as big and I hope you guys enjoy it I hope you guys enjoy this video and I'll talk to you soon thanks so in this next video I want to have some fun you know if you're if you're going to be a character designer if you're going to do it for any amount of time I've been doing it for a long long time at some point you're going to have to design something cute and a lot of people struggle with cute I know I did when I first started out we all kind of know what cute is but it's really kind of hard to draw it and it's hard to keep it consistent and so I thought I could go through and take you through some of my methods on drawing cute it's a lot of fun and when you really nail it it's really satisfying to get people to go awww you know is really it's cute so the first thing I want to talk about is first of all the way our brains are wired you know it's why we fall in love with teddy bears all that kind of stuff our brains are wired in order to react to those the cute proportions the baby proportions and that's what I want to go over today is just talk about those proportions and talk about some of the methods that I use when I'm when I'm doing when I'm drawing those proportions and and and some of the features and that sort of thing so why don't we go ahead and dive in and I'm just going to start scribbling now the first thing we want to think about is are those proportions that I was talking about normally we see cute and I'm just I'll show you how quickly you can get a reaction you know normally a person's head you know we we've got our eyeline somewhere in here person's head is like so somewhere in there like that and we've got ears nose mouth eyes right here okay so there's a there's a normal average proportioned person hair now as an adult you know when you look at these this bet that's not cute it's just we're not wired to react to that but if we take some of these proportions and we move them around then all of a sudden we're going to start seeing cuteness we're going to hit start hitting that all factor so now when we draw that head I'm going to move this eye line way down here and I'm going to put that chin right here so look how much cranium I'm giving this this little character and I'm going to drop the ears down here I'm going to give them little ears little little features I'm gonna make that nose small give them a little nose you know babies and that's what I'm drawing I'm drawing the baby babies have you know small little features except for their eyes but those eyes are way down low our eyes tend to be big and here I'm not drawing them super big that's one that's one mistake I see people do is they'll kind of go overboard with it they'll make the eyes a little too big I think you can get better cuteness drawing the eyes a little bit smaller now it's just a matter of taste sometimes the whatever you're working on might call for the bigger eyes but I like doing eyes right about in here with the little eyebrows like so in just a little tiny mouth and babies are cute I'm going to say cute a lot babies are cute and funny in the way that their their mouths are kind of all over the place and so the key is to be really really dainty you know you can make the mouth all kinds of different shapes and big pupils like so the eyes like that so now you've got cute and there here tends to be a little fluffy so I'll give them a little fluffy hair down in here now let's look at the head to body proportion I'm going to turn this a little bit I just want to straighten that head out now when I'm doing a character design of a character that is that's supposed to be cute I'll push those that head to body proportion now in a normal kid a baby a toddler I think that head proportion is like 4 to 5 heads high but I like to push it like two heads or two and a half heads which is what I'm going to do here so if I come in here and we'll give them a little nip - this is little little neck and bring it back there like so here we go little neck coming off this big cranium little shoulders to me to get to hit that cute factor the other thing you want to do is look at the contrast you're going to have like the big head and the tiny little mouth and and you're going to see much bigger contrasts with with features the arms will be kind of big and squishy with tiny little dainty hands and that's that really helps with the cuteness factor okay so let's give them a home you know a big belly and the other thing too you know I've talked about doing your straights and curves and how dynamic that can make your drawing well in a case of drawing little squishy kids or little squishy animals a lot of times you don't have too many straights and the design so you might want to forego that rule or just pull back on it so if we you know that and they all have these little these little tummies little puppy tummies I call them I remember when my kids were small I just think just crack me up with their little proportions and the way I like to draw baby's arms you know they've got the little squishy fat rolls on there they've got everywhere but if I look at a baby's arm there's a shoulder I like to kind of get this little rhythm going like so and there's maybe there an elbow right there if we're looking at it from behind and you get a little squishy that's there and then right down into a little hand right there if you looked at it if you look at it from another from the front nice and squishy and I like to I like to make the forearms bigger than the upper arm there's just something about that for me that's really kind of pleasing and squishy and cute and so once again I'm going to draw these little little thumb and little fingers coming off of a little you know fat little chubby hand like so that's actually a little bit small it's a little too small for my tastes I was going a little overboard here we go there we go right into that little hand like so so that's what I'm going to do here is if I come over here let's just draw him out some drawn with his arms out those little little hands little chubby hands like so now if we turn this hand this way you know just so you can see if I turn this hand this way I usually make I don't if I'm looking at the hand I'm going to draw it a little bit wider than it is long rather than making you know my our hands tend to be kind of squares right here I like to squash it for a little for little fingers because then I can get here we go I can get this kind of feel just a little little thumb and then these little fingers we've all seen baby fingers and they're really really cute and tiny and I like to draw a little little baby hands like so there you go so it's you know thinking about the anatomy of a regular hand but then just kind of squash it and make cute little proportions the cute proportions with it like so little baby hand so that's how I think about when I'm drawing cute cute cute cute okay so now we got this little kid and they tend to be a little bowlegged you could you know when the when the babies you know in the womb the baby's all curled up and it takes a baby even a toddler awhile before those legs will straighten out and their legs to body are a little shorter too so here I'm doing if you look I'm doing him about two and a half you know one two and a half heads high and make that a little bigger to get these you know those cute proportions you can see them going a little bit bowlegged I love making them a little bit bowlegged it's just really cute there we go and you notice too I always talk about one thing I'm going to go back to the streets and curves you know finding if I was drawing an adult leg like so like if I was looking at a pose like this this kids in you know an adult leg if we're looking at the torso you know here's the torso coming down like so ribcage chest it would I would normally kind of draw this as a straight line basically and get and here we go get it straight there go straight there and you know look for these look for these places where I can do these these straights and when I'm doing the drawings of the baby the designs for the baby I just want to get I want to kind of make them look like little Michelin you know the tire guy a little Michelin men little you know squishy round little shapes for those feet and legs I'll put a big baggy diaper on like so okay so those those are the legs and then coming down into the feet the feet are just like the hands I make them little squishy tiny little toes so if we had and I'm going to turn them in a little bit turning them in tends to make them feel a little more cute so I've turned in this way maybe bring that big toe up a little bit maybe you know the other toes are down but very very small very dainty that's what I'm trying to do here coming right towards us maybe there's a toe here like so tiny tiny little feet all right so if I drew you know a baby's foot maybe he's he's got his leg bent like so chubby chubby calves you know you may be sitting on his butt like this and there's his belly I'm going to turn this foot in a little bit like so and then tiny little toes and I could like I said like I did before I can turn these toes down like that really really simple treat everything very simple so that you've got we've got these proportions putting those eyes really low on the head keeping those ears down nice and low keep think I'm small look at the spacing between the eyes - I've really widened out the eyes that adds to the cute factor that really helps a lot a lot of times if you put those eyes too close together it'll lose the cuteness if we put the put the nose here and we you know we have big eyes we put them too close together like this it loses that a little bit of cuteness it starts looking a little weird and so I like to keep them kind of spread out and it's interesting let me turn this off it's interesting because I can let's just do let's just do a cute proportion like so we'll do it bring it way down here real squishy and we'll do a nose a little nose eyes and a little mouth little ears let's bring this back now it's it's amazing to me how it's not just humans that are wired to feel that cuteness factor to see the cuteness factor here you know here's a human baby very stylized but you know drawn to look cute and you can feel a sense of cuteness to it like so but then you can we could take this and just change a couple of things like so now you've got a puppy and it's just as cute you can it's amazing to me that that once you start getting down into the little baby proportions that it starts becoming really Universal as far as going from species to species you can you can make anything cute by following these proportions you know if I went and did I change the ears again and went and did this look at this all of a sudden we've got a little elephant so you can you know if you if you think about those proportions and really follow through with them it's really universal you could really jump around and apply it to a lot of different species different just different things the other thing too is keeping that line work soft and simple a lot of different angle changes will start to kill the cuteness factor you want and that's why cute sometimes it's so difficult to to draw because sometimes people get in there and they try to drive fat or whatever and it's not about that it's about simplicity and and smoothness you want things to be smooth let me pull over some that I've done in preparation for this here's a bunch of babies that I put together that I drew and you can see I've cut everything really round and plump you can see those see those forearms and the arms I was talking about where I'm getting kind of chunky and and fat and you know getting that you know you want to get this this shape to that body that little potato shape to the body to really emphasize that puppy tummy I was talking about you know you wanted all of this and look at the the head to body proportions you know here's one that's about two and a half all these are and the younger the baby you can you can push those proportions even more so here is a real young baby and I've pushed those proportions even more it's almost a one-to-one like you know the it's almost two heads and that's it so very very simple here I've gone a little bigger with the eyes and for me it starts getting a little bit too the you know I'm pushing the limit right there as far as how big I want those eyes to get because I think you right here if you look at this one I think you can get just as nice of effect if not a better effect by keeping those eyes large and you know relative to the rest of the face but not over-the-top and keeping them spread apart a little bit the other thing too is you can go really simple with the expressions like I'm doing here but look you know there's real simple very confident and that's that's another key get confident with your line put it in there Stroke it right down and and keep those lines nice simple round and cute okay you can see here I'm also thinking about Anatomy even though you know I'm trying to do a cute little character I'm not going to forget Anatomy so I know that there's a little tiny little shoulder blade under those rolls of fat and I know how the arms are connecting and all that kind of stuff so that I can get some form even though I'm trying to I'm stylizing them I'm getting some form to these to these little characters okay and the same thing here okay so I make sure not to forget the anatomy things that are happening underneath let's go ahead and once again I want to show you those cute proportions you know if you look at if you look at let me pull this over if we look at these two together you know this little guy in this little guy there's not a lot of difference in the proportions what's different obviously is I've just put some fur and change the ears and and you know change the body on this little guy but they're pretty much it's the same you know it's the same proportions okay that's really big head to body ratio and the you know the little eyes everything set kind of low although all the features are kind of squat and tiny and and dainty and that's the thing that you want to get when you're when you're doing cube here's another one for the little elephant once again same thing all the same proportions if you look at this little guy different than the expression then this guy over here they're very similar in their proportions even the you know with the elephant I kind of squashed up his little his little arms and gave them little little feet and this kind of made everything kind of squished and and dainty like I'm doing with the babies so you know the more you do this the more you'll find here's another one here I just kind of sketched out this little bunny once again doing the same thing just playing with those same proportions and that's the other thing too here you can see I was kind of pushing it and playing with it you can get really squishy if you're animating these characters you can have a lot of fun with them they can be bouncy and and kind of awkward and it's just they're a lot of fun to animate I've I've animated babies in the past and and it's just a lot of fun so here's a couple here I'm going to turn this off turn these on very quick sketches so this is how I would normally sit down and start drawing these these little guys out with you know just sitting down maybe this in here their little nose and trying this is a fun thing to do and just you know play with just doing little sketches like so maybe bring that head down around here like this maybe he's got his hands on his knees maybe he's looking at like a little spider web or something over here so just sit down and have fun just scribbling out lots of little poses like I've done here and you'll find little you'll make little discoveries of of what works what doesn't work you know one thing that I found when I was designing these little characters and animating them is that it can be kind of difficult to bend the limbs and and get really dynamic poses with little stumpy characters like this and so that's something to play with so if I were to do something like this let's say he's we got a little character kind of looking off this way like so so for doing that if I'm doing that and let's say maybe he's this arm is down this arm I'm going to bend it well that stumpy little arm can be kind of difficult sometimes shrink that up now here is a shoulder but it's really just kind of just getting in there and just really drawing everything kind of compact so you can see what I'm doing here you know normally if I drew a person's arm bent you know you have this going on and you know something like that with the hand like so well you can't really do that in this case we've got these tiny little stumpy arms there we go had that couldn't resist and so here little fingers a little hand maybe the thumb over there and here I want to do a little thumb little fingers sticking out like so a big big belly like that so in here I want to maybe do that little his little leg bent right there and flatten that out because he's on the floor maybe we see a heel and some little toes back there like so maybe a little bit right there so just go in there and like I'm doing here don't be afraid to just get in start scribbling and play with some of those proportions play with those proportions that make cute remember it's the big head the low set eyes the eyes set further apart the bigger eyes tiny little nose little mouth all that kind of stuff you know the other thing too is you can have some fun with expression you know here I can open that little mouth up like so maybe he's got one tooth we'll bring his eye we could probably bring his eye up just a little bit like so Oh eyelashes so get in there have some fun with it there we go like that have some fun playing with those proportions doing gestures with the body playing with you know look at babies - I mean really look at how they're built and that squishiness that's the thing that you want to get you want to get in there you want to find that squishiness and really push those proportions find out what works realize what doesn't work you know like I said if you get in there and you've got too much searching in your line and too many angle changes and too much Anatomy that's the other thing that people will do they'll put too much Anatomy in their in their cute drawings and it loses that cuteness remember simplicity is the key you want to hit those proportions and keep everything really simple and that will retain the cuteness okay so let's look at these one more time keeping things very simple the baby baby proportions you know keeping all of that and remember that it goes it's really consistent from species to species you can keep those same proportions over and over and over again and you'll retain that cute factor I don't care if you're if you're drawing a spider you know if you use these proportions or a snake you can make it cute okay so that's drawing cute why don't we go ahead and move on to the next video hey thanks for watching if you like what you saw please hit the red subscribe button down below spread the word and also if there's something that you're not seeing that you'd like to see let us know we'd love to hear from you thanks a lot

Channel: The Art of Aaron Blaise

Views: 294,111

Rating: 4.9633808 out of 5

Keywords: Aaron's Art Tips, drawing, tutorial, lessons, character design, animation, cute

Id: 9ByQoGs992Y

Length: 30min 2sec (1802 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2016