How To Draw Like Animal Crossing • Tutorial • With Template • Cute Cartoon Characters

[Music] hello and full people it's javiev and in this video i'm going to show you how to turn yourself into an animal crossing character just like this one and you can follow along using anything so digital art software even pencil paper it is all going to work i'm personally going to be using procreate on the ipad pro because it's just my favorite but you can really use again whatever you have so grab your drawing tools and let's get started so the first thing to do is to create a new canvas and the dimensions of the canvas are totally up to you depending on your own project here are the dimensions of mine it is literally just the dimensions of the ipad screen so nothing fancy here you want to make sure that it is you know at least 2 000 pixel wide so that you can zoom in a little bit without seeing pixels because otherwise it's just going to be really really hard to draw and guys if you don't want to sketch i've included this base sketch layer or gpeg i should say on my website so just click in the link in the description below it is totally free to download and you can start from there otherwise if you want to start from scratch and sketch it all i'm going to show you how to do it you're going to see it's just a question of very simple proportions and it is going to be super super easy so for example the head is the same side as the body then the top half of the body is the same side as the legs and the top of the legs is the same size as the bottom of the legs so nothing too complicated and i'm going to show you step by step how to draw this otherwise if you don't want like i was saying you can just download the base and jump back with us when we're adding the details and the color later which is going to be in a timestamp that i'm going to add now on the screen if you are drawing in digital art software go ahead and create a new layer for your sketch if you are drawing on paper make sure that you press very very lightly with your pencil because we're going to be super quick and rough with the sketch i like to use the dry ink brush in procreate but again you can use whichever software whichever brush that you like this is just the sketch and we're going to start with the head which is just circle if you have procreate you can hold your pencil and then tap with a second finger it's going to create a perfect circle otherwise it doesn't matter it doesn't have to be perfect at all and then we're going to measure the circle and add a little line at the bottom which is going to be the feet area and then from there we're going to divide the section in two as well so this is going to be the hips and this bottom section we're going to divide into as well so for the top of the leg and the bottom left leg you're also going to add this little u shape for the neck nothing complicated here and an inverted u shape for the body so you can see it's kind of half the width of the head but centered obviously and the bottom part is just going to be the slightly curved line so it's kind of a inverted or not inverted it's kind of a bell shape basically and at the bottom of this bell shape you're going to draw a semi-circle which is going to be the pelvis area you're then going to draw two sets of ovals for the legs so the top of the leg is going to be slightly rounder and thicker and the bottom of the leg is the same height but it is a little bit thinner you're also going to add the feet which is also two ovals so nothing too complicated here it's just a different angle and then we're going to move on to the arms which are also very very simple so i like to start by drawing two ovals for kind of the shoulder area and then you're just drawing cylinders so a cylinder for the top part of the arm and then another cylinder for the bottom part of the arm and you can position them however you want and a really great thing about animal crossing characters is that they don't have hands they really just have little spheres so you don't have to worry about drawing fingers which is really hard for pretty much most of the people so at the bottom part of your arm you're just going to draw a little circle and that is it and then you're going to do the same thing on the other side for the other arm and the head is very simple as well so start by creating a vertical line that is slightly curved kind of in the middle of your sphere and then a horizontal line slightly curved as well in the middle of your sphere so that kind of helps position the eyes really roughly and then the bottom part of your head you're also going to split with a horizontal curved line so these two horizontal lines are going to be where we're going to um draw the ear which is just like a c shape on the side and you can see that the shape of the head is kind of a bean shape so you're just going to draw this little wobbly curve like this now there are many different shapes for the facial features in animal crossing i'm just going to show you my favorite ones but feel free to do something different if you like for the eyes you're just going to draw reverse u-shape using the horizontal lines as your guide for the top and the bottom and for the nose i'm just going with the very traditional triangle nose and i'm finishing up with the super classic little mat like this make sure that you look very closely because right now we're going to sketch the basic hairline so there's this v-shape right next to the ear which is going to be kind of the sideburn and then you're just drawing kind of this normal uh hairline type of deal i'm not sure how to explain it but if you look at the image you're going to understand what i mean it's super simple and just like that we're done with the base part of the sketch so we're caught up with the people who decided to just download and now we're going to make it just more personalized and more fun you can totally use the eraser and clean up some of the lines if you want it is not essential at all because the sketch is not going to be part of the final product but if you prefer working with cleaner sketches that is totally fine as well and we're going to start adding details on the head and the face first so one thing to notice about animal crossing characters is they don't have eyebrows so that is very important they do however have irises so go ahead and draw depending again on the type of eye that you went with an iris so just an oval in the eye and the thing with animal crossing characters is they also usually have pupils when they have irises and that can look a little bit creepy in a sketch but believe me it's going to look good in the end depending on the eye shape you might have some little eyelashes here i just had the curved single eyelashes but you might have the three eyelashes on top or the three eyelashes on the bottom again depending on the style of eye that you choose now for the hair just think of the hair as kind of a helmet that is put on top of the head instead of actual hair there are multiple styles in animal crossing or you can even just go with something that you invent as long as it looks like it's kind of this solid plastic thing on top of your character's head it's going to fit in with the animal crossing style so you can see here i'm kind of doing something a little bit different my hair is long to the point that pretty much no video game ever has long enough hair for me so i'm going in here and taking this as an opportunity to draw very very long hair on my character but you can see i'm keeping it super simple i don't want to have flyaways or any crazy strand it's pretty much like you're just putting a towel on top of your character's hair or head i should say so kind of like the tick tock trend when you guys try to imitate girls they put a towel on their head picture that and draw this for your own hairstyle and you're gonna end up having kind of two surfaces so the front of the hair and this part here that i'm just kind of scribbling in which is going to be kind of the back of the hair i guess i'm not trying to explain it but i'm pretty sure you understand and just like for the hair the clothes are pretty simple in normal crossing just because they are not super two-dimensional so they're basically a texture that is applied to the same bell shape so i'm going to show you a very simple way to draw it and then you can personalize them with just adding little lines on that basic shape if you want pants you're just going to connect your bell shape to the bottom of the legs and then using the pelvis semi-circle that we drew to kind of draw the space between the legs i guess so super simple if you want your character to have a skirt you're going to draw kind of a straight line on the front part of the leg where the knee would be and then a curved line that follows your ovals at the back of the leg so that way you're going to be able to see kind of the shape of a leg a little bit more and then you're going to draw kind of the bottom part the skirt that's going to fall right in line with the knees like you can see here and you're just going to connect that with your bell shape so two super easy shapes pants or skirt should just take a few seconds to sketch and guys if you've made it this far in the video please go ahead and comment below new horizons i know it sounds crazy but it really helps me pace my video better and create better tutorials overall for you guys and it's also really cool because you guys know me but i don't know you and whenever you comment i get to see your username or your name and even sometimes a picture and it kind of makes me see the really nice drawing community we are creating here on this channel which is just super great so go ahead and comment in your horizons and we'll keep going so for the top part of the clothes you really just have to figure out the neckline as well as the length of the sleeve so here i'm just going with a short sleeve dress with a u neckline nothing too fancy but you could go with a t-shirt a long sleeve whatever you like whatever is your favorite clothes and the shoes are super simple it's really just the same oval shape and then you can have a pattern or something kind of mapped out on that shape so here i'm just going with two little lines that are going to show basic laces great so at this point we're ready to start adding the color i'm going to show you a super quick technique starting by changing the blending mode of the sketch layer to multiply and then lowering the opacity until we can barely see it now you might remember i have another tutorial on my channel that shows how to color cute animals you can definitely use the same technique for that but here i'm going to show you a slightly quicker version that is fairly similar but yeah it's just going to be a little bit quicker so you start by creating a new layer named base and on this layer we're going to draw the entire shape of the character like a silhouette so for that you can use any brush but i like to use this studio inking brush that comes with procreate and you can use any color as well but i like to just pick my skin color to start with and you're really just going to outline everything well not not even everything but outline the silhouette of your character so this shouldn't be too complicated but you do want to make sure that you really like the lines that you're drawing because that's really the base of everything so if one line looks weird here it's going to look weird in the end so take your time to do this and feel free to pause the video to really really really take your time and we're all going to meet each other when we have our outline of the silhouette of our character and once your outline is done make sure that there is no hole in it by the way it needs to be like a full complete line you're going to just fill in that shape so it is a silhouette and we're going to use a really cool feature which is called clipping mask and those come in most digital art software you just need to find it if you're using something different in procreate so you're going to create a new layer i'm going to start with the hair so i'm just going to rename this layer to hair and then in procreate you just double tap on the layer and select clipping mask which is going to create this little arrow here on the left and whatever you draw on this hair layer is going to stay within the base shape so that is super helpful because you don't have to worry about staying within the lines you can pick any color you want for your hair my hair is brown a little bit reddish so that's just what i'm going to do and as you can see whatever we draw is staying within the line so that's really cool so you're just going to draw the color for the hair using a fairly similar technique you can stay with the same brush or go with a different one i quite like the dry ink brushes because it has a little bit more texture in it but it has still allows to draw like solid shapes so feel free to change brush or don't if if you're new to procreate i recommend you just stick with the same brush and you're going to outline the different areas of the hair so you can see here i'm just outlining and making sure that it is connected again you want a full shape so you can fill it in with your paint bucket tool or the auto feel and you don't have to be super precise for the outside edges you're going to see here for the big part of the hair i'm just really focusing on drawing the line that is kind of inside the shape and then for this big outside part you can just kind of connect everything with a very like loose shape and it's going to work out and we're going to use this exact same technique to add all the different color blocks for all the different elements of our character so creating a new layer setting it as a clipping mask this time we're going to rename it to a dress in my case but you could rename it shirt or pants depending on what you are wearing in this image and you can pick again whichever character or color i should say for your character i'm going with a blue dress that i really like so again i'm just drawing the outline here very i was going to say it very roughly but no you want to make sure that is right because this is the shape that your clothes are going to be like so take your time but it shouldn't take too long and then you can just feel the shape and you're going to have basically kind of the silhouette of the clothes so here one thing that is really nice by drawing them on separate layers is you can just change the color very simply by just dragging and dropping and kind of switching until you get something that you're very happy with i'm going to show you a little hack here for procreate if you slide with two finger on your layer it's going to create this little checker pattern behind your layer if you double tap you're going to see that it activated alpha lock as well and what alphalog does is basically everything that we draw on this layer now is going to stay not only in the base shape but also in the shape of this specific layer so the dress layer in my case so that's really helpful because like i was saying animal crossing clothes are kind of just a pattern applied to a basic 3d shape so that allows you to just draw within that 3d shape and create really cool patterns or more intricate articles or clothing so in my case i went with something super simple just polka dots because this example i wanted to not last three hours but yeah you can draw something super complicated if you want something super detailed that is absolutely up to you and you can create as many clipping mask layers as you have different articles of clothings or sections on your character so in my case here i only have the shoes left so it's pretty much the same thing again nothing fancy here we're just going to outline and then fill in the color and that's pretty much it so this shouldn't take too long but make sure that you do take the time to make sure that your lines are exactly where you want them to be once you have everything kind of roughly colored in we're going to move on to the face but we're also going to group the layers a little bit so for that we're just going to swipe them towards the right in procreate and then this group option is going to appear at the top which is going to create this group and it's just going to make the file neater in general so you can see here i quickly created a new layer on top of everything rename it to eyes and this one is not a clipping mask that is very important and on this eyes layer we're going to draw the eyeball so for that i like to use a slightly gray white so not a pure white because otherwise you won't be able to add any light to it later which would be sad so you're just going to draw kind of the shape of your eyeballs that sounds weird and then just like everything else we're going to fill it in so that is a solid color we're then going to draw the iris and for that i like creating a new layer again just so we can kind of change the color easily and this layer is going to be a clipping mask applied to the eye shape so this is the reason the eye shape is not a clipping mask itself it's just because we're using it as a base so this new layer you're going to rename it to iris and you go to pick whichever color you want your eyes to be and you're just going to fill in the color again same technique nothing complicated here again this might depend on the type of eye that you picked it might just be solid black which i don't know these eyes look kind of creepy and depending on the type you might also have the iris which would usually be not a black but just a darker version of your iris color also depending on the type of eye that you chose you might want to add some shorter shadow on the actual eyeball so creating a new layer renaming it to shadow and then changing the blending mode of this layer while applying it as a clipping mask and then changing the blending mode of this layer to linear burn you might want to lower the opacity you know somewhere around 50 nothing too precise and you're going to pick a gray color that might if you're feeling a little bit funky have a little bit of a lilac tone to it but it's not essential you could just go with a pale gray and you're going to draw this kind of angular shadow in the top left part of your eyes just like this you might also want to use your smudge tool i like it set it to stucco from the painting section or smuff brush from the airbrushing section and you're just going to blend this shadow in so that it is blended it basically creates a nice gradient on your eye you might also want to add some eyelashes or at least just kind of the outline for the eye but before that i like creating a group for the eyes itself so just in order to keep our file well organized so if your character has some outline on their eyes and some eyelashes just go ahead and create a new layer in this eye group above the shadows it is not going to be a clipping mask because you don't want it to stay within the base eye shape layer and you're going to rename it to eyelashes or whatever you want i like using a dark brown grayish color but again that depends on the section that you have you might want to go with something a bit more crazy than that that is totally up to you and with the same brush that you've been using you're just going to roughly outline um either the top part or the entire section of the eye that again depends on the style that you choose and yeah you might want to add little eyelashes like i was saying it could be just this little curved single eyelash or three eyelashes there are so many different type of eyes and i was gonna say in prograde so many type of eyes and animal crossing to choose from so you can really experiment with that and you can even create something that is you know not in animal crossing you could just experiment and do your own thing that would be really cool as well and now we're kind of at the last part of this base color section which is going to be adding the details and that's going to really help pull everything together but not quite as much as the next section which is adding the shadows and the light which is really kind of the saving grace for this um this little art project that we're doing right now so that being said we're going to start by adding details so again on a new layer the details i know i keep saying that but it really depends on the shape that you choose because there are different type of facial features that you can pick in the animal crossing character creator i like this little pink triangle nose and this very simple brown curved smile but again there are different shapes that you can draw if you want you can also use this layer to add some details on other parts of your character for example if you want laces on your shoes you could definitely do that here you can also draw some little lines for like a sewing pattern on your clothes if you want to you can add little like fold line on your clothes you can really let your creativity shine through on this layer and this step so feel free to pause the video but when you're done we're going to move on to adding the shadows so for that i like to hide the sketch layers just so we can know what we're working with a little bit better and going right above the uh clipping masks that are applied to the base layer we're going to create another layer that is also going to be a clipping mask and this one we're going to set it to linear burn and lower the opacity to 50 so this layer is going to be the shadow layer so make sure again that it is a clipping mask applied to the base layer because we want this shadow layer to be applied to the entire character obviously and you can pick again a slightly purplish lilac gray color or just a gray color if if you're not funky and you're just going to use the same brush that you used from the start and well i'm going to reactivate the sketch for just a few seconds because what we're going to do now is we're going to outline this back part of the hair that i was talking about so thinking back of the towel that would kind of be the part of the towel that is the furthest away from us if that makes any sense so yeah you just outline it and using the same kind of technique you're going to fill the shape of this shadow hair area in and then we're just going to move on and draw some very basic shadow shapes so you're going to probably draw one below the chin so kind of on the neck area and by the way i'm pretending that the sun is coming from the right corner so yeah one shadow on the chin maybe one shadow on the left part of the head maybe covering a little bit of the ear as well so kind of a crescent moon shape basically like a c shape you might add a shadow kind of below the hair because we remember this is kind of a helmet so the helmet would cast a shadow on the face i know it's weird but bear with me you might also add a shadow kind of around the edges of the clothes and pretty much on all the other parts of your character it's going to be well if your your sun is coming from the right it's going to be kind of a little line on the left part of every shape and also kind of whenever you have shapes that connect together like here kind of the skirt while the dress connects with the legs there is kind of going to be a shadow cast by the dress on the legs so here there's nothing really super complicated we're just adding shadows with basic shapes and all just one color so just pick one side from which your light is and then pretty much draw shadows on your different shapes on the opposite side of that awesome so we're going to use a very similar technique for the lights so once you're done with your shadow go ahead and create a new layer it is also going to be a clipping mask applied to the base shape and this one we're going to set the blending mode of to add you might want to lower the opacity quite a lot here so around 30 because add is a very intense effect and you're going to rename your layer to light so for this i like using kind of a very bright super pale banana color just because i like to have some warmth in my light but you can use any bright color of your choice and you can see here with add it just kind of makes the light feel like light and this time you're going to outline the shapes in the same side that your light source is obviously so in my case i was saying that the sun was coming from the right so i'm just going to add this little thin line on all the right edges of my different shapes and if you have something a little bit more spherical like the hands you might want to add like a little oval as well to show kind of the volume of your shape but otherwise you can really just stick with the outline you can also use it to add a little bit more texture for example on the hair here i know i said it's like a towel helmet thing but you can draw some little lines to kind of show that it is hair so it's kind of an in-between you know we want to have some texture but not full-on hair strands so this is this is a good compromise speaking of compromise the thing with animal crossing characters is they are made in like 3d renders so the shadows and lights are really well blended if you want to be super accurate you can totally use the smudge tool again set to stick a brush if you want a little bit of grit or soft brush if you want super smooth gradients and then you can go on your shadow layer and blend in the shadow edges until you get this like smooth gradient effect and you would also do the same thing on your light layer so just switching layer but using the same smudge tool blending in your lights um kind of like this but i'm personally not a super fan of really blended shadows and lights on a very simple illustration like this don't get me wrong it looks really really great in animal crossing because it is just a more complex environment but here i think it would look just too washed out so what i like to do instead is just keep all my shadows and lights crisp and then create a new layer on top of everything running in lines and adding some outlines not like um like fallen black cartoonish outlines at all just very thin darker lines to kind of separate some of the different parts so here you can really use your favorite way to finish up a piece you could go with cartoonish black lines if you wanted that is totally fine or you can just do like i am doing which is adding some very simple details and kind of pretty much drawing little outlines only on the shadow sides of my character and also like what i was saying whenever you have two shapes that overlap so like the head the neck the hands and just stuff like that so here feel free to experiment that is totally a part that is up to your personal style or you could just go and blend everything in if you want to be super accurate with animal crossing that is great as well so there you go this was how to turn yourself into an animal crossing character i really hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up because it really does help the channel and i would love to see why you guys create so share your results with me either on facebook instagram or twitter and before you leave don't forget to subscribe because i put out new videos just like this one every single week i'll see you soon you

Channel: Genevieve's Design Studio

Views: 26,695

Keywords: Turn Yourself Into Animal Crossing, how to draw cute characters, draw like animal crossing, how to draw animal crossing, animal crossing art, cute art styles, how to draw, drawing tutorial, procreate, procreate tutorial, learn to draw, animal crossings, illustration, cute art, procreate tutorial cartoon, procreate drawing, animal crossing new horizons, animal crossing, how to draw animal crossing characters, animal crossing drawing, draw so cute animal crossing, drawing

Id: fPdjG-3U2ns

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021