Everyday young artists are inspired by characters that dance across screens and play among pages. Almost every creative has tried their had at developing their own imaginative worlds with their own stories and characters. But, creating a well-developed, interesting character with a clear, expressive design can be much more difficult than what most realize. There’s a reason why characters like Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson, SpongeBob, Cinderella, and Sailor Moon are so iconic and others are barely mentioned. The simple manipulation of shapes or thoughtfully constructed color palette can make a huge difference in making character design compelling!  In this course, I aim to teach young artists how to design successful characters with easy, logical steps that will apply to any style or story.

WHAT TO EXPECT: 
In this course, young artists and designers will learn how to build effective character designs that tell a story, just from their design! We will go over fundamental drawing skills, analyze successful characters along with learners' favorites to understand what really makes a design work, learn about key design concepts, practice creating interesting characters and bodies with a variety of fun exercises, and develop a successful character creation process that will help young artists design characters effectively well beyond the scope of the class. Our final project consists of building a character from scratch, starting with researching and building an inspiration board and ending with a fully designed character sheet. I will use brief lectures, sometimes assisted by PowerPoint presentations, but mostly this course will consist of live drawing demos and young artists practicing concepts through drawing.  I will share some website resources, but only through Zoom's screen share feature.

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:
No background knowledge is required, but young artists with basic drawing skills will get the most out of this course. I recommend my course How to Draw: Foundations if your young artist is completely new to art. 

LESSON SUMMARY: 
Lesson 1: Drawing Fundamentals 
In our first lesson, we will begin with introductions to the course and ourselves so that everyone has clear expectations for the class, and we can get to know each other.  Our first exercise will be a series of blind-contour drawings at various intervals which will help young artists develop their observational and hand-eye coordination skills. Once our hands and eyes are warmed up, we will proceed to practicing drawing the basic forms of spheres, boxes, and cylinders. With these three forms, learners can construct anything they might wish to draw through the process of simplification which we will review with our third exercise: simple object drawing. During the third exercise, I will discuss basic drawing processes such as incorporating line variation and shading into a work. 

Lesson 2: Analyzing Successful Character Design 
The second lesson will begin by introducing key concepts in character design (proportion, shape, balance, contrast, form, unity, variety, silhouette, color) using a simple PowerPoint presentation. Each of these concepts will be demonstrated through examples of classic, notable character designs that learners will be asked to analyze. For example, we will look at Chris Sanders concept art for Lilo & Stitch characters. Young artists may note how Lilo and Stitch have very similar proportions and shapes, but their silhouettes are strikingly different. 

Lesson 3: Simple Design with Household Objects
In our third lesson, young artists will draw quick and simple characters using inspiration from randomly selected household objects that vary in size and shape. Learners will first simplify the object into its basic shapes and forms, then use those shapes as a basis for constructing character designs. They will be encouraged to think creatively about their designs and to reflect on our key concepts of character design, ensuring they utilize the concepts as they draw. Young artists will also be challenged to re-imagine the same object multiple times to stretch their imagination and help them understand the many possibilities within simple shapes!

Lesson 4: Developing Gesture 
Gesture drawings are those messy, exaggerated drawings that attempt to capture the most basic shapes and movements of a figure. They are initial impressions of what the figure is doing. Good gestures come with experimentation, exaggeration, looseness, and practice! The gesture of a character is essential for creating attitude and life within a character. 
Our fourth lesson will be a quick introduction to the gesture drawing process that will emphasize the first two steps of gesture: action line and landmarks. I will demonstrate how to draw a gesture and explain each step. Young artists will be encouraged to draw along. Once the demo has concluded, we will move to Line-of-Action.com, one of many online tools designed to help artists practice figure and gesture drawing. All the figures we draw will be clothed, but some images may not be appropriate for all learners. Please investigate this website before enrolling your artist in this course. 

Lesson 5: Design over Gesture
Now that learners are confident in the five steps of gesture drawing and can easily find the action or motion lines of a form, we must practice gestures more fully. This class is designed to help learners flex that gesture drawing muscle through an entire lesson of gesture drawing practice and design characters based on that movement and expression. Knowledge of the five steps of gesture drawing and how the human body works is required. This class will emphasize expressing the motion and clarity of the figure. Once we have built a library of models, young artists will use those models as bases to build their characters from.. This will exemplify how gestures are not only a fantastic exercise for building important art skills and expressive characters, but how gestures can be used a library of models or poses to draw characters on to!

Lesson 6: Simplified Faces
Our sixth lesson begin with a brief PowerPoint lecture that will detail basic proportions and landmarks of the human face. Students will need to know where to look to successfully observe and draw the face. After the brief lecture, I will demonstrate how to construct a simple face using those landmarks and proportions. For the rest of class, we will practice drawing simplified faces using various fun and interesting shapes.  

Lesson 7: Building Caricatures & Expressions
In our next lesson, I will introduce young artists to a new resource, earthsworld.com. Earthsworld.com is a catalog of candid portrait photographs of people at various fairs and festivals across the US. These candid shots are perfect references for drawing interesting caricatures as they capture a wide variety of everyday people. While screen-sharing a reference from earthsworld.com, I will lead learners through how to build a thoughtful and interesting caricature with similar concepts and processes to what we have learned! Drawing caricatures will also help learners develop a sense for drawing expressions

Lesson 8: Let’s Review & Practice
This lesson will begin with a review of the concepts we have learned so far. Young artists will warm up with a blind-contour drawing and practicing simple forms. Then, we will analyze character concept art together to review our key concepts of character design. Finally, we will end our review by doing another quick character drawing based on a household object. Once our review is complete, learners will begin to work on their prompt challenge! Each prompt will be randomly selected. Young artists will have ten minutes to draw a character based on the prompt. Their drawings should be simple, but effective, and consider all the key concepts. This challenge will encourage learners to think quick, practice brainstorming ideas, and prioritize simplicity. 

Lesson 9: Developed Design 
In our ninth lesson, we will begin by tackling a key concept we have been slightly neglectful of: color! In our discussion of color, we will examine common color meanings and how to build a tasteful palette. I will emphasize the importance of thoughtful color choices and describe how value and color affect each other. Once we have discussed effective color strategy, the rest of our discussion will be focused on the other various details learners may have questions about, such as clothing, texture, and other elements. Young artist should come prepared with questions to this class! 

Lesson 10: Inspiration Boards & Research 
In our next lesson, learners will be tasked with researching and developing an inspiration board for their character. Research is an essential part of any good design. For example, if we have a character that is a medieval princess, it would be important to research what kind of dress, hairstyles, accessories, gestures, and expressions a person from that time may have. Young artists will collect and organize their research on an inspiration board.

Lesson 11: Planning it Out
The 11th lesson will give young artists the time and space they need to compose their sheet and practice drawing their character. During this lesson, learners will be encouraged to explore their character design thoroughly by working outside their initial ideas, playing with proportion, ensuring the design is readable from a distance and from the silhouette, and drawing the character with every key concept in mind. As they move through this process, they should develop a sense for what really works and be able to construct a consistent design. 

Lesson 12: Refining Matters & Finishing Up 
Young artists have put a lot of hard work into their characters and final project so far. Our last lesson will be dedicated to giving young artists the time to refine their designs and character sheets. This is a great time for them to ask any lingering questions they may have, share their work for feedback with peers and myself, and put the finishing touches on their works. I will guide them how to self-check their work.

Lesson 13: Show & Tell 
For the final lesson in this course, young artists will be asked to share and critique their works. Critique is an essential part of the character design process, especially if the learner is interested in pursuing design as a career. We will begin by reviewing our a Critique Guide that will give young artists the structure to frame their conversations. Then, each learner who wishes to participate will share character design sheet, give an artist’s statement, and receive critiques from each of their classmates. The goal of the final critique is to allow learners to practice utilizing the vocabulary they have been working with over the duration of the course, master giving and receiving criticism, and be able to respond and engage with each other’s works.