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Character Design Practice: Shapes

Leave a Comment / Art and Design, Drawing Tips / By J.K. Riki

Free 2D
Designing characters around base shapes for contrast and appeal is animation
a time-tested tradition among animators. Today we’ll go over that class
process and then leave you with a free worksheet of shapes to Start learning 2D
transform into characters, improving your art and design skills!
animation today and bring

your characters and ideas

To begin, let’s review one vastly important aspect of art: Contrast.
to life.
You can watch Ferdinand walk through all the details of this
essential aspect of art, but to summarize contrast improves art by
providing the viewer with two (or more) things that play off one -25%
another simply by being different. Contrast = interest. This applies
to almost every aspect of art, but is even more important when we
dive into character design.

Unique Shapes/Contrast in Individual

Characters
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Take a look at this image of Po for a few great examples. First, his
color scheme is classic contrast: Black and white. There is no
greater contrast than these opposing forces. Look deeper into his
design and you’ll see a myriad of contrast from shape.
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He is made up of many circles overall, and note the squares in other

areas of the design. All these elements work together to create a
visually interesting character. If he was made entirely of one shape
it would not be nearly as interesting. Yet at the same time, there is
an overall form to adhere to rather than placing things sporadically
or randomly. His overall pose is a triangle, which you’ll see repeated
in many of the promo images and poses Dreamworks puts the
character in.

Unique Shapes/Contrast in Cast of

Characters
It doesn’t stop there, though! Not only should characters have
contrast in their individual designs, there should be contrast
among the whole cast!

This rough image from Disney’s Aladdin is a perfect example. You

see the characters each have a variety of base shapes and that each
one contrasts nicely with the others, providing a lot of visual
interest and appeal.

Applying Shape Contrast to Your Own

Work
To apply this to your own work, it pays to practice working character
designs from base shapes. For example, if we begin with a simple
shape like this:

we can transform it into a number of interesting characters while

still maintaining the “shape” nature we are looking for.

Keep in mind:

The design does not have to match the shape exactly (or it
can, if you so choose)
You can add elements outside the main shape, as in the case
of Po above
The designs can be “inspired” by the shapes, as in the Aladdin
characters above
You can design in any style
The character need not be human; anything goes
Keep things loose early on and simply focus on the “feel” of
the shape and character
These will usually only be starting points, not final character
designs

Ready to give it a try? Here are some challenging shapes to practice

with. Save the image and reduce its opacity to draw over, or use it
as reference in a separate window while you draw. You can also
print it out if you prefer working on paper. See what concepts you
can dream up based on these complex shapes, and if you’re still
looking for more practice after that, draw a handful of your own
shapes and then design characters around them! The sky is the
limit.

Crazy “Above and Beyond” Animator Bonus Challenge: Take your

newly designed character and put him/her through one of The 51
Animation Exercises to see how they move!

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