Drawing - Creating Animal Characters

Everybody .

Aaron Blaze here .

And today I thought I would get away from the computer for a little while and come back and get onto my traditional , my good old drawing board , my old Disney desk , my animation desk and I just thought I'd sit down and do a little bit of animal character drawing for you .

Um You know , something I've got a lot of experience doing with Lion King and Brother Bear and , you know , a lot of the other Disney films that I've worked on Aladdin and um uh it's something I really love to do .

And so I thought it would be fun just to sit down and draw .

And I'll just talk about some of the things that I think about when I'm creating animal characters .

Ok ?

And I'm not talking about realistic animals .

I'm talking about making characters out of them .

So , um why don't we just go ahead and dive in ?

The first thing is I , I like to , you know , when I do this kind of stuff , I like to work on big newsprint .

It's really cheap .

You can get it at any art store .

Uh It's just newsprint paper .

It's the same paper that , you know , your newspaper is made out of .

And then the other thing that I'm using is um this drawing utensils .

It's basically just a holder and I've got uh this one's almost used up , but it's uh this is black pastel , but it's very , very , it's packed very hard .

So it's almost like graphite .

Uh It's almost like a number six or a six B pencil , but it's a pastel and I love to use it .

It's a nice big bold drawing line .

And uh why don't we just go ahead and dive in the first thing .

Let's just start with my go to , I like to draw lions , big cats .

You guys know that .

So I'm just gonna go ahead and start .

Now , the first thing that I think about when I'm doing animal characters is I want to think about personality .

That's the first thing that I want to get down the anatomy and all that stuff I'll talk about in just a minute , but that'll come in later .

And the other thing I want to talk about and I , that I think about is making sure that I'm getting interesting proportions .

I wanna make sure the biggest killer that I'm always talking about is making sure that you don't have evenness in your drawings .

Evenness is a killer .

And if you think about , think about music , you know , if , if music , if , if you listen to a piece of music and it's just but , but , but , but , but , but that's boring .

But if you can get some , some texture in that , if you can get some unevenness in it , that , that , that , that , that , that , that , you know , that kind of thing , that's more exciting .

That's more interesting .

And that's the same with visual , with um you know , when you're working visually , when you can get some unevenness , when you can get some texture in there , some , some visual texture , then that's , that's where it gets interesting .

So that's the first thing I like to think about is um expression , attitude and making sure that I'm not even .

Um but let's uh I wanna start with a lion .

Let's just start with a lion and I want to do , hm , let's see .

Let's have him looking off , maybe he's a little puzzled and you'll see , I'm , I , I start very loose and I want very clear expressions .

So I like to start with the eyes a lot of times I'll get that nose happening in here and you'll see , I'm going for major shapes as well , but here there .

So already you can see and I'm just kind of making this up as we go .

I , I'm thinking about a lion and I'm thinking about the anatomy of a lion .

That's the other thing , you know , um when you're , when you're working on character design , especially with animals , you have to know that anatomy just because you're creating a cartoon , so to speak .

Doesn't mean that you can get away with not knowing the anatomy .

Matter of fact , you need to know it even more because you need to know what you're abstracting .

AAA caricature is an abstraction .

So here I'll have him looking down or her , maybe we'll make it a female , but either way that's coming down and I wanna , I wanna really , I wanna push maybe the size of the face a little bit and get a nice big jaw like , oh look at that .

Keep your attitude simple there .

So here I'm trying to go for a nice , simple shape .

Overall , you can see right here and I know that on a lion , you know , if you look at that slope on the nose coming back , that head comes back this way so I can get that brown up nice and high and go for a nice clear expression .

I love drawing big like this .

It's uh it's so much fun now , cats , big cats , you know , we got the cheekbone coming down here and here's a , here's a leopard which is not too dissimilar from a , from a lion .

But uh you know , you've got the bridge of the nose coming down here .

The cartilage is all right here , which is what I'm drawing right here .

The cheekbones come in which is coming down right here .

The eye sockets are all right in here .

And actually , that's emphasized by the , there's some markings under the eye right there .

On the lion .

There we go .

So I keep in the , the that jaw comes up lots of muscle back in here .

I keep this anatomy even though this is a leopard , I've got lions , I've got a lion up in my bedroom .

Um I keep this anatomy in my head , you know , throughout the entire body .

When I'm caricaturing the body .

I keep all of that in my head as I'm drawing because if you know what you're abstracting from , if you know the reality , then when you create the character , the caricature , then it's that much more believable .

And that's what you want .

You want believability in your characters .

That's what we always shop for at Disney is , you know , we create worlds and we create characters that you can get behind .

And in order to do that , you have to believe that they're there , you have to believe that they're real .

And so not only from a writing standpoint , um but also from a visual standpoint , obviously , from a visual standpoint .

So here's , here's something , you know , somewhat quickly and I know that they have a bunch of fur that comes up in here .

But let's go ahead .

I think I'm gonna go ahead and try , uh I'm gonna try um giving him a make it turn , let's turn it into a male , give him a little bit of a mane .

So I think that man would go right off the page now , male lions before you get to that big , the big , the main Maine , the big part of the Maine .

Um , they've got this tuft right here .

A fur that comes around that grows off the jaw .

There we go .

And then that comes back into the main over here .

Let's see what we wanna do .

Oh , the other thing too .

So , so if , if you need to erase , I keep a needed eraser , you know , a gum eraser that I can just stretch and , and play with .

I try not to erase that much .

Not when I'm doing this sort of thing .

I love , you can see when you draw big .

It's so satisfying .

And I wanna find , I wanna get nice flat edge .

There we go .

I love , love , love drawing big like this , especially when I'm doing character stuff .

It's just , it's so much fun .

Uh especially with pastel and charcoal and you just get in and smear stuff around there .

So here I got character kind of surprised and looking off the screen right here and I wanna , I wanna let this nose come out and kind of want the silhouette to be nice and clear .

So I don't wanna , I don't wanna bring that mane down in .

So I think , I think I'll race this back and just let let this come up there .

Just something like that .

There's something quick I'm trying to think of pushing proportions and having some fun with it like that .

How about a bear I love drawing bears .

Same thing I'll start with .

I like to start with that simple shape .

Now , bears have a different type of nose .

Once again , going back to understanding that anatomy , it's important .

If you look at a dog's nose and a bear's nose , they're very similar dogs and bears are very distantly related .

And so they have similar noses .

But here I'm trying to find a nice , simple way of portraying that .

But here it is , it's Sunday afternoon and it's one of my favorite things to do on a Sunday is just to sit and just sit here and just draw just like when I was a little kid , it's something I love doing .

And once again , I want a nice simple expression just like so and they have the same thing .

Here's a , here's a bear skull right here .

Oh , let's see if I can do this without knocking anything over .

But this is a big grizzly bear skull .

And you can see there's that the , the nasal opening that cartilage for the nose goes right over the top of that .

So where that meets the bone , you can see that that shows up here and I like to show that and the drawing , give them some tooths , give them a few teeth there .

But I'm getting detailed already .

I'm getting too detailed , too quick .

So let's go ahead and I wanna go ahead and get his eyes in and that's that , you know , he's smiling .

So I'm gonna have him , I'm gonna push his eyes together a little bit and give him a little eyes relative to his head .

I'm gonna have him looking off to the right .

You want clarity , clarity , clarity .

Those is eyelids and here , same thing I wanna , I'm gonna push this brow up and bears have big muscular heads , a bear's jaw , that lower jaw , you know , they , you want to think about when you open a bear , when you open any animal's mouth .

A lot of people make the mistake that they , they make the corners of the mouth , they hinge , that's where it opens .

But you gotta remember the , the opening , you know , the hinge of a jaw is way back behind , you know , back here , it's way back here .

So when you open up a character's mouth , you want to make sure that you get that accurately .

So I'm thinking about that jaw way back here coming down and opening up like that , that's going to feel more accurate .

That's going to make it feel more believable .

Once again , even though we're doing something cartoony , you want to make sure that is believable .

And bears also have these big kind of these big droopy lips on the end .

But the key is , it's just making sure you get good , strong attitude .

I want to make sure that the attitude is clear .

So that's why , you know , when I'm creating the smile , I don't want a lot of different angles and line changes .

I want it to be a smile and that makes it nice and clear .

You can see when you're working with the , this pastel like this .

I can get nice and dark and just get in there and have some fun with it .

So there just like that , I'm gonna give him a little bit more meat out here .

Maybe a little fur up on top , get those bare ears , big necks right in the shoulder blades .

So here what I've done even little things like this little details .

You know , I added this line in here .

It's not just a separation between the snout and the cheek , but it helps define the shape of that cheek in order to push the the feel of that smile .

Ok ?

Look for attitude .

You want to make sure above beyond everything else , make sure your attitude is nice and clear and strong after that , make sure your anatomy is right .

Even with cartoony characters , you want to make sure that anatomy is clear .

Ok ?

There , there's another one .

And once again , if I wanted to , you can get in here and I can lightly shaded in if I want , I love working with this pastel like I said , get in here and have some fun with it .

Here we go .

I'm always trying to make sure that I'm shading in the direction that that fur grows ok there .

So I just figured I'd do a couple of little drawings for you just to show you what I think about when I'm doing these , these drawings .

I want to make this a nice quick one for you .

But sit , go out and try , you know , get some news print , get a big nice big drawing utensil , you're gonna get dirty , you can see my hands are all dirty but get in there and just have some fun drawing and draw big and don't worry about making good or bad drawings .

But you know , make sure that you do it over and over and over again and think about that anatomy .

Imagine , you know , remember your anatomy , learn your anatomy and make sure you get those expressions nice and clear .

I've uh I've got a character design course over on my website where I talk about a lot , a lot of that and I get into much more depth on my website at creature art teacher dot com .

Um And it's something that I've done .

I've learned from some of the greatest uh animators at Disney .

And these are some of the techniques that I've picked up over time .

And this is these are the things that we apply to our own stuff when we're designing stuff for our films .

But anyway , uh enough of that , I just wanted to do a quick video with you guys today , do a couple of drawings and show you what I think about .

I hope you guys have a great day .

Remember we're artists and we're meant to put some beauty back into the world .

So go out there , do something good and put some beauty back into the world .

And until next time , get out there and draw , have fun and I'll talk to you later .

Thanks , bye .

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