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[snowflakie06]

Hey, I just joined this community today and I have a question, one that I've had for awhile now.

How do artists manage to draw characters with the same design?

I've tried making character design sheets but they just don't work for me, I can't even draw two pictures on the same page in my sketchbook where the character looks the same. Any tips?

Comments

[dracothrope]

Draw your first character (usually from the front) on the left or right side of the page. Then lightly pencil in ruler lines at important parts of the body -- the heels, the top of the head, the waist, the knees, the elbows, the eyeballs, the chin, the nose... you can get as detailed as you want with the number of lines you use.

Draw in the other poses (side, back, 3/4?) within the page, though depending on the size you might only get one or two other poses in. Follow the lines to make sure your character is the same height and has the same proportions. Think about whether or not the new pose looks like the same character. If it doesn't, erase it and start over with whatever is wrong.

Keep in mind that your drawing isn't precious and that you can re-do it if you don't like how it's looking. Many artists have to go through several tries before they get what they like

[foxling]

Hmm. I had this problem. In fact I still do, with new characters.

1) Practice practice practice. Just keep trying. Eventually you'll commit to muscle memory the various quirks and features, and you'll be able to reproduce them suitably.

2) Use guidelines, like basic shapes and center lines. Don't knock it till you try it. ;)

3) Study anatomy and all that. It'll help you know how things are *supposed* to be, so that you can reproduce variations of the norm more easily.

Ennh, that's all I have for you right now. :3 I hope it helps.

[dingus]

One word: Repetition

[maskedretriever]

Much of what I'm going to say has been said, but maybe the repetition will help.

By the way: REPETITION! Your drawings are like snowflakes: they won't be good for much until you've got a WHOLE LOT of them.

But here's the big one: geometry.

It doesn't matter if it's accurate geometry. What matters is that it's consistent geometry. When I started my first comic, I drew the character's faces as specific combinations of geometric forms: One had a rectangle for cheeks, one had a trapezoid, the other an oval. These ultra-simple shapes acted as "hooks" for anything else I might come up with and eventually made the characters look reasonably different from one another.

If you start your characters off as combinations of certain fixed shapes, you may be able to still stretch your style over their surface and thus keep them distinct from one another.

Also: read Scott McCloud's books on comics. Especially Making Comics.