Corpsephage's Blog

 We've drawn what our character looks like from the front ( https://corpsephageblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/revised-stylized-character-model.html ), but in order to get a clear idea of what they look like from every angle, we must now draw them from the side. This can take a fair bit of guesswork, but it helps to draw your side character next to your front-facing character so you can compare where all the body parts are. Again, if you're less than artistically inclined, you can make a sideways character profile just by using the shape tool in PowerPoint. The main idea is to use horizontal guidelines to keep all the body parts consistent.  

After much tinkering, I've re-visited my character drawing style in hopes of making a basic model I can build upon. Here's a step-by-step guide on how I did it, specifically how to do a front-facing character model for something like a turnaround sheet or for the basis of a 3D model. You don't have to do it in this exact order, just as long as you have something you like. I did all of the below in PowerPoint using a $300 drawing tablet. If you don't have a drawing tablet yourself, or you're not so good at drawing, you can actually make a perfectly serviceable character model just using the shape tool in PowerPoint. (If you make a shape then go into Format Shape, if you look in the top-left of the screen you'll see an icon called "Edit Shape". If you click on it then go down to Edit Points, you can actually mold the shape into anything you like. This was like magic to me when I first discovered it.)

As a wannabe creative, I made this blog so I could keep track of all the things I'm learning, and hopefully help other people get off the starting line too. I don't think I can provide proper tutorials, because I'm far from an expert myself, but I think if I show my working-out it will give other people more insight into my process if they want to criticise it or use it as a springboard for their own ideas. I'll start off by illustrating roughly how it is I draw a basic outline for a cartoon person. It's going to look crummy, but it's only a basic doodle - the real meat gets added later on, using the doodle as a guide. It'll take more time to explain it than it will to do it: