Character Consistency
I've learned to do this every time
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Hi all!
My favorite class started this week, and I know some of you are taking it, too! It’s through Make Art That Sells and is called Illustrating Childrens Books. This week we’ll develop our characters, and next week we’ll start drawing them with different emotions and poses. When we get to that step, one of our biggest goals will be to keep the character consistent.
In a standard picture book, a character will appear about 20-30 times, between full page spreads, vignettes, the cover, and so on. We, as the illustrators, need to be able to move that character around in engaging ways, while keeping them looking like the same person/animal/thing.
Keeping the character consistent was so hard for me the first time I took this class. Want to travel back in time and see my first ever character sheet? Here it is:
I feel so proud reflecting on the growth since this piece. As you can see, I had trouble with proportions, eye placement, face shape, and all sorts of other things. I remember being absolutely amazed that other artists could make the character look so consistent every. single. time. So I sought out some tips for character consistency, and I continued practicing and drawing characters. Three years later, the strategy that works best for me is…