Simplifying Figures Down

During my process of practising my figure drawing, I realised that when it came to drawing figures in the situations that I wanted them in, I just couldn't draw the figures realistically. This could possibly be due to the fact that I had grown up with mainstream comics such as the Marvel publications, and automatically tried to emulate their style of working.

So when I realised that method of working wasn't suited to me, I decided to try and simplify my figures down. To help me with this, I drew inspiration from such publications as The Beano comics, and the works of illustrator Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim & Lost At Sea).

I also looked at how certain animation studios simplify characters down, looking at animations such as Family Guy, American Dad and The Simpsons, who not only simplify their characters down but also exaggerate certain features of a persons appearance to create a comical effect, for example the size of the father's strong jaw bone in American Dad to exaggerate the character's alpha male nature. In these animations, and also in the publications above, I found that simplifying things down actually complimented their light hearted humorous stories, which is what I wanted for my stories. If the figures had been drawn anatomically correct, the mood of the pieces may have changed to be more serious.

After looking at their simplified styles, I tried tried out using a more simplistic approach to my figures. The outcome actually proved, in my opinion, to compliment the feeling of the humour of the stories I had written, and I ended up liking simplifying the characters, so the experiment turned out to be a very positive one.