Ways to Make Sure You Get the Most up to Date Cartoon Character Design Tips

Making an overall excellent and unique character design cartoon art style is sometimes hard. The truth is that everyone has a favorite cartoon character, but the question is, how does this character come to life? While you are about to start copying other well-known cartoon or comic characters, you will eventually branch out and come with your own. In addition, there are several ways to come up with ideas for cartoon characters' concept art to draw. Any of these ways can get you started on populating your world of cartoons.

More so, the process of tackling your character design is often full of hurdles. This process requires a lot of creative thinking to create one's character from the beginning, although many well-known characters from films, advertising, and cartoons look straightforward. But need to exert a vast amount of skill and effort to make them effective.

Part 1 Tips for Brilliant Cartoon Character Design

As a cartoon character designer, here are 10 tips you need to put in place to make a brilliant cartoon character design. They are;

● Do not lose the magic

Make sure you try not to polish all the charm from your characters. Many character designers usually begin their project with a sketch and agree that this is often where the essence of the character gets captured. Therefore, when you start working up a design, make sure you do not lose that magic.

The first thing is to decide what you are trying to communicate and then create loose sketches with flow, acting, and movement. As soon as you tighten up the drawing, some of the dynamics will automatically loosen, so it is crucial to have as much life in the early stages as possible. In addition, movement is all but impossible to add later. Thus, you need to ensure that it is in the initial sketch.

● Avoid reference material

Although inspiration needs to come from somewhere, the aim is to create something original, and you shouldn't have the reference material right in front of you as you work. 

Also, if you take a look at something and when you try and hazily remember it in your mind, that is when you can end up making something new, rather than making a pastiche of something.

● Make research on other characters

For guidance purposes, it can be much help when you try to deconstruct why certain character designs work and why some do not work. Also, there is no shortage of research material to be found, as illustrated characters are appearing everywhere like stickers on fruit, TV commercials, shop signs, cereal boxes, animations on mobile phones, etc. Make sure you study these character designs and think about what makes some successful and the particular thing you like about them.

● Also, take a look elsewhere

It is also a great idea to look beyond some character designs when hunting for inspiration because most times, when you begin a project, you might start with the feeling to evoke. The process usually starts with the designer taking a video of himself as a reference and capturing something of the character's posture or idea's movement. 

● Try not to lose sight of the original idea

It is elementary to allow your favorite designs to influence you subconsciously. Sometimes when you look back at your initial artworks, it will bring back the feeling you had when you were creating them, and the project you are trying to develop will shift back on track.

● Exaggerate

When you exaggerate the defining features of your character design, it will help it appear larger than real life. Also, exaggerated features help viewers identify the characters' essential qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and also helps emphasize certain personality traits. In addition, if your character is strong, try not to give it normal-sized bulging arms, but soup them up so that they are five times as big as they should be. Note that the technique of exaggeration can also apply to characteristics.

● Decide the aim of your character design

When creating a character design, consider your audience as character designs mainly aim at young children, typically designed around bright colors and basic shapes. Also, commissioned character designs are no less creative but are usually more restrictive. Most clients usually have specific needs but want you to do your 'thing.' Usually, you need to break down the core features and personality. For example, if the eyes are essential, you will focus the whole design around the face, making this the key element that stands out.

● Make your character distinctive

Whether you are creating a monkey, monster, or robot, you can guarantee that there will be a hundred other similar creations out there. Therefore, your character design is required to be exciting and robust in a visual sense to captivate people's attention.

● Create clear silhouettes

A silhouette is required to help you understand the character's gesture which is another good way to differentiate your character and improve its pose. This lets you see how the character 'reads' and requires you to make the gesture clearer. It answers the question of; can things be simplified? Do you have a basic understanding of character, emotions, and how the line of action works? In addition, try not to overlap everything and keep the limbs separately.

● Consider line quality

Finally, curved and straight curved lines read by your eyes are at different speeds. The lines drawn are from which your character design is composed can go some way to describing it. Soft, thick, round, and even lines may suggest acute and approachable character, whereas sharp, uneven, scratchy lines may indicate an erratic and uneasy character.

Part 3 How to Apply Cartoon Character Design to Filmora Video Editing?

You can cartoon your character background design in your Video Editing turn a video into a cartoon depending on your device. If you are working on your mobile phone, then you can convert any number of your social media accounts that include film or photos to some degree. The detail or performance level will not be great most of the time.

But if you wish to do it professionally using your PC, then the best video to the cartoon software program for both Windows and Mac is Filmora. Filmora is the best software to convert video to a Cartoon background easily. It will enable you the requisite tools that will act as the right approach to create cartoon characters with appropriate locations and video.

The Wondershare Filmora Video Editor professional video editing software allows you to turn your videos into cartoons easily. The process by which videos get converted into cartoon style on Filmora is straightforward.

Step 1: Import the videos into Filmora

From the official website of Filmora, you will get the link to download, install and launch. Then from the main interface, import your video to it.

Step 2: Add the Cartoon effect under Stylize

You can add different effects or use the Stylize animation effects to your cartoon character.

Step 3: Adjust the cartoon settings and do some basic color corrections to perfect the cartoon result.

Go through different settings to provide the exemplary cartoon character, its background, and full-fledged video edited with Filmora.

● Ending Thoughts →