You’ve hit a creative block, or your drawings aren’t coming out the way you had hoped. Here are five useful tips sure to make your character designs more exciting!

Today I’m using Procreate on the iPad to create a water character to add to the same universe as my Mushroom Forager. I use an iPad Pro typically, but many steps I share are fairly universal no matter the app that you use. So follow along and discover how easy it is to create a water-character design concept in Procreate!

“Cute” character design is the most well-covered ground in character design. But does this mean that everyone that applies the same popular " artistic tricks" gets a universally cute character? We're discussing 5 things that prevent your characters from ACTUALLY being cute and how to fix it.

Designing races and factions is a tricky balance between harmonious and unique. Let’s outline a sustainable process and some best practices, as well as give a few tips for how to do this successfully.

Clothing, props, companions, and even environment say something about characters. And vehicles are no exception. Let’s get into the mentality behind designing iconic vehicles by dissecting some examples from Star Wars, and learn how to design vehicles for your characters.

I’m not going to stand here and make the argument that drawing isn’t hard. Or that it isn’t especially hard right now. This video is about all the ways we make drawing harder. This video is about the inhibitions that tend to build up in us like a grease trap and make it harder to get started as a result. It’s also about how powerful it can be to clean that grease trap out.

The head, the face, facial expressions, all get a lot of our attention when it comes to drawing characters. But it might mean that we neglect the body as a way to introduce interesting and dynamic shapes and designs.

So let’s equip ourselves with a better, practical understanding of the body, and thus enhance our body drawing skills!

Whether we’ve drawn our characters, written about them, or they haven’t left our head yet, we’d prefer that people care about our characters. But how do we do it? How do we make people care? By making your characters more engaging, or exciting to your audience. And there are 4 key ways to make your character more exciting:

1. Raise the stakes (or lower your character’s ability to meet them)

2. Clarify your Concept

3. Twist of lime— 70/30, 80/20

4. Juxtapose