Warm up exercises for drawing: create better characters with these quick exercises

crocodile illustration
(Image credit: Stephanie Rizo)

Sometimes when designing a character, it’s easy to get lost in making a complex design that looks and feels interesting. As a character designer who has been working in development for the past seven years, I’ve learned the importance of shape language and having fun exploring a variety of designs by using nothing more than simple shapes.

Boiling down what complex versus simple is can be quite challenging – wrestling with less versus more and clean silhouettes while also trying to keep your character design fresh, pushed and stylised can be an overwhelming task. When I first got overwhelmed and stuck looking at a blank canvas, I wanted to find something to help me warm up, an exercise pushing shapes and designs in a fun way. What may initially look like random pushed and pulled blobs are shapes that can make almost any design you can think of with enough practice, repetition and imagination.

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Stephanie Rizo
Story artist, Walt Disney Animation Studios

Stephanie is a Mexican-American artist working in animation. She is currently a story artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios and has also worked for Warner Bros. Animation, Nickelodeon, and DreamWorks. In her time at Sony Animation, Stephanie was a part of the team that created Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

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