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English, Spanish, 3 more
French, German, Italian
English, Spanish,
3 more
French, Italian, German
Kenneth is a professional freelance illustrator and has worked with companies like the BBC, Brown Bag Films, Nick Jr. and others. His specialties are story-driven, character-based illustrations and designs for a variety of mediums, in particular children’s television.
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English, Spanish , 3 more 
English, Spanish , 3 more
Create a character of your choice in two different stylesUnderstand what style is and why it’s importantHow to make conscious and practical stylistic choicesMaster painting and sketching techniques for different styles Learn Kenneth’s unique method of designing to stay inspired and work efficientlyGet lots of handy techniques and digital tools for a faster, easier workflowDiscover the benefits of a Style Guide and how to create your ownRefine your characters, taking them from a thumbnail sketch to a polished, colored illustrationHow style influences the end use and perception by audienceGain a greater understanding of concept design and art directionDo you find it difficult to develop your own art style? Do you want to learn how to create unique characters but don’t know where to start? Maybe you don’t even know what “stylized” means concretely?
Well, not to worry! Professional artist Kenneth Anderson will teach you everything you need to know about stylized character design.
“Stylization is reimagining the natural world in an expressive, unique way and there are countless ways to do that!”—Kenneth
In this in-depth course, Kenneth breaks down what stylization really means and how to choose a relevant art style for a project and draw consistently in that style. This knowledge will help you tremendously to develop your own style and to level up your illustration skills!
Look forward to a great balance of practical exercises and essential theory as you follow Kenneth’s step-by-step design process for creating Frankenstein’s monster in two very different styles. Explore the distinctive elements of each one, as Kenneth shows you how to apply them to your own artwork, using clear examples.
You will also discover a TON of nifty tips, cool tools, and handy techniques to simplify your workflow, make your artwork look better, and speed up your creative process! These tips include: lining up elements to unify your design, flipping the canvas to change your perspective, quick ways to create pose variations, the importance of ‘drawing through’, and a whole lot more!
At the end of this course, you will feel much more confident in consolidating your own art style and illustrating fun, unique characters that you can be proud of!
2+ Hours of on-demand videos
5 Assignments
List of recommended brushes
Process and Bonus images (JPG)
Certificate of Completion
Get to know Kenny, your instructor, and a bit about his background and expertise.
He will give you a summary of the great content in store for you in this course! He will also explain what you will need to follow along with ease. Don’t worry, it’s very simple!
This lesson will focus on the all-important theory of stylization. You’ll get a good grasp of what style actually is and why it’s so important to maintain when illustrating.
Different styles communicate different messages. So inconsistent design can make things confusing for your audience.
You will see various examples of stylized characters for different purposes and learn about target audiences, intended media usage, and tone of the story or message.
Kenneth will also show you what a style guide is and how to create one yourself. As your assignment, you will choose a character to design in two different styles. Fun!
Kenny will start out with rough sketches of his character in two different styles:
– Style A (for a 2D animated TV show for kids)
– Style B (for a 3D animated feature film for older audiences)
He will give you guidelines and tips to follow as you work and explain why they are so useful. Tips such as working with shapes, sketching quickly, starting in black, jumping back and forth between sketches and much more!
His approach for creating thumbnail sketches is different for both style types and you are guaranteed to find it fascinating and very helpful in designing your characters!
Welcome to Stage TWO! You will pick out your two favorite sketches from stage one, tweaking and exploring them further. This includes cutting and pasting elements together, and patching together your own Frankenstein! 🙂
Keep the parts that you like. Discard the ones that aren’t working. This is also the stage to play around with color schemes (always a joy!). After that, Kenneth takes you through specific steps to prepare the thumbnails to be shown to a client.
To round up, he explains the different design choices for each style and the reasons he chose them.
In this final lesson, look forward to learning a TON of amazing tips and tricks to assist you in your creative process! Kenneth takes both his character styles to the finalized illustration stage, working on clean lines, colors, lighting and shading, and final touches.
You’ll discover great digital tools such as the Warp Tool, Compass Tool, Brush Smoothing, Canvas Flip, and others to help in creating clean, smooth line art, drawing more comfortably, creating variations quickly, and much more!
Kenneth will also demonstrate cool ‘cheat’ methods that professional artists use to make their digital drawing process less tedious and much faster! You’ll have a whole set of new handy skills after this!
To round up, he will show the clear differences and similarities between both styles, summarizing the main principles to take home from this course.
Course rating
(Based on 92 reviews)
6 courses
Kenneth is a professional freelance character designer with 14+ years experience. Based in the UK, he has worked with companies like the BBC, Disney, Tandem films and Axis Animation. He also worked on Sylvain Chomet’s Oscar nominated film “The Illusionist” and the French feature Titeuf: Le film. His specialties are story-driven character-based illustration and design for a variety of mediums, in particular children’s television. In his spare time, he enjoys creating characters, illustrating magazines and making games.
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21 Draw is an online learning community where students of all skill levels can learn how to be a better artist. Our contributing artists and instructors are the best in the world.
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Each class includes 10-20 video lessons that are 7 minutes long on average. Most classes include exercise sheets, assignments, and layered PSD or PNG files.
Some classes include the ability to chat with the instructor in a public forum, e.g. if you want feedback on your artwork.
Yes! When you complete a 21 Draw course, you will receive a certificate of completion, which you can download and share with your friends, relatives, co-workers, and potential employers!
21 Draw courses are on-demand (pre-recorded) video tutorials that you can watch online with any digital devices anytime and for an unlimited number of times! This means you can easily watch (and rewatch) them at your own pace and convenience.
We have classes for all levels, even for those with zero drawing experience. In general, artists at all levels can benefit from these courses—whether beginner, intermediate or advanced.
Many lessons in our courses apply to both digital and traditional art. In a few tutorials, digital drawing software, e.g. Photoshop or Procreate for iPad is required. However, for the majority of lessons it is more about the underlying concepts and all that is needed is a pen and paper.
You can download the course resources (exercise sheets, assignments, PSD files, etc.) from the site, but you cannot download the video lessons to your computer.
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