How to cartoonify – this is a question that I get asked regularly, and this excellent photo someone was working with lends itself perfectly to a cartoonifying exercise for a beginner.
So, where do you begin to learn how to cartoonify someone or something?
If you have been around me for more than half a minute, you know that we are going to start with a combination of tracing and stick figures.
Tracing is always the place to start, because it builds muscle memory for you and lets you figure out where to place all the big components of the character that you are creating. Putting pencil to paper also helps your brain to think through how to put together a stick figure to portray the limbs for the pose you’re working with.
In this case, overlapping circles/ovals for the head and hat brim are the place to start, and then you can create a basic stick figure for the upper body, using dots/circles to represent the joints at the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist, to show the position of the arms and hands which are in the the character’s pockets.
No need for a lower half of this body — just two trouser legs will do!
Once you’ve finished with the tracing, what next?
It’s time to recreate the stick figure for yourself, and then embellish it a bit. Now, what to embellish?
When it comes to cartoonifying someone, you want to take the most recognisable and unique characteristics and exaggerate them for all you are worth. In this case I went for the hat, the moustache and the fob-watch, as well as making sure the double-breasted waistcoat (vest) was clear to see.
Exaggerating the face and head (and in this case, the hat) is always an excellent place to start — bigger heads always looks cartoony and large faces give you more space to work with when you are creating expressions.
I wildly exaggerated the bushiness of his eyebrows as well as his moustache size and width, all in the name of cartoonist’s licence.
The final exaggerated touch was the size of the pocket watch, again, very much a feature of this character’s time and position I imagine.
So, that’s how you cartoonify someone. I have a Pinterest board which is a great resource for finding funky photos that fire up your creative tastebuds — or have a go at cartoonifying a character of your own.
P.S. Wondering why I love using old-timey pics for this exercise?
It’s because each photo projects such a strong sense of time and place — as a direct result of the clothes (and often hats!) in them.
And when it comes to creating a cartoon character of your own, that’s what you want — distinct, recognisable components.
So by working with ‘odd’ or old-timey references, you subconsciously train your brain to add (or look for) eccentric details to embellish your cartoon characters in future — even though you’ll probably never create a vintage character at all.