Designing Cartoon Characters in Adobe Animate

Using the Line Tool with Snap to Objects enabled, we can begin the process of outlining the head.

Using similar techniques from the head, we will draw out the main portion of the hair, separating the large chunk from the individual strands.

By separating the hair strands, we can plan to animating the hair later to add physics and depth.

The final hair piece will be the ponytail, which we will draw on it's own layer and place below the head and body.

Continuing on, we can ink the neck and torso, using similar techniques from the head.

For more depth, we can move in and draw the jacket. This can be use to create physics when moving the character, as well.

With the torso and jacket in place, we can move over and ink up the arms.

With the arms in place we can move forward and design a closed fist for each side.

In this video we tackle the final portions of the character, which includes the pelvis, legs and feet.

With everything outlined, we can move forward with our eyedropper and paint bucket to start coloring in the layers.

Moving down, we continue filling in by working on the torso and jacket.

Following the jacket and pelvis colors, we can move over and paint in the arms, legs, hands and feet.

Using the Brush and Paint Fill/Inside settings, we can move in and start adding a layer of shade to the character's right side to help establish a light source.

Learn how to add highlights for extra pop and to help contrast the shaded spots.

To begin designing the eye, we will lay out each layer to help visualize structure and work without masking restrictions.

Here we will establish the mask to reign in the boundary breaks from the lids as well as add some highlights for extra pop.

Here we can finish up the face by inking and filling in the eyebrows and nose.

To establish our mouth poses, a open mouth template will be constructed, allowing us to mold each phoneme to our liking.

With the mouth template in place, we can move forward with molding 8 phonemes: closed, Ee, Ai, ETC, Th, Fv, Oh, and QUW. This setup can be used later for changing mouth poses if you decide to rig and animate with the character.

Like the mouth poses, we can mold multiple hands to switch them if we decide to animate the character later on.

In this video we discuss how you can design two additional head poses for more diverse animations.

Here we go though and fix various issues that have popped up during the process.

With the design complete, we can export an image for all to admire.

I share my final thoughts on this course. Looking to continue the process? Check out Rigging and Animating in Adobe Animate!