How to Draw a Cheetah

With its sleek, streamlined body, and long, muscular limbs, the cheetah is built for speed. Capable of running at an incredible 70 mph, the cheetah is faster than the rest of the big cats, or any other land mammal. As you draw, try to bring out the power and grace of this beautiful feline.

 The key to drawing anything is to break it down into basic shapes. If you can draw circles and ovals, you can draw a cheetah.  Don't be discouraged if your first attempt doesn't turn out exactly like the picture. Practice makes perfect, so let's begin!

Click the image below to view the step-by-step cheetah drawing tutorial.

Don’t give up if your first drawings aren’t perfect. Art is not something that can be learned overnight. Drawing is a skill that must be practiced and supplemented through observation, so keep a sketchbook, and take it with you everywhere. Look around you, draw what you see.  Visit the zoo and sketch animals. Sketch people at the mall. The more you draw, the better you’ll get. Good luck!

Furry Friday: Quiescent

With the release of my newest tutorial drawing book Draw More Furries right around the corner, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the talented artists who contributed illustrations. First up is Quiescent by Kristen “CentraDragon” Plescow, whose whimsical digital painting style and color palette are a joy to behold. This tranquil illustration of a kirin appreciating nature is featured as the double-page spread for Chapter 4: Mythical Creatures.

Here’s what she had to say about her artistic process:

“My process varies a bit from day to day, but overall I try to keep everything as simple as possible. For a large illustration like this, I start with lot of smaller doodles with ink and markers to get in the spirit of things, and to better envision the world around the character. Next, I make a sketch in Photoshop CS4, and move onto a quick under painting. Once I’m satisfied with the composition and color scheme, I’ll work on refining and detail from back to front. I don’t worry too much about layers, and like to merge them as I go. One thing I’ve learned—if you know there’s a part of your painting that’s going to be more difficult, always (ALWAYS) do it first. It’ll save you a lot of frustration and rage-quits later on.” -Kristen

Draw More Furries arrives in bookstores on November 23, 2012.
Signed copies are available through my online shop!

New book - Sketchbook Confidential 2

I’m in a new book called Sketchbook Confidential 2, published by North Light Books.

It’s a really interesting art reference book that takes a peek into the sketchbooks of 38 different artists including myself, Tokyopop alumni Jared Hodges and Irene Flores, and others (many fine artists and painters). Each artist is showcased with several pages of WIP sketches, and their thoughts on sketching. Give it a flip through next time you’re at the bookstore.

Just for fun, let’s draw cute animals

Drawing a Bear in 4 steps:

From Illustration School: Let's Draw Cute Animals by Sachiko Umoto. Part of an adorable series of drawing books. I just adore Sachiko Umoto's charming illustrations and whimsical approach to making cute animals that's simple enough for anyone to follow. Reminds me of the Ed Emberley drawing books I loved so much as a kid.

Finding the Right Pose - Archie Character Designs

Recently, I put together some Archie character drawings to try out for a penciling position.

Archie Character Sheet (inks). Pencils by me, inked by Jared Hodges.

Finding the Look

Working with pre-existing characters is different than designing your own. I first had to familiarize myself with nuances of the "house style" to draw the characters on-model. I did this by sketching the characters, while carefully studing the spacing and proportions of their features, especially their faces.

Finding the Pose
Once I felt comfortable drawing the characters, I did some thumbnail sketches for each character's pose, searching for the best character-appropriate gesture for each. It's worth noting that when I'm doing gesture sketches like this, I'm working small and fast. I'm not worried about proportions or details--that comes later. This is all about finding the pose.

Veronica
Veronica is the rich girl that pretty much gets what she wants. I decided to give her a hand-on-the-hip pose that emphasized her confidence and stylishness. For her outfit, a cute flirty dress, clutch handbag, and a bit of bling. I briefly entertained the idea of a more illustrative shopping scene for her (with bag carrying Archie in tow), but decided to stick with standalone poses.

Veronica poses

Betty
To contrast Veronica, I went with a sportier pose, and jeans and jacket outfit for Betty. I got pretty far in the drawing when I realized the pose was a bit too similar (hand-on-hip again) to Veronica's.

Betty - pose and rough pencils, next to finished Veronica for comparison.

Keeping the keywords "cute" and "sporty" in mind, I started over. Of these, the first two I did (upper middle, upper right) weren't right at all for Betty -- too sexy; too cutesy. After that, I stopped and reconsidered the character. Sweet and sporty. I liked the gesture of Betty twirling a finger around her hair to showcase her ponytail, so I kept that in the rest of the sketches. I ended up going with my third attempt (first sketch on the top left).

More Betty poses

Archie
Archie's your average, nice guy character that everyone gets along with. For his pose I decided to show him "just hanging out".

Archie poses

Jughead
Jughead's the goofy comic relief character. To capture his cartoony mannerisms, I tried to push his poses towards the extreme (without going too far). I thought it would be funny to show him tossing an entire burger in his mouth the way you might with a piece of candy.

Jughead poses

Polishing the Art
Once I had my poses selected for each character, I printed out the sketches at a larger size with blue lines so I could do a clean pencil pass over them with their proper details and proportions.
And here's the finished results!

Breaking into Comics

One of the questions I'm frequently asked is how to go about "breaking into" the comic industry. It's a tricky question to answer, because there is no direct path. The comics industry is a tough business to break into. There's a lot of competition. And even once you're "in", every new assignment or project still requires effort to get (though publishing credits do help!).

The most important thing you'll need are strong, stand-out sample comic pages that demonstrate your skills in sequential art. The ability to draw characters consistently on-model and capable of expressing a gamut of emotions, backgrounds in perspective, clarity in sequential storytelling, dynamic action, clear but exciting panel layouts, and so on. The best way to get that is to keep working at it. The more you draw, the better you'll get. Challenge yourself to draw outside of your comfort zone. Draw everything, not just people. The ability to draw human characters is, of course, essential, but comic artists should ALSO be able to draw whatever the script calls for: backgrounds from busy cityscapes to dense forests, cute puppies to ferocious beasts, racing cars to horse-drawn wagons.

Depending on the publisher, the way to get your work seen is to take it to a convention where an editor is doing portfolio reviews. They can give you the feedback you need to further improve your pages, or if your work is good enough, hire you on the spot.

The way I got my start with Tokyopop was through their 2nd Rising Stars of Manga competition. (I'm not sure if they're still doing the Rising Stars of Manga, but nowadays there are also other competitions running such as Kodansha’s Morning Magazine International Comic Contest, in which Jared's and my entry, Last Dance, placed as a finalist, and DC's Zuda Comics, which I have not personally entered).

For RSOM, I followed the guidelines, and sent off a short self-contained 20-page comic that landed me grand prize. The editors loved it so much that they asked me to put together a full three-volume version of the series. You know how that turned out. The series was Peach Fuzz. :) From there, I had the credentials and work behind me to get a job as a penciler over at Archie Comics.

If you're interested in writing and drawing stories, the steps are similar but somewhat different. You'll need to put together a comic pitch based on your desired publisher's guidelines. Every publisher is different about what they want. It helps to be aware of which publishers are looking for submissions, and what they want, so that you can tailor your submission to their needs. Check publisher websites for guidelines. But in general, it amounts to about 10-15 sample comic pages, a short (2-3 page) synopsis of how the story would play from start to finish, character designs and bios, and a persuasive query letter. I'm working on putting together one of those packages right now for the new graphic novel story I've developed. :)

Comic Page Layout Template

Here is the page layout template (larger version here) I'm using for Last of the Polar Bears. You're welcome to download and print it out for use in your own comics.

The template is sized for printing on standard letter-sized paper. There's a space for you to draw your comic page, a place to keep track of the page number, and a place to indicate starting date. I find marking the date useful for keeping track of my daily page output. The empty space has a purpose as well. This is where you can break down panels, write notes, and try out different ideas for panels configurations, poses, and expressions before you commit to them in the actual layout. See my previous post for examples.

I originally created this layout for use on Peach Fuzz, so the trim and bleed sizes are suited for a standard 5"x7.5" "manga"-sized graphic novel. The black bars on the top and bottom are there as space fillers because the dimensions are intended for penciling on a traditional 11"x17" comic page.

Book sizes vary, as do individual publisher's designated trim and bleeds. For example, I use a different page template for penciling comic pages for Archie Comics. Think about your desired final output size and plan your rough layouts accordingly.

Making a Graphic Novel (Part 1)

My Creative Process

I've finished scanning and compiling the roughs for the first chapter of The Last of the Polar Bears! 67 pages total. The full story consists of seven dense chapters chronicling a polar bear family's journey and struggle to survive in the changing Arctic. I'm working from a detailed 40-page synopsis of the story Jared Hodges and I wrote together. So far the breakdown is working out to about 10 pages of comic pages per 1 page of synopsis, so I estimate that the complete story will end up being around 400-500 pages.

Because I am both the writer and the artist, I decided to bypass the step of writing a traditional script for The Last of the Polar Bears, and work straight from synopsis to rough thumbnail pages. This allows me to be very flexible with my roughs. I read over my synopsis, then visualize the look of the pages as thumbnail drawings while I'm breaking down the actions panel-by-panel. In this way, I can quickly discover whether scenes that are easily described in text work visually, and make necessary corrections.

Here's page 17 and 18 from synopsis to rough thumbnails, in which the twin polar bear cubs Stella and Nanook experience the outside of the den for the first time:

Synopsis:

Stella asks Nanook what's up there. The next panel is his point of view. Endless white snow, and arctic twilight. Frostbite (an arctic fox) is also in the shot, but she is well camouflaged. Her tail is wrapped around her face so that she looks unremarkable, like a lump of snow. "Nothing. Everything's white!" A cold breeze sets his teeth chattering. "It's cold up here!" Shivering, brother cub tumbles back into the den, and falls on top of Stella. Stella protests and goes into battle mode, but he just huddles against her for warmth. It's no fun to play with an unwilling partner, so she gives up and calls him a wimp . She asks him if he saw "it". He shakes his head no. "Just lots of snow."

I breakdown this description into a list of panels, each with a short description of what I want to bring to the attention of the reader. My thumbnail page layout (template here) measures 4"x6" on an 8.5".x11" page and contains pertinent information such as trim and bleed so that I can plan out the overall look of the page along with composition, actions, and word balloon placement.

Sometimes the pages come together in a very straightforward fashion. Sometimes I'll end up trying multiple panel configurations. On page 17, you can see that I've come up with alternate takes for panels 1, 3, and 5.

Once the thumbnails are drawn, I scan them into the computer and assemble the pieces. Here's how 17 and 18 currently look.

These thumbnails are my roadmap for the next step: penciling the pages at full size. With composition and content of the panels figured out, I'll be able to turn my focus to drawing the characters tighter, cleaner, on model, and anatomically correct (to name just a few of many things I'll be keeping in mind as I work through the pages).

I'll continue to delve further into aspects of my comic creation process (with more Last of the Polar Bear sneak peeks!) in upcoming blog posts, so stay tuned for more.

The Last of the Polar Bears - promo poster

This is the promotional poster for The Last of the Polar Bears.

The Last of the Polar Bears is what will hopefully become my next graphic novel. I've spent the last year thinking about it and the last couple months writing and developing the groundwork for it. I just finished plotting out the story in detail from beginning to end, so now I'm ready to move forward with the creation of the comic itself!

This promo illustration, portraying an iconic scene from the first chapter of the story, had a pack a lot of punch with a minimalist execution. With so little detail, it wasn't difficult to draw, but every aspect of it needed to be just right.

I find it very helpful to create a number of tiny thumbnail sketches, to quickly try out different takes on an idea. Working with a general idea of a polar bear cub poking his head out of the den for the first time, finding himself surrounded by an unending sea of white snow, I created a couple of concept sketches:
In these examples, note how composition, placement, and size of the cub play a big role in mood and feel.

#1 is a strong close up on the cub's face, grinning as he takes a peek at the outside world - cute, but completely at odds with the title of the book.

#3 is closer in feel - the landscape is vast, the cub is small--there's a real sense of loneliness going on, but it's so far pulled out from the character that scene no longer feels intimate.

#2 is almost right on target. The cub is cute and awestruck without looking too giddy. But the centered figure is boring and predictable.

#4 takes the aspects of #2 that I liked, but moves the cub into the lower corner. The title is placed in the upper right corner to balance the piece.

Once I had the composition figured out, I set about drawing the character.

He went through several drafts (including some slight variations with him smiling, not shown here) before I finally hit upon a version that worked for the poster.
And here you have it, the finished line art of the cub seen in the poster (flipped in the illustration):

Stay tuned for lots more. I look forward to introducing you to this little guy and the rest of his family. :)

Draw Furries: New Book!

I'm proud to announce the upcoming release of Draw Furries - How to Create Anthropomorphic and Fantasy Animals written and illustrated by me and Jared Hodges, published by Impact Books!



In a nutshell, Draw Furries goes over drawing anthropomorphic and animal characters. It's 128 full-color pages, covering step-by-step anatomy, poses, and species-specific details (wings, tails, eyes...) for feline, canine, equine, rodent and avian characters, plus coloring and backgrounds! The book also includes a bonus guest gallery featuring art by the very talented Bara-chan, Kelly Hamilton, CookingPeach aka Miu, and Makime!

Here's some sample spreads from the book:




The book comes out the beginning of December!