I walked out of a hospital elevator, and there he was.
A grungy ball cap barely contained a wiry nest of grizzled hair in a downward swerve past a moustache that may have once belonged to Yosemite Sam in his adolescent years. A pair of dark sunglasses covered eyes (I presume of some indescribable sort). A sweaty tank top disappeared, half-tucked, into a pair of jeans that tumbled down into messy, frayed bellbottoms just over (and this was the best part) a pair of dime-store, rubber sandals… or flops, as we refer to them in the South.
Now, remember, I caught all this in perhaps a five-second glance, at best.
If you’re an artist, you’ve got to be prepared to not just draw fast, but to look fast, too… and take it all in.
The observational method of character design, as you’ve proba- bly guessed by now, is simply observing real-life characters and putting them down on paper.
I’d just come from visiting my stepmom’s sister in the hospital and, as I walked onto the ground floor from the elevator, this char- acter was stepping into the elevator. It was hard not to stare at such an outstanding specimen of the rural Alabama experience and, as you can guess, it’s wiser not to stare for reasons of personal safety. When observing people for drawing purposes, it’s best to remain casually unobtrusive in your efforts. Try not to “draw” too much attention to yourself.
I tell my art students to never be without your trusty sketch- pad, because there’s no telling when you’re going to run into a real-life cartoon character, who only needs a telltale outline to fully transport himself into the second dimension of Toontown.
When I am sitting at the airport, when I am waiting in a long line, or even when my wife and I eat out, I don’t like to be without at least a pen so I can jot down a quick character sketch onto a paper napkin.
Recently, my wife and I went to eat at a new restaurant she’d wanted to try out. It turned out to be a “country cooking” style place (one of my favorite, with those dishes of gravy and mashed potatoes, fried green tomatoes, and the like), and an interesting character drove into the parking lot right behind us. He hopped out of his sporty little convertible and hurried past us, for he obviously had better things to do than reply to my polite “Hello.”
He was in a black sports jacket, and had on an ash-colored buttonless shirt. His receding hairline rivaled my own, but his remaining snowy locks were a little more carefully cropped than my sandy brown ones. I don’t know why, but immediately I knew this guy was an advertising executive. Perhaps it was the folder jutting out from his armpit, or his overwhelming, smug superiority com- plex. I couldn’t be sure which, but very soon my suspicion was confirmed.
As you can see, Mr. Personality, on the left, was some sort of advertising agent trying to make a sale with a new restaurant owner. The two sketches on the right were done in a buffet restaurant. The top fellow was a biker in overalls. (I don’t know if you can appreciate his braided ponytail.) The senior citizen below had a strangely squared, compact physique I sketched quickly as his party left the restaurant.
After my wife and I ordered and sat down to eat a late lunch, “Mr. Personality” (as I’ll call him) positioned himself across the table from the owner/manager, a pleasant, polite-looking Asian-American underneath a ball cap not unlike my own.
It wasn’t just the features of this ad executive that fascinated me; it was the body language that was going on between these two. Mr. Personality was leaning forward over his fancy folders of sam- ple ads, with his fingers almost touching the opposite side of the table. Mr. Manager, on the other hand, was leaning his face in his hands. While facing the ad-man, his legs and the rest of his body were facing away from the presentation at nearly a 90-degree angle.
Perhaps you’ve already arrived at the same conclusion I did, even before I started eavesdropping. Mr. Manager was neither impressed nor convinced that this was the way to spend his adver- tising dollars.
Nevertheless, even though Mr. Personality walked out of the restaurant quietly doubting that commission he’d hoped would pay off his sporty little convertible, I walked out of the restaurant with an amusing little sketch scenario. Certainly not a finished cartoon, as you can see, but the first sketch at the top of the drawing was from my point of view, and the two sketches below were how I imagined it from Mr. Manager’s perspective. All of these were drawn on a handout dinner menu.
Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at. Character ideas are all around us… at restaurants, sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons, waiting at the bus station, or even in class.
I did some sketches while sitting in the Atlanta airport en route to my aforementioned San Francisco flight. One lady I drew, oddly enough, ended up sitting on the plane next to me. Though I can’t recall whether I showed her the sketch I produced of her, I showed her the accompanying sketch of her traveling companion. She was mildly amused, at best.
And when I got to the theatre where we were all to spend the next three days enthralled at the verbal exploits and physical stage performance of Mr. Richard Williams, I found myself in a veritable amphitheater of caricatures. Cartoonists love to draw each other, for some reason, but cartoonists just love to draw… period.
Though I was pretty happy with the drawings I did of an Asian artist and Mr. Williams (who insisted that everyone call him
“Dick”), I think the drawing that best exhibits the personality of the subject was this young man sitting on the front row.
Yeah, these types always sit on the front row. You know them.
That know-it-all in the front row
Whether you’re in a college class, Sunday school, or any public forum, there’s always that one know-it-all (or worse yet, more than one) who always has to pipe up.
I don’t mean to sound unduly negative, but here was a room full of artists, eagerly waiting to hear the results of Mr. Williams’ 30+ years of animation-experience advice, many of whom had spent their own hard-earned dollars to be there… and whatever Dick said, whatever advice the Animation Maestro himself offered us, this young man’s hand would shoot up to counter-offer his personal approach. I wasn’t the only one rolling my eyes and groaning every time young Mr. Knowitall waved his energetic palm at Dick.
There is something you may have noticed here also, from per- haps a psychological point of view, about character design. Rather than getting upset at these unpleasant types like Mr. Personality or Mr. Knowitall, rather than picking a fight or trying to win a shouting match, it’s far less violent and perhaps far more constructive, and downright more personally satisfying in the end, to turn these smug individuals into cartoon characters.
In other words, instead of letting their petty annoyance factor work against your nerves, let it work for you and you might even surprisingly find yourself turning a profit. As a matter of fact, Mr. Grizzled Elevator Redneck (the one with the baseball cap and sun- glasses, remember?) ended up in my CD-ROM presentation for KinderCare in an example on “How not to dress for work.”