How To Draw The Same Character Consistently

I've had a couple of people compliment my ability to draw comic characters consistently. Hearing this always makes me happy because having characters look the same from panel to panel is something I'm constantly worrying about. This skill is really important for cartoonists, animators, or illustrators to have. Whenever you're creating a character, they need to be recognizable to the viewer at all different angles and in different clothes. If you're drawing in stick figures you can give one a bow tie or the other a hat, but this consistency can get trickier the more detailed or realistic your style gets.

Other than learning basic human anatomy and drawing faces until your hands fall off, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when designing your characters. Today, I'm going to share a few tips and tricks to make sure my characters look recognizable from panel to panel.

Knowing The Features

When you first start learning how to draw the human head, most start out by using basic shapes. You got an oval for the head, some almonds shapes for the eyes, perhaps a triangular shape for the nose. When learning the basics, you keep things simple and generic. But real human faces are anything but generic. I was always taught that you can break the human head into three parts (the forehead, the eyes & nose, lips & chin) and each section should take about 1/3 of the face. But in reality, sometimes people have larger foreheads. Some have smaller chins. Another example is that generally, eyes should be one eye width apart. This is a good rule to go by but in reality, people's faces don't follow these rules. Some eyes are closer than that "one eye-width rule".

So when designing your characters decide what unique features you want them to have. Does your character have a small or large nose? Is the tip of the nose upturned? What kind of eyes do they have: almond shaped, sleepy eyes, narrow eyes? How about eyebrows? Are the angular or rounded? There are countless features to choose from; giving your cast of characters a diverse set of features is not only a good way to keep them looking consistent but a way to avoid "same face syndrome".

Working With Shapes

Simplifying your character down into shapes is a really good way to keep things consistent. Try picking a shape for the head. For this character, I went with a heart shape. As for the hair, I simplified it down to four sections.

I normally don't make an actual diagram, more a mental one, but for the purposes of this post I wrote down the keys aspects that make up this character. It's basically like a checklist.

Once you've figured out what is disctint about the character, start drawing them in all different angles. Make sure to keep the features the same no matter if it's a front view, 3/4 view, or profile view of the face.

Just Keep Drawing

This is probably the most commonly shared piece of advice for people learning how to draw; just keep drawing . Obervation, repitition and practice are the only ways to really get comfortable with drawing, no matter the subject matter.