Making a Cartoon Baby
So you want to draw a cartoon baby, do you? Well, let me show
you how. The process is simple. First, create a rough sketch.
Next, draw in some details. Third, clean up the draft and
finally color it in. Sound simple. Well, it is. If you have any
kind of talent with art you'll be the proud parent of your very
own cartoon baby in no time.
When you decide that you want to create a cartoon baby the most
important thing to do is create a rough sketch. A rough sketch
will allow you to get a feel for the design without taking hours
to draw it. If you decide you want to change your design you
just change your sketch without throwing away all those hours of
work. I recommend that you try several designs and then choose
the one that you like the best.
After you have the general design you should add the detail to
your cartoon baby. It is helpful to make photocopies of your
rough design so that you can try different variations to give
you cartoon baby a character of its own. As you go through
designs, save the old ones; they might be useful with other
projects.
When the details are done clean up the draft. If you are
working on paper trace your draft so that the lines are clean.
If you want to digitize your cartoon baby this is a good time to
do so. Once it is digitized make sure it looks exactly the way
you want it to look before you move on.
Finally you can color your cartoon baby. Here
again it is wise to make copies of your artwork and try
different colors schemes. Try lots of different color
combinations. The more combinations you try, the better your
final color selection will be. Color selection is best done on
the computer. Once the character is digitized you can change the
colors with the click of a button.
That's it, now you have your own cartoon baby. How do feel to
be the world newest cartoon parent? Okay, so he doesn't do much.
He just sits there. If you want to bring your cartoon baby to
life you have to animate him. I will give you the basic steps to
do this, but if you need more information I have a great article
on how to do that in flash. Bringing your cartoon baby to life
is just a matter of dissecting him (I know that sounds gruesome,
but it has to be done). What I mean is that you have to draw his
body parts in many different positions. For example, if I wanted
to draw his head in many positions such as: from the side,
looking at me, and half-way in between each of these positions.
I would do this so that when it became time to animate my
cartoon baby, all I would need to do is put that the appropriate
pieces together to make the baby appear to move its head.
After all of the parts are drawn in the various positions you
need to make a story line for your character. If this is your
first cartoon creation, make the story simple. Comic strips are
excellent examples of simple story lines, because they are
depicted in just a few frames and generally can be easily
animated. Once you have your story you can actually start the
actual animating.
Animation is one of the most fun and time consuming parts of
the entire process. It can be done in many ways. A few people
like to do it by hand, but most practical people do it on a
computer using an animation program like Flash or After Effects.
Now you know the process involved in creating your own cartoon
baby. I wish you the best of luck in all of baby creations. If
you are currently learning Flash, or would like to learn it, and
need some helpful hints on finding tutorials go this article. Flash Tutorial