Emotions Course
Are You Struggling To Draw Emotions?
(Why learning to draw emotions is the secret to great cartoon characters)
Trying to draw the right emotion can be a tricky.
What if you’re relying on your character’s expression to sell your idea or gag, only for it to fall flat - and you’re left with nothing to show for it?
To bring your characters to life you need to be able to draw the most common emotions.
We all relate to emotions, so if the emotion doesn’t match the situation or words your character is using then it won’t connect with you or your audience.
So you could go through all the effort at the drawing board to create your character, perhaps even post it on social media or show it to friends, only to get people go “huh?...I don’t get it...”
And that sucks
Flat emotionless characters don’t express anything. If you can draw a face with a recognisable emotions, everyone will understand what you’re talking about.
But how do you get down on paper what’s obvious in your head?
You might even start questioning yourself. Can I really draw? Should I bother doing cartoons in the first place? Will anyone ever get what I’m trying to show?
If only you had a reliable system to help you understand emotions - and to draw them
A step-by-step guide that would give you clear directions to know what to do, when to do it, why you should do it, and how to do it. That way you'd have confidence during the whole process – every step of the way. To able to draw characters with a greater range of emotion, that would give your confidence a huge boost - and be fun for your audience.
Presenting Eek!...Huh?...Grr!: Drawing Emotions For Your Cartoon Characters
You can spend ages trying to write an interesting story or a funny gag, and then spend yet more time putting it all down on paper or the screen. However, the end result simply isn’t going to connect with your audience - or even with yourself - unless you capture the right expressions on your characters faces.
How so?
Evolution has wired us to study faces, we’re experts at it. It’s the first thing we do when we want to know what someone is feeling or we want to gauge the mood of the situation.
It doesn’t even have to be a human face - your attention has surely been caught by shapes or designs that look like faces, whether in nature, on an appliance in your home, or the front grill of a car.
YOU subconsciously know how to read emotions, but it might be a bit trickier to explain them - or to recreate them on paper.
The Emotions course will show you the most common emotions, as well as some other ones, and also how to draw them. Finally, it will show you how you can use emotions to generate some ideas for your cartoons.
So what is it?
It is a self-study course that you can follow at your own pace. You will learn about the most common emotions, as well as a variety of others. You will then learn how to draw the different emotions. Finally, you will learn how you can generate cartoon ideas using different emotions.
You don’t have to be a great artist to draw cartoons....or be a psychologist to understand emotions
Let's take a look at what's in the Emotions course itself
Give your cartoon characters a greater range of expressions
It is not all smiley faces out there! You need to be able to show a wide range of feelings and emotions on your characters faces.
Soon you will have your characters expressing whatever you and they happen to be feeling.
Draw from different angles
Drawing from the front profile maybe easier than the others, but unless your characters are never, ever going to move, you’re going to want to be able to draw them from other profiles as well.
You will do some simple exercise to get you doodling from other angles.
Help build your drawing habit
Drawing cartoons is not solely about the drawing bit, you’ve got to actually get into the habit of drawing in the first place. Unless we build a drawing habit, it doesn’t matter how great our ideas or intentions are, they’ve never going to materialise on paper.
Anyone can learn good habits - and so will you.
Generate your own ideas for cartoons
Folks often get stuck coming up for ideas about what to draw. This can be frustrating and lead to not much drawing getting done.
You will learn some techniques and do some exercises to get you coming up with your own ideas.
Keep it simple
It is easy to overcomplicate things and end up in a muddle on the paper.
With only a couple of dots and lines you will be able to bring your characters emotions to life.
Illustration instead of frustration!
No more getting frustrated when trying to draw an emotion.
With a few exercises and a bit of practice you will slowly become more and more consistent at showing emotions on paper or tablet.
Some Frequently Asked Questions:
Can you show me how to be a great cartoonist?
I can show you some techniques to help you improve your cartooning, but nobody became a great or even good cartoonist as the result of doing one course or reading one book. This is a skill you can learn like any other - and like learning any skill it takes time to put it into practice.
What equipment do I need to do this course?
You don’t need anything other than a pen and paper. However, feel free to use hardware or drawing app you like. The principles work equally well if you are working with the latest tech or prefer to go old school.
I don’t know how to use Procreate (or some other drawing app) Will this course show me how to use it? Can you help me?
This course isn’t about learning how to use any particular drawing app or software, but if you go for the option have 1-to-1 coaching with me, I can show you a few tricks.
How much time do I need to do this course?
I recommend putting aside around 20 minutes a day, as it’s better to try the exercises for yourself as you go along.
Why should listen to you?
I’ve thousands of cartoons, and made an awful lot of mistakes while doing so. Along the way I’ve picked up quite a few tips and tricks which have made my cartoons a lot better - and can do the same for you too.
TESTIMONIALS
Coming soon!
What’s inside?
Let’s take a look inside the course.
The course has some underlying principles to follow, including the all-important one that this is a skill you can learn and not magic.
There are a variety of different exercises to try. This one gives you some pre-drawn characters with blank faces so you don’t have to worry about daring. All you have to do is focus on the facial expressions and conveying emotions.
What This Course Is About
Why you need to have a wider range of human emotions in your characters
How body language connects to emotions
How to start and maintain a drawing habit
How you can combine different emotions
Why emotions are crucial for cartoon characters
Using the power of exaggeration in cartoons
Mistakes I’ve made drawing cartoons (and how you can avoid them)
How your face changes when expressing different emotions
How you can change the tone of a cartoon by changing the emotion
What This Course Is NOT About
Becoming a great artist. You don’t have to be able to draw great pictures to be a great cartoonist. For sure it can help, but it can also get in the way if you end up putting too much detail and time into what you do.
It's NOT about instantly mastering the full range of human emotions. You will get started on the most common ones, and also practice drawing other ones as well. Over time you will find yourself adding more and more - however, it’s not going to happen overnight.
This course is not just about showing you a few techniques to practice. It’ll also give you some ideas about how you can develop you own techniques.