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Kenneth is a professional freelance illustrator and has worked with big companies like the BBC, Disney and others. His specialties are story-driven, character-based illustrations and designs for a variety of mediums, in particular children’s television.
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Develop an illustration out of a key story momentUse reference as an aid to develop your ideaSketch thumbnails to map out and decide on the designLearn to create unique characters and good character interactions for visual interestUse lighting and color to set the mood and create dramaHow to create focal points and lead the eye to key parts of the illustrationDiscover the different types of light sources and when to use themIllustration is the art of conveying an idea or a story moment in a one single image. Without the help of time, dialogue or sound effects like in an animated film, an artist needs to focus on the elements at their disposal to successfully convey their idea.
You will learn exactly how to tackle these elements with Kenneth’s help to create fascinating scenes that make viewers want to dive right in! He will lead you through each stage of his illustration process, break it down clearly for those who are entirely new to character design. You’ll be creating your own fantasy worlds in no time!
In this course, you will learn the essential principles that will transform your art into dynamic illustrations that come alive, as well as discover useful tricks which professional artists use to come up with ideas, save time while drawing and use lighting and color to set the tone and create drama.
If you’d like to have a sneak peek of what’s in store, click on the preview buttons below and watch Kenneth do his magic.
3+ hours of on-demand videos
List of recommended brushes (PDF)
In these tutorials, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the personal art process of the character design master, Kenneth Anderson (aka Kenny)!
To him, drawing is really all about storytelling — grabbing a specific moment in a story and capturing it in an illustration. How does one do that? Keep watching and find out! 😉
Kenny discusses what things to consider and questions to ask yourself when coming up with ideas for an illustration. All your design choices should aid in communicating the story moment, so having clarity about what that moment actually is will make every else down the line much, much easier!
Research fills in gaps in our knowledge and opens us up to new ideas. It’s the key to starting off right. Learn about Kenny’s checklists to make reference gathering easier, where he goes to find it all and why a mood board is such a great idea!
Why create thumbnails? Crafting the perfect story scene for an idea isn’t easy, even for the pros, but thumbnails help tremendously in exploring an idea on paper and will go a long way in saving you from frustration and wasted time later. Kenny discusses important factors, such as canvas ratios, lighting sources, color options and perspectives for his piece.
Kenny explains his process for creating engaging characters in this tutorial, discussing the 3 main facets: their personalities, current mood and current desire or motivations. He delves into how to make characters unique and keep things interesting with different poses.
Learn in detail how to convey an emotion to the audience through lighting and color and follow along as Kenny explains the decisions he makes regarding these important aspects.
All the major design choices have been made, so now it is time to paint the image and bring to completion! This stage just deals with flat local colors, concentrating on color palattes. You’ll discover tips on canvas size, resolution, what order to do your block-in and how to use layers.
Building on the steps before, Kenny refines the image further with shadows, lighting, detail and some cool effects. He explains the importance of defining key areas, and not over-rendering everything in the illustration.
We are almost done! At this stage, Kenny likes to take a step back and evaluate the
image, tweaking it as necessary. You’ll discover the exact thought process of a pro and get valuable insight on what is or isn’t working and why.
Course rating
(Based on 49 reviews)
5 courses
Kenneth is a professional freelance character designer with 14+ years experience. Based in the UK, he has worked with companies like the BBC, Disney, Tandem films and Axis Animation. He also worked on Sylvain Chomet’s Oscar nominated film “The Illusionist” and the French feature Titeuf: Le film. His specialties are story-driven character-based illustration and design for a variety of mediums, in particular children’s television. In his spare time, he enjoys creating characters, illustrating magazines and making games.
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21 Draw is an online learning community where students of all skill levels can learn how to be a better artist. Our contributing artists and instructors are the best in the world.
Our streaming platform on www.21-draw.com makes it possible for anyone to watch hundreds of video lessons by industry legends who have worked for Disney, Marvel, DC, Dreamworks, Pixar & more. A membership gives full access to our streaming platform.
On books.21-draw.com you can buy our popular learn-to-draw ebooks and physical books, separate from the courses, and they too are also delivered to you by the heavyweights of the art industry.
Membership includes unlimited access to all 20+ courses taught by the world’s best artists PLUS new courses as they are released.
Each class includes 10-20 video lessons that are 7 minutes long on average. Most classes include exercise sheets, assignments, and layered PSD or PNG files.
Some classes include the ability to chat with the instructor in a public forum, e.g. if you want feedback on your artwork.
21 Draw courses are on-demand (pre-recorded) video tutorials that you can watch online with any digital devices anytime and for an unlimited number of times! This means you can easily watch (and rewatch) them at your own pace and convenience.
We have classes for all levels, even for those with zero drawing experience. In general, artists at all levels can benefit from these courses—whether beginner, intermediate or advanced.
Many lessons in our courses apply to both digital and traditional art. In a few tutorials, digital drawing software, e.g. Photoshop or Procreate for iPad is required. However, for the majority of lessons it is more about the underlying concepts and all that is needed is a pen and paper.
You can download the course resources (exercise sheets, assignments, PSD files, etc.) from the site, but you cannot download the video lessons to your computer.
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