2 Techniques for Stylizing a Character’s Face

Let’s look at what Randy Bishop, the instructor of our “Fundamentals of Character Design” course, has to say about character stylization! He’s an expert when it comes to character design and would like to share some insightful tips with you. 

What is Stylization Made of?

First, Randy wants us to know that stylization is made up of two things: simplification and exaggeration. 

Simplification is when we break down complex details into their most basic form so that we can effectively communicate our ideas to our audience. 

Exaggeration is something Randy likes to do with facial features that will really showcase the character’s personality. For example, he might draw an unusually small mouth on a character that is soft spoken or large eyes on a character with a curious personality!

Facial Features: Proportions

Each part of the face, including its proportions, can be used to tell the character’s personality. For example, we tend to associate the head with intelligence and the jaw with strength. As artists, we can design our characters with ideas like these in mind!

In the image above, the character on the left-most side might be considered intelligent but lacking any sort of brute strength. The middle character appears strong and manly but not as wise. And the character on the right looks like an average person with average abilities.

Facial Features: Eyes, Nose, and Mouth

Check out how the character’s demeanor changes depending on the shape of just their mouth, nose, and eyes! This means we have the ability to tell the story we desire by being intentional with every single part of our character’s face!

Try This!

Switch out the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth of a character, one at a time, and see how much they change! Be sure to tag us @21_draw if you decide to try it out!

Now that we know a little more about character stylization, the next step is practice. If you’d like more free character design tips, these courses have FREE lessons on the topic!

• Fundamentals of Character Design by Randy Bishop
• Dark Fantasy Character Design by Xiaofan Zhang
• Drawing Characters with Personality by Tony Bancroft 

As always, I hope this was helpful to you, and see you next time, artists!