Who are you drawing for? The answer makes all the difference.
The answer can be as simple as, "myself," or as complicated as "50 year old single, male, home owners, with pet cats." Whether you're drawing for your mom or a client, it makes a difference.
When drawing, you should always keep who you're drawing for in the back of your mind. It makes subtle and not so subtle differences to what you do and how you draw it.
Case in point...
I am currently designing the look of the characters for the Level 1 Lessons for TheDrawingWebsite.com.
Both Brush Lee and Pen Grier needed to be redesigned. I also need to design secondary characters.
Why the redesign of the protagonists?
Because the target audience for the Level 1 Lessons are elementary school kids. As cartoony as my characters already are, I thought they needed to be even MORE cartoony. They needed to be even simpler looking.
This decision was based off of what I liked when I was in elementary school. The more cartoony something was, the more I liked it. The more "real" or "serious" it looked, the less likely I was to pick it up. I'm basically writing these lessons for the kid I was when I was in elementary school.
I know that not all elementary school kids think this way, but by doing this, I know exactly who my target audience is and therefore it makes it easier for me to make design decisions. It also helps that my kids have similar tastes as me when I was their age.
Sneak Peek at the Designs
I thought I'd give you a sneak peek at the work I've put in so far into the designs.
The Level 1 Lessons will be done in the form a of a comic and it takes place in a world where drawing is a highly praised skill. The story will also take the form a Kung Fu movie only instead of Kung Fu, people will battle with "Draw Fu". Everything the characters learn in the story will be real world, pragmatic drawing lessons. They will be even easier to learn because they will be taught in the form a story.
Here are the designs I've got so far. I'm showing you the whole process so you can see that I really worked to find a look that satisfied me. Especially for Brush Lee. He was giving me a lot of trouble:
I didn't draw these simply off the top of my head, I had inspiration in the form a collection of photos I've compiled on a "Draw Fu Comic" Board on Pinterest. I use the photos as jumping off points when it comes to costumes, characters faces, environments and archetypes.
You can go to it by clicking here:
http://www.pinterest.com/daarck/draw-fu-comic/
Hopefully, this helps inspire you and motive you too.
Luis
P.S.
If you haven't joined the Draw Fu Facebook Group come on over. There's some great discussions about all kinds of drawing things going on there. You're missing out:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/697412070274059/.
