Model sheets

Before I start a new project, I read through the manuscript a few times.  My first step is to doodle some aimless drawings—to warm up, I guess—then I begin the serious business of drawing thumbnail sketches in the form of a storyboard.  As I’m doing that, I stop every so often to work on model sheets of the characters.  The first ones are just like this sketch of Barnacle Bleackear, from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies and Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates.

blackear.sketch

To really get into a character, though, you need to draw the heck out of it.  Here is a model sheet of the duck from The Perfect Nest.  Drawing the character in a bunch of poses helps me to understand how it looks from different angles.  After drawing the same character many times, it’s a whole lot easier to incorporate into a page sketch.

duck.modelB

duck.modelA

Here are the goose and hen from The Perfect Nest.

goose.modelA

goose.modelB

hen.modelB

hen.modelA

And here’s Jack the cat from the same book.  I design each character before I begin the tight page sketches.  It’s crucial that these characters look consistent throughout the book.  My audience is 5-8 years old, and many of them are just learning to read.  They need to be able to identify a character every time it appears.  You can see that these sheets help me work out and understand each character’s proportions—and also allow me to develop the expressions, gestures and poses that establish its personality.

jack.model

0 replies
  1. Leda Miller
    Leda Miller says:

    I’m curious, John, just how detailed your story boards are. Can you post a portion of one? Also, when you “draw the heck out of” your characters, do you pull from the script to get ideas of what angles and expressions you want to play with?

    Reply

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