Check out Everyone's Character Studies

On Thursday I did a warm up exercise that I learned from Kelly Light's Character Design 101 workshop and the 2012 New England SCBWI conference. The exercise was the take a bunch of random shapes and try to form characters based on those shapes. I thought it would be fun to do the exercise again, only this time let my illustrator friends do it along with me. We have all been having so much fun with it. Thanks Kelly! If you want to try it yourself then STOP! Go back to the original post. It's more fun if you don't peek at the other solutions until you've already done the exercise yourself.

I don't know what's better, doing the exercise or seeing what everyone else did. I love seeing what other people came up with! If you happen across this post after 6/8/2012 and still want to join in, post a link to your characters below in the comments section.

Here are the shapes everyone started with...

And (drum roll please) here are the "answers"...

From Russ Cox. They are all awesome, I especially like the squeezy head guy on the bottom left.

Some fabulous characters from Laura Zarin.

Below is a submission from Tracy Bishop. Love the chef. What a clever idea!

The next one is from an up and coming artist, Robin (age 14). I'm really liking the guy in the top middle box. Can someone explain that Me Gusta face thing to me? I don't get it.

Hazel Mitchell came up with some very clever characters.

Roberta Baird not only restricted herself to only using these shapes but she also restricted her drawing time to 6 minutes. Very impressive!

Sherry Rogers came up with a super cute dog. And of course that last one looks like a pirate hat, why didn't I see it?

Michelle Henninger's contribution is next. The moustache guy looks like he's in an old fashion bathing suit, love it!

Andy Smith was very clever and made a whole cast of dinosaurs. The little guy in the middle is so cute!

Here's one from the person that started it all... Kelly Light. This was just one of the great exercises that she put forth in her Characters 101 talk at SCBWI. Super Squirrel is awesome!

Oh, I almost forgot, here's mine. Funny how so many people saw the 2nd row left-hand side as pretty much the same girl with a bob.