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Oct 2019

Hello there!

This is a fun drawing exercise that I enjoy doing from time to time. It is meant to train your imagination, your reasoning and your drawing skills regarding character creation (more specifically, facial expressions) by drawing a character you know well doing out-of-character things.

In order to start the exercise, you'll have to draw your character with an expression (or pose, if you feel motivated) that fits them or that is very characteristic of them.
Then, proceed to swap the drawing in two ways:
STEP 1: Change the expression/pose to one they are very rarely going to be making. It will ideally be the complete opposite (laughing vs. crying), but you can do something else as long as there's a big enough of a difference. In that second drawing, they will still be the same character, with the same "soul", but their actions will ideally feel out of character.
STEP 2: Now take that second drawing and change the character itself (their soul, mostly) to better fit the action they're doing. Try to make it as opposite as possible, but if that's too complicated you can just change their personality to something that seems distant enough from their usual self. I mean, the most complex characters should be pretty hard to easily "swap", as they're often full of ambiguity themselves (you know, the ones often understood by nobody but the author), but try your best!

The objective is to change both the original drawing's action and personality into something that feels like an Alter Ego of sorts.

NOTES MEANT TO ANTICIPATE YOUR QUESTIONS
-You can use whoever you want: OC's, or the main character of a story you have, or a character that's not yours (give credit if necessary) or yourself if you're that kinda person.
-This is the basic "structure" of the exercise: Drawing 1 > Drawing 2 > Drawing 3. The image above is just for clarification, so you can do it vertically, horizontally, diagonally (u edgelord), or whatever. You can also skip drawings 1 and 2 altogether, and go straight to the point if you feel like it.
-Use the style and technique you feel the most comfortable on. Do it a lot sketchier than the example I made if you lack the time, or make a full illustration to make everyone else feel like lazy useless normies.
-Feel free to also add an explanation and reasoning regarding the process you followed. It's very interesting because sometimes people will see different things in the same drawings.
-And then you can post a link to the comic the character appears in, if you have any, to let us know more about the character, because why the hell not? :smile:
-This is mostly meant for training, for fun, and, for some of you, for advertising :kissing_closed_eyes:.
-Trying to go over the top with complex expressions that make you think a lot is the way to go (there are a LOT of different ways a person can laugh, cry, worry, etc) so be as specific as you can. The image above is not a good example of this, although that doesn't mean you can't just turn a hero into a villain in a similar manner if you really want to.
-You can do more than three drawings if you want, and more than one character as well. For example, you can do a fourth drawing that will also change their appearance to one that better fits their new self. Because why put limits to creativity?
-You can also shamelessly drop a cool random image/video/text/link and give no context, but do that only if it's very very cool.

TLDR - Draw something out of character and post it on my face.

I think that's all... Please don't ignore me, this took a while to write.
And have a nice drawing session, everyone. :wink:

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    Oct '19
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    Oct '19
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Hullo! I definitely want to do this, but I might get to it later this week because I am so swamped and tired right now. excellent example btw. I might try with a few characters who start with evil sneers and see where that will lead me >:3c

This looks like an interesting thread!
I'll try this somewhere this week :smile:

Yeah, I didn't expect anyone to actually start posting drawings right away, naturally. Take your time! It's not easy, unless you're like a god of character designing or something. :laughing: