Captain Character Part Three - The Face Bit (OUAN404)

I looked at a lot of shapes for the face of MILAN TURNER, including a lot that I would never ordinarily consider when designing characters in the past.

I also experimented with a bunch of noses

I'm not a huge fan of cartoon heads that are just one shape. It's cool to use the shape as a guideline and add things on later, but when somebody's head is just a circle or square, I don't really care for the simplicity. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but overall it can be quite lazy.

Bart Simpson and Cyanide And Happiness are two of the exceptions

Were I to draw one-shape heads, I would feel like there were oodles of interesting chins and forehead designs that I was missing out on by being too simplistic.

Here are some more interesting head shapes I doodled.

I tried to follow the tutor's advice and let the pen roam freely when laying out some basic head shape designs. It helps to give them some interesting variety. Eventually I settled on this, which I designed by first drawing a circle for the top part of the skull and then adding various chins and foreheads to it until I had a design I was pleased with.

A very early, untouched design.

I gave MILAN TURNER big ears, a large round nose and a protruding chin. Then I took the face for a test drive with some wacky expressions.

The mild sneer/ disgust one is my favourite

Doing the facial expressions was my favourite part of this brief. Sometimes I use my own face for reference in my phone reflection. Drawing the faces brought me such inexplicable glee, I think because the expression can be changed dramatically with a really small error, there's a great feeling of accomplishment when I get it just right.

 

Also, I tried a couple of different eye styles. I liked the eyes in "Ethel And Ernest" which I had recently seen but decided that they were more subdued and charming and didn't have the energy to convey MILAN TURNER's brand of energy drink induced mayhem.