Exercise 5: The many faces of Blob

Can you capture great expression in a character’s eyes? Yes!

I believe that capturing expression is the key to creating great characters. This is what brings cartoons to life and gives them their special personalities we love so much.

There are lots of ways to capture expression in your characters. In this section, we’re going to focus on our character’s faces. For this first exercise, it’s all about the eyes. We’ll draw one of my favourite characters – Blob!

I’ll show you how expressive a character can look when you focus on changing how you draw the eyes. Even in a character as simple as Blob.

Let’s see what expressions we can capture on The many faces of Blob!

Doodle Challenge!

Draw Blob again but this time draw him with different expressions. Try drawing a shy, thoughtful, lonely, sad, or scared Blob. Start by drawing a ‘normal’ Blob, just like we did in this exercise. Then draw your five more Blob characters. Focus on how you draw Blob’s eyes to show these expressions. If you get stuck, try making the face yourself in the mirror and look at what your eyes do when you make that expression. Have fun capturing expression in the eyes!