September 2025
This note is about drawing character sheets. For me a character sheet is, ideally, one sheet of paper with the same character in different positions, with different expressions and from different angles along with little rules or notes about how this character can be drawn. It is a way of finding out what it feels like to draw a character repeatedly and so there is jeopardy: it could surprise me now much I find to enjoy or it could fall apart because a character is more fiddly than they first seemed. Sometimes a character is just great to draw and it makes me laugh or I am charmed with how they curl up or sniff or scratch or stretch. Sometimes you have a great silhouette on paper and then how they move in a three dimensional space becomes a bit of a game. That is the character sheet test.
I have a mouse character called sprout and it is so simple, just dots for eyes and a ball for a head and a little black nose is all it is, and the the ears are just a wiggle that I draw quickly. It is a barely there mouse and I just love drawing it. The wiggle ears vary a bit each time which works within a surprisingly big range of different wiggles but sometimes I have to redraw them and the eye position to nose can't drift too much. There is something about the string arms and legs and ball for a body that is just easy and fun.
Another mouse character that I call Perkins has a body that, as I was drawing the character sheet, just started to move like a hinge, because the top of their head and nose sort of form one point that widens to attached to their body and that goes on to form another point where their tail begins. They hinge between their head and body. Then it became a question of how wide or closed I can have this hinge and the answer is there are no limits, it all works very pleasingly.
Then I have a mouse character that came out of the marbling that I described in a the note for August 2025. It is just a wiggle for a body that I just dashed a long thin snout to and it moves really well somehow on character sheets. I had a different body shape for my main character called Stilton, but this wiggle body character is so much more fun to draw than what I first planned that it has sort of won the title role.
Next month I will describe some of the settings for the Stilton adventure comic I'm drawing and some of the perspective techniques I'm playing with.