Drawing and Rigging My First Character For My Resident Dragon, 2D Animated Web Series

This will be the definitive version of
my TET Avatar character rig.

Following on from my introductory post to Building My Two Cartoon Web Series in this post I will be showing you the behind the scenes on the steps I'm following to draw and rig the first Resident Dragon character, TET, who is an avatar of myself.

Typically you wouldn't start a web series by rigging characters but I've already scripted three of the six 2-3 minute episodes, and storyboarded the first two well over two years ago. Both storyboards are actually on my Instagram account if you dig far enough. 

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A post shared by David Arandle (@etourist.tet)

The Easy Way to Draw Front Facing Human Characters

Since all the characters for this series are pretty well defined in my Resident Dragon joke cartoons I'm able to start simply by sketching my first character in a front facing T-pose using my preferred bitmap drawing application, Krita.

When drawing front facing human characters for rigging I always use the horizontal mirror function in my graphics editor. Since humans are generally symmetrical it saves me time and ensures all the limbs are identical opposites.

Krita's Horizontal Mirror tool helps create perfectly symmetrical characters
and saves you time. Turn off mirroring to add any non symmetrical features.

Convert a Front Facing Character to a Three Quarter, Side Facing Character with this Shortcut 

Front facing characters are useful to have but a three quarter (315 degree), side facing character is more versatile as, it can be used as a substitute for both full side facing (90 or 270 degree) angles, as well as front facing when teamed with a three sixty degree head. It also gives your character the ability to walk/run side to side.

The easiest shortcut to a side facing character rig is to draw all your front facing character limbs in such a way that they'll also work on a side facing character (you can use the same three sixty degree head since that already can turn to the side). Then all you need to do is create a new side facing, torso/hip sprite.

My side facing version of the character uses the same arms, legs, and head. Only the torso/hip
sprite has been completely redrawn. Note that I did skew the feet back slightly to maintain the character's balance, standing still but that is a far cry from a complete redraw.

Turning the Character into a Vector Image Using Inkscape

Since I'm aiming for my series to be of a higher quality, all the art will be vector art. This will not only keep all my lines sharp but will also give me access to vector color management. This can be very useful for giving your character simple costume changes like removing a jacket simply by turning the jacket 'off' through color management.

Initially I was going to use Affinity Designer as my Vector tool of choice but I found, what should be some of the most basic drawing tools, worked very differently to what they do in my preferred Vector tool, Inkscape. It was such a problem that I decided to drop Affinity just for the drawing element, and come back to it when it was time to put my sprites into Cartoon Animator's vector character template.

In Inkscape I simply imported my finished art from Krita and manually traced just the essential elements. Again I only drew half of the character, flipping each element to get the other half and then combining them together.

The initial trace of the character in Inkscape with just the essential elements
not yet divided into the various sprites needed for a completely rigged character.

From here I systematically went through, renaming all the sprites, breaking them up into the actual parts needed, creating all the joints, and coloring everything with one eye on how each part could be utilised to create different outfit combinations with color management.

Color Management and Joints

Color Management is the reason I don't start beginners out with vector characters in my Learn Cartoon Animator Rigging Courses. While you could completely ignore it, you may as well be using bitmap characters if you do. It's a powerful system that lets you build in multiple outfit variations, and completely different looks to the point where you can make multiple characters from one character rig.

Since my TET character is nearly always seen in his gray suit I didn't want to go too crazy with multiple outfit variations that I may never use. I'm mostly using color management to remove his jacket and tie, and to turn his button up shirt into a long sleeve T-shirt.

As my characters all have outlines I also have to deal with the issue of making sure the outlines don't break when the joints are moved. If you'd like to know how to do this I have a detailed video breakdown, Rig 2D Characters with Outlines, 4 Methods for Rigging Joints.

The main image shows TET wearing his standard gray suit. The top two
smaller images show variations I can create through color management
just by making those layers invisible. The bottom smaller image shows
how the arm and leg joints can move without the outline breaking.

The Absence of Shading?

You may have noticed the character uses only flat colors without shading. This is intentional. I'm hoping to add shading in post production in my video editor. By not having any shading on the character I should be able to light the character for any scene as needed.

I will have to do some more extensive tests on that idea but I'm pretty sure it should work. Worst case my series will all be flat color - or I'll have to go through and add shading to the characters directly.

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That's where the character is at, at the time of writing. By the next update I hope to have the front facing version fully rigged with some animation tests to show you.

If you'd like to see more of this particular work in progress I have made a video on my AnimLife YouTube channel (and embeded below) that demonstrates everything talked about in this post but with a lot more detail and actual demonstrations.

Drawing and Rigging Tips for the First Character in my 2D Animated Series Cartoon, Resident Dragon

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