Learn how to draw comic characters in this helpful guide and explore some useful tips and tricks.
There’s a lot to think about when creating a comic strip – from developing the story to setting the scene. A vital part of the process is comic character creation, and getting the look just right makes all the difference when building your universe.
Whether you’re creating your comic for a personal project, school, or for a piece of marketing, Adobe Express has the tools to help. Learn how to draw comic characters in this helpful guide and how to get started creating your story.
The first step is to come up with your initial comic character idea. Before you get stuck in, as exciting as it may be, it’s important to brainstorm ideas and visualise what you want them to look like. Draw up some rough sketches, come up with a backstory, and even create a mood board. Try to collect as much information as you can about your comic character until you have a clear idea of what they look like and their basic personality.
For example, think about their:
Though you may be tempted to start drawing your comic book characters straight away, drawing a stick figure is one of the key first steps. It allows you to first portray your character, which can tell the reader a lot about who they are and how they interact with the world. Practically, stick figures also help you to make sure you get the dimensions right before fleshing them out further.
While building out a stick figure is often an important step when looking at how to draw comic characters, it’s not always vital. If you want to jump ahead a few steps, go ahead, but their skeleton can act as a useful template when you start to add more detail.
Your comic character’s head and face are what allow them to express themselves and help readers identify who they are and the sort of person they are. Because they’re so important to the overall character design, it’s essential to get them right.
For example, the shape of your character’s head will, itself, carry with it certain tropes and stereotypes in comic strips. A square head with a sharp jaw often reflects quite a tough or menacing persona, while a longer, triangular face may appear more villainous, and a softer, rounder face may depict a gentler soul. Whatever you choose, starting with these basic shapes is a great place to start.
For the face, you’ll want to practice drawing each aspect – such as eyes, mouth, nose, etc – from multiple angles. Your character will be dynamic, of course, and will not always be facing in one ‘easy-to-draw’ direction. Facial features can be incredibly intricate, so it’s a good idea to start practicing these from real life. Take a look at photos of family and friends or even practice some life drawing while you’re out and about.
Your brand-new face needs some brand-new bones to match it – and muscle. This is where you get to decide on your comic character’s body shape and build, ensuring that the structure is somewhat lifelike (depending on your art style) and in proportion with their size and head design.
If you’ve never drawn muscle and bone before, it’s a good idea to do some research on human anatomy. You need to have an OK understanding of muscle and bone proportions, basic shapes and purposes. This will help when drawing comic book characters in different poses, so you know what appropriate muscles should bend and flex, and what they should look like in action.
You’ve got the basis of your comic character design down; now it’s time to get even more creative. You can start to have some real fun designing and drawing these further details that really bring things to life. These can include:
Whatever you choose to add, don’t be scared to spend some time on this step, refining the little details of your character’s person and personality.
Now it’s time to bring your comic book character into the technicolour world. Depending on who they are, what they do and what they represent, each character will require a different colour palette. For example, if you’re creating a classic hero, think bright shades like yellows and blues. Meanwhile, more questionable, mysterious characters may suit purples and reds. These are comic strip stereotypes, of course, so you may want to mix it up entirely!
Here, you’ll also want to think about their surroundings and backstory. Someone who’s faced a few struggles may often wear darker, more textured clothing to reflect this, while someone slightly more privileged or classically heroic may require a cleaner, smoother look.
Adobe Express has a huge collection of professional creative tools to help you with your comic character design. Whether you’re a complete beginner or already a pro, there are plenty of tools and templates to help you throughout the process.
Adobe Express allows you to create a comic book template from scratch. Whatever your story or universe, use the free comic strip maker to get started.
If you’re not ready to start from a blank slate, you can also explore the free library of comic strip templates. There are hundreds to choose from, so you’re sure to find something that works for your project.
Once you’ve finished drawing your comic book character, you’ll need to create their environment. Use the Adobe Express image editor to create the perfect backdrop and explore a range of editing tools and effects.
Time to bring some life to your comic book world. With the Adobe Express animation maker, you can make animations in minutes. Experiment as your characters move through their world and add that extra flair to your comic strips.
For those finishing touches, learn how to add speech bubbles and captions to your comic strips. Give your characters a voice and try out different speech bubble styles to give flair to your pages.
For creative text effects that bring life to your comic books, you can use the Adobe Express AI text effect tool. Simply add your prompt and it will generate unique text effects in seconds. Then, just tweak and edit until you’re happy and add them to your project!
It’s always a good idea to start with the skeleton when drawing a comic book character. This will act as a helpful template and guide when (quite literally) fleshing out characters, so you can ensure everything stays in proportion.
Practice. Like every skill, practice is key when learning how to draw comic characters. You’ll learn not to be so afraid of mistakes, too, as the more you draw people, hands, feet and faces, the better you’ll become quite naturally. Take time to do some studying too, both in real life and of other people’s work.
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