Character Design: A Complete Guide to Drawing 2D Characters (Udemy.com)
Learn to Design & Draw Your Own Characters: Drawing for Animation, Manga, Anime, Cartoon, Comics, Video Games+
Created by: Video School
Last updated October 2024
What you will learn
- Download a 100-page PDF with Skill-Testing Worksheets!
- Use a 2-Step Character Design Workflow
- How to Create Amazing Characters From Scratch
- How to Draw Better Muscle Anatomy
- How to Give Your Character a Dynamic Pose
- How to Understand Fabric Folds for Clothes
- How to Produce Lineart, Add Color, and Cel Shade Digitally
- How to Draw the Human Face Accurately
How it compares
Against the other 175 rated Udemy courses in Digital Painting on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.4 out of 5higher than 26% of them
- Reviews176#82 of 176 by number of reviews
- Length18.5 hourslonger than 92% of them
- Last updatedOctober 2024more recently than 77% of them
Course Description
Do you want to be able to draw characters from your imagination?
Perhaps you want to draw characters for video games or movies? Or start your own comic series?
If you said yes, this is the perfect course to learn character design.
You'll learn the entire process from understanding shapes and shape language, to drawing the human head & figure. You'll learn how to draw several poses for your characters; understand how lighting can effect the mood and style of your character; and transform your hand-drawn character into digital art.
Enroll now and get instant access to:
18.5+ hours of video lessons
100 page workbook PDF
Student drawing community
Premium Instructor support
Lifetime updates to the class
How does the course work?
Jump right in with drawing warm up exercises. Then, learn our recommended tools and jump right into drawing character silhouettes. From there, you'll learn how simple shapes can give off different feelings - friendly vs. mean, good vs. evil, etc. You'll then learn how to draw the human head and figure.
Once you've learned all of these basics, you'll put it all together with some full character designs. After drawing your first full characters, you'll learn different poses to draw your character in.
The rest of the course covers some advanced drawing techniques, lighting styles, Photoshop skills, as well as deeper dives into character elements like hair, cloth, armor and more.
This is a very practical course! You'll be drawing and sketching your own characters throughout the entire class! And by the end of class, you should have several characters drawn, and the skills to draw any character from your imagination!
Why take this course from us?
Being able to create characters from your imagination is a sought after skill that is required by most major media companies in some aspect of their creative process. Whether it is to create films, games, or comic books, there is always a spot for someone who can draft up new, innovative, and magical ideas to bring the project to life. Even in the 21st century where much of the world's entertainment is in 3D, a skilled 2D illustrator is a vital asset in providing the initial designs that later become sculpted and rigged assets in 3D software.
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with theoretical and practical knowledge that will be immediately useful when trying to get better at character drawing. This course is targeted towards hobbyists as well as beginners who seek to be professionals. Each topic will be taught at a comfortable pace and reiterated multiple times throughout the course. Students who enroll in this course will learn to think like an artist and adapt to a workflow that will allow them to produce designs that can be used by a 3D modeler in the studio pipeline.
Who is your course instructor?
This course is led by Kevin Gardin, the founder of Drawcademy, in partnership with Video School, creators of several top-rated courses in the fields of art, design, photography and video creation. Kevin has been drawing his own characters for years, both professionally and as a hobbyist. He is excited to share his knowledge and passion with you.
Are you ready to start your own character design journey?
We're so excited that you're here reading this course description, and know that once you enroll you won't regret it.
Click that enroll button and start drawing today!
Instructor Details
- 4.4 Rating
176 Reviews
Video School
Learn creative skills, from absolute beginner to advanced mastery.
Video School exists to help you succeed in life. Each course has been hand-tailored to teach a specific skill from photography and video to art, design and business.
Whether you’re trying to learn a new skill from scratch, or want to refresh your memory on something you’ve learned in the past, you’ve come to the right place.
Education makes the world a better place. Make your world better with new skills!
Our courses can be watched 24/7 wherever you are. Most are fully downloadable so you can take them with you. You can also view them on mobile devices with the Udemy mobile app.
All courses have a 30-day money-back guarantee so that you can check it out, make sure it’s the right course for you, and get a refund if it’s not!
More courses by Video School
Adobe Illustrator CC - Essentials Training Course (2025)
4.8 (33,107 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 12.1h
$124.99
Maya for Beginners: Complete Guide to 3D Animation in Maya (2026)
4.6 (8,648 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 29.9h
$159.99
Procreate: Digital Art, Illustration, Animation on Your iPad (2024)
4.6 (4,323 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 16.3h
$16.99
AI-900: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals AI-900 Practice Test (2025)
4.5 (3,428 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
$19.99
Adobe Audition CC: The Beginner's Guide to Adobe Audition (2024)
4.5 (1,969 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 2.3h
$10.99
More Digital Painting courses
Character Art School: Complete Coloring & Painting (2026)
4.8 (6,042 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 19.5h
$34.99
Procreate Masterclass: Digital Drawing on the iPad (2023)
4.8 (1,744 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 18.2h
$94.99
Digital painting with Krita 5.0 intermediate level (2022)
4.8 (271 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 6.8h
$79.99
Reviews
By Hayley Robinson on 3/24/2024
Very easy to follow lectures and tutorials. Boosts confidence to see drawings coming to life. Cheers
By Tathan Allen on 12/18/2023
Easy to follow and gives you room for creativity!
By Rohit Mohan on 11/3/2022
Really loved the course, the course covers in detail everything i needed to know about creating characters. Thank you
By Mariam Mohamed saleh on 8/1/2022
perfect course as i expected. it helps me alot improving my skills
By Naman Jaloria on 6/26/2022
Awesome course and interactive instructor. Always there to solve your doubts regarding the course.
By Siddharth Rangnekar on 6/30/2021
this course is amazing as they start from the very basics and then move on ahead a step at a time, I like the way this is progresssing
By Simon Wiediger on 5/11/2021
Perfect, maybe you have to be on a little more advanced level
By Ivo Ivanov on 2/19/2021
Really simple but usefull tips how to draw lines and shapes!
By LeHavre Buck on 2/10/2021
Didn't know I was going to need a sharpie .under impression could get by with tool you showed
By Charlie Ashton on 8/14/2024
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 88 / 100












