Hillary the astronaut; how to draw a caricature

Recently I have been tinkering on some ClojureScript animations using Reanimated. One problem I ran into was that most of the drawing tools available to me were too complex for my needs. Most of the time I was fine creating with circles and rectangles, but I wanted some characters with a more hand drawn feel. So I built Napkindo. Here is a screencast that shows it in action:





Transcript:

Hi!

I’m CoderX and today I will show you how to draw a caricature in Napkindo. Let’s draw Hillary.

  1. First find some headshots or crop a picture.
  2. Start a new Napkindo and select the picture as the background.
  3. Trace the facial features.
    Infuse a bit of personality as you go by exaggerating key features.
  4. Trace and elaborate their hair. Simple strokes work best.
  5. What’s the first thing that comes to mind about this person? Think up an action scenario that embodies them. Do they have a favourite hobby or activity? Hillary wrote to NASA as a child inquiring how to become an astronaut.
    Google some reference images.
  6. Freehand in the scene peripheries.
  7. Let’s give our sketch a title: Hillary the astronaut.

As you can see, it doesn’t take much time or effort to produce a good looking, cartoonish caricature. So why not spend 10 minutes and draw a loved one or colleague?

It is a great way to show people that you take an interest in them. People sometimes use them as their avatars, or just for a laugh.

I drew a sketch of my colleagues every day for the past month, and they loved it.



They started using them as avatars in our chat rooms.





If this revived in you a desire to draw, I recommend you also watch
“Why people believe they can’t draw - and how to prove they can”
by Graham Shaw
We are all born creative.


Thanks for watching!

If you are interested in why SVG is useful in animation and drawing, I also recommend you check out Sketch n' Sketch https://youtu.be/YuGVC8VqXz0


This is CoderX, the voice for the screencast: