Drawing Tutorial: How to Generate Great ideas for Character Design

Learn where ideas come from when creating characters and worlds so you can draw your own, with Nathan Jurevicius

It’s easy to think we are out of ideas but, with a little creativity, you will find that there are a lot more characters to be designed inside your head than you realize.

Nathan Jurevicius is a creative director and designer who has created characters for video games, toys, virtual reality stories, and editorials. In this tutorial, he shares a simple way to tap into your creativity.

1. Free your creativity

Automatic or free drawing is an easy way to get what’s hidden in your head onto paper. Get a large piece of paper and challenge yourself to draw on it constantly for a short period of time. Let the pencil go wherever your mind takes it.

Your drawing will turn thoughts into ideas.

2. Review your creation

Look over what your subconscious has let go. Analysing your drawing will help you isolate elements that, as the drawer, you will be able to understand, in order to be able to refine them at a later point.

Now, you can understand and develop your ideas.

3. Create complex concepts

While an original idea may be impossible to come by, you can still be creative with what already exists. Just like a horse and a horn were mixed to create a unicorn, you can blend the elements you identified in your own drawings with objects in the real world until you strike a perfect balance.

If you liked this challenge, you can learn to illustrate original characters and visualize the environment in which they live on Nathan Jurevicius’s online course Illustrated Character Design and World Creation.

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