Do cartoon characters require anatomy studies??

manilamerc

Me and my brother are having a discussion if anatomy is required or is helpful for designing cartoon characters. I am more on the side of it is required and my brother is more on the side that it isn't. When I say anatomy I mean skeletal, muscular, fat tissue, etc. of human or animal.

Let's take Crash Bandicoot. Was anatomy a big help designing this character?

For me I think anatomy is needed to make good looking cartoon characters. I think artists take in the human skull for example and use it as a base and exaggerate some features but still keep the basic skull in there.

I need to know your thoughts on this as me and my brother always come back to this discussion.

Ace-Angel

In current and next gen? Yes, they're the basis (especially for humane characters) to get the proper deformations and such going on, without them, your human looking character that is cartoony would have very little to compare to.

In older gen however, concept at most, modeling would have been pointless since you were really limited to extremely blocky models inside and out to make things run, Bandicoot being a prime example, very little actual model based anatomy.

Actually, you could make a comparison of Bandicoot and Ratchet (from Ratchet and Clank) to see what generational change has led to.

pior

(double post)

pior

Yes !

Even the most stylized (and successful !) cartoony character designs require a strong understanding of anatomy. For instance, this cartoon would have not been possible without a strong understanding of the female figure :

jfeez

Yes!! How else would you know what forms to exaggerate?

poopipe

yes and no

you don't have to know what everything is called and you don't have to be able to render a beautifully formed realistic human to turn out some awesome stylised character designs

however - if you don't have a good understanding of proportions and the mechanical structure of a body you'll fail miserably when you start trying to distort them.

Valandar

The best way I've ever heard it put:

"You must understand the rules to know when and how to break them."

A 'toon' character created by someone who understands anatomy looks like a cartoon character. A 'toon' character created by someone who does not looks like a bad cartoon character.

Oh, and don't forget, you also have to have the same knowledge of how edgeloops should flow, especially in the face.

JoshWilkinson

jfeez beat me to it; cartoon characters are created in a way that makes anatomy exaggerated or stylized. understanding that anatomy is crucial.

pior posted a perfect example of a stylized, exaggerated female character. you could boil that down to simple line work and shapes, but imagine trying to conceive that cartoon in the concept phase. i imagine tons of iterations of similar designs were canned before that was perfected.