Storytelling Portraits
Are your characters' faces telling a story?
Before a character speaks, before they move, before we know their backstory, their face already gives us clues. Are they dangerous? Kind? Naive? Protective? Clever? Proud?
In this course, I’ll teach you how to design original faces for your characters using a simple, practical system. I'll show you how to design original character faces that express personality, support the story, and feel memorable at first glance.
The 10 Head Volumes.
We’ll begin with a simplified mannequin of the head. Instead of memorizing complicated anatomy, you’ll learn how to assemble these pieces like building blocks, creating a solid three-dimensional head that can be transformed, pushed, and designed with intention.
Capturing Real Faces
Then we’ll study how to take inspiration from real people by moving those pieces around to understand likeness and personality. After that, we’ll enter the heart of the course: the archetype system.
The 7 Archetypes
We’ll study seven character archetypes: The Lion, Bear, Ox, Snake, Fox, Owl, and Pup. We will look at plenty of examples from movies, animation, and games. We will examine how their shapes, proportions, and facial features function, and we will design our own female and male versions of each archetype.
Designing a Face that Tells a Story
By the end, you’ll design a full character portrait from scratch; we will create our own interpretation of the evil witch in Snow White, but set in the pre-Columbian Bribri culture of Costa Rica. You’ll see the full process: design iterations, color palette, final portrait, pose, personality, light, and shadow.
This course is perfect for artists who want their characters to feel more specific, expressive, and story-driven.
It is especially useful if you:
- Want to create original faces for your characters
- Feel like your characters look too generic
- Want faces that express personality and story role
- Like character design, comics, animation, games, or visual development
- Want a simple head construction method without heavy anatomy
- Want to capture likeness from real people and turn it into character design
- Want to create portfolio-ready character portraits in a cel-shaded comic style
It is both, but the main focus is character design. You will learn how to build faces, but always with the goal of creating original characters that support a story.
Yes, especially if you want a simple way to start designing character faces. It is also useful for intermediate artists who want their characters to feel less generic.
No. This course uses a simplified 3D mannequin made from basic shapes, so you can focus on structure and design instead of complicated anatomy terms.
The course explores seven story-driven face archetypes: Lion, Bear, Ox, Snake, Fox, Owl, and Pup. Each one helps you understand how shape language and facial design can communicate personality and role.
How to Draw Faces Like a Pro, another of my courses, is the complete foundation for understanding and drawing faces. Storytelling Portraits is more focused on designing original character faces for a story.
Storytelling Portraits focuses on designing the character’s face and role. How to Paint Stylized Portraits, another one of my courses, focuses on painting: values, lighting, color, and final stylized rendering.
