Digital Story Booklet Character Design Guide

In this post, we will guide you through each step of the “Book Character” design process. There are many other strategies to creating your character, but this is the most basic and simple.

Step 1) Full Face or Head & Torso

The first step is to decide if the front cover of your Digital Story Booklet will be your character’s entire face or a smaller head and torso. Below is an example character that uses each style.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2) Add a Background

Build your character by layering each element from the back to the front. For a Full Face character, the background can be their skin color. For a Head & Torso character, the background can be anything such as a landscape, sky, colors, or just white space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3) Add Facial Features

For a Full Face character, you may add eyes, a nose, a mouth, and other features. For a Head & Torso character, you should determine the size of the character’s head before adding these features. You can draw your face, use an already created face in the stickers section, or import your own image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4) Add Clothing & Accessories

The entire cover of the Full Face character is a face, so only their legs and arms need clothing and accessories. Before adding clothing and accessories to a Head & Torso character, you should draw the rest of their body with the character’s skin color. Remember to select the elements and use the “Layer Up” and “Layer Down” tool to keep things layered properly. For example, when you draw above the face, you would use the select tool, click on the face and use “Layer Up.” Or, you could select the brush strokes and use “Layer Down.” When you are done, you can add clothing and accessories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 5) Fine Details

At this point, your Book Character may already be completely finished. Some people like to go over their design in close detail to make things pop out and look a bit better. For example, you can use a black paint brush to draw outlines in certain areas to have those objects pop out more. You can refine details in the background and add other small elements where desired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 6) Download & Share!

Make sure to download your final character. It will download to your computer as an image file. You can also save any character and it will be preserved in the “Open” folder. Once saved, you can create a new character and revisit the previous character to edit or download. If you use an incognito browser or block cookies, saving functionality will not work.