Cartooning - Drawing the Crowds

Intro

A couple of years ago I blogged about drawing a crowd of santas at a party. I'd included a link to Tom Richmond's article about drawing a crowd scene, but the two scenes weren't very alike.

Latest Funstreak showing crowd in the background

My latest Funstreak cartoon uses many of the techniques discussed in Tom's tutorial, but in a simplified way. This doesn't mean you don't need to put much thought into it. It's well worth considering the dynamics of a crowd as you draw.

Stepping Through the Process

A crowd of people might just be a bunch of ovals to represent faces, but there's a number of things to do in order to make it look convincing:-

1. First we need to consider the density within the packing. People stand shoulder to shoulder, or with slight overlap, which leaves some gap between their heads.

Spacing Between Heads

2. The people behind will position themselves between the heads of those in front to get the best view. This gives a loose hexagonal packing pattern when viewed from above, or if the crowd is on a banked surface.

Loose Hexagonal Packing

3. People are also different heights and sizes, and tend to bunch in an irregular way, so we need to randomise the pattern a little. (I've also reduced the overlap heights.)

Randomising Positions

4. Faces at the top of the crowd block will appear smaller than those at the bottom. This establishes distance. Try to keep the size change a linear progression, so work on no more than two rows at a time to help keep consistency.

Using Reduction - Each Row Back is 90% Size

4. The usual distance effects will apply, so details will diminish and colours may darken or desaturate. In my example I didn't add any details because they're too far away, but I did add a little cell shading.

The Example From My Cartoon

 You can also see that I packed the crowd much tighter than in my previous examples. I really wanted a sea-of-faces with bodies only really visible on the front few rows.

Drawing A Crowd - Christmas Style

Introduction

Well if you remember my Christmas Challenge posting from the other week well you're perhaps aware that I've not yet delivered anything on my promise. But, that's not to say I haven't been working on it. Of course life tends to get in the way but I have (honestly) been drawing a lot more again since I've been in better spirits. And true to my often supressed desires, there's a fair amount of detailed work gone into this one.

OK, I set the bar quite high for myself wanting to put my characters into a room full of Santas, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it.

Don't Crowd Me!

The first thing you do is look to see how other people do crowds, but it soon became apparent that it wasnt a crowd that I wanted! Take a look at the following..

I found Tom Richmond's article which describes a common way to go about it. It is in this simple example just a sea of faces...

Constructing a crowd scene tutorial

It works quite well, but it just wouldn't work in my cartoon frame because the angle is wrong. Also I wanted to focus on what the crowd was wearing, the faces aren't actually that important. Anyway, have a read of the article because there's some interesting points that will help you get a more natural looking crowd (if that's the style you're after).

What I was actually after was a room of socialising santas with a smattering of elves, just to balance out the numbers. I was going to have to do it the hard way. So before I type much else I'll show you what I produced.

The completed crowd scene

Disecting the Scene

I know we all draw using layers, but it I think helps to considering the concept of simple layer elements as a solution before you start drawing. A bit vague?.. well hopefully this will make sense...

1. The obvious first layer is the foreground holding our two LGM characters dressed in their festive costume. This is the easy bit, it was simply a case of finding some old artwork and overpainting a santa suit and an elve outfit. (yes I'm recycling 😉)
2. The next layer back isn't quite so obvious, but it's all the other santas. It's built using a number of overlapping santas (I traced some from examples I found on the web) and added some of my own. I found that the further back examples only required a head or a hat to fill in the spaces, and it soon started to give the impression of a party. Finally to help establish perspective I added the tiled floor to help draw your eyes back and deepen the room.
3. Next step was to add the columns and the tree layer to balance out the top of the frame and establish a midrange backdrop. It also helps lend the idea that they're somewhere quite grandiose.
4. Finally after adding a graduated floodfill background, I traced a room outline and selectively thinned out and erased sections of line to reduce its impact. I only wanted it to suggest a shape, not take your attention.

Busy Busy Busy

The problem you can find with a busy image like this is your main characters from layer 1 can get lost in the santas in layer 2. I used two methods to help here...

1. Choose your positioning of santas in layer 2 so that nothing 'binds' with the details on layer 1. This is more of a problem with the LGM wearing the red outfit. I could have chosen to use more elves behind him, but I wanted the party to be composed primarily of santas. Keep them all on separate layers at first so you can keep moving them around and rescaling them as you build up the crowd.
2. Thicken the black outline on layer 1. I know it sounds a bit heavy handed (excuse the pun) but in practice it's just enough to help keep the two layers distinct.

Finally because this frame will be used for a cartoon, leave space (or keep detail minimal) for speech bubbles and logos. Here there is space top and bottom where nothing important would be lost.

Update: 28/12/2016 - http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/55/