Illustrating Characters and the Stories They Tell with Mary Jane Begin

I liked how all got along, the tone and friendliness of the instructor, the helpful suggestions, and what the students were working on. One little question, no men wanted to be apart of the experience.

This was amazing experience, I learned a lot from these lessons, skills which i learned in this classes helped me to be better at my job of digital artist, Thank you very much!

This is a really fun little class. I would definitely recommend it if you are suffering from artist's block, as the exercises are simple but effective in unlocking imagination and getting the wheels turning again. I appreciated all the sidebar tips about using scale, line weight/direction, and color to communicate personality or as tools for adding contrast or "oomph" to a drawing.

This class is both instructional AND motivational! I especially loved how relatable MJ was even though she teaches art at RISD, she still feeling rusty if she hasn't drawn any characters in a while great tips for finding secondary sources of motivation. I am even more inspired to keep up the work on my skills! Thanks for this course - I wish I'd had access to something like this when I was a kid and still formulating my career plan. But, better late than never to devour this information as an adult!

Wonderful teacher and very inspirational. Describes and gives good ideas on building characters, their personalities and how to make stories with characters. Very good how she describes how you build them and how you can use references. Also going trough a bit of the drawing process and the importance of colour. The title of the course describes this course well. That`s what to expect of this class. It is not just about the drawing.

Wow... Thank you so much, MJ! What an absolute superstar! I really appreciate your artistic transparency in all of your examples of work + your thought process. It has made a HUGE difference to my creative mindset. And for that, I am very grateful. I can't wait to see what I can now create with all of these new skills that you given me. Good things! Michelle -x-

I loved this class. The exercises are fun and inspiring. I was actually doing research to help me develop my own class when I bought this course and I'm thrilled I did. Bonus for me: I am going to work on developing a character and story I've left on the shelf for about four years thanks to this experience. I highly recommend to anyone of all skill levels.

I didn’t pay enough attention to the description so was surprised by the focus of the class — but in a definitely good way. As a member of SCBWI, I’ve learned a lot about illustrating characters by going to conferences and participating in our active local group. Most of the instruction I’ve received, as I suspect is also the case with most formal instruction, has been from the point of view of being given a character from a story to illustrate. This class covers creating a story based on the characters you draw, placing the drawing first and finding the story as you work. Of course there is overlap in the two approaches — overlap that emphasizes important steps. The creativity process is demonstrated clearly and in depth here in a gently encouraging way. However, while I, like the instructor, believe that everyone can be creative, I also question whether this approach would work for all illustrators: not all have time to write the stories that go with the characters they create, as ours is usually a business driven by clients who already have a story and characters. I’m not saying that this would not be a valuable class for them, just mentioning the different take on the subject. I had expected more of the usual angle of how to create a page of character sketches for your portfolio or how to develop the illustration of a character from a manuscript. Though help with these topics is partially covered in the progress of the class, they are not the main focus. All-in-all, the different approach is to the credit of the class — encouraging and expanding a student’s horizons. Also, plenty of little gems are thrown in during the lecture and demos, from techniques to the psychology of creativity. The instructor is competent, clear, and pleasant. She conveyed a lot of information that I didn’t realize until I was thinking about it later. One note: the titles for the breakdown of the demo are not exactly accurate, The demo is of the instructor creating one character as she draws. I understand that the producers wanted to segment it, but really it’s one continuous process, and some of the titles for those lessons are misleading.

Very nice class, I really like it. It works more like a workshop, very dynamic.

The character development advise is very helpful. I started out with one version of the main character and then developed a totally different version. I am still working on the story telling and expressions.

Such a great class! MJ is really inspiring and encouraging. I've never known how to approach drawing characters, but now I feel much more capable....hoping to one day write and draw my own children's book!

Amazing lecture! Everything an illustrator learns in art school covered! Thank you for sharing. I miss the imput and critiques I experienced during my college years and this class brought to mind so many enjoyable memories. The advice was given in a generous and kind, inspiring way!

Thank you so much!! I really enjoyed hearing Mary Jane Begin's insights and the encouragement to dig into character creation.