Designing Things from an Anthropomorphic Angle

This was an actual request from one of you through our last survey: "Learning how to design things from an anthropomorphic angle. I feel that design is shown a lot without actually being talked about online."

Creating anthropomorphic versions of objects or animals, in simple terms, is understanding what their function is, their visual characteristics, and their most commonly known facts across society. For instance, let's pick up a tool like a pencil and apply this logic.

Pencil

• Function: Used for writing, sketching, erasing, shading, detailing, and marking.
• Composition: Made of graphite, wood, rubber (for the eraser), clay (mixed with graphite), metal (for the ferrule), and paint.
• Visual Characteristics: Appears cylindrical or hexagonal, sharpened at one end, long, slender, and comes in various colors.
• Professions That Use It: Students, comic artists, fashion designers, calligraphers, architects, storyboard artists, and anyone whose work involves taking notes.

In order to make non-living things feel alive, you simply need to think about the function or characteristics of the subject, object, tool, etc. Based on that, try to think of a situation where a character is performing a certain characteristic in relation to the subject. For instance, if it's a "pencil," you have several things to draw inspiration from and create a composition, like the ones previously mentioned.

From that train of thought, you can slowly build up a character's background, similar to what I do in the Mastering Maestro post in the "Concept" section. Imagine a simple situation or a casual story where your character can perform the characteristic that they share with the object. In that sense, if the pencil character is a student, he would be actually using the pencil or performing an action that relates to the pencil shape, color, or context.

Maybe you want to go a bit abstract and choose a totally different subject to mix with the pencil, like a soldier in a war shooting graphite against a paper sheet, but keep in mind that regardless of the situation you are trying to portray, at some degree there must be some kind of relation with the points previously addressed about the pencil itself. Maintaining this key connection will ensure your audience understands your intention, as it might be very easy to lose them with details.

If the concept is interesting to you, your next step is drawing. This can be through imagination or through references. If you don't have the capacity to build it all up from memory (like many beginner artists strive for), simply search for a series of references that match your initial idea and use them to build up your overall concept. You will find this process applied to every single one of my latest illustrations, described in the Process Video posts along with the PSD File.

Here is a simple exercise you can try out.

1. Choose one object, the more casual the better.
2. List its function, composition, visual characteristics, and professions in which the object is often associated, perhaps even the most popular association people assign to the object.
3. Choose a profession for your character, the profession that is commonly associated with the object; professions depend on that tool or object.
4. Involve the character in a conflict or situation where it must perform its duty or one of the characteristics of the object previously mentioned.
5. Write it down in a sentence.

Example

• Ref: Pencil
• Color: red, yellow, grey/black
• Action: Fashion designer using his or her red hair (pencil eraser) to get rid of graphite-like strokes.
• Costume: Eccentric outfit, matching pencil colors and symbols with symbols associated with its profession.
• Symbols Associated with its profession: Fashion designer objects. Mannequins, fabric swatches, sewing machines, pattern drafting tools, dress forms, tailor's chalk, sketchbooks, textile samples, draping tapes, cutting mats.

This is a very rough example of idea development, as you can see I started with a pencil, and that opened the door to more ideas in relation to the research conducted and character development.

Creating things like this is a skill. I'm sharing with you the way I approach this subject, but it's through these simple practices where you can slowly develop these processes more intuitively. In the meantime, please share with me your thoughts. I'm more than eager to guide you so you can make your own ideas real.

Let's brainstorm!