Dynamic Animal Illustration for Children’s Stories
A course by Julie Mellan , Illustrator
Learn to draw anthropomorphic characters that bring joy to young readers by exploring the fundamentals of animal anatomy, posing, and stylization
Learn to draw anthropomorphic characters that bring joy to young readers by exploring the fundamentals of animal anatomy, posing, and stylization
Illustrating for children’s stories is an opportunity to draw evocative and playful characters that bring joy to young readers. Illustrator Julie Mellan turned her childhood love for drawing into a full-time career and has since worked on children’s books published by Penguin Random House, Clavis, and Fleurus.
In this course, Julie teaches you how to create dynamic character illustrations of your own. Explore how to use animal anatomy, observation, and other drawing techniques to illustrate expressive anthropomorphic characters for children’s stories. Light up the imagination of young readers through character illustration.
This is Julie’s second Domestika course. In her first, Animal Characters in Watercolor for Children’s Books, she takes you through the process of bringing animal characters to life in watercolor form.
What will you learn in this online course?
14 lessons & 14 downloads
- 97% positive reviews (294)
- 13,300 students
- 14 lessons (1h 58m)
- 14 additional resources (5 files)
- Online and at your own pace
- Available on the app
- Audio: English
- English · Spanish · Portuguese · German · French · Italian · Polish · Dutch
- Level: Beginner
- Unlimited access forever
What is this course's project?
Create a dynamic and expressive illustration of an animal of your choice for a children’s story.
Projects by course students
Who is this online course for?
This course is for anyone with an interest in learning to illustrate dynamic characters for children’s stories
Requirements and materials
No previous experience is required.
In terms of materials, you will need paper, a pencil, an eraser, and some visual references for inspiration.
Reviews
A course by Julie Mellan
Julie Mellan is a French illustrator and self-confessed watercolor addict who specializes in illustrations for children’s books. She spent her childhood reading Beatrix Potter’s books and drawing animal characters from Disney movies, before going on to study classic drawing, painting, illustration, and animation at the French art school École Émile Cohl. After graduating, she continued to combine sketching and watercolors to create expressive animal characters, and eventually published her first book in 2013.
Julie uses traditional mediums to tell stories through her illustrations and create connections between characters. Her work has appeared in children’s books published by the likes of Penguin Random House, Clavis, and Fleurus.
Content
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U1
Introduction
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About Me
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Influences
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U2
The Basic Body Structure
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The Materials Needed
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Defining the Intention: the Action Line
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The Three Parts of an Animal
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The Perspective
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U3
Building around the Structure
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Animal Anatomy
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Observation
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Stylization
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U4
Developing the Character
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Doodling
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The Sketch
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Structure, Stability, and Volumes
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Honing and Final Touches
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Anthropomorphic Characters
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FP
Final project
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Dynamic Animal Illustration for Children’s Stories
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What to expect from a Domestika course
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Learn at your own pace
Enjoy learning from home without a set schedule and with an easy-to-follow method. You set your own pace.
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Learn from the best professionals
Learn valuable methods and techniques explained by top experts in the creative sector.
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Meet expert teachers
Each expert teaches what they do best, with clear guidelines, true passion, and professional insight in every lesson.
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Certificates
PlusIf you're a Plus member, get a custom certificate signed by your teacher for every course. Share it on your portfolio, social media, or wherever you like.
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Get front-row seats
Videos of the highest quality, so you don't miss a single detail. With unlimited access, you can watch them as many times as you need to perfect your technique.
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Share knowledge and ideas
Ask questions, request feedback, or offer solutions. Share your learning experience with other students in the community who are as passionate about creativity as you are.
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Connect with a global creative community
The community is home to millions of people from around the world who are curious and passionate about exploring and expressing their creativity.
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Watch professionally produced courses
Domestika curates its teacher roster and produces every course in-house to ensure a high-quality online learning experience.
FAQs
Domestika's courses are online classes that provide you with the tools and skills you need to complete a specific project. Every step of the project combines video lessons with complementary instructional material, so you can learn by doing. Domestika's courses also allow you to share your own projects with the teacher and with other students, creating a dynamic course community.
All courses are 100% online, so once they're published, courses start and finish whenever you want. You set the pace of the class. You can go back to review what interests you most and skip what you already know, ask questions, answer questions, share your projects, and more.
The courses are divided into different units. Each one includes lessons, informational text, tasks, and practice exercises to help you carry out your project step by step, with additional complementary resources and downloads. You'll also have access to an exclusive forum where you can interact with the teacher and with other students, as well as share your work and your course project, creating a community around the course.
You can redeem the course you received by accessing the redeeming page and entering your gift code.
meganmakesartvt
PlusThe step-by-step guide, beginning with real animal anatomy and working toward anthropomorphizing was amazing. As we went along, I realized that you can't truly understand how to make dynamic picture book animal characters without understanding how their real-life counterparts act, move, etc. It has me thinking about illustration from a whole new perspective. Thank you!
sarahlikestodraw
PlusI 100% recommend this course for animal lovers.
nattapontera
Saw the recommended episode. Makes me want to draw illustrations for children's stories immediately. In case you want to use it for further design work.
clare_jayne_creates
I thoroughly enjoyed this course and it will be one that I revisit a few times. I took this course because I am a puppeteer and sculptor, so I love animation and character design, but I have always struggled when translating my 3D character work into 2D artistic mediums. Learning the basic principles of how to do this has really helped! The resources are beginner friendly and the teaching is clear and relaxed, making it very accessible and non-intimidating as a place to start in illustration.
malgosia_kawczynska
Muy bien curso.
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