Following on from my last post about how the designs of the characters in my graphic novel, Oh Brother, have changed over the 7-ish years I’ve been working on the book, this post is about my absolute favourite thing: drawing emotions!
Once I’d settled on the redesigns, I wanted to make sure that I could draw these characters experiencing lots of different emotions but still remaining recognisable, even when their faces were squashed or stretched out of their neutral positions. Drawing emotions is something I’ve always enjoyed doing for some reason, maybe it’s the power behind capturing feelings or emotions (which I can find pretty hard to describe with words but much easier to capture with drawings).
I love making an emotion chart for my characters as it really helps me practice keeping the character consistent (something that I think is important for easy reading in comics: you don’t want to be questioning which character is which while trying to enjoy a story). Making these charts also means that I’ve drawn the character’s heads at least 20 more times before I even start on the book (and each time I draw them, it helps me to really settle on their character design).
Here are the character emotion charts I made for the main Oh Brother characters when I first started working on the book (2016) and last year (2022) before I started working on the thumbnails.
