Life Drawing in Animation - Character Design

Life drawing plays a huge part in character design, because without practicing anatomy you won't have a proper grasp on human anatomy, and therefore will not be able to create an anatomically correct character. You would also need it to develop your own art style, so that you can stylise/simplify the character. Mike Matessi's book Force: Character Design from Life Drawing basically says this. If you can establish force with a character then that will help define it. Do the shapes you draw allow the character to move in the way you would allow it too? Does the character look enough like a human to add appeal? Is their age defined well enough, or their gender, or even their personality? These are all principles to consider when incorporating life-drawing to character design.