Anime characters come in all different shapes and sizes, and they’re created using every kind of art style out there. For this reason, you have plenty of reference material to choose from when drawing your own original character! In fact, you might have trouble choosing between them all! One way to narrow down your options is by finding an anime base that looks similar to the character you want to draw, but even then you’ll still have several poses to choose from, so it can be hard to decide which one works best for your needs.
Anime Bases to Download for Free:
There are a lot of free anime bases download, but as with most things, you get what you pay for. A good anime base will be clear enough that you can trace it easily, without being so large that it will take up your entire screen or so small that it doesn’t show important facial features. It should also have enough layers to create a full-body image (or as close to full-body as possible).
The best part? Bases are easy and free. You don’t need any special software; just download an image (we recommend using Google Chrome’s image-search feature) and start sketching! If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out our favorite places to find quality bases below
How to Use Anime Bases:
Once you have your favorite character’s base, you can use it to sketch out drawings as practice. If your drawing isn’t coming out quite right, take a look at your anime base to see what adjustments might help you nail down an approach that matches your vision. Remember: The goal here is not to create something photo-realistic or perfectly in line with someone else’s work, but rather to learn and practice using all of these resources.
Finding references: Google Image Search is by far one of my favorite tools for finding image references quickly. You can search using keywords like girl pose reference or anime body template to find images that are tagged as such. Many sites also offer free bases under Creative Commons licenses, so be sure to check those out.
For example, I’ve found some great female body templates on Flickr. It’s also worth looking into other types of art (like paintings) since artists often paint from life or from photographs—meaning they capture realistic poses and expressions really well! Resources for learning how to draw: There are tons of books on how to draw manga anime-style characters available on Amazon.
However, I highly recommend checking them out from your local library first before purchasing them. There’s no need to spend money if you’re just starting out! Just be sure that whatever book you choose covers proportions and anatomy basics; otherwise it won’t be very helpful when drawing people in action poses!
Common Anime Pose Reference Sheets:
If you’re serious about creating original characters from scratch, it helps to have a cheat sheet of common poses. The good news is that many artists share their templates online; just do a quick search and you’ll find dozens. Make sure to get them in JPG format so they can be imported into your software; or, if they’re SVG files, convert them using your preferred tool.
Even if you don’t plan on tracing any of these images directly, having a wealth of references can make character creation more intuitive not to mention faster. Plus, there are some amazing design tips among all those helpful tutorials! It’s very important to think how would an Anime dao character look like before drawing him/her. There are lots of poses in anime drawings that we can use as references when drawing our own characters.
Character Design References:
Drawing characters is hard. You need to balance a ton of different elements—from anatomy to costume design—to bring your character to life. To make it easier, we’ve rounded up our favorite character design references on Envato Market. Whether you’re looking for character base templates or just free anime bases, these resources are essential for any designer! Use them to build a new character, or use them as a starting point for your own designs! Browse all reference material for anime base here.
