Across social media platforms (Reddit, Twitter, and ArtStation), artists who completed the "70 Exercises" report three major breakthroughs:
The face is the focal point of character appeal.
Goal: Train shape language and readability. Eye Anatomy for Stylization:
Goal: Emotion through pose and face.
Before diving into the exercises, it's essential to understand what makes a character stylized. Stylized characters often deviate from realistic representations, emphasizing certain features, simplifying others, and frequently incorporating exaggerated or abstract elements to convey personality, emotion, or thematic resonance. The "Appeal" Mouth:
Before touching 3D software, the focus is on 2D sketching to understand appeal.
Key Takeaway: Stylization happens in the 2D planning stage. 3D is merely the execution. Before diving into the exercises
To give you a taste, let’s look at Exercise 24: The Extreme Silhouette Test.
The Prompt: Draw a character representing "The Evil Witch" using only a solid black silhouette. No internal lines. If the silhouette looks like a blob, you fail.
The Exercise Steps (as taught in the course):
This single exercise eliminates the habit of "drawing features first." It forces you to design the shape language before the details. This is the kind of "aha moment" that happens 70 times during the Coloso journey.