Hii! You fucking ate with the TDI redesigns and it wanted to know if you'd make a guide as to how you mimicked the TDI style?
hihi !! tysm !! glad a lot of ppl like em !!
as for the style guide, i am far from an expert at replicating art styles, but having a neo-UPA inspired art style really made this easier for me, even if i did struggle on getting used to some design choices.
DISCLAIMER: I do not condone tracing over other people’s artwork to claim as your own final product. I only trace the shapes from the total drama characters to break down and analyze the art style for educational purposes.
IN GENERAL
total drama’s art style is heavily stylized and takes inspiration from clone high and many UPA-inspired cartoons in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. it uses very thick and bold outlines to define its characters and their individual shape language. a lot of designs use a variety of sharp angles, straight lines, and curved arcs to achieve a balanced character design that works in the total drama universe.
because the shape language is very geometric and simple, it’s surprisingly easy to recreate the total drama art style & reimagine some of your favorite characters in the universe!
BODY TYPES: THE “TYPICAL” WOMAN
a lot of the women in the show follow this base, even more than the “typical” male body type. compared to the men, the women of total drama have cat-like eyes, stylized lips, skinny necks, an hour-glass figure, longer and thicker legs, and pointy fingers. head shapes & features may vary depending on character and/or ethnicity. not all women in the show look like this, though! there’s a decent handful of women with very unique body types, such as beth, macarthur, & emma from the 2023 reboot! it also helps to reference characters from different seasons to get a better idea of the shape language in the show’s universe!
BODY TYPES: THE “TYPICAL” MAN
the “typical” body type for men isn’t as well defined as it is for the “typical” woman, so there aren’t as many examples of what defines the “typical” male body type. However, based on the handful of characters we collected, we can determine that the “typical” male body type in total drama is top-heavy. compared to the women, many of the men have broad chests and shoulders, thicker and longer arms, thicker necks, thinner waists and hips, and shorter, thinner legs. they have flatter, more boxy fingers comoared to the pointy fingers the women have. head shapes and features may vary depending on character and/or ethnicity.
BODY TYPES: THE PLUS SIZED WOMAN
plus-sized women follow some of the same rules & principles as the “typical” woman does, from more cat-like eyes to sharper fingers however, in contrast to the more common body type, these woman have much thicker body proportions and use rounder, smoother lines to emphasize either fat or muscle. head shapes and other features may vary depending on the character and/or ethnicity.
BODY TYPES: THE PLUS SIZED MAN
there’s a pretty good variety when it comes to drawing plus-sized men. while some of them, like ripper, follow some similar principles to the “typical” man, others offer a new, unique design base to work with. their features are generally rounder and wider to emphasize their weight. head shapes & other features may vary depending on character and/or ethnicity.
BODY TYPES: THE LANKY MAN
unlike the “typical” man, the lankier men don’t usually have the same broad shoulders and chest. their limbs are much thinner, & they sometimes don’t have any pronounced calves. it’s more common for the lankier men to have their feet facing in the same direction as opposed to the other, though the latter isn’t an uncommon design desicion either. head shapes and other festures vary depending on the character and/or ethnicity.
BODY TYPES: THE BEEFY MAN
Of all the body types presented to the male characters, this one is the closest and most similar to the “typical” male body type. the difference is that the broadness of the shoulders and chest are exaggerated more, and the shape of the arms can vary between being wider to having more lumps. head shapes and other features may vary depending in character and/or ethnicity.
HAIR STYLES
a hairstyle can tell people a lot about a character. theres a lot of different ways to draw hair on characters, though in general, the appeal to total drama’s art style would be the simplicity and angularity in its shape language and character designs, so you don’t have to give your character thousands of spiky hair strands to make them appealing.
im not good at explaining how i replicate art styles so i really hope these help!!! also im sorry this ask took forever to compile lol i just wanted an excuse to study the shows art style more. heres another helpful video to help understand the process of character design !!
i also recommend checking out harry gold’s channel. he does a lot of art style replication videos & this one explains art style replication exceptionally well!
tysm for ur ask & tysm for ur patience!!
