Motto for cuteness might be “Less is More.” Chibi, kaomoji, simplified animals are simple and they’re cute because of it.

 

We’re going to talk about how to draw cute creatures, design new cute creatures, posing the creatures and how to draw cute versions of real life animals.

 

Check out the video version here:

Face

Since chubby face is cute, draw the creature’s face short and wide with the eyes right in the middle. Nose and mouth are close to the eyes, leaving a little chin area. You can puff the cheek for cuter impression.

Make sure there’s enough room to add decorations to the crown, cheek and chin.

There’s a wide range of cute faces, but the cutest might be the most expressive. Just take Kaomoji for example. You can tell what’s going on just from simple dots and lines.

Try adding simple expressive faces to everything and turn them into cute creatures.

It works well with 3D objects and photographs, too. Use white border effect to make the face pop.

The sizes of eyes, nose and mouth depend on your preference. Nose and mouth can be optional.

In real life, animal’s eyes have no visible sclera (white of the eyes). Human is the only animal with that visible.

You can choose to draw irises only animal eyes. Or add sclera to your design.

For animals that have muzzle or beak, draw it shorter than the real life version. If the muzzle already short, like pug’s, just let it be.

Body

Try using 1:2 ratio for head and body at most. It looks good for almost every realistic cute creature. 1:1 for chibi version and 1:>1 for baby animals.

For animals that have short and normal length neck, it’s preferable to not draw it at all. The idea is the neck is so short that it’s not visible.

For animals with long necks such as giraffe, draw the neck shorter compared to its real life counterpart.

Size doesn’t really matter for other body parts such as limbs, tail, ears, horns, fins and so on. You can draw it in any size you see fit.

Add enough details to make the creature identifiable, but not too much it overwhelms the cuteness.

Stylizing

Stylizing creatures into something that doesn’t really look like the real life counterpart can only work if the creature is familiar to the viewer.

 

See these three for example. You can tell right away they’re cats, even though if you compare them to a real cat, there’s only little resemblance.

It also works for creatures that have distinguishable features with a degree of familiarity to normal people. Such as panda, bat, elephant, pig and so on.

You don’t draw a heavily stylized lemur and expect most people to correctly guess what it is.

Anthropomorphic Creatures

Adding human attributes to non-human creatures has its own charm. Even when standing upright, the head to body ratio is still the same.

Give the body a triangle shape—small shoulder and wide hips.

Like previously mentioned, the size of other body parts and accessories is up to you. You have way more design option with this kind of creature.

Designing New Creatures

Cute creatures are not limited only to animals. Not only you can turn existing items into cute creatures by adding cute faces. You can also apply what we have learned so far to create our own unique creatures.

 

Take this oval for example. Add a face and you’ve got a cute slime.

You can go one step further by adding decorations to it. A horn, eyebrows, fangs, color variations, ears, hair, fur, bows, hats, anything works. Just don’t overdo it.

Of course, you’ll have more options with creatures that has bodies.

 

Create a creature based on existing items or plants. Give it a face and, maybe, body and limbs.

You can also turn the creatures into cute robots.

Pose

It’s true that when a creature is cute, almost any pose would look cute on it.

Adding context can mean more cute points, even if what the creatures are doing isn’t cute.

You can also use gap moe by drawing a very-not-cute creature in a cute pose.

Using References

(Note: Timelapse for every animal in this section available in video version)

Turning your pets into cute art can be easily done. In this section, we’ll turn animal references we have into cuter versions.

 

We’ll simplify the animals into two levels, the first one is a cuter version of the OG and the second one the chibi version.

 

Take this tiger as our first subject.

1. Trace the eyes and enlarge it using Free Transform tool. Move it to original position.

2. Draw the mouth and nose.

3. Move the eyes, nose and mouth so that they’re close to each other. Draw the rest of the head and simplify the cheek part. Draw a simple tiger pattern instead of following the OG.

4 .Trace the body.

5. Use Free Transform to resize and make it look shorter.

6. Increase the volume of the legs to make it stubby.

For chibi version:

1. Draw the eyes round at first.

2. Draw the body simply, make it look stubby, then resize with Free Transform.

3. The rest of the steps is similar to the other version.

4. I drew some fluffy hair near the ears and change the eyes’ shape to resemble the OG more.

The tiger’s face is in front view and it’s tall, let’s draw a running corgi in side view for a change.

The steps are similar.

 

1. Enlarge the eye and nose, trace the head and body then use Free Transform.

2. Skip drawing the teeth to make it look friendlier. Because corgi has medium hair, you can add fluff to the simplified version.

3. Shorten the muzzle. Add more fluff.

This time I base the chibi version on the simplified version.

 

1. Draw the eye with an oval, trace the head, make the mouth smaller.

2. Make the legs simple and stubbier.

3. Resize the body, add fluff.

4. Make the nose bigger then shorten the muzzle.

The same steps can be used on smaller mammals like hamsters.

You can also use it to draw vultures.

Penguins.

Goldfish.

Snakes and so on.

Outro

That’s it! I hope this tutorial can help you to draw better cute creatures.

 

I'll see you next time and have fun drawing!