H-B Design: Heavyset Male Human Character # 2

For this exercise I picked a character originally drawn and painted by Hawley Pratt and Al White.  The character is based on an HB character and clearly Hawley and Al were staying faithful to the HB look.

I especially like this character because... aside from Hawley Pratt being one of my favorite artists... I love the hands.  The finger pointing, the fist shaking, very expressive and very cartooney hands.

Incidentally, the original character had 4 fingers and a thumb per hand.  Now, we all know that cartoon protocol calls for 3 fingers per hand... now don't weeee?

Anyway, I made the appropriate change and drew this great character... I call him the mayor.  He just hired QuickDraw as the town marshal and now he's yelling at QD and his sidekick Baba Lou: go out there and catch the bad guys!!!

Let's examine the mayor's ... well... er... proportions:

In comparison to yesterday's exercise the head is a bit large.  The chin extends beyond the quarter mark.  I'm going to say the head comprises one-third of the character.  The legs, you will note, are clearly delineated at the quarter mark.

As you've probably noticed, I'm eyeballing my dimensions... they are by no means exact.  Cartoons aren't meant to be exact... at least, my cartoons aren't meant to be exact.

As with yesterday's character, the bottom half of the face "outweighs" and is clearly larger than the top half.  Plus, the face once again "indents" at the nose.

Commonalities between the two characters:

Bodies divided roughly into quarters, but the head can comprise one third of the character.

The oval shape to both bodies is pretty obvious. 

Once again, no visible neck.  This time instead of a kerchief covering the neck, the jaw hangs below the neck line while the coat scrunches up at the sides.

The head "indents" at the nose.  That is to say: the top part of the head is smaller in circumference than the bottom part.

On our original Golden Book drawing the legs were a bit confusing in their construction.  Remember yesterday's exercise where the legs looked like a pair of sticks stuck onto the character?  Today there's more heft, more flow, in the way the legs are defined.  A weighty flow of either arms or legs from the torso is not a Hanna-Barbera-ism... it's more of a Golden Book-ism.  HB kept the attachment of arms and legs pretty simple.  They were uniquely shaped, to be sure, but their attachment points were quite uncomplicated.