When you are creating a character for animation, you need to give it life. The character needs to be able to act and it is in your hands how and when it will act. This involves some great thought, especially when you are thinking up a major character for your cartoon. But, it really doesn't have to be too complicated. You are basically taking the role as a director when you create characters and therefore you need to think of these drawn figures like they are characters. Here are a few questions you have to ask yourself about the characters that you animate.

• Does the character look the part? If you have created a character that plays the role of the antagonist, it has to look the part. As an antagonist, the character has to look evil. This is even truer if you have drawn up the nemesis of the main character of your story. The same is true when you draw the protagonist. The hero needs to look like a hero, needs to show confidence and charm. This is a simple rule in animation and you can often put twists in the character appearance so that it is not too obvious whether it's good or bad. This all depends on how your story progresses.

• Does your character do what you want? Only you know how the story progresses in your cartoon. It is therefore important that your character is doing everything that you want it to do. This question is important because you have to draw the character the way it's supposed to be drawn in each sequence or scene.

• Does the character look like it has “meat”? This basically means that your character needs to look alive. The characters you draw need to convey a kind of personality so it is up to you to be able to express different attitudes through the animations. For example, if your character is angry, it has to be drawn like it is angry. The more realistic your character is drawn, the more effective it will be when audiences watch your cartoon. This is very important so you have to study people's faces with different expressions so that you can model your characters after those people. This is the reason why some animators will actually hire some actors and have them act out different emotions and sequences. They then base their animations on what they learn from those actors or actresses.

• Is your character simple to draw? More than anything else, you should have control over the way a character is drawn. If you add too many elements to the character, you might have a difficult time drawing it in different ways. This does not mean that it should look like a simple character to draw. It simply means that the character you create should be easy in the sense that there will be consistency in the drawings and it will not be difficult for you or your artists to recreate the character with different faces.