Draw a Whole Character
You have used the vector tools one at a time. Now you draw a whole character with them, blank canvas to finished art, in one sitting. We pin a reference to trace, ink closed outlines, shape the curves, fill them into solid shapes, style a palette you reuse everywhere, and stack every piece in the right order. When you finish, you have art that is crisp at any size and built to rig.
1What you are about to build
This is the capstone of drawing. Instead of practising one tool, you carry a single character from an empty canvas to a fully coloured figure. The plan is simple and it never changes: trace over a reference, ink each part as a closed outline, fill the outlines into shapes, colour them from a shared palette, then stack the parts back to front so they overlap correctly. Keep that order in your head and the whole thing stays calm.
2Open the drawing surface
In the Animation studio, add a Vector row from the add-row bar. On that row, click Draw and rig to open the vector surface. Across the top are three modes, Draw, Rig, and Test; the whole of this tutorial lives under Draw, so click it and stay there. The rail splits into a Draw group for making outlines and a Fill group for turning them into shapes.
3Pin a reference to trace
Drawing a whole figure from nothing is the hard way. Open the Reference image picker and drop in a rough sketch, a photo, or a pose study of your character. It sits behind the canvas as scaffolding, not final art. This one image keeps your proportions honest across every part you draw next, so the head and the hands actually belong to the same body.
4Fade the reference with Opacity
A bright reference fights your ink. Drag the Opacity slider down until the image is a faint ghost you can still follow but no longer mistake for your own lines. Somewhere around a quarter strength usually reads well. Now your black outlines pop clearly over the top and you can see exactly what you have drawn versus what is still just the guide underneath.
5Ink the first closed outline
Start with the largest part, usually the head or the torso. Pick Add Point and click around the edge of that part, dropping a point wherever the line changes direction and nowhere else. When you come back to the start, click the very first point again to close the outline into a loop; press Escape instead if you meant to leave a line open. A closed loop is what you will fill in a moment, so aim to close every body part.
6Shape the curves
Straight-line polygons are not a character yet. Grab Curvature and drag up on a point to round it, or down to sharpen it toward a corner. For a whole run of points, select them and use the contextual Curve group: Peak snaps them to hard corners, Smooth rounds them fully. Use Peak for a jaw, a knuckle, or a fold in cloth; use Smooth for a cheek, a shoulder, or a belly.
7Tidy the points
Traced outlines always end up with a few too many points. Select a lumpy stretch and press Simplify to drop the points that barely change the curve, leaving a cleaner line behind. Need to fix one point by hand? Select Points and Translate Points nudge them, Delete Point removes a stray, and Weld merges two points that should really be one. A clean point count now saves you grief when you rig this character later.
8Fill your first shape
A closed outline is still just a line until you fill it. Switch to the Fill group and pick Create Shape. Click the curves that wall in the area so they stage in amber, then press Fill shape to paint that region solid. Changed your mind before sealing it? Clear staging resets the amber selection so you can pick the curves again. That amber preview is your safety net, it shows exactly what will fill before you commit.
9Style the fill
Select a filled shape and the Shape style panel opens. Turn on Enable fill and choose a Fill colour for the body of the shape; turn on Enable outline for a Line colour and set the Line width for its edge. Want a soft blend, like a cheek's blush or a metal sheen? Tick Gradient, pick linear or radial, and press Add stop for extra colours along the ramp.
10Keep a palette with Swatch paints
A character that uses the same reds and blues everywhere looks designed; one that improvises a new colour per shape looks accidental. In the Shape style panel, use Swatch paints to click a ready colour (Black, the greys, Oxblood, Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Blue, Purple, White) straight onto a shape. Toggle whether the swatch sets the Fill or the Line before you click, so one tap can colour a shape or just its outline.
11Draw the rest of the parts
Now repeat the loop for every remaining part: outline with Add Point, shape with Curvature, close it, Create Shape, Fill shape, colour from your swatches. Draw the body, then each arm and leg, then the clothing shapes, then the little details like eyes and buttons. Because they all live on the one Vector row, they build up into a single drawing you can rig as a whole later.
12Stack the shapes back to front
A character is many shapes in the right order: body underneath, shirt over it, buttons on top of the shirt. If a near shape hides behind a far one, select it and use Raise to move it up the stack or Lower to push it down. Build back to front from the start and you will barely need these, but they are there to fix any piece that landed in the wrong layer.
13Hide the seams with Hidden Edge
Where two filled shapes overlap, like a sleeve crossing an arm, the outline can show through and break the illusion of one solid figure. Pick Hidden Edge and click the edge running through a point on a filled shape to hide it, so the join reads as a single clean form. Click it again to bring the edge back if you hid the wrong one. This is the trick that makes stacked shapes look like one connected character.
14Make holes and combine forms
You may reach for a mask or a boolean subtract from desktop drawing tools. FoundryInk's vector editor does not have group masking or liquid-shape booleans, so here is the workaround. To make a hole, like the gap in a belt buckle, leave the inner curve out of the fill when you stage the shape; an unstaged inner curve reads as a hole. To combine forms, overlap filled shapes and tuck the joins with Hidden Edge. Readers will never spot the difference.
15Clear the reference and check your work
With the character drawn, press Clear on the reference to remove the tracing image and see your art standing on its own. Zoom in and out; because it is vector, it stays razor sharp at every size. Scan for gaps where a fill leaked, points that never welded, or a shape sitting on the wrong layer, and fix them with Paint Bucket, Weld, and Raise or Lower. Lean on Undo and Redo freely while you tidy.
Draw your whole character
Trace, ink, fill, colour, stack. Links into the app. Saved on this device.
Whole-character drawing questions
Separate closed shapes per part, even where they touch. An upper arm and a forearm as two shapes will bend far better under bones than one long shape, and stacking them lets clothes and details layer on top cleanly. Draw them apart, then tuck the joins with Hidden Edge.
The outline was probably not fully closed, or you did not stage every bordering curve. Close the loop by clicking the first point again, then with Create Shape click every curve that walls in the area so the whole boundary turns amber before you press Fill shape. A gap in the boundary lets the fill spill.
Use Swatch paints in the Shape style panel and pull from the same four or five swatches for the whole figure. Decide the core palette early, then tap the same amber for every hair shape and the same blue for every cloth shape. That repetition is what makes a design look intentional.
Select the shape that should be in front and press Raise to move it up the stack, or select the one that should be behind and press Lower. Building back to front, body first and details last, avoids most of this, but Raise and Lower correct anything that landed wrong.
Pick Hidden Edge and click the edge running through a point on the filled shape to hide just that line while keeping the fill. This tucks the seam where a sleeve crosses an arm so the two shapes read as one solid piece. Click again to bring the edge back.
Leave the inner curve out of the fill when you stage the shape. An unstaged inner curve reads as a hole, because FoundryInk's vector editor does not have subtract or clip boolean modes. Build all your cutouts this way and combine forms by overlapping filled shapes.
No, but it helps enormously for a whole figure. A faded Reference image keeps every part in proportion so the head and hands belong to the same body. Set its Opacity low, trace over it, and press Clear when the character stands on its own.
Vector art is points and curves, not pixels, so it stays crisp at any size and its points are exactly what bones grab when you rig. You can rig imported images too, but vector gives the smoothest bends and the cleanest lines, which is why it is the ideal base for a character you plan to animate.
You drew a whole character
From an empty canvas to a fully coloured, correctly stacked, seam-tucked figure, entirely in the studio. It is sharp at any size and every point is ready for bones. Next, we look at why rigging vector art bends so much more smoothly than rigging cutout images, and how to bind each kind.