Cartoon Feet Formula

Feet are often one of the most neglected parts of the body when it come to drawing. It's not that they aren't important, it's just that they aren't very "glamours." Also, most of the time they're covered up completely by shoes so we don't even get to draw them as much as everything else.

Still, we should know what's going on inside the shoes. And women often were shoes that expose their feet so, we still need to know how to draw them.

In this lesson, we'll do just that.  I'll share with you the three part formula that helps me draw feet, plus more. In this lesson we'll go over:

• Very basic cartoon Feet
• Three Part Foot Breakdown (include ankles)
• Toes  (Stairs and pointing in)
• Applying The Formulas to Different Styles (Freddy Moore Style, Bruce Timm Style, Takahiro Kimura Anime Style) with Turnarounds

Very Basic Cartoon Feet

For the most part, in it's simples form, as long a your cartoon feet drawings are made from shapes with a flat bottom surface and some sort of incline leading down to the toes, you should be okay. For example:

That's all there is too it. However, if you want to get a little bit more naturalistic, then you may want to try this formula...

Three Part Foot Breakdown

The first thing you need to do when drawing the foot is to have a base shape to create the rest of the foot on.  A foot can be broken down into two simple flat graphic shapes.

The foot from the side can be drawn as a triangle, and the foot from the from can be drawn as a modified box with a connecting bottom triangle.

The triangle favors one side more than the other.  The inside part of the foot will have the shorter angle.

Once you've got that down, you've got a foundation on which to create your more solid forms, of which there are five parts.

1. The main body of the foot.
2. The heel.
3. The toe area.
4. Ankles
5. Toe Breakdown

The main body of the foot

Main larges form that take up most of the foot is an oddly shaped tube. It look something like this:

It's like half an arch.  Or even half a cave, because one side has the arch while the other goes down to the floor.

The Heel

When you add the heel, it goes right into the cave as if it's a pillar of support. But there's an area of space still left:

The Toe Areas

The area where you will put in the toes is shaped like half a disk that wraps around the front of the main cylinder.  It assumes the a softer version of shape of the triangular lay in. One side is a little shallower than the rest.

Ankles

Although this is essential the main foot formula, there's on thing I should bring and that's how you connect the leg to the foot, namely the ankles.

You can think of the ankles as a hinge with really large bolts sticking out from either side. You attach the curve of the main body of the foot to the ankles.

However, there's something you need to be aware of with this "ankle hinge." when looking at it from the front or back you will see that it doesn't line up.  One side is higher than the other.  The inner "bolt," is higher than the outer.

Making sure to draw the ankles that way, will make your feet look more natural.

Toes

Once you have the general foot forms drawn out, you can start adding toes. A helpful way to draw toes is not just to draw them like balls or boxes but to draw them like steps.

Step like this. First you step is a shape like this.  Kinda like wienie shape with a flat top.:

Then you create a step. It's not a perfect step, there's a slant to it and it's shallow:

From here you can add the toes nails  the details:

You can do this with all the toes, just making each toe small as you go.

Now there's something I should note.  (1) Say you're looking a the foot from the top:

(2) just like drawing fingers on the hand, you should place them in an arch.

(3) The other thing to keep in mind is that the toes look best then they turn inward toward each other. So the big toe slants toward the little toes, and the little toes slant toward the big toe.

Keeping these things in mind as you draw feet will really help make your feet drawing "feel" right.

So when you're all done you end up with something that looks like this:

Applying The Formulas to Different Styles

Now it's time to show you how this formula can be applied to our three goto styles.

When doing my homework on most of these styles, I found that feet where almost afterthoughts.  Very rarely where feet more than just a shape with some lines for toes.  Sometimes they didn't even bother with the lines for toes.

That said, there are a few exceptions, like moments where the feet are the focus of a shot, or when a character is barefoot as part of his design, like Disney's Tarzan. And speaking of Disney characters lets start with...

Freddy Moore Style

In the cases where a Disney and Looney Tunes character's feet are more than just a graphic shape, the design of the feet tend to be very simple.  Except for Disney's Tarzan, as I mentioned before. His feet are extremely well designed, anatomically accurate but still cartoony and exaggerated.

So I'll show you four examples of Freddy Moore Style feet:

The simple shape foot with not details:

The foot with toes:

Caricatured foot. This version of the foot has the most anatomy:

and Looney Tunes foot.

Turnaround

Male

Female

Bruce Timm Style

The Bruce Timm style feet are even more simple. Hardly any detail at all:

Turnarounds

Male

Female

Takahiro Kimura Anime Style

In Takahiro Kimura anime feet, toes are extremely simplified. Almost like Bruce Timm feet.  Just a tad more definition in the foot shape:

Turnarounds

Male

Female

And that's it for the feet.  I hope you can see that feet aren't too difficult to draw in cartoons. However, just because they can be drawn simply doesn't mean that you shouldn't give them some thought and structure.