Creating Silly Cat Characters From Random Shapes

Seriously. A blob. Not a masterpiece, not a perfectly planned sketch, a blob.

That’s exactly how this page started. I sat down with my dot-grid cartoon journal, grabbed a pencil, and just… made shapes. Organic, weird, slightly unidentifiable shapes. No plan. No pressure. Just six grey forms on a page that looked like they belonged in a fever dream or a modern art museum. (Honestly, same thing.)

Here’s the wild part: those “meaningless” shapes became the foundation for six completely different cat characters.

Step one was pure freedom.
I filled the page with random organic shapes in grey marker, letting the contours go wherever they wanted. Lumpy here. Elongated there. One looked like a melting trophy. Another looked like it was auditioning to be a kidney. Didn’t matter.

The whole point was not to think.

Your brain is actually more creative when it’s not trying to be creative.
Don’t you think peak performance happens when you remove the pressure?

Drawing in your sketchbook is the perfect place to prove that idea right. But it can be hard to think up characters when you open up your cartoon journal.

Step two was where the magic happened.
Knowing that I had already put down blobs gave me a starting point.

Something to work from!

I picked up my Kuretake brush pen and started finding characters inside those shapes. One tall, wide form became a grinning, flat-bodied cat with stubby legs and big energy. A twisted S-curve turned into a scruffy wolf-cat hybrid, smiling and staring at nothing in particular.

The blobs told me what the characters wanted to be. I just had to work with spacing features, a variety of sizes, and shapes to keep them interesting.

That’s the secret nobody talks about.
By starting with random silhouettes, you’re forced to experiment with body proportions and try out wild distances between elements in ways you’d never consciously choose.

Tall ears on a wide body? Sure, why not?

Tiny legs under a massive torso? Absolutely. These “accidents” build your design instincts faster than any how-to book ever could.

Your cartoon journal isn’t a gallery, it’s a laboratory. Weird results are the whole point.