Welcome to Wacom Creativity Camp!
Want to create your own original character for comics, manga, anime, video games, an illustrated story, a D&D campaign, or just for fun – but don't know where to start? Join us!
Wacom Creativity Camp is a free online character design workshop series happening this summer, taught by professional character designer and concept artist Alexandria Neonakis. It's perfect for young folks, beginning artists, or anyone else who wants to strengthen their character design skills. It's free, and you don’t need any digital art tools to participate – pencil and paper is fine!
Each session builds on the last, so if you attend every workshop you’ll have a completed character model sheet at the end. It’s OK if you can’t make it to every session, though – we’ll have recap materials and “homework” to get you caught up, and we’ll publish recordings of the workshops on YouTube.
One more reason to attend live, though: we’ll be giving way Wacom drawing tablets during each session, and only attendees are eligible!
Join us live on Zoom on Wednesdays, July 8 – 29, from 3:00-5:00pm PDT!
Click here to register!
Alex Neonakis is a freelance concept artist, fine artist, and illustrator from Canada. She has worked in the video game industry on games like The Last of Us Part 2, and has illustrated several children's books!
Creativity Camp 2026 workshops
A free, live character design workshop series from Alexandria Neonakis!
Character design resources
Want to extend your learning? Tips, tricks, and tutorials to design dynamic characters
Where to buy Wacom products
You can participate with pencil and paper, but if you want to upgrade to digital art tech, here's what you need!
Wacom Creativity Camp 2026
During this workshop series you’ll draw along with Alex, learning the basics – including the building blocks of great character designs, finding inspiration, and nailing costumes, accessories, and other details – and by the end you'll have a complete model sheet for your original character! Throughout, you’ll also get expert feedback and support from a professional artist.
Click here to register!
Session 1: What makes a great character design? Mixing and matching simple shapes
July 8th, 2026
3:00 - 5:00pm PDT / 6:00 - 8:00pm EDT
In this first session, we’ll discuss what makes a good character design. We’ll break down how many classic characters are constructed out of simple shapes, look at how different characters match each other style-wise, and mix-and-match elements to see what new characters we can come up with!
Session 2: Finding our own style: bringing inspiration and references together
July 15th, 2026
3:00 - 5:00pm PDT / 6:00 - 8:00pm EDT
In this session, we’ll build on the foundation of Session 1. We’ll discuss how our inspirations can help us develop our own style, and look at our favorite characters to see what common elements we can find. We’ll take what we learned about simple and inspiration and start developing our own original character!
Session 3: Costumes, settings, and accessories: getting the details of our character down
July 22nd, 2026
3:00 - 5:00pm PDT / 6:00 - 8:00pm EDT
The third session really gets into the details and specifics of our character! If you were a character, where would your setting be? And what three items or accessories would absolutely have to be part of your design so that everyone would know the character is you? We’ll focus on how setting and details can completely change our character design, and start to finalize the costume and accessories of our original character.
Session 4: Final details, high-level professional feedback, and Q&A
July 29th, 2026
3:00 - 5:00pm PDT / 6:00 - 8:00pm EDT
The main goal of this session is to finalize our character sheets – and then get feedback on what we’ve done! Submit your work for review, and Alexandria will give you personalized (positive) feedback on what you’ve created so far in the workshop. We'll also have an open Q&A so she can give you advice or insight about anything you want to know about being a professional artist!
How to design compelling characters
Whether you're creating a video game, comic page, or editorial illustration, you need your characters and designs to be dynamic and compelling. Make sure to attend the Creativity Camp workshop series for expert instruction on character design. If you can't make one of the sessions, though, or are looking for more resources, check out all of the great content below!
Gear up for character design with Wacom digital art tech
You can participate fully in Creativity Camp with pencil and paper! And plenty of professionals over the years have used traditional materials. But if you'd like to upgrade your digital art gear, these are the Wacom tablets we recommend.
Wacom Intuos creative pen tablet
The classic pen tablet loved by millions of artists around the world!
Wacom One 14
Our most affordable creative pen display, for those ready to upgrade to pen-on-screen precision.
Wacom MovinkPad 11
The all-in-one, Android-based portable drawing pad for artists on the move!