Transcripts
1. Introduction to the Class: Welcome. My name is Martin, and in this course I want to show you how to draw and render cartoon characters. This is a complete beginner's introduction to cartoon illustration. I assume you know next to nothing regarding how to draw or how to use any digital illustration software. My goal is that by the end of the course, you'll have the knowledge to sketch and illustrate stuff at the level of something like what you're seeing on the screen right now. This course will be basically divided into two parts. The first part we'll build from CDO how to draw and design cartoon characters. And the second part will deal with the rendering of your sketches that is, using a digital illustration software to make the final lineup color and light and shadow. But don't worry, you won't need a tablet. We're going to be doing definition using ink, saving the free open source spectacularization software. And that means that all you need is an everyday keyboard and mouse. That's how you illustrate using vector software. So here's how the course is going to go at large. On the first unit, we are going to start learning how to draw and assign the Capitol Hill. I believe the head is complex enough that it deserves its own unit. So we learn about the techniques to help us with the design. And the important difference between working with cartoons versus real life heads. By the end of this unit, if you make all the exercises I'm going to give you, you should be able to come up knowing how to draw attractive full heads. The second unit is going to be about the rest of the body. Will learn about the mannequin, how to put it in movement, and how to dress them up. From this unit, you should be able to come up knowing how to sketch full rough cartoon characters. Then we'll move on to the sketching unit. Here, I'll sketch up to five cartoon characters using the different techniques we've seen. Up to this point. I expect you to sketch at least five of your own characters. Rather than copying what I'm doing. We'll move on to the Inkscape unit. He didn't want to go fairly in-depth into how to use Inkscape and the specific techniques and tools related to rendering sketches. I want you to come up out of this unit having a firm understanding of Inkscape and how to work using vectors, as well as the basic techniques used for rendering and sketches. And final unit is all about taking those sketches to Inkscape and render them, finishing them up with the tools of the program. Here you learn everything you need to make it a sketch as beautiful and finished. After the end of almost every lesson, I put a list of exercises you should make to really sync that up. Again. Are free to move on without doing them. But I strongly recommend you to try them out. Before ending this lesson, I want to let you know that I strongly encourage you to contact me. If you have any doubts or questions about the course, you can contact me by e-mail. But if you can please use the course page this way, all the other students can see the questions and answers. Well, I think that's all you have to know what the course to be in. So wherever pencil and paper and get ready to start, I promise you, it's going to be lots of fun.
2. Introduction to the Head Unit: In this lesson, I want to go really quickly about the way we are going to be making the health. Like I said in the intro, these type of capstone for modern animation are designed to be attractive, but also simple and graphical, with the goal of being the ECS possible to animate. And this means a couple of things. First, most of these haptens with rely more on graphical shapes than on three-dimensional anatomy. And second, that is usually a lot of reuse of different parts of the body, especially in the head with the features. Because of that, discourse may go in a different direction than other character design courses. But once I won't be dealing with form of three-dimensional drawing that event on the shell. And second, we are not going to deal with the anatomy of the features. It's just not necessary. Most of these haptens use a limited set of symbols to represent the different features. Barely they can eat, categorize a hair, and which they do. It's usually for a guide or a special case. This all means one thing, dry in this type of cartoon, it's way easier and easier to learn than any other type of more realistic afternoon. And in my opinion, way more fun. Anyway, Peter says Sumaria of the different topics that we're going to be seen in this unit. First, we are going to deal with the different ways to build a head and using a metal that is spent to help you quickly the sign has without having to worry about the details. Then we're going to check out one by one of the most common health features that you see all the time in different cartoons. And then we'll see how to finish the head in a complete way. Otherwise, I'll be throwing in some character of the sign lessons meant to improve the quality of your design to make your characters more memorable and with my personality. By the end of this unit, you should have all the knowledge you need to draw a nice and attractive heads, just like the ones you're seeing now. So let's get to work.
3. The Head shape: I believe the best way to make a hill is to start with the form, the silhouette, the shape of the hill. But that poses a problem. When you're working with cartoons, any shape can be used as a Hell. I do, however, realized that say in that isn't really that helpful. So what I'm going to do in this lesson is to show you what I consider to be the most common types of cartoon hills that you see repeated all the time in different cartoons. If you take a look at these hairs from famous cartoon shows, of course, taken away all the detail in her hair and features, just focusing on the basic shapes of the hill. You'll see that the old tend to be super simple. In fact, most of the heads tend to be made of a slightly modified geometric shape, mostly rectangles and circles. Occasionally you may see a triangle. Metal heads are based on simple geometrical shapes. That's one of the main characteristics of these, the style that we are working on. Of course, you have outsourced to make your characters heads out of squares and circles. That's just the starting point. Maybe you can squash or stretch the shape tilted to one side, one of the edges or round one or monoclonals. Just something to make it feel more like a hill. By the way, you see me using a vertical and horizontal line here on the heads. This is just a common technique to find the center and the position of the eyes without having to actually draw them is really useful, especially for health status supposed to be in three quarters to make them look to the side. I want these lines to more or less match the roundness of the surface of the shape to help you with the impression that the line is resting on the surface. But the Landsat just a quick guide, so don't sweat it too much. Now we can do a couple of things with his hands to other bit more detail. So they can feed a slightly more realistic. But before that, a super-quick detail. In later life, the skull, which makes up the main form of the hill, can be simplified into two forms. Is field for the cranium and then slanted box for the jaw. Those two forms makes up the characteristic shape of the hill. Now as you can see, many cartoons acknowledged these two anatomical forms. And they come tonight the hailed by using two shapes, ma, for the cranium and another one for the job. And then makes the head of field just to read more realistic. Even if the hills Alan realistic at all. The important part is to imply the separation of forms between the upper hill and the jaw. Then what does start with the shape of the cranium, which almost always is going to be a circle. You'll rarely see any other shape. And then you append the shape of the jaw. This shape can have more variation depending on the character. You're going from. Every cent that applied to the previous geometrical heads of playing with and modify the shapes also applies here. Though usually you want to keep it simple. Remember, we are working with simple graphical gardens here. So complicated or detailed, want to feed the style. I understand that right now most of these fields don't look too much like gotten health. But in a minute when we add the facial features and hair, Harrison with Gleick together, I promise for now, I've recommended to practice making dance of these and see if you can make them feel like something that three years your imagination. Another really good exercise is to find your favorite cartoons and trace or copy only the head shape. This to see what the boroughs do with health.
4. The Prototype: Now that you know how to make the shape of the hair, It's time to other features. And one thing that you could do here is just to go in and draw the eyes, the nose, the hair, all of that in one go. It's not hard once you know how to draw them. But here we want to use this opportunity to show you a little tool that has helped me enormously at the moment of the sign-in interesting looking faces. But first I want to give you a quick explanation about how the sign works. What defines how good they often head or body or any sand looks as what to do with the large shapes than with their specific details. Now what do I mean by the large shapes? Well, I mean the shapes that encapsulates up the features and other details. But more specifically, the location proportions and empty spaces between those shapes. That is, the relationships that may say heads unique and interesting to watch. The details and the facial features. Also, mother, they do affect the overall design, but we don't have any good the sign of those large shapes. The head won't look as good as it cools. So if we trace all well successful Carter heels and worry only about those flat shapes. Here as you can see, I'm using a circle for the eyes, nose, and ears. And I'm also quickly going over the general shape of the hill. I immediately see how these shapes communicate clearly their personality and idea behind the design of the hill. When I'll show you the detail, the most important stuff is here. This is whether the sign of the head release. So knowing these waited to start our heads using simple shapes instead of features and details. This way we can focus on the most important part of the design first and foremost, and not get bogged down by any time consuming facial feature or detail. Instead of drawing eyes, just make a few ellipses that matches the location and size you want. The thing with the nose, the ears can be half circles, and the mouth can be aligned. The hair can be a sketch super roughly. Remember the goal here is to come up with interested in looking at proportions and relationships as fast as possible. If we can make something that looks like an interesting character using nothing but lines and ellipses. Then adding the details on top is going to be the easiest part. And here you go. As you can see, making one of these prototypes is super fast and easy. You just these hairs took me no more than 10 seconds to make. And because it has like 90 percent of the whole design solved, let us brevis realize how the hell could look and let us iterate on it if needed. And believe it or not, adding the details on top, East Asia sparked if the design is well-made and you have to do is to replace the leaves and other shapes with nice and finished features. Making sure to stay true to those shapes and sizes as best you can. And of course, the rest of this unit we are going to be spending on how to do this. How to finish the hair, the starting from this large shape design. Now, you can make this first-pass like I did here with hair and eyebrows and all the details if you want. But since the goal is to make some design happened fast, I wouldn't bother with that from now. At this stage, you can make laid the science just by focusing on the health shape and features and Nationals. I'm telling you because hair and expressions as something that's a bit more advanced. And the truly important part here, as I said a minute ago, is the shapes, location, and proportions, not making something that looks finished. So for now, don't worry about that. I recommend you to just make bold and hairless characters and focus on exploring creative helps with unique proportions and sizes and personality. The rest of this unit and the hell we're going to be building on this London how to make the features and hair and finished in every scene that goes on top, we're going to be using this prototype his all throughout the rest of the unit to explain quite a few other concepts. So you need to be able to get how this works in a practical sense. I strongly recommend you to play with this and see if you can come up with some interesting science. Eventually, you'll develop a sense for good design. But for that to happen, you need to practice making tons and tons of the cells.
5. Head Features Part 1: Once you have built a design prototype that looks great in central place. So those temporary shapes with nice finished features. But as you may have guessed, there are a million ways are these have categorized the different features of the hill. However, if you pay attention, most cartoons actually use only a limited set of control features. You will find the same eyes, noses, ears, and mouth. Let me turn over and over again through completely different styles from different areas. So what I'm going to do in these next few lessons is to show you the most common features for this style that we are working on. What's going to be on these lessons should be more than enough to get you making any type of cartoon you may want. Though, some of the more specific and unique features and expressions I'm going to left for you to learn on your own. I also wanted to let you know that all of the features you're going to see you in the next few lessons. Bruce, some other extra ones. And then I'll be in a PDF file that are going to leave you in the resources. This way you can check them out as a reference. So let us start with the eyes. First is their beady eyes. This type is not as common today, asked the other ones. But you still see it from time to time, is basically just a tiny circle, often with a specular reflection on one side. Here what you can do is to stretch them into ovals. Did them, and play with this separation. Remember that this type of ice are supposed to be dynasty, so don't make them to be. The next category of AI is probably the most popular type of AI in any cartoon style of any kind. And ADA, the round die. This is just a white circle with an itis and sometimes a pupil. And the first thing you can play with is the iris and pupil in the size and whether it's going to be a clear separation between them. You can get a completely different feeling for the eyes depending on this. But you can also change the shape and orientation and even form of the actual eye. That's another way to get a ton of personality. One thing to keep in mind is that many cartoons change the shape of the eyes based on the position of the eyebrow. Especially at the moment of this Blaine, certain emotions. We'll see more about these in just a minute. Finally, one of my favorite things to do is to leave the circle of the eye, incomplete outline in only partially the two eyelids. They learned that you do show is usually a part of the upper or lower one or both, but live in a clear opening in the center. Finally, the other big category is what I call the cat eyes, because they're simplification of the real life I. But it's still a Stylize. And that happens to result in the night that similar to the eyes of guts out, this usually use decides for characters that are supposed to be attractive or more appealing. Probably because they feel just a bit more realistic than the other ones. And that calls attention to them. Anyway, the easiest way to draw these eyes is to think of them as if they were a skewed rectangle. Only that you run off the corners. Here you can create quite a few things. Mostly how wide is the opening? For younger characters? You'll want to make them why there. And for other ones, you should make them closer. So you can play with the iris and the pupil is in the same way then with the round eyes. One nice little trick you can do is to play with the inclination there in the corner upwards is a very effective way for making characters more alert in an attractive, which is often what you want with these type of ice. But there's more to the eye than the eye itself related to the eye of the eyebrows, eyelashes, eyelids. So let's take a quick look at them. I'm going to send a fairly big the moment of the finite, how a character looks. So let's take a quick look at the most common ones. That block eyebrow is one of my favorites and super common. And this is Tyler of cartoons. Basically it's just a rectangle on top of the eye. Usually you want to bend it at all, just make it a straight rectangle. Most variations come from the length and thickness. Similar to the block. Eyebrow is the rounded blog. I blow. What do you round off the two ends with the difference that you can bend it if you want. One of my favorite is a common variation. Where do you round off one side and you live with the other one ends in a point to create this kinda droplet shape. The other type of IRL that's common is the realistic eyebrow. This one is a bit more useful for a way, the style of characters. Basically it's just a realistic eyebrow. Let's do a thin block that usually thins out that we told us the m, the particular arc and the amount of thickness you give it, can vary it a whole lot. And it will define the look and feel of the character. Eyelids, eyelashes, or something that's super important to communicate emotion. And gardens, eyelids are often just a line that covers the eye partially. Usually will have an arc to the adult, the roundness of the able and their life that top eyelid goers way monospace in the eye. So most cartoons only show the top eyelid going down, usually to the notary board for that character. So don't forget that the eyelid will cover the aid is partially. Notice that this also work with the gut. But since they got, I usually will have this inclination. You have to be aware of where the corners a start and end regarding the eyelashes, depending on the style and the character, you may not want to even bother with them. Little cup to decide what you want. Our graphical cartoons, this very communist style you see all the time. And those are the one cycle, the radiating eyelashes, because that's how you make them. You start with a common ground I, and then you'll draw anywhere from three to six eyelashes coming out. Here, you can play with the location and we're asked what is the quantity. You can even make them actually floating, not connected to the eye whatsoever. Then you have this slightly more realistic single shape eyelid, usually left for females and make up organelles with the eyelashes. It's usually made of a shape that is connected to the upper eyelid, usually making it thicker and extended it. There are multiple shapes you can use. The most common ones are just a thick line on top of the upper eyelid that usually ends in these triangular shape. And that was the most common eyes and I related features. Now you have more than enough knowledge about eyes to make any shared in these asylums. But there are more features to see. And we'll do that in the next lesson. This one is already a bit too long and I want to keep them ECM fast to rewatch. So see you there.
6. Head Features Part 2: In the previous lesson, we studied the eyes. In this lesson we'll deal with the rest of the features and we'll start with the nose. The first type of nurse I wanted to show you is super-simple and common in the more graphical cartoons. And also in their not-so-good Africa. It's made up of either a half-finished triangle or a half-finished circle, which of course you can push and pull and scaled and rotate to get different types. These nurses can have bridges and now you have to do is to just make a line. The weaknesses are some of my favorite because they are one of the most flexible and personality infused and features super common with all people and middle age males. Basically, it's just a rectangle with an indication of one when this think of these nodes has made a four-point plus the wing at the bottom. And just play around with the position of those three points and the size of the wing to get different. Feeling gnosis on doctor can also add a bleed on the upper part. And if you want, you can separate the wheat from the body of the nose to get even more possible variations. Just remember that all comes from thinking of those four points, the wings, and playing with them to get new gnosis. Another nice thing you can do if the character is in three quarters, is two other an indication of the other wing on the other side. Just half a circle II soldier needs. Then there is the round knows. This one. I super flexible as well, is basically used for more goofy characters. And it's often colored differently than the rest of the skin. To further emphasize the weirdness. Basically is just a closed circle that you're going to squash and stretch and play with the dimensions clues. You can make a balloon by ending the apple aside in 1. These nodes works pretty well for front and three-quarters view. Now for the mouth, the mouth is the most simple mouth and a surprisingly popular type of mouth, despite its simplicity, you see it everywhere, even in the most realistic type of ketones. This is just a line that's about it. However, it's very common to have a shorter line below to imply the lower lip, though it doesn't connect with the upper line. You can also allocate to get different expressions like a smile or a frown. And in some expressions is very common to add a short line at the end for some excitedly data. The lips mouth is most commonly used in females and attractive characters in general. Here you can make the leaves in the classically formed, make it about shape on top and an arc below. But you can also just make the APA leap another arc. Keep in mind that the leaves don't have to follow the integrity of the mouth. You can just make a line mouth and then put the leaves on a small section. This is especially good to the older female characters with the small leaps. Another thing to notice about these type of leaps. He said You need to wrap them around the mouth. If the guy smiles, elifs will have to follow. If they can either open its mouth. It also have to follow, but more about that in a second. This is very important. In three-quarters, the lips will change to account for perspective distortion. And you'll often see the center of the bow moves all the way to the side and the Alcoa, the apex to the side as well. Now let's talk about open mouth's. There are many ways to make an open mouth. And I think that everyone can figure it out how to make an open mouth from front view. It's super easy. You just make their mouth have the shape you want, usually an ellipse, something open mouth often have East in cartoon that these are usually just a single rectangular shape. Optionally with a few of the visions for three or four individual teeth. Not too much. Otherwise, it will look, we're more often than not, you'll see only the upper teeth showing. This avoids the problem of making the mouth area to BCM. Unless you're making somebody crunching that these together, which is a common expression you see all the time. Here's their mouth is really open. Sometimes you'll see the tongue. The tongue is just half a circle. For three-quarters open mouth. Since GitHub is more complex, not too much. Once you know what to do. My technique is super simple. Just make a C shape and close it with another C-shape on the front. Then if you want, you can make the D sand the tongue as well. Just like before. These C-shaped can be either to make a smile or a frown or any other mouth shape. Just by playing with the shape, make it sharper or rounder for as long as it roughly constructed in a C form. You know, look cool. Like are the ellipse. You can overlap the leaps to any of the open mouth too great an open leap smells. Finally, it's what I call the nose smells. And more than a specific type of nose, it's a design technique of disuse. This is more prevalent in the more graphical captains. You'll see why in a minute is super easy to make. Just going to denote with the upper lips, with a mouth in three captives. And there you are. This works best when we connect the line or open mouth with a simple gnosis we saw in the nurse's lesson. But you can experiment and try to connect it with other types of nurses. We often see some cartoons connect the lower lip with the chin as well. This is usually done with all the are overweight galactose. And to end this lesson, the ears. Okay, this one is going to be a short one. If you pay attention to cartoons made by the pros, you'll notice that the den nearly as much variations for the years in comparison with the other features. And the thing is that in gallstones, yields tend to be super-simple. I suppose the main idea is that if they were more detail, they equal to compete for attention with the rest of the face. So that symbols are super-simple, nasty forward. And so remember that, hear them talking about the most common features. I'm not dealing with cattle and specific ones like elf ears or damaged ears or anything like that. Okay, the most simple symbol you can make is probably just these blank half circle. This is actually a pretty common in many malarial cartoons. The other common thing is to make these 2.5 circles inside this supposed to be a bit of detail from the inside of the year and that's about it, believe it or not, those are the two main types of ears you see all the time. And pretty much everything you need to know for now. Well, we're done. Those were the most important features. You need to know. The ones that 90% of our gardens in this style use over and over again. Most of the uniqueness of a character comes from the clever neutralization of these small quantities of features, rather than creating something entirely new every time you want to draw here. So what I would like you to do now is to go and find your favorites prototype hairs that you made so far. Instead of replacing the circus with these features, you just lumped, it doesn't matter if it looks rules are not just tried turns in terms of combinations as well. Don't forget to get the PDF with all of these features and more in the resources section.
7. Hair: I've noticed that most courses and books on cartoon drawing skip completely on how to make the hair. And I guess the reason is because there really isn't that much to it. Once you know how to approach it, making any type of hair is super-easy, but some quick guidance can be helpful. So this is what this lesson is all about. So first I want to talk about the single most important thing you need to know about drying the hair. In ketones and also in realistic drawing. You want to draw the hair as simple shapes. Beginners are often tempted to make the hair as individual strands, but that's the wrong way to do it. When you're drawing complex and messy subjects, like for example, the leaves in threes or patches of grass or hair. The most effective way of drawing that is by using a shape that takes the general form of that area. And doing this simplification is even more important for cartoons. Now to actually make the hair. Well, we could just mess around making some shapes and see if you can find the heavy wanted, let's say, completely valid way to make here and find interest in the science. However, what I recommend you to do is to go and find reference. Here you can take two possible ways. You could grab reference of other characters and see if you can use it or inspire yourself with it. This works rate with some of the most simple and generic haircuts are there. But if you want something truly unique, something that just works with the design of your character, then I recommend you to search for real life pictures. I prefer to use real life reference because you can always just make a straight copy without making your cartoon look too much like any other one. Just Google female calico cats are male haircuts. And it's an else like biking. Births are goofy eyebrows. And you'll get a million different pictures. Probably more than you'll ever need. If you feel like you need even more, let me recommend you pin the rest as well. Is way more organized and Google and easier to find similar content to what your surgeon with reference of interesting looking Heracles. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with nice-looking hair. But if you're still worried, I can give you a few tips on how to handle making different types of hair. But first, a generality, but always keep in mind that you are adapting the haircuts to a cartoon here. You are not making a one-to-one copy. What you're doing is finding information of how the hair works. Your character may need for the head to be bigger or more, please level or maybe even more simplified. And then you, because especially when you have real-life reference, it's really easy to go overboard and make a more detailed copy then what you need. So whenever you are using reference, always err on the side of simplicity. Okay? If you're working with a character with straight hair, sometimes it's very helpful to us some lines on top to indicate the direction to where the head is flowing. Just so it reads weather. Like for example, in these haircuts, I'll in a few lines will help each of them to read them more easily. Since the show the direction to where the hair is going to. Something that's harder to see when you have such simple shapes. Another common thing is that you're going for a character with currently are messy hair. In this cases, it's often helpful to simplify. You are the first animals with some nice and big bumps like this. You may feel like you're losing alert in the transition between the photo and Ryan. But you don't want complex, have to really curly hair either. So this loss is completely acceptable. Okay, this might be alone into the most basics of drawing, but I wanted to make sure you don't complicate yourself when making hair. Chances are that you want to add some gods to the fringes or other locus of hell to make the cut feel less geometrical and more natural. Remember to always refers to her shape. And only then on a second bass at the guts or Lockett's you want. This way you focus on making the most elegant shape possible for the hair without having to worry about the small details. Well, that's about it for the harem. And that's complete service and you need to know to draw hands. So I have a few exercises that will help you make hair and put them together. First of all, search for reference of cartoons and see if you can come up with some haircut that's inspire but different to their reference. And second, finally, a life haircuts that you think look interesting and adapt it to your favorite heads. And finally, since you now have pretty much all the knowledge you need to complete the hill, why not the star making those prototypes that animal complete an equals here and all of that. That will simplify and speed up the whole process of coming up with a hail from scratch.
8. Introduction to the Body Unit: The body is different to the head in the sense that now we have to juggle with a lot more shapes. We have the torso, the arms, the legs, the hands and feet. And of course on top of that also is going to have to be there and also be in perfect proportion and nicely working together. So we need a different approach. We can no longer just draw the shape of the body and fill it with the details. I mean, we could, but that requires considerably more knowledge and experience. What we need is a method to systematically build a body little by little, a system that helps us down the complexity. And that's what this unit is mostly going to be about. I'm going to show you a method where you're going to work with easy to do shapes and progressively go adding new things that you have. A nicely finished sketch that we can take later on to finish. While we are not gonna go into in-depth anatomy, we're going to start with a small introduction to the human body and the simplified shapes you can use to draw it. The idea here is that not all cartoons are highly stylized and highly abstract. Some of them use at least I beat of real life anatomy. And that's what we're going to start with. Just the absolute basics of how you can use the shapes to build a body. So we're going to leave the hands and feet for a later lesson. Then we're going to move on into the metal. We're going to first focus on the sign and then on Paulson. After that, we're going to talk just a bit about the details and clothing and accessories. Again, in this hostile definition is actually one of the easiest parts, mainly because they avoid detail or unnecessary information on the body as much as possible. But a quick lesson and some tips, one heart. And by the end of this unit, you'll have pretty much all the knowledge you need to be able to Fourier sketch a cartoon character like the ones you're seeing here.
9. Basic Mannequin: Okay, we are ready to assign our own characters. And to help with that, I want to introduce you to an awesome tool that you may have seen being used before. Because it's very common when drawing characters. Depending on the artist. It's going to have different names. I call it the mannequin. And it's a bit of an analogous to the head prototype we saw in the head unit. Because it has similar function. It is meant to help you with the process of designing and drawing a character by separating this process into two steps. One, would you establish quickly and easily the main shapes and proportions and the position of the body. This will be the mannequin. And then on a second step, we use this mannequin as a guide to draw the final galactose with the details on the line out and I would assign on top. So how do you make a mannequin then? Well, that depends on the particular character, the post, the style, and your preferred way of working. We are working with Captains here. There really isn't a single mannequin that works for every character because each carton can have drastically different bodies. However, most collectors are going to be heavily based on a version of the real life. While so knowledge of anatomy do mothers Soviet. Now, I won't go into anatomy in this course for a couple of reasons. First, that's an advanced topic and I want to give it a beginner friendly. And second, you don't really need knowledge of anatomy to make most captain characters. However, I do believe some quick random through the most important shapes that makes up the body is going to be heavily even efficient for any guide there of any body shape. So that's what we're gonna do now. So here's a diagram I made of the super simplified anatomical shapes of the body. This diagram represents the main shapes I think when I make in a mannequin, I warn you that this is my personal way to obstruct the anatomy of the body. I'm sure other artists will see the things in a slightly different way. But this one's for me and I think it'll work for you. Now. Not all cartoons are going to have this exact same body, but this eye around represents the most complex mannequin you'll want to make. So if you learn how to draw these, you should commit to memory the different shapes that you see here. Then it's not going to be hard to play around with the proportions and positions. And even change a few shapes here and there to come up with your own money again, that feeds, take either you want to draw. So now let's go through all of these shapes and clarify any doubts that may come up. By the way before starting. I want to let you know that this diagram will be available in a PDF file in the resources. So you can use them as reference. Whenever I'm making a character like to start by making the torso. I believe that in a cartoon is the single most characteristic shape of a character. So for me it makes sense to start though. This is the torso. I like to think of the torso has been made of four distinct sections that you can play around and exaggerate to get to unique bodies. At the top instead of PECS section. This is a real life muscle and it has a unique relationship with the rest of the torso and the neck. You'll realize that trapezius Ysaye back muscle that extends to the base of the shell. So all of these area that you're seeing here, it's kinda the back of the pterosaur showing through the front. You can see this more clearly in the side view. And this is important to know because it will define the way that person moves in the upper section is not a straight line. It has this triangular shape that goes to the neck. It's bigger in males and in females this muscle is there, but it's much smaller, making it barely visible. So have this muscle on mine when making the top of the dorsal. But what's more interesting is how it's related to the neck. I want you to notice that the negative sign in front of the trapezius, like I said earlier, the trapezius is part of the back showing through the front. That's the reason why they make seems to penetrate into the torso. You can see how this works better inside you. And because of that, the neck extends down the trapezius section length. When I'm making mannequin select to indicate the connection between the naked, the torso, my close-in the shape of the neck, like in these diagonal. This way I can easily see if it's connected properly. And the extent of the RBCs, which is going to be important for some characters at the moment of place in the arms. As you'll see later. The next two areas of the torso, I'm not going to be nearly as complex. Going down the trapezius. Others will have the pectoralis idea what the bacteria is muscle 0s in real life. I like to separate this section because of two things. First, some cotton ball is exaggerate these parts of the torso to make super masculine male bodies. Second, this area is important because this is where the breast come from in females. Notice how the breasts hang from the Wharton of this area down. You can see this clearly inside Rio. From front view there is a trick to help you place of rest that I like to use. Just think of an imbalance helped shape that connects with the size of the neck. This trig also works pretty well in three-quarters view as well. Of course, I don't need to mention that this idea is considerably y, therefore average male bodies than for the average female body. This next area is basically the connection between the upper parts of the torso and the lower path, which ends in the waste. In cartoons in the classic male body, this idea has an inverted ribosomal shape that connects with the pelvis. And in females, because of the classic hourglass torso. This is the narrowest section, especially compelling it with the pelvic section. Finally is the public section of the torso. This area has its own complexities, mainly because of the way it connects with the legs. First of all, I want you to notice how in the male and female torso, this shape has a bit of a unique form. Three from the front, kinda looks like an underworld shape. As if the mannequin were wearing underwear. Underworld shape is not arbitrary. The legs penetrate our region to a torso and this angle in real life to allow the legs to move forward in different directions. So drying this shape is essential, so the legs look currently connected with the torso. A couple of things to notice. This angle at which the legs connect will change depending on the character or body type. But it will always connect before the upper end of the pelvic area, before the waste. So always make sure to leave a bit of space here at the top. And second, this might not be visceral from all angles, but there is a small gap between the legs. It does not end in a point. This is important because you may want to make characters with lots of space between the legs. So you want to give this gap in mind. And that was the torso. But now central talk about the other limbs. We already talked about the neck, and of course we saw the headline length in the previous unit. So let's escape to the arms. It's really important to know that in real life the arms hang at the side of the torso. They have their own width. And so it's easier to think and separate between the dorsal and the ANS. And I streak is rather thickness with another shape. In this case, I use a half circle. This half circle, as soon as the function of the finding the width of the arms and the location, notice how the arm starts aligning with the upper torso. And the other thing to keep in mind is that the trapezius ends at the width of the torso. It does not go above the arm. Remember that it's very important. From here I found that the easiest way to simplify the arms is to make the upper and lower arm as two triangular shapes. Of course, in real life, the shape of the arm and the musculature is much more complex than that. In roughly triangular shape like this, looks pretty good for all the limbs. So the upper arm is basically a rounded triangle that starts at the size of the house circle. And the lower arm. Well, it's a bit of a more complex shape. Think of it SAT or drop shape. This is a fairly accurate shapes to the real life form of the lower arm. And it's extremely important to get it right for any character that shows some musculature. A couple of things to notice. The shape was stabbed before the end of the upper arm. This is the way the two arms connect in real life. Also notice how the outside side starts a bit above the inner side. The outside is always going to be a simpler curve. It's just a C-shape. The inner side, it has a more complex escargot. These teardrop shape as sort of a pizza from side view. And from all views. The muscles wrapped around the bones in a very particular way make it the lower arm have this shape. From pretty much all views. You'll notice that in both mannequins and made, the hands are two rectangles here. So maybe their feet as super-simple triangles. Hence, our feet are very well-known to be fairly complicated to draw. Let's East that even in cartoons, the shape require some extra study. So why is it set it to, to make a single lesson dedicated to the hands and feet. For now, I recommend you to leave them both for the finishing stage and make our mannequins we rectangle hands and the angle feet. Wherever you saw how the legs connects with the torso and the importance of the underwent shape of the lower section. That'll help you connect the legs. Now let's look at the legs themselves. I want you to notice how the length mirror what happens in the ANS. The upper layer has a roughly rounded triangular shape, just like the upper arm. And the lower leg has this characteristic teardrop shape that we already saw in the Lower Alabama, but throw in a bit more in detail. The upper leg starts. The points defined by the underwear shape, as we talked earlier, and ends in a point. This point is where the kneecap is. Notice the difference between the male and female happen lay. There may lead them to be more muscular and therefore everything and spread apart. Female lakes are wider because they have a writ more fat, but mostly because the heaps will most likely be much wider. So they start being Vidal. Melissa parts of the body where the side view really matters. Notice in both male and female, the upper layer still has this roughly rounded triangular shape when now the backside is much flatter. So there is this roughly flat side on the back end, roughly rounded side on the front. Like I said a minute ago, the lower leg has a similar shape to the lower arm from the front. It starts just above the end of the upper leg. If you remember, that lasts where the kneecap was going to be and it follows these teardrop shape. This gets to the foot. What is different from the lower arm is in the side view. What are the theme of one size flat in one side, rounded repeats, but now opposite to the upper layer. From side view of the lower leg is why they're at the top and thinner at the bottom. The epics of the curvature is going to be on the first half. Notice how the lower leg start just a brief behind the upper layer. This is how the legs are in real life. And this mental help balance out the body. And of course, if you remember from a minute ago, I said that the hands and feet, we were going to be seen it in a future lesson. For now, I like to make the fetus triangles three and the mannequin phase. And that's what's it for the mannequin. Like I said in the beginning, these diagrams represent the single most complex and realistic style mannequins you'll want to make. If you master it, you should have everything you need to make. Any type of character with any type of body. So now let me give you a quick demonstration on how you will use the shapes to the sign your own characters. What I wanna do is to apply each of these shapes to completely different proportions than what's on the diagonal. I'm going to play with different shapes, squashing and stretching them, making them bigger or smaller. And for us we're gonna say respects somehow the relationship and placement of the different shapes. The mannequin is going to look like a correct Canton human. I might merge that one shape or another. For example, you notice that I don't like to marketers separation between the trapezius area and the pectoralis area. And that's okay because even if I don't draw it, I'm thinking about it. I'm making sure the neck want over extend past the trapezius area. And given the torso, the classic triangular shape that the trapezius idea gives it. That's what you do when you understand and get familiar with the shapes. The thing is that the diagram represents a roadmap to the basics of the human body. So you understand better how the body works. It's a tool. Once you understand how to use it, you don't have to follow it to the leather. I do, however, recommend you that for now. We will do follow it pretty closely just as a safety measure to eliminate one more idea. Well, and here there are different mannequins of different body types all made using the shapes of the diagram. Now it's your turn. You'll have the PDF for the diagram and use it as a reference to do the same thing I did. He'll make dance and dance of these signs. But 20 important, draw them in this front view. Don't worry about putting them in dynamic poses quite yet. We're going to do that in the next lesson. For now, focus on using the shapes to the sign and cool characters and add them to memorize the shapes of the diagram. So you don't have to rely on it every time you want to draw a character.
10. Posing the Mannequin: Hopefully now you're able to make your own cartoons, even if they are simple geometrical shapes in static positions. But chances are that you want to draw them. Doing something cool. But at least a standing in a more interesting way. And the problem is that there are some subtleties you need to know. So your character looks when it's in a dynamic pose. And that's what we are going to be seen in this lesson. And let me be honest here, dry in the body and movement from imagination. It's actually pretty hard, especially in the more dynamic poses. The problem is that when you're a beginner, you lack the visceral knowledge about postures. So you have to improvise and more often than not improvising and results in some terrible drawings. The good news is that this achieved that can help you some sense that Altis or false skill levels to all the time. You can use reference, which in this case means finding a picture with the posture you want and then adapting it to your character. So the first step is finding the right pictures. I would recommend you to use either Google or better than Google, Pinterest. Just search for something like standing Bose's or fight impulses, or maybe even gesture process through search for gesture drawings. I would also recommend you to go for real life pictures. Because what you want is knowledge about how the different forms of the body interact with each other to make a particular posture. And pictures to that better than an artist's interpretation of a posture. But it's up to you and unnecessary but sometimes helpful in-between step is to take the reference and find its mannequin. Just try it on top or at the side, the shapes that we saw on the previous lesson. Just to see more clearly what is what you'll need to adapt to your character. Doing this will also help you memorize the little sovereignties of the pose and give you a more direct way to translate it to your character. So if you're just starting out, I recommend you to do this. Now it's time to adapt the post to your character. Hopefully now you have a ton of money gains made from the previous lesson. This is tip is probably going to be quite challenging. The burden lies in that you need to keep the split of the bows while retaining their cartoony proportions, which may require some adaptin and of course practice. So it's not nearly as straightforward as it may seem. For that reason, I'm going to go through some of the more important character design concepts that apply to both in your character. Pay attention because this information is essential for the character to nuchal in general. Okay, They're very first thing you should watch out for ease the line of action of the pose. The line of action is a line that usually goes from the hill to one of the legs. And that captures in a single line the whole movement of the body. This line is usually going to be a nice and smooth C or eschar. Even in standing poses. If the lengths are separated, you have to choose which leg is one important for the post, and which leg makes the current flow more naturally. This line of action is a very nice tool to help you make a postural more natural and dynamic. I like to start drawing the hill and then add the girl. Then add, try to place all the different parts of the mannequin trained to follow it as best I can do, will not believe how much of a difference this curve makes. It will transform completely any STI falls into something that feels more natural. Let's talk about rhythms. Rhythms are as similar concept to the line of action. Basically an imaginary curve or line that joins the different parts of the body. And that makes them flow from one to another. We'll go from the torso to a limb or from one leg to another. You can follow this loop or the inside of the body. Or they could follow two important parts that are completely separate them. That's also important to know. The parts don't have to be connected to flow one to another. The rhythm is an imaginary line. Just like what happens with the line of action. This reasons will help you connect and align the different parts. And that's what asserting a character that feels more solid and pleasant to the eye. At the moment of copying the pulse, make sure to keep these rhythms in your character. You went into the proportions completely different. Remember that you are in control of what happens on the paper. So you should draw the character in such a way for this freedoms to be as clear as possible, to accelerate in one or another according to what looks best. Another thing to be aware at the moment of begin and dry in a posture is the silhouette and clarity. The silhouette is the shape that makes the visible part of the body. So in the case of this picture, for example, there's an LED will be the the black shape. As you can see, you cannot see anything happen inside of that area, only the content. But what matters to us is that whenever you are looking at their character, the very first thing that your brain sees is the silhouette. And from that silhouetted derives what the character might be doing. What you want to say, clear silhouette. That is a posture where their silhouette communicates exactly what is doing without any Confucian, some pulses have a clear silhouette and some others don't. Always be on the lookout for reference where you can easily tell what the person is doing at first glance. If you can't, or it's rather difficult to find out, then their posts is not doing what it should. And you should probably pick another reference or redo the drawing. Let me warn you that this stage is probably the hardest you have to deal with. Either define what makes a good posture, how to push it, staying in proportion and keeping your shapes while adapting your characters to a pose is something that will take practice and lots of failing. So keep at it because it's, they have this step and everything will be much easier from now on. As an exercise, just practice making dance and dance or parses out of left answers. Get your favorite designs from the last lesson or create new ones. And then to some good bosses.
11. Hands and Feet: The feet and especially the hands, are widely considered tricky topics for a beginner. The main problem here, especially with the hands. Instead, there are a million possible positions and configuration that you could be in. However, in cartoons making hands and feet east much easier. Not only because of the simplified anatomy, but also because there are certain common hands and feet positions, you can learn and use for NSF that one require a particular action. So that's what this lesson is going to be about. The basic cartoon anatomy of the hands and feet. And the most common positions you'll be using 90% of the drawings you'll be doing. Before starting, I want to let you know that all of the drawings and diagrams that I'll be showing you here will be available to download in a PDF file. Just like with the features. You can get it in the resources. Let us start with some basic anatomy. The cancer, basically a rectangle divided into half of it being the bound and the other half being the fingers. And so usually the hand is wider than the lower arm. In real life, the fingers have all different lengths. But in cartoons you can get away by making either all of them more or less the same length, except of course, the middle finger or the ascending towards the outer side of the hand. The thumb attaches at one of the sides depending on which hand. And comes out directly from one of the sides of the lower arm for palm up usually make the bump of the thump, which is say half circle, which occupies about half of the hand. As our opposite to this, there is another tension blame. Though this one is optional. We remember that the leader finger is always smaller than the rest of the other ones. For palm down is the exact same process. Only that you don't show the change in plane of the bomb as far as the fingernails. Whether you want to make them or not, depends on how far away the character 0s. That's a detail that's optional. The same with another's. Though I find that most cartoons rarely draw knockers in general. For the side view, you will rarely draw the hand completely from the side. It will look much nicer, natural if you dry it just w tilde they're showing the other fingers. Make sure to make the rectangle of the hand. I bit wider to accommodate for all four fingers. And of course, don't remember that it should start at the connection with the lower arm. As so notice the natural government by the fingers. This is how the fingers look for when the hand is relaxed. When it's Roberta is pretty much the same. Only that you're going to see the thumb and the half circle of the thumb through the other side. The three stars, some of the most common conformations you'll see in cartoons. There are two type of feasts you should know. The palm up feast and the more lateral side feast. For the bound up feast usual first draw the rectangle of the bound. And then you'd rather fingers in this staircase pattern. Make sure to leave a space on top to show the plane of the first finger. Then you add the thumb on top. I think I don't need to explain how to do it from the opposite view. It's even simpler. Just make sure to draw their knuckles. Then that is decide fist. And just like with the side hand, you'll want to do it WTF an inclination so it looks more natural. This time make the rectangle of the bone. And here's an interesting thing. Drought the fingers again in this staircase pattern with the very first finger having this extra line to imply that is curl in there. Then you add the thumb just below. And the other way around is practically the same, but with a button in delta and ASAM is just below as well. The feet are easier than the hands. That are three common positions you want to commit to memory. First is the side. From the side that feeder actually a triangle shape. If the food is being seen from the inner side, then you want to use the inability of a plane in the front for the big toe, which will hide all the other dose. The heel is surrounded form. And the ankle can be just that tiny curled at the connection with the lady. I also noticed that it's wrangle doesn't align with the lay. The heel is just a bit behind it. From the opposite side, the exact same shapes repeat with the main difference that you want to draw the fingers in these takers pattern. Here's where we are so helpful to draw the fingernails. Though that depends on how far you are C and the feet. France required us. Their feet is basically again a curved triangle. But this time I read displays to the side. Notice this curve that indicates the shape of the feet. And so you should make a plane at the front for the frontal part. Make sure that the sides has an arc for the familiar with staircase pattern for the dose. From side view, their feet are so super-simple. Let's make a rounded triangular shape. But at the top, make sure to make the two anchors. At the bottom of the triangle, you can make the fingers, remember the staircase pattern. And that's about it for the feet. But I want to very quickly talk about the footwear and how it relates to the shape of the feet. If you know how to draw the feed, then drawing the footwear is going to be easy. Most of it is going to follow roughly the shape of the feet. Only that will be bigger depending on the shoe. And we'll have another around the shape. The shoe, we'll most likely have some sort of outsold, which will add a bit of extra depth. You can also have a heel in three-quarters. It can be a bit tricky to show this. I like to make these depression with this shape. Most shoes are also going to show some sort of wrapping around the lower layer. This means that the shoe, we'll have some volume there. And finally, mushrooms will have some sort of detail on the top section. And some will wrap from one side to the other. You have to draw this model less in the correct perspective. Before ending this lesson, I want to give you a bit of advice or how to use what you've seen here. When you are working with cartoons, you can get away with a lot of short hands that you couldn't do with a more realistic style. And one of those shorthands can be applied here. Like I said in the intro, you don't need to learn how to draw hands and feet from all angles. With three or four standard type of hands and feet. It shouldn't be enough to cover pretty much any position you need unless of course that the hand is doing something specific. So Loman, how to do the standard type of hands and feet will get you a long way. Familiarity with his hands and feet will help you draw from reference in those cases when you do need them doing something specific. Okay, with what you just saw here and a bit of reference for those extra unusual positions. That should be about everything you need to get going with the hands and feet. As an exercise, you have the PDF and copy my drawings until you memorize them completely.
12. Finishing and Clothing: Okay, Now it's time to finally grab all those mannequins. And now the final line and clothing or accessories to it. This part, believe it or not, it's not actually that hard. In fact, I would say that this part is probably way easier than making a correct mannequin of a body in a dynamic pose. If that is indeed correct. With Goodbody, the sign silhouette shapes and all of that, then every central be smooth sailing from now on. I think that there are two separate things you should keep in mind when you want to go from a mannequin to a finished sketch, the body and the clothing for their body definition should be pretty intuitive. This is smooth corners made by the head shapes you use in the mannequin. The mannequin that I showed you, it's already heavily based on real life anatomy. So if you follow it, the final body line, the line that's part of the body and not the gradient, should be pretty similar to the mannequin. But sometimes I read of reference can help you address some things we haven't seen. Like some bomb cinnabar lupins of particular process, or bended or twisted limbs are some specific musculature that we didn't saw. Some of those details can be hard to realize on your own. I also believe that having a cartoon reference in a similar style to what you're going for is essential. So you can compare and inform yourself and see how other artists solve particular problems. Maybe they didn't even follow real f anatomy. But maybe this simplifies something into a very clever way. This sort of information, you're not going to get it out of a real life picture. By housing clothing and accessories. I can't possibly know what type of clothes you want to use with your characters. But what I can do is to give you a few techniques and thieves help you at the moment of dressing your mannequin. This first one should be annoyingly familiar. Reference is always going to be important. Not only to be able to come up with a deliverable clothing, but also at the moment of seeing how cartoons handle certain types of clothes. Again, the importance of gathering cartoon reference as well as real-life reference. Some clothing behaves and looks different in real life than it does in ketones. So when the sign in the close of your characters, always search for reference of what you want. Once you decide what you want to draw, search for reference of cartoons were in similar clothes or at least similar fabric. I will strongly recommend you to use Pinterest here. We'd been dressed. You can use the features that recommends you a similar image to the one you have selected. This way you can find what you want visually with relative ease. This is especially important for the cotton reference, where Google will only throw you countless cartoon images of a stock sites rather than ketones made by professional artist. And I wanted to share a few tips regarding the specifics are making clothing. It's very common for the globe to leave the silhouette of the body, especially baggy clothes, sink of the sleeves of a shirt or a zombie shorts. In many animation shows character the signers avoid any type of loose clothing to ease the work of animating characters. So the globe looks like it's super tight on the body and do not leave their silhouette. I believe that you should make a conscious decision at the moment of making the clothes. Because some close lend themselves more to be loose and the rest of the body and some others don't. Like I said earlier, think of a shirt. Unless it's a super tight one, is going to leave the silhouette of the body, at least at their sleeves or address. It's probably going to be stuck to the legs, is going to be more loose. In those cases, you have to be aware of the different ways close crop around the body. Most of the time, unless you're working with the single most flat angle Africa Catalina styles, you'll want to rub the clothing around the body. We will need an arc so it looks like it's placed around it. This arc implies some perspective, but you'll have to worry about this. Most of the time you want to make the outcropping down when ileum or the torso or any other parts of the body is pointing more or less at the front. When you are seeing something from above, like for example, sockets or boots or anything low in the body. These depends on the particular view of your character. Then you want to make the ALK pointing up. And if you're making the loose clothing that we talked about a second ago, then it will show abit of the inside of there, but does the body as well as the glow then wraps around it. Okay, and that's about everything you need to dress up your characters. I told you it wasn't the time. I cannot emphasize enough how important references in this part, even for characters that, that will indeed a close use reference to bridge all the gaps in your knowledge. And now you have everything you need to start drawing full characters. So why not do that? Practice making dance and dance of characters from the ground-up. And pick your favorite to get to the next stage, which is going to be the finishing. Well. See you there.
13. Introduction to the Sketches Unit: In this next unit, I want to draw the characters that we are going to use for the render unit. But I want to warn you a couple of things regarding what's going to be in here. One thing I want to live very clear is that you should definitely use your own characters rather than copying my own. Not only is going to be more rewarding to you, but also it's going to be martyred. Look at it to see how the process works through and through. I decided to show you the drawing process, mainly because they thought it would be weird to just come up with some character sketch out of the blue in there on the unit. And also just to give you an idea of how each of the parts of making a character come up altogether at the moment of sketching something. So let's leave this very clear. My goal here was to get to a sketch. I did not want to finish there, make it nice and smooth line render in this course is all about making characters in the style of what you see in today's animation. And for that, you need to render something in an illustration software. In our case, the vectors of Inkscape. And we don't need a nice pristine drawing to do that. A rough sketch is fine. If there are some minor problems in the sketch. You can always fix them later in Inkscape. And you see a couple of locations where that happens to me. So I don't need to tell you that just like all drawings in this course so far, you can and should follow using pen and paper. After n. In each lesson, I'm going to export the character as a PNG file, so we can use it in ink CEP in the next unit. However, if you're using pen and paper, you can always take a picture with your cell phone or any other device and import it into APC as an image. We don't need the sketch to be super clean, but as long as it's legible. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say for now. Let's get to draw.
14. Boy Sketch: For the very first character, I wanted to draw something that was super common and super easy to draw. This kinda what that is so easy that you can draw it. Even without a mannequin stage. Though I made it into two stages just for the sake of consistency. It's there Come on boy with a common boy, girl body that you see in a ton of animation shows. It. It's one of those characters that mostly made out of the shapes of its close. It is basically made of three rectangles. Blows the leaves, which are made of the classic two alanines, Doc centroid. The fact that is meant to be a narrowly and an athletic character. I decided to even super buy clothes and shorts above the waistline, which is a strongly associated with narrow the characters. And so on. Notice how the shapes variation in size and space. They are not all equally spaced. Notice also that the character here is in a super static pose. I did not use any reference pulses. In fact, I did not use any reference for the process of most of the characters you see here. And the reason is because I wanted the characters to work nicely together in the cover. So I went for lame static poses. Anyway, that's another reason why you should use your own characters with their own cool process. I think you should be pretty familiar with Ericsson I'm doing here. If you made all the exercises I've given you, you should have done all of these a ton of times. So there isn't much to say, at least for this character in particular. But I do want to talk a bit about the mistake I made with the hair. Basically, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I guess I was going for some really lame narrow the haircut, but I was overconfident and I fell for the classic mistake of not searching for reference. And the result is that I'm unhappy with the way it looks. However, I decided not to rerecord it with a better hell, because this gives me an opportunity to show you not only how we can fix a few minor things at the moment of finishing on Inkscape. But how we can also directly draw on the program. In fact, I have an entire course dedicated to drawing characters and direly on Inkscape, using only the mouse and given chicken out in my profile if you're interested. So we're going to do that was rather hair at the moment of rendering the drawing using the mouse and keyboard. And hopefully you see the power of being saved to fix and refined things. In fact, I want you to notice one important thing about these and all the other sketches that will be coming. This is say, quick sketch. This nothing finished about it. It's a relatively rough sketch that captures the AD app in a more or less complete way. The hair thing was a mistake. But in general, I don't like to make super finish the sketch is when I'm sending something to Inkscape. First because it's not necessary. And second, because it gives you an opportunity to draw and retouch the idea in the program itself. The more familiar you become with Inkscape, the rougher, the sketches you are going to be able to send and finish. And in the state this sketch is, it's more than completed enough so we can have any seat time finishing it in there.
15. Man Sketch: Let's continue with a character that's a bit more complicated. In this case, I wanted to draw a modern male. I read a fake hips that with some interesting facial expression. I want you to notice how I'm making the whole body inevitably carb. I'm not drawing the line of action, but I'm thinking about it. And of course has to be expected. The result is much more pleasant than if he were to be standing in a straight line. One of the great things about working with mannequins is that you can work in stages for as long as the mannequin looks good? Yes. Set for the rest of the sign. In this case, I don't really know what sort of details or clothes or face the character is going to have. But I'll figure it out when I get to the next pass. I already have a nice base to build on top with the mannequin, the sign. Of course, having some rough idea of what you want is so as important. But you don't need to know everything before you're stamped. Do have some room to improvise. In this case, the one thing I had nine before starting was the expression. And as he was going to be relaxed, holding something. And I build the rest of the character based on that. I thought the character didn't need a special clothes on anything. Just some common machines and a common shirt was enough. Notice how simplified the buttons on the sharp. Now, there are only four really big buttons. Are how big that the sleeves and the false or the shirt or the belt. This is what I meant when I say that. You shouldn't make the details visible and reasonable in cartoon form. It's not hard to do once you know how. But failing to capitalize the details is a very easy and common mistake too though. I originally have the idea of making him to have the other hand in his pocket. But then I thought that the whole design looks barren side the side to add an accessory, write down one of those personas for Maeve's. I thought it would feed pretty well with the coffee drinking hipster character. And that's about it for this character. There are a few things I feel like I can breathe Dutch later, like the legs separation or they can grow in the coffee. All of those things should be easy to fix an insane. So I didn't even bother to do it here on the sketch.
16. Simple Man Sketch: For this character, I wanted to make something in this title of all the Hannah Barbera cartoons. One of those characters that have these body where the dorsal on naked joint. Now think of characters like first flint stone or boundary rubbers, something like that. Characters with bodies like these are fairly common in cartoons. And if you said yourself to study the work of other artists, they are much easier to draw them bodies to determine and atomically realistic and require the mannequin as a tool to draw them correctly. So when the sign-in these character, I've had a few references of cartoons with this type of policy rather than the mannequin reference. But having the mannequin, this is another of those characters that are so simple, you could just make them in one go, skipping them at a given stage. Those characters made in this style. But I only go for complex dynamic pulses. So it's up to you to use the mannequin Norma. I still think that mannequins are a useful tool for whenever you want to work on the big sign first and then on the details later. And that's exactly what I'm using it for in here. When I started to make the silhouette, I didn't have any idea of what I wanted to make. But once the mannequin shapes that there, it's way easier to just use your imagination or end. Just try stuff out and see if it works. That's my favorite way of working with cartoons. For the details, I wanted to do something super-simple as well. I thought that they were the type feet, some work line that's considered ungrateful. So may the classic unhappy bell boy waiting for their luggage. Other than that, what I can tell you is that the references helped me a lot. I have an idea in mind for what the traditional uniform of available was with was referenced that allowed me to handle peak when it works for this character and leave out what didn't. And that's one thing you should keep in mind. You should always mix and match reference too narrowly make it unique, but also to make sure it fits your character. Okay, we're almost done. I love making this type of characters because they are so goofy and easy to make.
17. Girl Sketch: For this character, I wanted to draw something a bit more complex. Something that shows the process of building a character from a body might have in the clothing on top. And so this character is going to have a bit more complex silhouette. The volume of the girl is going to be super simple. It's just the classic body archetype of the beholder gave with it the volumes that you see all the time in TV shows. I didn't even bother with the separation between the upper and lower limbs, or by adding an underworld shape to pull the legs from this one. He is simple enough that you don't need to draw these separations. But I am thinking about them, making sure that what I'm drawing fits those shapes from the mannequin. The only other thing worth noticing here is how important the line of action is for the pose. Which in this case, again, I didn't draw it, but I'm thinking about it. And that assault is that the whole body has his pleasant curve. For the face I had in mind these very teenager phase. We bought a look and chewing gum. And this phase was the one thing that gave me the idea of having her holding a cell phone in her left hand. I originally thought of making her looking at her fingernails, but I thought a cell phone with communicate the idea even better. Now for the interesting part, the clothing, he didn't wanted to give her some super baggy clothes, but not in a way that will overwrite the body shape like the clothing you see in those monographic island simple cartoons. Where the clothes Eastern sign, clothes heel adapt and feed the body under. And you get the sensation that the clothing will change the shape as the character moves. Some said that doesn't happen with those graphical cartoons. Of course, I had to look for reference. It went if they close in heat is heavily stylized and simplified. I still had to search how this type of jacket looks when it's opened. And the same for the hand holding the cell phone. When interesting thing happens here, I couldn't find reference for a person holding a cell phone in a way that I wanted. I searched for a long time and I only got a few approximations and nothing else. So I had to grab my cell phone and start taking pictures so I could get the exact reference. I neither. Sometimes it's easy to forget that you have a body that you can easily pose for the exact reference you want. I must admit I love making these set of characters that are more realistic than the flattening graphical styles. In my opinion, you get the best of both worlds. There's implicitly and a spear at the moment of working. And a more detailed lambda. Why are they in cartoon in the end.
18. Woman Sketch: Let's finish this unit with what's probably the most complex character you are drawing this course. Their warrior woman. Though, if you made all the exercises, I'm sure you'll find it quite easy. Here. I wanted to make a character that's fairly realistic and that utilize completely the base mannequin we saw in the last unit. You'll notice that the proportions are not as exaggerated as with the other cartoons. I decided to go for a, what a woman, because I believe attractive females usually required to be it more realistic than other type of characters. I suppose that the reason is similar shapes or the body at least recognizable. I also find females in general to be slightly more complicated to draw than mains. You'd have to have a certain degree of sovereignty at the moment of feeding everything together. You want to be extra careful with the line of action. And there was the rhythms. I'm sure you see clearly the classic C curve in the pulse. And of course the reasons from the pelvic area going to the legs and the upper torso. This is where you see how important the line of action and breathe themselves to make the pulse few more solid. Regarding the details on top, for the face, I wanted just the genetic attractive female face. And for that I used the full proof technique of using the cap ice with the eyelashes and the leap mouth. We had tiny nose though are my touch some of the proportions in insight making then also you want to smile or the ice even bigger. I find that in general, the face is something that's easy to read Dutch in Inkscape because it's super-easy to move and escapes things around in three different variations in their proportions. For the close, I wanted something super-simple that felt Greek or Roman. So I searched for reference on Amazon's and other staff from that data. I finally decided for something iconic, the classic yoga with some exceptions of girls in the middle for something a bit more unique on this type of character that I'm meant to be symbol. A complex set of clothing will not work out as well. So you want something simple and easy to do. Once I enclose in on pencil, draw lightly so you can try multiple things and shapes and proportions. Now coming to the first thing you come up with, once you have a nicely designed mannequin, we should use it as much times as you can to try different clothing's and details. And we're done with the character sketches. Now I'm going to export all of these files to an image file. But I'm gonna do that offline icon. If you're working traditionally, just take a picture with your cell phone or a scanner. With a scanner, you don't need a drawing to be super clear. Uses needed to be legible. In the next unit, we'll import our finished sketches in doing set to work on them.
19. Introduction to the Inkscape Unit: Okay, so we want to make our sketches nice and finished. For that, we need to use some sort of illustration software. What I propose in this course is to finish the sketches using a vector illustration software, in this case, the free open-source Inkscape. And the main benefit is that you can make the finishing and get results like this without the need of a tablet, just using the traditional keyboard and mouse. Now, if you're near the vector illustration or even just near the Inkscape, things can get complicated. Bacterial illustration is a different paradigm that you have to get used to and except can be pretty complex to use. So here's what you should do. Check my profile for my class on Inkscape. It's a super short time condense introduction to not only Inkscape, but bacterial illustration in general. When you're done, continue with this unit and you should be ready to finish our characters. I'm going to warn you, lovingly new software and a new illustration paradigm can be daunting. So I recommend you to take this class is slowly and with gown, I promise you, it will pay off immensely. Bacterial illustration really opens up a completely new world that somehow in the shadow of traditional pixel base illustration. And in my opinion, as a vector illustration fan. And up this in general, it's hugely rewarding and well-worth the time investment.
20. Importing and Preparing Reference: In this lesson, I want to show you how to import a sketch to Inkscape and prepare it for tracing over it. Once you have your sketch in a bitmap image format are looking to do is go to File Import. And this will open the classic file browser bureaucratic system. Here you just search for the 51. There is another way to import an image and that is drag in from university system to the canvas. This is measured metal. Now a no mother of the ways you imported your email. As soon as it's placed on the canvas, you get this little dialogue. This has a few options for the way the mesh is going to be displayed. For our purposes, you can completely skip this message. None of the options are important to us. Let's click on Okay. And if you want, you can also click on the checkbox so it won't bother you have n. And now the image is there on the canvas. One thing that you should keep in mind is that this image is an actual object. That is, you can use the object tool with it and it pretty much all operations will walk. You can scale it, flip it, mirror it, changing their stakeholder and incent, you can do with a normal bath with the object tool. You can do it with the symporter, the image. However, this is not a bass, it's an object. So the Node tool or any path operation won't work at all. We're almost ready to start working. But there is a few things we need to set up if we want to work with the most comfortable way. First of all, we need to be aware of the size we're going to work in. So I'm gonna make a simple line with the Pen tool, which is the most common tool we are going to be using. And as you can see, the default size of the stroke, which is one pixel width, submit too small for the sketch. It's going to be really difficult to see when we start tracing. This is a very common problem. In both. The images are almost always are going to be really big. You can do two things. You can change the default stroke size by messing with the preferences of the tool. Or you can just simply scale down the image so the one pixel stroke looks big enough. This is the easiest way and it doesn't require to mess up with the default settings. So I'll just grab the image and using the object tool. I'll scale it down. Remember to hold control to scale, maintain the proportions. This way you avoid that instruction in the sketch. About there looks right. Now all the strokes made with the vendor will be nice and or reservoir. The next couple of things that are super-important that the moment of working constantly. First, depending on your image and the colors that show on your sketch, it may be really important to lower the opacity so you can see the strokes and shapes will make it better. And second, you'd want to lock the image so you don't accidentally selected when you are manipulating shapes around. Believe me, it's really annoying AN and will lower your work in speed by a lot. So that in a few ways to do this, but the easiest and most flexible way is to use layers. I won't go on detail over how to handle layers here either. We'll leave that layers are simple and intuitive enough that you can figure them out just by using them. But I leave you some resources with some exciting flowing gaze you feel that we'd lost after the lesson. So go to layers. Layer. And here is the layers dialog. As you can see, it's super-simple that are in too many options. By default, every time you create a new document, an empty layer is created. This one that's called Layer 1. And every object you create is automatically assigned to this layer. So the sketch that we imported belongs to this layer. A couple of things we can do with layers. Right next to the name, that is these two icons. They're going off a tiny II and the icon of a daily lock. They mix the layer invisible, which makes some objects that belong to that layer invisible. We can click on this icon to prove that the sketch belongs to this layer. And so notice how the icon of the changes to an open or closed. Depending on the state. The lock icon looks all objects that belong to that layer. This means that we can see it but no longer interact with them. I went to look the layer again. You can see how the icon change from an append log two I plus 1. And before I could just click with the object tool and select the sketch. But now, no matter what, I cannot do that, we won't allow me. You can see how useful this option is to trace over the sketch without fear of accidentally selected it or move it when handling the shapes on top. Then there is the opacity slider down below. This handles the opacity of all the objects that belong to the selected layer. So dependent on your sketch is how much you should lower the opacity of the layer that owns the image. I've recommended to know it as much as possible as long as you can see it constantly without straining your eyes. One last thing, and you can double-click on the layer to change the name. I'm just going to call it the sketch. And now we're almost ready to start working. We just need to create a layer on top. Just click on the plus icon and you read the name like drawing. Not forget to select this layer before I start working. So now all new shapes you create will belong to it. And because this layer is on top of the sketch layer, this means that the objects are going to be created on top, cannot be accidentally moves below the sketch. And that was sold. You need to know for now about the importin and preventing your image to trace over. From now on, I'll be skipping the steps, since they are always the same. Berlin commended the study every sin in this lesson. Because this is something that you'll be doing over and over again. If you want to work with sketches.
21. Methods of Tracing: In this lesson, I want to quickly talk about the two different ways to approach tracing the sketch. Using shape or using line. Whatever you are tracing on Inkscape or any other vector software, you'll want to reconstruct your sketch by using the shape building methods of illustration. That is, stacking shapes one on top of another. This is the Netherland methods over illustration of any vector software. That's how the software encourages you to work. And something that you may have not realized is that applying this method to trace over my sketch is no different than using it for any other illustration. So it has all the drawbacks and benefits that come with this way of working. Working with shapes means that the whole illustration is a bit more flexible. If it's used adequately. You can make some proportional and shape adjustments at anytime, even after you run Arizona. And creating dance of variation by making smaller changes is actually super easy. All of these means that you have a tool that gives you a beautifully way to experiment. Then push your illustrations. I bit more than what's on the sketch. But of course, this way of illustration also has its drawbacks. First of all, if there is no way to make the particular drawing a bit more modular, then there's no way to take advantage of the shapes you are. Drying is made of it and so complicated to work with interlocking shapes. When he shaved might be partially behind and in front of another one. And finally, because you have to think in terms of shapes and you have to make sure all of them work nice and clearly. Even if you're not going to see every part of every single one, it's an overdose slow process. However, the dissonant alternative to work in like this. If you're interested in making any type of illustration that's going to have any type of lineup visible, like more traditional cartoons. Then you can use what I call the line out methods of tracing. Instead of using built-in or custom main shapes to try to reconstruct the sketch from the inside out. What you're going to do is to do something similar to what you will do if you were working in a traditional way. Using paths as if there were lines made with a pen and focusing on making the liner That's nice looking as possible. And once it's done, only then fill the empty areas. Use in a nice tool that's specifically designed for these cases and that we are going to see how to use later. It's called the rocket to. This method is way faster than the shape building vector way. Because you only have the focus on the Lenhart and nothing else. No need to juggle with interlocking shapes or complex areas. Any problems you may have can be solved by following the sketch closely and focusing on making the lineup pretty. It tells us super-fast since you don't have to worry about what's not been seen. This method also has its drawbacks. Obviously, since the liner is just that lines, you cannot make any significant change in the proportions or shapes after it's remade. I mean, you can, but then you'll need to redraw all strokes that connect to the area where you made the change. So this way of working, it's like the opposite of the shape building methods. You have the speed and convenience, but you lose flexibility if you need to change something. So if you don't have a detailed sketch to follow, then it may be harder to improvise the rest of the sketch and the fly compared to when you're using shapes. And of course, this method won't work at all if you plan to export something to animate. So why you can only do this if your illustration has lineup? Well, it has to do with the way you feel the empty spaces and the bucket tool. We're gonna see more about that later on. But for now let's just say that the line art which also have the duty to control the imperfections of the field. Now, I want to live this very clear. It's not that it's not possible to create an illustration with no line up using this method. It's that it may be more trouble than it's worth the fitting the purpose of volcanic this. A very important thing I want to clarify here is that I'm not saying that if you happen to onetime illustration with line art, you'll need to work with the lineup method. And if you wanted without it, you'll have to use the shape builder method. The shape builder method is the illustration method, must vector software and Quraysh. And that is the main method you'll be using. And yes, you can work with lineup using this method as well with very little program. But the thing is that if a person fits, then working with a line narrow methods can be a nice option that can save you a lot of time and headaches.
22. Line Art Basics: In the previous lesson, I talked about the two methods of working with line or which shape. Well, even if you choose to work with shapes, you're going to have to deal with the lions sooner or later. Maybe as I detail on an area or to represent certain elements like and I have row. You need to know how to handle the stroke so you can use them to make any lens. As I said before, in Inkscape, there is no such thing as a line, only baths with stroke but no fill. This means that handling line is not as straightforward as you were saying. So in this lesson I want to go over some of the basic operations regarding handling strokes. So what are some tips for creating and managing line art? And I want to start with that. A few quick tips on making the line at when you are tracing a sketch. These tips will relate to placing nodes. So they'd work for both methods. Since in both methods, you need to place nodes correctly to either make the line art or to make the shapes. As you may already have guessed. A vector shape can be made of a million different ways depending on the placement of the nodes. What I'm saying is that this same stroke can be achieved with completely different configuration of nodes. However, what you want is that those nodes describe the shapes in the most efficient way possible. Mainly because you want to be able to adjust the shape late thereafter it's been made. If the nodes are in the wrong place, it can be almost impossible to change or modify the shape. Luckily, there are a few rules of thumb at the moment of creating vector shapes that are general to all vector work in not just when tracing the sketch. The first call them rule when making a shape or line is that you want to use the absolute least possible amount of Knowles necessary to get the shape that you want. The more nodes on a path, the harder it's going to be to adjust that shape after it's remade. This is my process to be less shape with the least quantity of nodes. Carbonyls go on gardeners. Smooth nodes go on the apex of a curvature. And that includes curvatures that are to the side, like in this case. And that's about it. It's actually not that complex. If you can follow those rules, you'll never have too many nodes that get in the way. So now let's see an example of how to put these principles to practice. So here we have this super basic sketch. By the way, I made these and they are leaning CEP using the calligraphic tool. Let me know if you would like me to add a lesson on how to sketch directly doing same for those who use pen tablets. Anyway, as you know, by default, the pen tool basis kernels that make these straight lines. So here's my digital efficiency tip. Find each corner and place the nose. Their worry about introducing the curvature once that you have the strokes in place. Kansan and manipulate in straight lines is way easier than handling curves. So I'm going to try to trace as much as I again using straight lines. Okay? Now that the strokes are in place, use the node tool to core of this three sections into place. If you need more control, you can always use the handles to fine tune the curvature. Like I said about if a curvature follows after another curvature, then you will need to use a smooth node in the apex. Another nice trick that you can do is to put a corner node in the apex. Well, you know, you need a smooth dollars later on. And then after you alone adjusting everything, use this multiphoton in the two concerts or the node tool to smooth the curvature, then you are most likely want to adjust the roundness with the handles. One thing you'll see me do all the time is to draw through other shapes and lines. You can always cut down the excess after. But by overextending, I'll either give yourself some room to wiggle around the shapes if you need to adjust something later on. And those were some general tips for creating liner. But I want to remind you of a few specific operations and functionality that you're going to have to be really familiar with every time you want to work with line. So here they have this 4-node stroke. If I delete any of the nodes from any of the two ends, either by using the delete shortcut or the baton and the controls. This will shorten the stroke. However, if I delete any node or group of nodes that I will not lead to n nodes. What will happen is that those nodes are going to disappear. And instead we'll try to maintain a symmetricity again, the curvature it has previously. Most of the time, this is exactly the functionality that you want. So you can control the shape disposition of nulls. However, if you need to work on the line art, maybe got in a short segment that goes. Another or something like that, then that won't do. The solution is this Wilton over here that says delete segment. Just select two or more non-metals. And click here. And this will remove this section of the stroke. You can only remove a segment between two nodes. So if you need to delete an arbitrary segment, just use the node tool to place two nodes where you want and then use this button to corral that segment. One important thing to keep in mind is that while these two segments look like they are two separate objects, in reality, they are not, they are still a single path, but made of two paths islands. You can clearly see that if you have the Node tool and start moving it around. But what if you want the two islands to be two separated objects to separate the paths that you can move around and operate independent of each other. Well, there is a tool that allows you to separate islands into separate objects. Just select the object and go to Path break apart. And now they are two separate objects. Of course, if you have more than two paths islands, this operation will create more than two objects. A similar function to the elite segments is the break path. This button over here. Though it's less common. It allows you to break the continuity of the stroke in the selected nodes is like the delete segments. But without having to remove a segment, you want to use these to create bath islands, then you can make their own separate with the break apart common that we just saw. Now, why would you want to do this? Well, if you need a particular segment of the line to have a different style and the rest of the stroke. Because Inkscape only allows one style per path, the only way to do this is by generating a new path. In real life, this is really important for creating line out with corner. It is also possible to join nose as well as combining two or more separate paths into a single shape. This is more unusual, but it has is uses. This is often used to clean up every day shape that was created with a Boolean operation. This type of past tend to have really messy and ugly adults that can cause some problems in the shape at some moment. And I slid a little detail, is that if you use this option with the notes of a completely different, separate the open paths, it will automatically join the two paths together into a single one. This can be used at times to create certain shapes. Rest the other goes down the one that says Join and knows when a segment, this one does the same thing when it joins two animals with a line. Which means that it's more useful to join path islands or separated paths. And those were the basics of hands in line with around. We'll take a look at some of the more advanced techniques related to line up. But this is the basic that you need to make any type of trace in. No matter the tracing method that you choose.
23. Bucket Tool: In this lesson, I want to talk about the bucket tool, probably the most important tool to let us add color to a line after only vector illustration. I will talk about this before. Within ink saved, there is no stroke only or line only object. If you make an up and a stroke with the Pen tool, that's considered an open shape. Which means that if you give it color, you can only see that as far as Inkscape is concerned, that stroke is just like any other paths that closes with a straight line at the end. In fact, if you were to use this path in a Boolean operation, even if it doesn't have any feeling on this, is the shape that the operation would see. It's really important that you be aware of these. Because if you have a line out only illustration and you want to do with color, then you cannot just select the strokes and keep them. Feel. What you need is the bucket. The bucket tool works by generating a path that has the shape of the enclosed area where you clicked. So in this example that these are two separate lines who are also separate paths. They are not combined into a single object, two separate objects. But if I put them together in such a way that they create these enclosed area, I can use the bucket tool and click inside here. And this will generate a path that has the same shape of the Anglos area. Now, very important. This is a completely new separated object. Is not a field belong into any shape. It is on path that will have the selectors fill and stroke. And that can be modified and move that away just like any other path. Now at first glance, these don't look super useful. Like it could replace the need for complex Boolean operations. Birth. If you look closer, you'll see that the dial, a couple of important technical problems that limit the power it has. Take a quick look at the shape. You'll notice that there is something wrong. If you zoom right in, you see that the path does not feel the area completely. So why is this happening? Well, the bucket tool uses pixel information from your canvas to generate the baths. And this means that it's never going to be perfect or clean, like it will be if we were using a Boolean operations. You can mitigate this, grow them by playing with the parameters and other controls, or by zooming in and performing the operation from closer. Because there should be more pixel information, the path should be a bit more tight, but it's never going to be 100% perfect. However, there are ways to make it work and we'll see that in a minute. So going back to a line art illustration, this tool gives us a way to add color to our illustration by adding the color like with the children color in the application. Just select the color that you want and click on the different enclosed areas. Remember to zoom in as much as you can. So they're generated the shape matches as close as possible to the area. If for some reason the bucket to fails to generate the bath. First make sure that you're not some in to match. The program needs the pixel information of the entire area to be visible on the canvas. If that's not the problem, make sure that the enclosed area is actually completely closed. Sometimes it may be that one of the corners do not fully overlap and it can be hard to see. Finally, if you still have problems, make sure to check the color selector. It may be that you are generating a shape with no field or that's fully transparent and that the shape is there but not visible. Okay? But we still have the problem that are filled shape is unacceptable, At least from up-close it looks and finished. And this sort of carelessness in an illustration, it's noticeable and it makes you look amateurish as an artist. So let's see how to fix them. What we need is to grow a bit the shape. So it overlaps with this throws and of course then send it to be below the stroke. Well, there is a quick operation that does just that is called the dynamic offset and basically grows and irregular shape completely evenly in science, something that a normal scaling with the object tool 12. To use the dynamic offset, just select the path and go to Path dynamic offset, or just hit Control J. Once the operation is enable, I'm pretty sure that apply some sort of pass effect. You will see this little note that controls how much you offset the shape. Just be careful and offset it just enough so it overlaps with a stroke, but not enough so it shows through the other side. Once you're done, remember to send this path to be below the line AB. So it looks nice and clean. If you are careful when offsetting the path, the color in your illustration should look exactly as if it belonged to pass width field enabled. There should be no difference. There is this petroleum that you can encounter when working with a dynamic offset operation. It's certainly not perfect. And depending on the areas, it may be possible that they feel not reach certain places or that our extended past a few throws. In that case, you're going to have to go in manually and fix the path with the node tool. However, just like with the normal pass effects, if you try to select the animals with the node tool, you should see that you cannot see them. It is still shows the effects on drug. In this case, the little note here, the solution is the same as with the other paths effects. Just select the shape and go to Path effect to pass in. Now you should see that LCM fixing these cellulose manually is seventh of a pain. But if you are careful when making the fill shapes, they shouldn't be too many places to fix. And that's all you need to know about the bucket tool. The market tool is submitted for a niche tool, since it doesn't have that many uses outsides what we just saw. But when you do have these type of line after only illustration, then it can save you a lot of pain.
24. Introduction to the Rendering Unit: Okay, we are ready to make our sketches all nice and pretty. Hopefully now you feel at least submit more secure handling Inkscape and vectors in general. I promise you that if you have a clear and well-designed sketch, this is stage is going to be a piece of cake. So what we're gonna do now is to go one-by-one to all the sketches we made in the last lesson. In other lines, colors and shadows to make them look like what you're seeing now, like I said earlier in this course, you'll learn more if you raise your own sketches. So these lessons aren't really that thought out for you to follow along. I will not be working in realtime. I'll be speeding up and slowing down different sections to explain the use of the tools. However, if you want to follow along, I'll leave you the images and the finished illustration in all three steps in the resources. Well, there isn't much left to say. Let's begin by entering or sketches.
25. Boy Rendering: Okay, Let's start. I am really important the image file. So very quickly, I'm going to do the exact same thing I showed you in the important lesson. I'm going to lower the opacity, lock the layer, and create a new layer on top to work on. First I'm going to create the line and this is pretty simple. I'm just using the pen tool to trace over the sketch as faithfully as it makes sense. You, there is a couple of things I'm doing here. First of all, I'm not tracing the adequate yet, the heavy, super-important. And it can be very tricky, especially because I have to fix the hair. As I said in the last unit, I'm not satisfied with the hair, so I'm redoing it heal on insight, in my opinion, especially with the most complicated stuff for last. And the other thing, you probably notice that I'm pulling the lines super quickly and roughly so much that the lines don't match that well, the sketch, that's something I like to do. I'd like to first have all the lines and then on a second pass and I find them and make them follow the sketch better. I believe it's easier to make the lines fit together when you have all the other ones around it. One thing you're going to realize pretty soon in my video, and also when you get to treasure on sketches, is that sometimes it doesn't make sense to follow the sketch 100%. Sometimes you can fix a small mistake or something you don't like right there on the program. For this one in particular, I thought that the hands are too big, so I made them smaller. That's what I meant when I said in the last unit that you don't need a super cleaner sketch and then you can fix any problem in Inkscape itself. Eventually you notice how easy is to manipulate and move the lines around once they are made. Any parallel in their proportions, symmetry or inaccuracy in the shapes is super easy to handle by just moving lines and train some things on the spot. Okay. The bodies on less than four the hill. And usually I don't like to use shapes to create parts of the body. I prefer to work as much as I can with the Benton. But here it makes sense to make the hair with a rectangle. I'm going to round it with the modifier may need adopt to be flat. So I'm gonna use a different separation too. Chop off the top section. If you're not feeling comfortable with Boolean operations on which shapes in general, you can always just keep them completely and just use the pen tool for everyone. But I just feel comfortable doing these operations. And they do save some time for the video. So that's why I'm using them. I mean, there are things that obviously doesn't make sense to use the pen tool. Mostly for anything that's completely around, like the glasses or the eyes. But for most things you need to trace. You can safely use the pen tool and it will probably end up looking more natural and then using geometrical shapes. Here for the eyelashes. I use some of the lineup techniques you saw in the section. I just duplicated the circle and jump off the bottom to create them. Being comfortable with manipulating the lines is essential to trace anything. So go back to the manipulating lines lesson more than one, see if you feel like you need it. Okay, Now for the hair, I really wasn't happy with the way it looked on the sketch. I decided to fix that awning, save itself. The truth is that the pen tool is incredibly powerful. Any shape you can make with your hand and a pencil, you can make it with the pen tool. It's possible to make entire joins with the pen to land your mouse. In fact, I have a few courses on drawing characters, backgrounds, and game out, all using the pen tool and the mouse and keyboard. So don't underestimate the power of this tool to actually draw if you need the main petroleum is that it's considerably slower and clunkier than a pencil. But if you get comfortable with it, you'll unlock a completely new way of drying. Okay, we are done with the line. More or less. Now comes one of the most fun, important, powerful, and sometimes frustrating parts of the whole process of illustrating with vectors. And that is messing around with the drying. What I'm going to do now is to play around with the position and scale and rotation of the lines. Plug justice or refine some small things that might be slightly off. In this particular case, since I'm mostly satisfied with the body, I'm going to mess around with the head and try moving around some things just to see if something looks better. The head is the first thing I'm messing around with. But I also try new positions for the eyes and the glasses and even the nose. The important thing here is that you shouldn't do any sort of big changes. Only slight manipulations that can result in more pleasant proportions or whether clarity or something that looks better somehow. And the line is done. Nice, Santa, move on to the next step, which is adding the field and the colors. If you remember from the bucket to lessen. Because most of the illustration is made with open lines, we need to use the bucket tool to generate a field shape that's going to work as the color. Just like a children colon in application. It's super fun and fast and easy to do. However, I like to first start by finding all those closed shapes that are closed. The shapes that don't really need to have a field generator. So this is what I'm doing now. It's possible to use the bucket tool with these shapes. But I don't think it's necessary to artificially use it when simply setting up the field needs enough. So once all those cool shapes have the feel enabled, I'm going to create the fill shapes with the bucket tool. If you remember from the bucket to lessen, all you have to do is to zoom right in and click on Close to area. If the field fail to create, make sure there isn't a line that's open or that you have the right field color. Also remember that this is actually the shape, which means that you could have both fill and stroke. So make sure the stroke is disabled. Once you have all the fill shapes in place, remember that you can go and use the dynamic offset to make sure that field covers up the whole area. I guess that for this particular case, you don't really need to do it because we are generating the shape from so close and we're gonna be seeing the illustration from a certain distance. You probably won't see too much of the size where the bucket to shape doesn't reach. But still, it's good practice to go in and make sure everything gets filled in. So I'm doing that for all areas in all characters, even if they are mobility. Now to apply the color to the fill shapes, what color is your character is going to have? It's up to you. The only tip I can give you is to experiment with the ages and mouth. Moving the sliders, slightly, refining the colors through there. I already have more or less thought out what colors I want for the character. So I'm going pretty fast here. You should take your time. Color is an important part of the whole design. And we have the color done. I think the character looks pretty good already because live with here and nobody would complain. But one thing we can do to view it and extra polish to the presentation is to add some subtle shadows. You will not believe how much a quick, shallow, depth next to your character. To me, it's well worth the time. So how are we going to do this? Well, we're going to use a super awesome trick of pictorial illustration. We're going to use a completely black or super dark shape. And then we're going to lower the opacity a lot. That can result in the shallow darkening, the color below just like a shadow would in real life. So that's what I'm doing here. I'm going to create shallow ships on top of the drawing and applying a dark color with heavy opacity. Notice that I'm not worrying about the location in the stack of the shallow. I'm just trying to shallow on top because the lineup is pure black. I could make one of the edges of the shadow to go on top of one of these lines. And nobody will notice, by the way here I'm using a very important shortcut that you should memorize and keeping your heel, especially when working with shadows. I'm based in the style of a copy of the shape. Just copy a shallow shape that's already set up with all the right colors and opacity using control C. And then you can apply the same color and opacity to any new shape by heating the shortcut Control Shift B, it's have less in at the moment of making shells quickly. So I'm sure you're wondering, how do I know where the shadows go? Well, basically what I'm doing here is assuming that there is a light source right above the character. And just a bit to the right from there, I just eyeball where the shadow should be. Since the light is right above. Since say the hair than shorts are going to cast shadows on the body. And since the light is also a bit to the right, the whole left part of the body will receive just a bit of the shadow. Remember this? You don't need to be super accurate with the shallow location and placement your site to be logical and account for the volume of the things. I'm sure you're wondering, why is the light source up and to the right. Well, you can put the light source whatever you want. And that will result in a completely different lighting scheme. But I think that the app right or the left light source is the West for most cartoons. And those shadows that up to the side really help create the extra deafness. My employee in new planes that are not in the drawing. So for now, I strongly recommend it to stick to the app right or left light source. It's always a winner. Occasionally you see me using a shape as a shallow, like in the case of the hair when I just started producing Boolean operations with them. Again, if you're not feeling comfortable with them, you don't need to use them. You can just use depends on, okay, so here's a really nice trick that I like to use for the shadows. It's completely acceptable to use a shadow made of 100% black color with a super low opacity. There's nothing wrong with that and it looks pretty good. But in my opinion, the whole drawing loose, separate, more lively. If you just sell a tiny hint of a color, the shallow. So instead of going for a completely black color, I'm going to change it to be an almost black blue. And I'll adjust the opacity. And this will result in a shadow that has a very subtle tint of that blue. I'm sure you'll agree that this shadow looks at least better than the old gray one. Other than that, the only other depending give you for the shadows, is that likely to use some common sense to where they are going to go and how big they are going to be. What you want is the subtle feeling of three-dimensionality they give you. So you don't want to make them too strong that they become distracting or too small that the unknown possible from afar. Ok, and we're done with the first character. I know this lesson was a bit field with explanations, but that's because I wanted you to get every sin that was happening. For the next characters are going to step up the base, explaining the general things have it less than focusing on the more specific techniques and tricks that I'm using for that character at the moment. So if you have any doubts about the basics of how to start the rendering process, go back to this lesson and we watch it as many times as you need.
26. Man Rendering: The man is a slightly more complex character than the queue. But other than that, everything here will be exactly the same as before. Regarding the line, there really isn't anything new I can explain here. Once again, I like to first put most of the lines super roughly. And once most of them are in, adjust them so they fit nicely together and of course, follow the sketch. What I can tell you is that I'm fixing those small things I didn't quite liked of the sketch. Like this abomination between the layers and the hand with the coffee. I'm also going to move the left arm up just a little bit in a minute. The head here is also considerably easier than before. There is no hair to improvise. It's arguably the most complex part of the character. So I always leave them for last anyway. In a few quick refresher cylinder. Okay, now for the color and just filling in the spaces with some random color that I'm going to change later. And of course I've just in the field with the dynamic offset. So it feels nicely the whole area. One nice technique you'll see me use here with the other characters. That's especially used for, for one-year experimental with color joining together all the different colors, shapes that are meant to be a single thing. So for example, here with the shirt, the color field is separated into eight different bumps, a different shapes. We've got the right arm, the two sleeves, the main body of the shirt separate it into two. And the two colors at the top is we want to change the color of the shirt. You'll have to select them all one-by-one and apply this in color. It's a smarter to just join all the eight shapes into a single one by selecting them all in using a Boolean union, using control and Bruce Banner we had to worry about is a single shape and you can select and choose a color easily. I always do this when I have to experiment and I have to constantly trying new colors because it just makes sense. Okay, Now for the shadow, again, this is exactly the same as before. And you've seen the simulation scheme of a light on top and a slightly to the right. I'm going to use the setup for all characters, so they are all consistent. I'm also going to use the same color for the shadow with all of them. The one thing I want you to keep in mind here is that the body of this man is considerably bigger. So for the shadow to be noticeable, it has to be real. If the shadow is too big or too strong, it will call attention to itself and it will be distracting. It will take away rather than add something to the character. One thing you can do is to play around with the opacity, lowering as to soften the impact of debbie shallow or increasing it to make up for being too small. There is no formula here. You'd have to decide on your own whether you feel the shadow is too strong and distracting, or two, unknown reservoir and adjust it from there. Well, the character is done. By the way. Let you know that here I forgot to record when fix the color of the coffee. And when I say often the shadow of the porous, so that of Flickr them. It's such a minor thing that I didn't thought to do AS worth to record it just for that. And the way she was the final illustration, I think it looks pretty good. Now to the next one.
27. Simple Man Rendering: Now the bellboy, this kinda E6, three symbols. So this is going to be fast. Right off the bat. We have a bit of a dilemma here. The orbit, our body is very symmetric in this position at least. And we could have used a mirror modifier. In fact, I recorded it once. You've seen it, but I disliked how mechanical it looked. That's why here I just duplicated the line to the other side and I embraced the lack of symmetry. That's one of the flaws of working with vectorization software, is that it can be very easy to just make some things that look too clean, too perfect, with perfect arcs and perfect symmetry. That's why I like to avoid you see dance of tools and just go with the trusty old Benton. That often leads to a more natural quote-unquote floss in the tracing, just like a real life pencil trace with, but maybe a bit less of course, since you can manipulate the line as you wish after it's been made. What I'm trying to say is that it's really easy to fall into the trap of UC know this advanced tools that a vector software provides to trace the sketch, but doesn't we love to underserved in something that just looks too perfect and mechanical. Stay with the pen tool and the occasional leap soon. Some parts of the body are gonna go full black, like the gloves or the feed and the eyebrows. So I think it's okay if I'm giving it the color right down. Notice one thing here, I'm using the ellipse tool to make all the buttons. It will have embedded easy to just duplicate the leaves and make a perfect copies. But I took the time to scale them and update them so they could all look different from each other. That's what they meant when I say that it's very easy to find the trap of making something. Okay, here I'm following the same process to you with the color and using the dynamic offset to make sure they feel them completely. As far as the colors. I already have more or less defined because I want mainly because I searched for reference before starting the video. Okay, something very interesting happens here. I was looking at the character with other callers, complete them, finished. And I find out that I don't like how wide it is. I feel the face looks a bit too small inside though. But since we're working with vectors here, there is still time to make some simple larger scale adjustments. So it took the object tool and the whole body minus a face and a squashed down the whole body. I also made the features slightly Why them? And now I'm happier with the way it looks. That's another great thing of working with vectors on like with a traditional pixel-based software. It's never too late to fix something you don't like the shadows. This is probably the easiest character to our shadows. The whole body is basically a cylinder, so that makes it even simpler. Let's move on to the next one.
28. Girl Rendering: Okay, let's continue with added globally the single most complex character of the bunch, the government. And the truth is that if you have a good sketch, there's no such thing as difficult line art, or you have to do is follow the sketch. So I guess the difficulty of tracing something depends on how rough sketch and this case, there is a line of the sketch is pretty accurate than definitive. There's no surprises or anything to improvise at the moment of making the line. And even in this case, I still prefer to leave the hill for the last thing. No matter the sketch, the biggest amount of subtlety and attention to detail has to go to hell and the facial expressions. So it's always going to be the most difficult part. And you see that these would be the case for this get Other than that. But there is another body proceeds quite smoothly. But here comes to him. And like I said many times over, the heterocycle be the most important parts of the character. So it's worth the time to refine and try new things here. For example, the hair and the eyes are Somalia that I'm going to really fight with. And inside it to shorten the width of the hair of it. And that required to adjust a few of the other lines. Ivan made a new head section because I thought the other one didn't fit. I also change the shape of the nose to something I lagged model. You'll see that even later on. Once I put the color, I'm still going to mess around with it a lot. The hair is always something that has to come out the best possible way. Okay, Now for the color, again, I go to do the bucket third thing with the dynamic offset. I'm sure you're pretty familiar with it by now. So I'm not going to bother to explain it again. And of course, I'm also given field to those few closed shapes that I have there. I don't think I need to explain more than this is the exact same process than with the other three characters before. But here's the thing. All the other characters have had extremely simple color schemes. They have been almost monochromatic, except for the bellboy. But even then he only had to call us to peak. That's something you can come up with on the spot. For the girl, I want to be the single most colorful character, or at least the one with the more interesting color scheme. So I came up with the idea of the resident here in contrasting colors, maybe given her an artificial hair color that pops up. So how did you do this? How did you come up with interesting colors that just fit together? Well, let me give you a tip. If you Google online ballot or something like that, you'll find a million of these sites that show you a super interesting palettes. If you don't know what a polite is, it's basically a collection of colors that look good together and are pleasant to the eye and that you can use for your illustrations, whatever maybe any of these sites will work. Some of them even give you the ability to search using keywords like pastel or retro or a warm. These pellets are a great way to start giving your character those unique colors. Here I found one that I really like, this one. Most of these sites also give you the hexadecimal number of each color so you can copy it and use it in your application. Rather than worry about them, I just take a screenshot and they based it on in saber. Then I simply sampled from the palette. It's very important to note that these palliate represents only a starting point for the colors of your character. The truth is that the scholars were called nicely together because they are equal size bars All right, next to each other. Your character is probably going to be different. Somalia's are going to be bigger than others. Sections that need more attention than others. You'll notice that once I apply the colors I picked from the pellet, it kinda works, but it could be better. So what I'm going to have to do is to refine those colors and make them feed to my character. And that's the very key behind using pre-made palettes. They are just then starting point. Once you hover the color supply, you have to refine them until they look at ammonias with your character. Just fiddle around with the three sliders in the HSL mouth from the freelancer dialogue and see what happens. We only can give you is that you should try not to move any of these sliders to match to the point they lose the color from the palette. Other than that, just try as many variations as you can. Okay, here's one interesting thing that happened. I felt that the face needed something and I decided to give her eyeballs. And that brought a new set of problems. I just go and get to be happy with the way the eyes looked. You will think that now It's too late for fixing anything considering that we are the color and the feel and everything. But remember these modifying things. It's super easy when you're working with vectors, even when you are at an advanced stage, because it's so easy and fast to add color and shadow. At most you lose only a few minutes of work. But just messing around. That's another reason why I love vectors. So I spent a really long time making small changes to see how I can give it the look I wanted to the eyes. I start that you have some eyelashes and iteration the size of the ideas and moving them around a bit. And eventually I go to something I was happy with. And now for the shadow, this time I really don't have much and say, I just create the shadow shapes in the same places than before, using the same metal and the same shadow color. And he has, the drawing is somewhat more complex, but the same rules apply, so it's always the same actions performed over and over again. Just be careful, try not to forget a shadow. In some area. I'm telling you because when I am recording these videos, I often forget something because I'm always rushing trying to not to make the video too long. In this case, I just noticed I forgot some area at the left of the skirt. But I guess it's a small enough that most people won't even notice. And the way that was seats for the girl.
29. Woman Rendering: Okay, The final character, the model, anatomically realistic one, the female warrior. And after seeing the whole process behind the previous four characters, the release in anything that I can explain except some very particular things. So the lineup is just about the same as with all the other characters. Material happens something interesting while I think the sketches, okay, I felt that it needed something else. And at this stage I came up with the idea of making something just a tiny bit more complex. And the belt we did on, I ended up changing my mind and made some other changes instead. But the thing is that once you have a well-made sketch, you can also work as some sort of guide or even mannequin to draw on top here on example. Here I also decided to add some changes to the unmanned and make them simpler. I did some changes mainly to the position of the eyes. My thought and making them just a bit closer. We'll have the do not believe how much some really subtle change. So always be on the lookout for some small changes. Now for the familiar feeling with the use of the dynamic offset and heat, I'm also setting the colors as I am fixing the shapes which are much simpler than the ones of the girl. Just some classic Roman white with some accelerations here and there. And here it comes back when you say that about the sketch freely, like it did something else. And because the drying is our really made, it's not hard to have some details. In this case, just a couple of lines at the borders. And that makes a huge difference in my opinion, making the whole design field much more field, despite being just a couple of extra lines for the shell, is the exact same as with the other guy. The only new thing I can tell you is that I tried to see if I could add some shadow at the hell below. I could have just put the entire block of shallow. I could have done this without the other guy, those as well. I really don't mind that the guy has no shadow on the head. And that's about it for the woman who is. The last lesson for some final words and advises. The next and final video in the course.
30. Conclusion to the Class: Congratulations on finishing the course. Hopefully, you've learned a thing or two about making cartoon characters and you're ready to move on to more challenging things. Here you can go in two directions. If you want to learn more about character design and the sign, I think you should focus now on the basics, how to draw in 3D, and how to work with perspective. Then you can finally move on to more traditional figurative drying and real life anatomy. Do you might not be interested in realistic drawing, but the ammonia know about it, the better your ketones are going to be. If you're left hooked with the awesomeness that Inkscape and bacteria illustration in general, I would strongly recommend you to check out my other courses. I have quite a few that range from background designed to be dilemma out. If you're interested, make sure to check out my profile. Either way you just to move on, I'm going to leave you in the resources, some information on where you can learn more about these topics for free. I really hope that this course has been of helping somebody to you, or at least that you have fun with it. I put a lot of time and effort on it. And I really want to see you're getting the most out of it. If you have any questions whatsoever, mixture plus Kenny sends through the course page in our response, usually within a couple of hours. I'm always looking for feedback, so don't be shy to contact me. Well, that's about it. See you next time. Bye.