Character Design: Concept Art, a Beginner's Guide

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. Today's video we'll be going over concept art and how to go from an idea such as a witch or a knight or rogue and mage. Thief. Whenever your character's gonna be whatever their title is, occupation. Just in general, the idea of the character you're trying to create and how to take that and flesh it out. It'll become, and to help it become a character. You start out with generic ideas. Then you flush them out just a little bit more until you end up with a little bit more personality. And when you get satisfied with how you wanted to look, then you start to work on the outfit, the facial expression, and all that kind of stuff up until you end up with a finished concept art that you've used to further the development of your character and your stories. Okay, let's hop into it. 2. Basic Concepts: Well, right, in the first part we'll be going over just the basic idea of what character concept is and how it really get started on your first character. First off, you want to come up with an idea of what your character is. Like. I chose a witch. And generally if you choose a title such as like a job or maybe like what they're what they're fighting style is or what their personality is like. I like to use job titles or races if there are some kinda like a cat person or whatever they may be. I like to go based on that first. So first off, I came up with, which is I've ever wanted to create a which character. So first off, I just drew a basic head ends out of a witch hat. I did this little curve where it was going like this and swinging this way. Just to see how that went in there and try the opposite to see how that would look as well. This one looks more Moby and kind of oh man, I don't know. It reminds me of like in like an old not Jamaican look kinda like the people that live in New Orleans that you see in some of these movies or TV shows. And they've got this cat, this, this guy would like a twig and his mouth and he sit out on his own because old shack in the middle of the swamp. And this is what, this reminds me of, less of a witch in more of more of a swamp guy. This is a little bit closer to it, which to me, but also it's still has a min of the hippie vibratory. So really what I wanted to do was maybe capture both. So I went ahead and did kind of, we think, built, instead of these strictly curved one direction. I liked the left, swish the most. So I went ahead and use that one. That one had been fleshed out the face and hair and a little bit more on this one, too cold to have this girl's hair coming out of it like this. I think it looks pretty nice. Still very generic. Which ideas though when it hadn't this one and I added some extra curl. And to the solution on top of the hat. I kept not waviness word, chooses both of these. And I wanted to maybe pull a little bit more from this one as well, kind of put all these together in one and then expand upon it. So this one's curves a little bit more than either of these. So I just made that curve even more so towards kind of a swirl almost. Then I wanted to take the banks than an id on this one and just kind of expand on similar. So this is you got these big ones coming off on the side here as pretty cute. And I went off on the end here to add that flushed out the face to make it look a little bit better as it ever was. Headers, what I hadn't through neck and chest, shoulders. Now, I think this is a pretty good idea of how to get started. And you can do as many iterations of this as you want to, to where you really feel comfortable with the basic idea of what your character is. In the next section, we'll be going over how to expand on this a little bit more toward, you can get a little bit more developed characters and you're going to add a little bit more personality to them. Okay, let's hop on over to the next section. 3. Concept Evolution: Okay, everyone in this section we'll be going over how to evolve this character into a little bit more fleshed-out character. So I have this generic which girl? But through a little loop, de, little bowler hat and everything. I didn't like the loop really too much, so I've kind of took it away. And whenever I started working on these, but I kept the pat the way that I made it originally. There really liked the way that this hat kinda turned out, so I kept it here as well. The next part that I wanted to do to try to just evolve her a little bit more was first and just redraw or Face Reader hat and just kinda started from the ground up. And I added this little star to her cheek that I thought would be preview. So I knew a lot of and I'm a girl, witches usually have some form of attention you on her face or, or maybe their thigh or chest or something like that. The usual places. And this is a pretty solid content right there. I could probably just run this and move on to Part three with that. But I didn't like how generic it looked. So went on and I decided to just experiment a little bit more because I took a break from this character because I got so Boston what I wanted to do with them in the first place. So like when I came back, I had a fresh outlook on what I wanted to do and then decided to do like a, you know, she's got this crazy tom boyish hair and just a smaller which had there just floats just above her head. I kept the star. Really just kept everything else. But this gave her a lot of unique field tour and later a lot more. I don't know. I can't say I've ever seen anything like this in a TV show or animators and new game. But I know that I've seen something like this before. So I went on and I decided to create maybe these little, these little Which spirits that run around whether you've got this little sad movie one near this confident had begun here. And I thought it might be cool to have. So she doesn't have a hat as much as she does here. I decided to try to maybe creator to smaller hat, little spirit guys. It float around with her. And maybe she uses their powers to amplify her powers. I don't know yet. They're just kinda roman there. This one is the one I really liked. I decided to take away that had entirely changed the star. 23 little dots under her. I really push this tomboy wash hair, cut it short. Simplified face. Just kinda go from there. And you know, a may incorporate these little spirits more into her design. Like if I add those two, this one and I send these little guys, there's their own concept. Could probably come up with some really cool too little. Which hat spirits to float around with this one. And then maybe they can do some kind of combination technique where they put their skills together. And she does some kinda really cool spell of some sort. You can definitely see how these are more fleshed out and have more uniqueness and personality compared to the first batch to the left there. Anyway, now, you just take these and you find the one that you're really satisfied with and you go ahead and we'll move on to the final phase of concept darting. 4. Concept Finalization: In this final section, we'll be going over why and how I decided to create this character the way that we did based on all previous information, including all the way back to here. So first off, I really loved the way this turned out. It was by far my favorite one. I took this idea and I applied it to like a character base body I had saved. That's another good way for you to fully concept. Here characters is create a, a base body like Template. And then drove her character over and over on top of that template of that curator. That way you don't have to keep drawing the body over and over it really solid body. Apply your character to it over and over in different ways, giving different outfits. And that'll really help you design your character a lot faster. But it's a lot more satisfying to look at it as well. And it really encouraged you as you build along. I evolved her hair a little bit bigger than it. Some deaths have been, some of the spikes come out. The back end. Governor appointed her as a little bit more than I did over here. On this one. I covered it up just to or a kids three dots because that was pretty unique compared to the star. I mean, a lot of character set stars or hearts or diamonds or teardrops or any thought of that. But you see something kinda like either like a straight line or dots. They're so basic engineering ideas for tattoos that really no one wants to use them. But the net now makes them more unique because they're not used as much. Now, I don't I'm not gonna go over the concepting of her outfit as much. I will just explain that to you because mostly because of random space on this page. But I wanted to do something kinda like a corset right here. Because I thought of course it would look pretty cool on a on the switch lady. Not really going to cover that. But then I wanted to I wanted to skirt for sure. That was something I wanted to switch lady to have. Because if you think of her being animated, it would look really cool is she's charging up a really big magical spill on the ground is charging up the magical circle on the ground. And, and then the winds bloated, wear skirts kinda flop and side to side with the wind. And that would just looked really cool. So I knew I wanted to skirt the corset and the top. We're kind of optional, but the skirt was a must-have. I could've done long boots instead of the short ones that I did. I chose the short boots because I have another character that ever created in a similar style that has long boots, and I want to turn to stand out from her. So I went ahead and did the short shoes. As another thing you need to think about. It. You may not want your characters to hook. A lot similar. You want them to look unique compared to one another. So I chose the short route, still long ones because I have another character that already has it been chosen skirt because for one she's a witch and I have a character that has kind of a one piece swimsuits, battle warmer, top looking thing. I really don't know what to call it. And I have another one has pants and I have another one that has shorts. And I was running out of bottoms to choose from. But luckily, since I was designing a mage, I really wanted to go ahead and use this. So it really worked out. So the bottom half infer, based on all these other characters I've created in the past. They're all living in the same world and universe. I wanted to mold a standout from one another. So the bottom half of this character was basically already chosen for me because I wanted them to look unique. And none of these aspects of the thigh high socks and little bits in sqrt exist on any of the other characters. So as much as it fits the character, it was also kinda what I just had to choose. So it all worked out. Knowing things that were really left up for debate. Was the arm, shoulders, chest, waste, stomach area. Since I had already designed the head that I liked based on this one down here. And the bottom was already chosen for me. So the middle part was really the only part. I really had to think about hard on how to design. I had no idea where I wanted to use for a top. There's plenty of options. More so than bottoms. Yeah. I had to really think about this 1 first entity, like a tank top that they'd like a bikini top. And I was like, well, you know, it's too just to tacky and why would she where it became? She's like a wizard. Didn't like this. I think this is called a crop TOP. Large Carp talks to the top. Here. Are the ones coming from Tom. But I went with that because I thought it kind of looks cute and then tried to think of something that would match and kind of push the bottom and the top together to have a complete outfit. Actually did bandages injured? It just looks cool. Actually did bandages. Not putting anything there and just showing her belly button really didn't make make sense. So I didn't do that when either. The anyway, I chose the course that again, it's not something any mother characters have sort of a major read, read it, really stand out. And if she has kind of a tomboy ish, look, maybe she really wants to push that. She's a female. So she wears a skirt, she shows the legs. She's got a corset to push out her figure it a little bit more our less like so. So she can appear more feminine since her head looks kinda wish. So there you go. You can do this with your own characters. Period, a character base after you've went through the basic ideas. And then the advanced stuff is until you get to hear finished idea and you just repeat each process as much as you need to to get to a satisfactory finished piece over here. And then you really start to develop in redraw this one over and over until you get your desired and go. Okay, I'm gonna go over this in the review in the next section. 5. Summary: Okay guys, this is the final section of this class. I want to just go over a quick review over what we've covered. First, we covered generic ideas for concept art, such as how a which can have a generic look tour. And then you just evolve it until you get something a little bit more personal. So you'd finally get something that you really satisfied with. Linear move on to the body. And you start to really work there. Until you end up with something you're really satisfied with. First-off, taking your idea, flush out some generic ideas of your character. Try to paint a little bit of personality to it. After you've played around with some basic ideas, start to add a little bit of personality, such as tattoos or scars or whatever you want to pull it. And if it still seems to engineer, don't be afraid to branch out and come up with something a little bit more unique, such as I did with the which making her head float a little Given Uncertain top wish hair human HER2 little. Which spirits to float around with her. And then, you know, don't be afraid. Because this is just concept art. You're just trying to create the idea of what you want your character to live. Like. Don't be afraid to play around with it as much as you need to, to get the desired result. Take the one you like the most, moves onto the body. The best way I think to come up with an outfit for your character is thinking of where they exist and where, what type of world Dina, What kind of person they are. What would the type of person where in public? And make yourself a character base template and work from that. So you can continually just repeat this over and over and over until you ended up with a version that you really like. Michael try on different outfits given different facial expressions, given different tattoos, change out their socks and shoes. Whatever you need to do to create your character. Ok, I think that'll cover it. I hope you guys learned plugging in this class and you'll create many characters. And I'll see you later.