Transcripts
1. Character Design Lesson 1 Study the masters: Hi everyone. My name is
urgent Jerome column, and I want to welcome you to Introduction to
character design. And thank you all
for taking the time to be part of this online class. During this video series, I'll be sharing with you the basic knowledge
you would need to know for designing appealing character design for animation. We will explore the research needed before you
start designing, developing characters
which strong silhouettes, using a variety of
contrasting shapes to design appealing characters and adding personality with
gesture and much more. If you always wanted to
create your own characters, this is the class for you. So let's get started. Before I teach any topic, I believe that it is
essential for students to know the masters of that
particular industry, and in our case, masters of character design. So since this is an
introductory class, there won't be any major
lessons in this video. Instead, I will be
giving you a list of character design artists that I want you to do a
little research on. Google them and
look at their work. Follow them on all their
social media platforms. The reason why studying
the work of the masters is essential is that you will see the standard at which
you need to be at. I'm not seeing to
compare yourself to these artists and judge
yourself harshly. That is not healthy. No. I'm telling you
this because you need to understand
the standard of work you need to produce to be
noticed by other professionals and work in the character
design industry if that's what you want to do. So let's get right
into your assignment. Good luck guys, and see
you in the next class.
2. Character design Lesson 2 Research: Now before you
even start drawing any designs for your characters, you need to do as much research
and reference gathering as possible of your
chosen character. You'd find that many
inexperience artists would just start drawing characters
without doing any research, only using their
memory as a resource. This is very limiting because when we referenced
from our memory, we tend to go to things
we saw on TV shows, movies, cartoons,
comics, et cetera, which would often
create designs that look sloppy and unoriginal. You should always gather
as much research as you can given the amount of
time, annual budget. Let's say you had to
design a tiger character. If you can go to the zoo to absorb tigers, you
definitely should. If not, watch as
many YouTube videos about tigers and
gather as many tigers, reference images as you can. You'll discover much more things about tigers that you
never knew before. And you may see
something unique from your observations that can add a special touch
to your designs. Now for this video series, I want to have you all choose Character topics and
you are going to begin and end this class developing your character design as you
move through this course. So what I would like you
guys to do is to go to a website called Character
Design reference. Character design reference
is a website that holds monthly character
design challenges. And what I like about the
challenges is that they always have interesting
topics to choose from. Once you are on the website, go to all themes and choose one of the themes to work with
throughout this course. If you can decide, I want to work with
the same theme that I'm going to work with. You can do that as well. At the end of this course, you are going to design three characters
based on your theme. One male, one female, and one child, male or female. So if your theme is Gladiator, you will design one
meal gladiator, one female gladiator,
and one child Gladiator. The theme I'm going to work
throughout this course. We'll be Roller Derby. And as an example, I will show you how I go about doing research on this topic. So let's jump into that. So basically when I
started doing research, I look at videos of my
subject matter on YouTube. Now the reason why I
watch video is because video allows me to see
how these people move, their personalities
and their dashes. Now, since my topic
is roller derby, I decided to watch one of the roller derby
matches to see how the game is played and to see if it would influence my ideas. It is a very rough sport, so I know my character
is going to be tough. I also watch a little short documentary on one
of the players to see her personality and
her team interactions. Once I watching our videos, than I start searching for
some reference images. Now what I look for in
good reference images are closer look at the
costume, props and faeces. I then gather up all
my reference into a specific folder and
keep them in my desktop. This way I can refer back
and forth to the images without having to go on
the Internet repeatedly. I usually repeat
this process for all the characters
I'm about to design. So what I want you guys to
do for your assignment, I want you to do what I did, but for your theme and gathers much reference
as possible. In the next class
we will talk about the basic ideas to start
building your characters. So good luck guys and see
you in the next class.
3. Character Design Lesson 3 The importance of caricature: Designing a character from
scratch can be intimidating. And you might be wondering, where do I start this lesson? I will talk to you guys
about the importance of caricature and your
character design method. For those of you who don't
know what caricature is, is basically the exaggeration of certain features
of a subject. I use caricature all the time
in my character designs. And I believe if you understand
how to use caricature, it will help your
designs improve. So let me do some
demonstrations of caricature and I will talk you through it and how I go about doing it. Okay, So as I said before, caricature is basically the
exaggeration of features. So what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to show this guy here, and I'm just going to draw
them in a caricature style. And I'm going to do
it in different ways. And I'm going to show
you how I go about doing it in different
styles and designs. So my first one is not
gonna be as dramatic, but it's going to help you
understand what I mean, right? So this guy has a
rectangular face, right? And you'll see how much
different my second, third versions are
gonna be because I'm not going to push this
one-to-two crazy. This one is more, a bit more realistic, but not that realistic. Right? So we have a little cartoon
version of this guy here. And what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to shrink this down smaller so that I can do the second version. Right? Now what I want to show you
guys is that you can design faeces and designing
your characters based on simple shapes. So here we have a circle, a triangle, and a square node. These are the most basic
shapes he could get down to. And what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to do a caricatured
version of this guy, but paste them more
on the circles, squares and triangles
are gonna do three more character
cockroaches. And the first one, I'm going to make
it more sick obese. No. This is a good way. If you're trying to come up with different options
for your design, It's a good way, a good
place to start off. Because then you
could get a variety of different looks for the character that
you're designing. So a lot of manipulation here. So in this version, his head is much more circular. I'm going to try and keep everything in that kind
of circular basis here. Let me to move them down
to get some more space. So now we have a more circular fees with
version of this guy. Neat on this side. Alright. No, he almost looks like it's pretty much
a different place. And now you can see that that's the way your variety in
your ships coming in. So the next one I'm going to do now is the triangle version. So I am going to make his
face a bit more triangle, but I'm going to use this
triangle not on the head. So there's handle the more kind of focus coming down this way. So you have much more of a triangular shape
there. All right. It's caricatures. I'm going to exaggerate
features of his fears as pruning mustachioed a bit
because he's a little older. And here we have a
triangular Boucher. His face is more based on
a triangle and this one. Alright, so you could see
redrawing the same guy, same phase, everything
that nice change. But we get in different
versions of the same guy with caricatured versions of him using different shapes
to help us develop it. The last one is
gonna be a square. I think I get fit a square
lesion and here, square face. Very, very basic. I'm going to make his
most batch really, really dominant in this one. So I exaggerate and not
most dash because it is a very important
characteristic that he has. Right? So when you see a characteristic
in someone's fees, when a character you
want to emphasize it, you should definitely
make it bigger. There though. His lip is kind of
overlapping, It's chin. So I want to keep it as square
the one to be rectangles. I'm going to keep his
eyes like down here. So there we have it, the
version based on two squared. So I'm going to actually
do another example for you guys to show you
again, let someone else. So there are different ways to approach doing caricatures. And I'm going to show you a different way than
the previous example. So in this one, I want you to pay
close attention to these spaces in-between
the features of the face, the spaces between
the eye and the nose, nose and the mouth
and the chin right? Now, if you look at
these spaces here, you would notice that at
different sizes right? Now, what I want you
guys to notice is how I would push these spaces
in-between two features, depending on how I see
the features of the face. So let's, if I observe this girl's face and I see features that stand
out to me a lot. I would make those
features bigger. And if the features that I see maybe later on are the features I
would make smaller. So for her the first thing I see is her eyes and her hair. So those are the two
most prominent features I want to exaggerate. So what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to draw the here and make it quite exaggerated. Alright. I'm gonna make it quite big. Quite over the top. Alright, and I want to make the eyes bigger as well because they really stand out to
me in the original photo. I'm going to make them bigger. Right? Nobody knows
that something that didn't really
catch my attention. So I'm not going to
exaggerate or make that big. And the malt. This could go either way, but I'm going to go
with maybe small foods. And then maybe in
my next version, I will do one way, maybe a larger mole. Now she has a really short chin, so I'm going to try and exaggerate that and
pull it up even more. So you can see how for having a really,
really short chin. She has earrings. I could make it bigger
for some more contrast. And then she has some hair
sticking out on the side here. I think I'm going to
make the hair a bit bigger because I really
wanted to stand out. Alright. So we have
caricatured version of a here. Now this one isn't that pushed. So I'm gonna do another version, pushing it, pushing new
features even more. But before I do that, I want you guys
to take notice of the spaces in-between
the features. Right? And how I made
them a little more exaggerated than
the previous one. So if we look at this one
compared to this one, these pieces have a
lot more contrast in between them, right? I'm going to make even more exaggerated
version of right now. So those spaces would become
even more. Contrast it. So I'm still going
to, let's see. I'm actually going to
make the hair a bit more flat in this solution. Because with caricature
there's no real, there's no real standard. Ted, you can, if, if, let's say five
different artists, Judy samples and each one would look totally
different because they would have exaggerated different features
of that subjects. So in this one, I am going to exist, well, maybe he has smaller, but I'm going to make
the forehead bigger. Alright, Experiment. And, and this, this is kind of, you know, get transferred to your character
design method because, you know, you've been trying
to find the right design and you have to do a
lot of experimenting, a lot of trying to
find the design. So Charaka Jello was you to practice doing
different versions? Right? And each one doesn't
have to be perfect. No, it's about exploring. So I'm going to make
the nose a bit long. And actually I think I
made her eyes to swallow. Actually, I'm going
to make the eyes I'm going to keep her eyes big. Keep them. Then I'm gonna make it keeping it small. But I'm going to actually
make the lips bigger. She's quite serious. And this photo, so I'm going to keep
that shin pretty small. It looks pretty wacky. It's actually then omega
Aaron is a lot bigger than I. Need some more contrast
in between that. Here. Right now I still think I could push this
even more crazier. So I'm going to do one more and I'm going to go
really, really crazy. But I want to make
her fees longer. Let me just make this
a little smaller. So I'm gonna make
this last version. I'm going to try here
a bit more elongated. So I'm going to push it quiet. I'm going to have the year, like really, really off
the top exaggerated. Anything about caricatures. You could go whole. Exaggerated. You want. I've seen artists go
really, really crazy lake. So exaggerated. And it's really amazing
advocate go that far. I've never really
gone as far as I've seen other artists pushed
their caricatures. So even if I try, I don't think it looks good. But you giggle as how
far you want to push it. Really exaggerated here. I'm going to maybe lips
really, really small. So you have like a
really big contrast. And I'm going to keep the
eyes big, really big, really big earrings. We go. So here we have three different versions of caricature using this
reference photo. And it's basically treat
different character designs. So that's why I thought
caricature would be an essential part
for you guys to know before you start
designing your characters. And this just applies
to the face, right? You can also do
this with the body, which will, which will. I will show you next, right? But remember when you're doing a caricatures and you're
not sure what she spaces in between the features
and see how you can mix and match these pieces
in-between the features to make them enough
contrast because I can't. Stress, creates a better
appeal in your drawings. And it makes it
more designed and appealing and less boring compared to drink
something realistic. So let's move on to designing or showing you how caricatures can be
applied to the whole body. So here we have two
American football players. They look like they're
in high school. And I'm going to show you how. When you use in our reference. And you look in at, you
looking at this object. It doesn't matter who you
are or your perception. When you look at someone Susan, things stand out to you. Whether it's looking at a
face or the entire body. And based on the things we
spoke about with the face, it's basically the same thing transferred over to
the entire body. So you could design someone
with a more triangular body. I'm also killer body
or square body. And then you could, I'm using the
previous rule, kid, apply the various species
and between the features, look at those spaces
and maybe trying to exaggerate those
spaces in-between it already certain body parts. So I'm going to show you, because a demonstration
would be way better. So I'm going to focus
on this guy first here. And when I looked at him, I see like he has
because of his hair, he seems like a kind of upside down triangle, triangular face. So what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna go really. Cartoony, really basic. So there we have this shape. I'm going to go with his head. And then you have his body. Know this area here is where his pods
protective possible. So B and you get in this kinda bulge here
with the excess fabric. So I'm going to
actually make this a little bigger than
it is near reference. And you'll notice
that I'm focusing on the shape of his body first before I even
go into any detail. Now, his body gets a little
more slimmer down here. So I'm going to exaggerate that. Again, Maslow my hair. He has like a big fish dies and then his feet kind of
narrows down here. So I'm going to do
is I'm going to make the task a
little bit bigger. Then I'm going to make the feet much more narrower down here. Let me create more room. Shrink. This will quit keeping the feet narrow. And I'm going to create
some contrast and make strap foods more bigger. So you see I'm creating
contrasts with the various sizes of the features and
his body parts, right? So because his feet
are skinny down here, what I'm going to do for his
arms is I'm going to make them a little bit bigger. Join his fingers. Dana's hand signal. Pretty. We just keep an eye on or off. Still. We can all do design. It doesn't have to be
super clean, super sharp. You know, once you, once you have your design down, then you could worry
about doing cleanup. Know that we have this
basic shape, right? When we look at it, you could see all the
different shapes. Alright, more triangular
body, very thin legs. And there's a lot
of contrast between the top of the body and the
lower part of the body. So I'm using the contrast
degree of appeal, right? So if I would teach us, you know, in features here. All right. Let me fix that. Just putting some placeholders for the cease because I'm just wanting to show you how you can apply the same principles
of cappuccino fears. You can apply it to the body. Actually because he took off, his body is big. I'm going to make his head a bit smaller because the contrast is a bit off when I
was looking at it. So this looks a bit better. Alright, because I
had bigger against big and I wanted maybe small, big and then small again, right? And terms of the
ships of his body. So then you can go back in design phase. All right, so we won't talk about detail
too much in this lesson. But this is a stage. Of design and the
shape of the body. It should usually come before
you even start focusing on the smaller details of the
body and what you're going to put into the costume and
color and all of that stuff. Like you need to have your
ship designed on first. Once you find something appealing that works
for your character, then you can move on to that. So let me try and do
another full body, one fee to see, right? We're going to apply the
same thing. For this one. I'll try and do multiple
versions of the same character. So you can see that in not restricted
just to that one version. All right. She has a big O. We're going to exaggerate that. And again, just
like the football, I'm gonna draw a
bigger thighs and make the feet coming
down very narrow. So you get a contrast again in different
parts of the body. Contrast between this area, this area, you know, you have large and
then you off small. Right? And then you have small. All right? So I'm going to make
here omega here. Because it's something that I think is an important part
of the schools character. So I'm going to exaggerate
it here and be bold, big. All right, for the, I'm going to make the arms tiny to go with the
timeliness of the upper body. Alright. Then again, just please
hold the face now, these, these are
just rough, sorry. No. When we get into doing multiple versions or trying
to find the right character. Alright, you'll have to do multiple versions and
keeping it rough. I'm just focusing on the ship, the overall shape of the design. Alright, we won't,
won't focus too much on details for now. Let me do another
version of her. So you could see Give her a
longer face, a longer neck, the sign in or just
playing with the shapes, playing with the contrast. Maybe in this version, I will give her a
longer alone that OSU and are really,
really cropped short. Now you see how I
approach making my decisions when I decided to make her torso longer? I already knew maybe I will be making her shorts even
shorter than previously. So I'm probably going to keep the size of the thighs
Lodge at the top, but I'm going to
make a tall and then before long the legs. And they say I'm not being
restricted by my reference. I'm just using the
reference as a guide. And then I'm using my design
principles to maybe choices. I'm allowing myself
to caricature without this, without
restriction. Alright? If I wanted to go really
crazy with the hair, I could go like this. Alright, so we get a totally
different version of her. So it's basically a totally
different character, totally different design. Now you see how you get up like caricature to the
entire body now, not only limited to doing
caricature for the fees, right? So I hope this was helpful and I hope you will use caricature any designs
moving forward. And now we're going to talk about the assignment I want
you to do to practice, to help you with the principles of applying caricature a tear, friends, and not copy
in your reference. So let's move on to that now.
4. Character Design Lesson 4 Character Features: Welcome back everyone. In this lesson we're
going to talk about designing the features
of your characters. No matter where you
are in the wool. If you observe people in public, you will see that everyone
has unique features of the face and body that
contribute to their character. Some people may have similar
features but not identical. And you would find
that some artists fall into the trap of drawing characters that have the
same fears, same body type. And the only thing
that they used to distinguish them is they're
all fit or hairstyle. I don't want you guys
to fall into this trap. That's why we're going
to explore how you can design a variety of
character features. We will be focusing on the
hands, feet, and face, but you will be able
to use the methods we learned here on any part
of the character's body. So let's get started. So the first thing we're
going to talk about is hand. Now hands are really special
feature of a character. And the way you
draw them could add real dimension and
real personality to your particular character. Large hands could
mean something. Small hands could mean something depending on who the
character is, right? So I want to show you how I go about designing different hand. Then we can move on to
other features right? Now, before I actually do
the designing or Behance, I want to show you how
I draw hands because I know hands can be very difficult for a lot
of people to draw. And this is my quick
little go-to when I joined hands or join hands and I'm very
difficult position. So basically the
hand is a cuboid. Like this. You can use this basic shape to draw the surface area
of the hand, right? So let's say if I was
drawing this and over here, I will try and break it
up into this basic shape first to make it simpler. And then I would go about
adding in the fingers, right? Which are basically
little cylinders attached to the cuboid. So and it makes it
easy for me to break. Don't know, this is
just like a rough, very rough version of the
hand that I put down first. And then when I'm doing cleanup, then I would go in into adjusting to how I want the
design of the hand to be. But this allows me to put
down a very rough please hold up for the position of
the hand and then I get out in the shapes. And for my particular joint that I tried to keep the
hands as simple as possible. I know a lot of
people tend to do, tend to draw the hands in really detailed,
complicated style. And I don't think it's necessary in terms of
designing your characters. What you want to do is design your hands for your
character and not design it based
on your reference or based on too much realism. You want to design the
hands, the character. So let me move on
to another example. So here we have a wood
shop guy and he is, you know, Calvin, some
word here with a tool. I would shave I think. And what I wanna do is I want
to show you how I could draw these hands
in so many different ways. So what I would do is the first one, I'm
going to draw it. I'm going to try and
draw it a bit similar to the reference photo. And I'm not going to
draw it to caricatured from the reference photo. I'm going to keep it kind
of it on point to that, to the hand in the pit here. So I can show you
how it differs from the other hands I design. Right? Yeah. Alright. A bit rough but
it gets the basic idea. Don't know if I wanted
to draw the hand of, let's see, a young
girl, a young woman. Right now they would have
a bit softer and let's say the girl wasn't
a wood shop person. She is more of less entire job that doesn't
involve the hands out much. Her hands wouldn't
be as strong and as as tough as this
gentleman's hand. So what you would
do is you would draw the hand silica
bit more softer, NO. To have less jaggedness, to be a bit more
thinner. Softer. Alright, let's see
future in the next time. You keep it small, you keep it soft. Because you know, it's a
female characters time. And you would just use
the reference as a guide. Now, if, if the character was even bigger and
stronger guy than this person who is actually
the wood carver here. And we wanted to
exaggerate it and make it more scary, scary
looking person. Let's say we needed
to know about the character just by
watching his hands. Like, how would I go
about designing that? Make his mic, his
fingers like really, really sick and you know, rugged and scary looking. Right? I would go about that. See. And even when you're
drawing the hands, you can think about cartilage or like how can I caricature this hand to make it
look big and scary, you know, could make
thumb really huge. I began scary. I'm thinking this guy
is very, very huge. Just by watching his hand
is think well his fingers. We can tell that, well,
these guys are really, really big and scary compared to the previous
two characters. I assume you're drawing
the next one as well. Android, big thick of fingers. We draw any hands doing the
same thing so you can see the difference with a character. And you know, I just add some
here on the hands the show. Maybe this guy's really
from the hard work in lumberjack guy in there. Hey everybody. Alright, let's do
the front hand. Yeah, let's do this side. It's the same principle. Let's say we will draw in
a scary monster right? From the depths of
who knows where, right? Fit, draw it. Now the fingernails
and this monster. Be something out of this world. So we'll draw long, scary, evil looking
fingernails. All right. Already looking like
something attached to some kind of monster
or some kind of demon. It all depends on
how far you want to go or how timid you wanna go. Let's say it was a baby, right? The drain babies or
the limbs are babies. You have to use more rounded, more stubby shapes For a
child compared to an adult? Yeah. More stubby sheets. So just by watching these hands, you can tell what kind of character these hands are attached to just by
watching the hand. So I'm overlooking the hands could be a very
big mistake in it. I didn't even know that
personality to your characters. And your hand, your
design of the characters, you know, the style in
which you draw your hands. You could draw it
in like, you know, something, something
very different, something very stylistic. You know, maybe enjoyed,
really, really busy. And you have a, you'd
have a different kind of character with this one. This one isn't close to
life as the other two, but it's a Han, you recognize a time. And you could tell maybe this is attached to somebody
who is skinny. And if the character is way different from that
of a demon or baby. But we could tell that, Hey, these are three different
characters and these hands are not attached to the same person. We can definitely identify that they are totally
different characters. So you could, you could
explore and find a new design. Like you might not even know the direction
you want to go in. And that's why exploration
is so important in finding the right design for your characters and your overall design
of your character would influence
certain aspects of. The features of a
character, right? So if you know your character
is going to be skinny, maybe a character
is going to have long, long, skinny hands. And if a character is strong, maybe he's a bodybuilder. Your character is going to
have bigger more whoop times, you know, because he's
in the gym working out. His fingers are going
to be much stronger than the character
who is skinny right? Now this applies to all
the features of the face. And we're going to
move on to defeat, and we're going to move
on to the face now. Now the same principle
applies to defeat right? Now, ephedrine,
defeat of this woman. We're going to draw it closer to the reference for this one. All right. Just by watching the reference, we could probably guess that
this woman is like maybe in her 20s, early
twenties, mid-twenties. Just by watching her feet. She's probably maybe a 100 in 15 bones or something
along those lines. Just by the feed right. Now, I want to show you, once I finished this
one, I'll show you, I'll be drawing the same defeat with a bit of different
character in it. Alright, so now that
we've finished this one, now let's say we were drawing the feet of a more
heavy, sad woman. I, we wanted to create a
contrast in the feed rate. So let's say her
feet heavier on top. And then we could create contrast by making her
feet really, really small. So you get like a nice
contrasts coming up here. Using this same photo
as a reference. Right? Draw the next leg. And you see how he could
caricature any part of the body. It doesn't just have
to be the face. Alright? So we have two. And again, we have a variety in, in-between these two characters. We not draw in to see him legs and the same feed
for every character we have, you know, we have to
explore the variety. Let's do another example
which would defeat, alright, let's go back to having maybe a real rugged
lumberjack guy. Feet and all his
feet would be weird, different than this woman. This, his feet
maybe look really, really unattractive feet like really hairy, really muscular. Know his tools and see me at all like Vietnam and
stuff like that. I'm creating character in a sec, really, really ugly feet. And let's say the, draw some contrasts
between the characters. Let's draw, let's
say we could draw the feet of maybe a
young boy or girl. Alright, obviously the
size will be different. And again, when you draw
in younger characters, you want to keep the shapes
more rounded and less sharp. Now, when you're
drawing all the people, these shapes tend to be
more more sharp and more. The edges seem more
triangular and stuff. But for younger characters, you tried to keep it a bit
more smooth and curved. Rounded shapes, more stubby. I get younger characters when you draw it
like that. Yeah. So same thing applies to defeat. Now let's move on to the face. And the face has a
lot of features, so we can have a lot
of talk about there. So here we have a variety
of different people, different reference photos
we're going to use, right? And when we look
at these people, all of these people
are different because they have
different features, right? So why would you draw your characters half
in similar features? If in real life everyone
has different features. And when we're
drawing characters, we need to exaggerate these differences to add more character to
our characters. So let's start with the nose. If you look at the
nodes of each character here, everyone is different. Now, if I were to use
these reference pitches as inspiration to create
my own characters, I would just use
them as inspiration. I would not copy them. I would look at the shape of
the nose and try and design a news for my character based
on it but not copying it. So the first nodes
by the old man, let's see if we were to draw it more accurate to
the folder, right? We do a quick sketch of
that, Louis. Alright. We have one nose. Now, if I were to
draw, Who knows, it would be a little
more rounded, a bit more smooth compared
to the old man's nose. Alright, and we get orally tell that these nodes is belong
to different people, different stages in life, right? If we look at, maybe this
go over here for noise. If you are drawing her nose. No, it's a bit more wider. Right? And then same thing
with this guy over here, is known as the front. Pointed downwards. Know, you're already getting a lot of variety in the
shapes of you knows, just by looking
at the reference, I'm copying the reference. But what if we apply a
caricature to these noses? So let's go back to the
first guy and let's try and car could share that
news to something, you know, more cartoony. What if we push the nose wider? It will. Oh, that's it. That's different. Let's try and go more like this. And there we have you
do another shape. We could explore
shapes like this. For a really, really long time. We can get different varieties. All right, let's do one more. Let's see if we get some more. Alright. So we have different nodes
is there of inspired by the photo of the
older gentleman there. And it's the same thing we could do with designing variety. Let's go again with
this girl here. She has a much more
smoother nodes, right? So if we were to exaggerate, that will get
probably just leave out the bridge of the nose. I'm probably just add
the bottom piece. Or if we wanted to, we
could make it really, really smooth and go like that. Or, you know, I'm looking
at this nodes and i'm, I'm designing based
on this nose and creating different looks, right? So you can have a bunch
of different looks. And designing variety. You could even
just maybe just do this if we wanted to
go really simple. And Israel that bridge day. All right, You see I'm
already designing variety. So there's no real excuse not
to, to create differences. You know, everything
is there to be inspired by in the references. And that's why I
want you to be more creative with design
and the features. We all had to create things
that never existed before, to create characters that
never existed before, right? We want to put in our
pool snow creativity. We don't just want to copy from the full dose and
copy from real life. We want to be inspired
by real life, right? And it's the same thing with the hair and the eyes and the
shape of the head, right? So let's say if we were
doing focusing on the eyes, now, I will go back to the
older gentleman there. His eyes are more
squinted in, right? So we could draw it like this. And maybe you, maybe
you wanted to design a character whose
eyes are really, really close and I looked like his eyes closed all the time. Right. As compared to,
let's say the girls. I, and she's Asian. Like how could we design eyes to show that this girl is
Asian in algebra and, you know, we
probably have to do, we could get a
variety of designs. Could come up with a
lot, a lot of designs. It's just take some time and patience to lock
down your design. And you know, you
might be starting off, you might be impatient. You just want to go
with the first thing. That you'd draw it first thing is never
really the best thing. And it's, it's, it's about
exploring and notice about taking risks because at this stage you can take
risks with your designs. And with this one, this design, I'm just going to push
the exaggeration a bit more creative with the eyes. You know, and if we wanted
it to go like really, really cliche, I make
the eyes like really, really chunky, kinda stereotype. And I'll get go with that. None if, if we want
it to be even really, really simple dependent
on this style. Here though you can go earlier, it was simply doesn't matter. This is designed and no, it's not about drawing
realistic is about design. If you want to go simple, or if you wanted to go, depending on the
style of this show, you wanted to go maybe
a little more detail. I'm putting certain things there in the eye to make
it look more realistic. I wanted to put details
in the eye and the lady, light shines in the eye. I know we already get an
a variety of ICA, right? So and again, it's, it's like a repetitive process. You experiment. You don't just locked down. The first thing you
draw and just say, Hey, that's going to work
because you never know what design you're
leaving on the table. Something that could be way, way more interesting, right? Same thing with the right, same thing with remote. Let's grab this
and go with them. All right. Let's use the lips. The school, right? That's right. More realistic to
the photo first. Alright. As it looks there right now, we could go more exaggerated. Simplify it some more. We get cool. We can modify it a bit, make it top lip. The dominant animal experiments
so that we can make, what if we make the top lip small and the
bottom lip huge? We get an a different
look there too. So what if the towel
version where we focus on this V-shape
and the top lip, we can add that in, make it a little more realistic. Or if we wanted it to
be super, super simple, we can just do a line that can be independent on his style. It might not work
for this character, but it's still a
different version of it. Let's see. We were
dry and lips for her. Well, based on this reference
and watched his ship, we could, we could play
around with this ship. Go more round. Experiment is, there's always so
much variety in the shapes you can apply. Really exaggerated dv. Alright. So the point I'm trying to get
across here is that I want you guys to come out of your comfort zone
and start designing. Start thinking about what, what features can I add to this character to
emphasize their character? And he could always think about the character and tried to design for them, pick character, very gentle person and you can add more cuz to the character. The characters is our
rough, rugged person. He can vary square
shapes to their fears. Make them really, really
rugged on square. Use, use your reference as a resource and not just copy it. So I hope you guys understand
this concept of China, the features, and I hope
you like practice it. So your assignment is going
to be to draw a variety of features and explore as
many varieties as possible, as many options as possible. Just, just, just have fun. It doesn't have to be you trying to block known specific
nodes for our character. What I want you guys to do
is to just drove variety, draw as many variations
as possible. Um, you can use as
many references as possible and see how much, see how much versions
of eyes you could draw. Cmos, versions of lips
and hands and feet. You can draw. So good luck guys and see
you in the next class.
5. Character Design Lesson 5 Rough Designs part 1: So here I got it up. All my references that I
downloaded from the Internet. I picked out my favorite ones. One, that one said, I think that I will pull certain elements from things
that I think are appealing. And I put them together
in one image in Photoshop so I can
refer to them. And just watch the image. Just look around
the image and watch all the different players in the image and get inspired
for my design, right? So what I'm gonna do now is
I'm gonna walk you through how I go about coming
up with my first set of ideas and then deciding on, on my selection and moving forward which ones
I liked the most. So what I do is I look
at my references. I think about what I want
my character to be, right? And it's a roller derby, so the character is going
to be tough, as I said. And out of the three characters that we're going to design, I'm going to start off with a
female and then probably do the meal and then the child. It doesn't matter which
one you start with. I'm just starting with that one because I guess I'm just feeling to
start with that one. It's Nauru particular
reason. Yeah. What I do is I'm looking at it. I take any images for awhile. I look, I look at some of the
body types and the shapes. And, um, I thought process and what I
could do in my mind. And then I would
just jump into it. So the first, the first
idea that I have in my head is like a really
tough woman, right? So I wanted to have like a big very intimidating
gotten a ship. So I'm going to start off
with very big upper body. Work my way down. Now, I'm not going to spend too much time on this idea
is what I wanna do is that I want to get some body
shapes down really fast, eight and then move
on from there, develop more and more and more. The first thing I do is
I start developing some, some body shapes, just getting some ideas about
doing it really fast. Let's try something a little more around the same
level of toughness, but just a little more lean. I tried to keep the
shapes, contrast it. So if you notice, if I have the top of the body, huge, I tend to contrast that against like
smaller or thinner legs. Because there's a, there's
an appeal and contrasts. So I tend to try to keep
things really contrasted. I don't try to keep all like everything so close to real life and have everything
as proportion as real life. And, um, these body types, even on designing the female, you can actually pretty shoes, pretty much use these body types for almost any male
or female character. I'm just putting
down some stuff. Let me take a look back at my reference and see
what's going on there. Now when I look at my reference, I see that there are few
goals that they looked off, but they're not that huge. What I'm gonna do is I'm going
to also design some girls with a smaller top area and maybe longer or bigger legs. And just trying to get an overall idea of the
body of the character. So since the legs are
huge in this one, I'm going to keep the arms thin. So you could see these
are just four solutions. And we already have a bit of relate different types
of characters here. So let's try and maybe take a look at
the reference again. Now that's the good thing about having a near reference there, is that once you, once you run out of ideas, you can always just go back
to the reference and read, refresh your mind
with some ideas and then just come back again. I don't like call that leg position. No. This one has more of a
uniform leg structure. Same size. Very true. I'm not sure I like it do, but that's okay
because it's just this sketch and not spend
too much time on it. Maybe I could probably design one with a big head
because of the helmet. And I'm going to be really
big experiment here. I don't think it'll,
will code for this one, but still trying it. Let me make some more room sharing this. One thing I should
also mention though, is that when you're designing your characters and you do it
in like a quick body types, you should probably,
which I didn't do, you should probably
try and small. That way. You don't spend too
much time on detail because I think sometimes
the best of us, we get caught up in detail. So if it's small, it tend not to worry
too much about detail. Because then you
can't really fit it into a small
thumbnail sketch. This one's a bit to traditional. It's not to exaggerate
or anything. More. Focus on legs, smaller torso, and intimidate them
look kinda like that polytope might
exploit a little later. No, the pauses don't have to
be that amazing just yet. Um, pause and we'll talk about in a later lesson
because pulls in and gesture is important part of designing the look
of your character. Because some characters
would pose a certain way. Those warrants. So it will get different feelings from different characters
based on their posture. So what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to do a bunch of these
body designs. And then I'm going to come
back and show you guys, because this might take really, really long and it
may be a bit boring. But you've seen how I started
and then we'll move ahead to how I'm going to select which bodies dying is I want to develop and such
and such and such. So let's skip ahead to that. So I did a few more options
for the design and I actually came up with to that I think were really
appealing to me. And I'm going to develop these two now based
on his sketch. So you could see
how I take it from this stage onto the next stage and develop a new character. These are the two
rough sketch designs I decided to go with. I really like the first tough, vague, more heavy, said good. And this small girl, I like how they look. Standing next to each other. And I'm going to use
a new one on the left as the woman and the one
on the right as the child. And I'm gonna develop
these and I'm going to show you guys how I
developed this now. So I'm going to start
with the woman, right? And usually, once I have this
rough sketch to work with, I start tweaking it, creating different versions,
trying things out. Because I've actually narrowed down the concept right now, there's so much possibility is you could do in
character design. So this is like for me, this is the first age of
narrowing down a whole bunch of ideas into something more specific to where the
direction I want to go. So once I have this design, I usually, you know,
drop the opacity. And what I want to do too as well as have my reference open. What I'm gonna do is I'm
going to swap in between the reference and my design. And I'm gonna see elements in the reference
and sat adenine more detail, a little more detail and
fleshing out the character. So let's see what
we could find here. We could look at the
details of the helmet, of the uniforms, the
protective pads. Add that little more detail
there onto the character. So I'm going to start
with the helmet. And I'm not going
to like try and B, not going to try
and be too clean. Right now in my sketch, I spontaneously kinda drew her what her helmet
cover in her eyes. And I kinda liked that idea. So I'm gonna go with it
now for the first version. But I might try
drawing her with eyes. And the other versions. Draw some pony tails. And you'll see I'll
be like clicking off and going back and checking
the reference and, you know, coming back. You know, what I can add in. Now the reason why I chose
this one as well is because I really liked the
shape of the current. You know, it was
really appealing to me like, I don't know. I think I was able
to make something that has not too much contrast, but a bit of contrast
and body type. And I thought that was
really appealing to me. And I could rework this and add some stuff and see
how it comes along. And I'll flush it out a bit. I really liked all
I made he shorts, like really, really
thin down here. A nice contrast between the
size of the shirt and shorts. All right. Let me just
check the knee pads. Knee pads are generally big, so I'm going to try and
see if I can get that. Alright, right now, We're moving on top port
and characteristic, which is the actual
rule of blades. And then just design I had
her feet pretty small. I'm going to try and
keep it pretty small. Remember the door for you to be checking on era
friends and using it. Eventually just for reference. During the human body. We'll worry about thinking not doesn't make it disappear if it needs to reference to draw
the human body. Like you're designing
a character. We not, we not here to
prove that we could draw everything from our minds and we're so great and we
don't need reference. Inexperienced people would judge you on how well you could
draw from your mind. And that's the ultimate thing. Yeah, But that's that's something to worry
about that Let me see. No, she has tiny feet. I'm thinking of
making the leads on your blade tiny as well. So you have something
coming along. Alright, now we can move
up through the arms. And now I'm looking
at the reference. I get. I can tell that
they're different. Various bonds and
protection control it multiple is actually bad. Keep checking back
and make sure I draw the equipments
accurate and things don't look wonky. Totally made up as
though somebody who's drawing it out of their
head and keep checking. Alright, so since the top of the hand arm actually is huge, I'm going to make them fingers to just finish off fingers. Right? So you have a cleaned
up version there. And I'm going to do is just add some simple detail
to the uniform. Looking at the reference
to see what I could add. Nothing too complicated in terms of What's on the uniforms. They usually seem to
just have a logo. And let's find some stripes
and that's pretty much it. I'm not going to go
beyond what I see. They're not gonna put any
fancy logo, anything. Alright, this is my first
cleaned up version. Let me write that so you
could see it better. So my first cleaned
up version, right? Let's see, we have a character
coming along here. Right? Now. I'm not going to do too much in
this one video. So I'm going to wrap
up this video here. But what I want is that
I want you guys to catch up to me at this stage
with your characters. And then we'll move
on from there. So I'm going to tell
you guys what to do the assignment and then you
just guys work on that. And then we get moved
forward on actually refining the
character's face and any other detail that
we need to do before we move on into the next step. So let's do that now.
6. Character Design Lesson 6 Rough design part 2: Alright guys, know that we
have our foods rough design. I want to start doing some more designs just
for the head alone. So this was the head on
this character is my first, initial sketch, a rough design for this
particular design. But I want to explore more of the head and see
how I could tweak it, what different options
I could put on it. Try different hairstyles, tried different versions of the
helmet, mounted nodes, etc. So what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to use the reference, same reference as before. I'm just going to explore different alternatives
to the hair. I might find something
I like any new ones. I'm maybe not, and maybe I just might stick
with the old one, but it's good to explore
and to try and find out to see what you could
do to make it better. So looking at the reference
node, the references have. When I look at your
references, I'm seeing a bunch of different
style helmets. So I might try doing
different style helmets. I see different hairstyle. So I'll try the
different hairstyles. So let's see what I can do here. Which element
should I try foods? I'm going to try
this one down here. See how that looks. This helmet kinda wraps
around the head entirely. I still like the fact that
I'm not showing her eyes. I want to keep that. Look back at the
helmet. It wider. I'm going to keep
these had designs are off because I don't want to spend too much time on them. I want to get Dong as much
versions as possible. I'm going to try different
hair style for this one, I'll try maybe day long. And it's just like this. So this option. So let's move on. Excuse me. Let's move on to another
version. Let's see. We could try the helmet with
device up here, this one. For this one I think I
because there's a visor, I'll try occlusion with eyes. Now it's pretty risky to
try design without eyes, because the eyes are the
most expressive thing. On the human fears. Eyes and eyebrows. So do it. Design and our face and eyes is a big limits. Right? To another one. Let's try this helmet. And who your style? Which is more of Cara. I'm going to try
and stay the same, the structure, because
I really like it. I'm not going to. Try and change that too much and make things
too complicated. I'm gonna play around
with the ear style. I haven't really come
up with any that I think would do the
first version yet. So I'm going to keep going. Maybe I reach runaway. I'm kinda like, oh, I can't seem to choose. This hairstyle kinda change, changes the character a bit. I'm not sure about that one. We could do a version
where she does not have hair sticking out of the helmet. Maybe just a little
but not too much. Solid way. This one looks a
bit too masculine, so I'm not sure if I'll do that one either. Might try. One more here. I'll try it again. I'll trial version with eyes. So this is basically me
designing in real time. See, this is exactly how I go. I'm not leaving out
anything right now. This is my process. Anything I might actually
leave all of that you won't see as maybe me doing a number of
different versions. Maybe I do more
versions of screen. But basically my process, a way to help but just try it. If you have an idea and you
don't think it might work, it might still want to try it to see just the visual E habit. Don't want to lose. Interesting. Since one I kinda like
The goes on the helmet. I really like there's a mystery
and not see in her eyes. I really, really like that. I don't know if it's because of this theme and who the
character is supposed to be. But I really like the fact
that the helmet is covering her eyes and you get
a mystery from that. And you maybe would need to look at the rest of
the character's body. In order to see the expressions
and reactions and stuff? No. I'm seeing some
from the reference that they have like some fees being done stuff
over their eyes. So I'm actually going to try and do version with the eyes. Some fees and hoops. There are so many
different versions of eyes I could draw. I wanted to seem tough. Face beans seem like something
that would really make an intermediate in. Kinda looks good. If these beans, I don't think the fee
is bandwidth look good with all the, i's. So I'm probably either going
to have to do a version. If there is face paint, it's going to need
to have the ice. Is no eyes. I'm
probably not going to diffuse pain because the helmets diversion with development
isn't going to have much space to
draw a face paint. Because I'm gonna be
poverty led to the nose. I don't know why that seems
to make a see more tough. Like with the eyes. I have no idea why that's appealing to me so
much of it. Later. Let's see what. And I can paint. Some would face paint
running right across if I'm really liking the plots. And too long here. I'm not like an evolution with the short hair or that much. I'm really taking that
into consideration. So what I'm gonna do
is I'm going to now, I could keep going and keep exploring and it's
something you should do. But I don't want to be
like creating this really, really long video of me drawing like 20
different versions. So just for the sake of time, and just to get the
point across quickly, I'm going to pick
out the ones that I liked the most and start
refining those even more. Like. I might just make, put the heads that I liked the most on the body and see how they work and then decide them. So I'm gonna do that now and
jump, jump over to that. Okay guys, so what I
did was that I took my favorite head sketches from the previous rough designs. And what I did is I
attached them to the body. And I looked at them
together in a row so I could really see them side-by-side and see which ones I
really, really like. And after looking at
all three of them, 123, I decided I would go with
number three because I really like the idea of
how AND the face paint. And I really, because this is an introductory class and in the further classes we
can do expressions. I want to show you guys these are designed with a full face. So I will be going with
the design with the eyes. And I really like how
it looks overall. I really think it kinda edges
out the first two designs. So I will be going with this, with this design for
the further classes. So what we will be doing now is that I will be telling you guys your assignment and we will be wrapping
up this class now, because in the next class, what we're going to
focus on is we're gonna do a character sheet and maybe some expression sheets and really show the
design of the characters. So let's move on to
your assignment now.
7. Character Design Lesson 7 Character turn arounds and charactrer expressions: In this lesson, we're going
to talk about creating a character turn around
and character expressions. Now, the reason
you would need to create the correct
It's in her arms and expression in a production
pipeline for a TV show. That the storyboard artist
and the animators could refer back to these
models sheets and you can see the
characters and how to draw the characters while
they work, right? This is mainly done
for reference. So I'm going to show you
how I go about creating these characters in earnings and character
expressions, right? So we're going to start off with the character Tinia wrong. So I have the front view of my character here
already on the canvas. And what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna show you
how you can draw the back of the character
without too much trouble. So the first thing I usually do is that I will
draw some guidelines. Alright? So the
guidelines will help me see the tippy top
of the character. All right, through here. And then the lowest
point down here, right? Guides to exactly where the top and the bottom
of the characters. No, I'm not going to
redraw the character. What I'm gonna do is
I'm going to do another short and I'm gonna copy the front of the character. This is a little trick. I do. Enjoy the back. I'm going to transform
it horizontally. All right, so I flipped
it horizontally. Now, when I go to draw the back, I'm just going to
reduce the opacity. And I'm going to
go in now and draw the character as though
she's facing the back. Alright. The guidelines will come in handy because then
I could see where I am. Right. Now. This is going to
be rough as well. Because I haven't really
spend any time doing any of the designs
of the back of her. So I'm going to keep it off
just in case I need to make changes or do any kind of edits. So I'm using the
front as a guide. But I'm drawing her because I'll have the overlaps of the back would be different, but the overall silhouette would be technically to see them. So you're going to have
to adapt in some areas. And then you could probably just redraw some of the areas. They seemed like the arm era here you would have to
draw it differently. This would be the back
of her palms here. So it will be like the opposite. So you'd probably
see her thumb here. On the same side. On the left-hand side
you'll see a thumb. Because remember
this is the back. And then going to continue dawn. Alright. So this leg is actually on the front, will be in the back. On the opposite side. Now we have the knee pads, so we won't see any nepa adds. The buck, stops with
any bad. All right. Now this is gonna
be a bit different, so know that it's swapped around the ankle here. And then the front
of the foot there. Same thing with this
angle would be here. In front of the foot
would be there. Alright. No, we draw an arrow to use the guide. I'm forgot that the
guy who was there. All right. Everyone,
I finish this. I'll just make adjustments
if it's not working. So coming down this way. Right? I believe the pods on the elbows would probably
be similar to the front because it's going to
ride around the arm right there and for
the gloves. All right. Now, since she's
putting her chest out, she probably has maybe
four wrinkled here. As it cools, stretching
that helmet. Alright. No. Zoom out of there. And we remove that. We could have the CNN
Clara know the Buck. She probably would have. Maybe. I'll play a number to the back. Let's just put a random
number, 27 maybe. Right there you have the back of the character and I'm not liking hold
this leg is positioned. So I'm going to comment
on more this way. Thick. Again, I'm not really
scared of being or off because you can always
clean up this after I, once you're happy with it. Alright? Maybe some
detail on the shoes. And then we have a
very long socks. So you can double-check to
see what probably a missing and just added in some
more. It goes there. All right, so there we have
the back of our character. Now, if we are going to do, Let's see, this side. This side is a bit
more tricky on me. Just move these guys
over one space. Now this side is a
little more tricky. So what I do decide is that
I draw some more guidelines. So once your guides
are in there, you can reduce the
opacity just to see it. Do a new layer. So now that we have, when I'm willing to actually do is I'm going to copy this again. Place it over here. Make sure it's then going
to reduce the opacity. And then I'm gonna
work on this side. So the head position will
probably remain the same. I have up here. See, I'm using the
front pose as a guy. Tell me rough in angle. Who's going to be spread apart or off everything
for her legs are spread apart and you
join the side angle, that means a bit higher up
than they need closest to you. So because there's
some distance in between from this
leg to this leg, there will be some
foreshortening going on. Okay. I think I need
to redraw this on. And I think I need
to redraw this one. So a lot of mistakes
get made during this. That's okay because
we can always fix. All right. Now, the arms
are coming out this way. So you're going to need to
know some foreshortening. Foreshortening skills is going
to have to be point here. I don't think bellies out big. So go Sox. I think a head is
tilted back a bit. Helmet is coming. Alright, so we have this drop of the helmet and then we have a pointy tools coming
out to the front. Troy and the fingers. Alright. So you have a
rough side view there. I still think there's
legs look a bit awkward. Redraw that it looks
like it's coming out. I think I may need to
do it anymore here. That looks better. I just draw something or off
the placeholder there. Alright, so we're going
to draw the nose, eyes. This is pretty rough, so I can always
clean this up later. You don't have to worry
about being too rough is all about getting
the character. She does all about getting
the proportions right. And then you could clean
up and tighten up later. All the different V2. So it's been good shorts
would be more like this. You probably won't see that, but I need to draw and elbow mean here. All right. And then
she has a tattoo. Face needs a lot of cleaning up. But just to get a point
across for now here we have. All right, so here we have
our first dinner wrong. So this is like the most basic
tuner, only good to have. Some people, depending on your style and you know the
production demands, they would draw a three-quarter
view or a different view. This is the bare minimum
front, back, and side. And you see like you
have the guides, you stay within the guides. You try not to break the guides. If you think something is off, you can always check it
guides or draw more guides. And try and adjust. And the guides will help you
with most of the things, but there are certain, certain parts of the body that would be in different
perspectives. So you'd have to adjust those, like say for the
feet here, right. Because excuse me,
because this is the back. New rollerblades would
be going away from you. So the perspective
would be different. And it's the same
thing with the arms to the side and all you have to adjust for the perspective
on with the arms here. I have to make sure I draw the thumbs company because they are the buck or the width. All right, so certain
things you have to pay attention to when you're
drawing it on our own. So this is the reveal minimum, basic knowledge you need
to know about in her arms. You need to draw
a front and back. And I said and be clear. So when somebody is using
your designers or reference, they can understand what they need to know about
the character, right? So it's pretty simple. You just need to do a lot of practice are different
characters and you will be able to get it down as quickly and
effectively as possible. So next we're going to move
on to character expressions. Okay, everyone. So what we're gonna do now is we're going to do a correct expression sheet. And basically what that is
for those who don't know. It's you're drawing your
character in different emotions, happy, sad, angry, etc. Now the reason why you would
have to do this is again, for the same reason that you would do a character
turn around sheet so that the rest of
the production line or the B the animator
to store bought out is they can reference the character expression sheet when they're doing their work. So what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to show you how I go about doing the
expression sheets. And yeah, I'm going to
do some basic emotions. And how I go about
doing it is that I got some are friends
of the emotions, whether it's happy or sad. In this example, we have
a girl who's happy. So what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to use this as a reference to draw
the happy emotion. Now for me, I am totally
honest with myself. I try not to be too egoistic and think that I could draw every
emotion out of my head. So I still try and
use reference. And so for this one, I'm going to use this as a
reference for happiness. And what I would do is to make
my life even more easier. Actually, draw, I would draw the
character and they seem pause just to make
my life easier. Now because you've
just designed a skirt, it might take you some
time to be able to know how to draw her
or him very well. Because remember, you've designed something
that never existed before. And just because
you designed it, that doesn't mean you
would automatically know how to draw
the boost and very well because you just
design something and you yourself need some time to figure out how to
draw your own character. And the tough thing about doing a character expression
is that you need to keep it character
on Model and don't. The car, the morph into
a different character. So that's the difficult
part with these things. They try and keep it on. You don't have to worry
about being clean again. You could keep it
rough at this stage. And then you can always come back and make your adjustments. And don't be too
hard on yourself. If you did enjoy, it, could do for this
time. All right. Join the helmet. So keeping it rough. Put in. All the features. All right. Make a
little more happy. Doesn't look that happy. I think it's because the
eyebrows need to change. The eyebrows. Such a big indicator of emotion. And they didn't draw them. And the happy
emotion to try them. Know when you're happy. And I post them to be high. Now in real life, when I'm looking at
this or friends. But I first probably are reused, but because they're
not exaggerated, it wouldn't get to see it. So in animation, you know,
everything is exaggerated. So you would need to exaggerate
to make the emotion. Read, Clara. Alright, I'm gonna put
the face paint right up to her forehead and
then come back. This way. She doesn't seem very
mean and this bit, it looks more soft. I think I may need to come back to this to make
some adjustments, but this happy emotion, good work for now. Alright. So I'm going to move on
to the next emotion. What do we have next? We have angry, so do
that on a new layer. Alright, so this one
might be a bit more fun. So this one is a big stretch. So there's gonna be some distortion and
the characters fees. So I want us to make
sure I'm keeping it on model and not make her look like a totally
different character. And again, to make my life easy, I'm using the same position as the reference. Alright. So let's see, I might need to exaggerate the expressions
and the eyebrows. Put some more
wrinkles are all in. But a lot of emphasis on them. All right, I need to make the
face even longer. So as you go along, you will need to adapt and
make changes as necessary. She's really stretching
out a jaw here, so I'm going to need
to make more room. And putting the fears these eyebrows aren't
aligned with, didn't know. So I need to make an
adjustment there. I might need to come back
to those eyebrows because I think I could
exaggerate that more, but let's try and enjoy
the rest of the fees. No sense of faces
like stretching. I'm gonna guess
that this trap for the helmet is going to
be extra tight so it may come in into the
fees squeeze. Feasible. They're projecting nose. Know the angle of her
head is a bit too box. So you might see right
under the helmet here, bit of perspective,
choppy and it is met. And now we could go
in and do the eyes. Now when somebody
has angry eyes, they tend to be squinted down. A bit more sharp as compared
to when they're happy. Maybe some more wrinkles
here to emphasize the anger. All right. We could put in the Philippines. Looks pretty aggressive here, right? No. This is a little
trick I like to do. Oh, it's not really a
trick is something I noticed in Studio Ghibli films. When a character gets angry. The characters, Studio Ghibli
films would have like, you know, something, the emotion comes
through in their hair. So I kinda like to do that now. So the head would be
like kinda raised up. Like, you know, when an
animal in a while or like a cat kinda feels
threaten their food, raises up or
something like that. Kinda like to add
that to the hair. So I do not know. Mostly for anger and divisions angry and raise their head up. I think behaves a bit off model, but I can fix the
fix that later. All right, so there
we have anger. I got something. I'll please hold that it. Alright, so let's move
on to the next one, which is confused,
confused right? Next year. Now, since this emotion is kinda street
on a street on there. So now when someone
is confused them, wait till their head. So I might not stick with
de-reference this much. And maybe character tilde had a really tough to learn your own character
that you designed. I'm going to go
right into the eyes. One time. She has fairly thick eyebrows. So I learned how to draw this confused
look from Aaron Blaise. How to draw the eyebrows like a swoop like this. The top one. Here and then the
bottom one here. He always says try and make
it feel as though it's on the same muscle and not
break it up like this. Try to make it swoop
on the same line. Quick tip. Let's get back to this. No, I kinda like There's also another tip I
learned from Aaron Blaise, which is The more than sign. When drawing
expression like this, you would draw the
top eyebrow here, bottom eyebrow, and the nose. And then the mode
would come this way. So it's kinda like, uh, more than sign. So you kinda go with this sign. So this top I would be smaller because it is closer
to being squashed in here. This I B, I think I need
to raise an eyebrow. It isn't exaggerated
enough. Let me draw this. I first show it all
the way up here. That looks way
better, way better. Exaggeration always makes
things look better. And following that same
rule I just told you about. She has she has lipstick. Yeah, I think that's
all for models. So let me try again. She has fairly wide loops. So how does it confuse mode? Look, I think it's
point the eyes. So let's see how this looks. Even though I still
think it's off model. I don't want to
draw her with us. Smile because that'll
be a different emotion. I think then I need
to draw something, something more neutral,
foot confused. Draw a little on lead gen
as though she's getting up, pulling up confused and annoyed. And it looks like
the same thing. I'm thinking this looks
more like annoyed, but you might be confused with what the
teammates is saying. She's like, What are you saying? What are you talking about? As I might need to bring all
that element of it, maybe. Depends on how it
looks at things pants. And enjoyed right though. Alright, good intro to hear. My try and get
that same feeling. And express a Trudy here. I'm going to draw
this side can dawn. Very rough. And then this one I might
try and puff it above it. But I'll contrast. So she's kinda thing in her
shoulder up on this side. Maybe she's doing
both shoulders. All right. I'm
really need to bring that helmet bone
is a bit too high. Right above the eyeball. It looks better for now. Let's move on to
the next emotion. Let me just erase this here. So you can want it
in this last one, a very basic one. Sad. Surely let me move this up here. So I get work down here, closer to the reference. Again. We go indefinitely getting
a lot of practice drawing your character, doing this. Jacqueline sadness now. Sad, not sadness. Know what sadness. You try and squash stuff
down a bit because, you know, when we're happy we can expand our self
and when we sowed, we kind of put ourselves in. So I'm going to try
and pull things in. So the helmet is gonna be
a little extra little. The head isn't going to be that the eyebrows are slanted. Don Woods. I'm going to have
to exaggerate and more than the reference, feel as though I
could slanted more to make it feel even more sad. She just maybe lost again. I feel as though this
character would feel angry rather than side
if she lost the game. To probably be sad
for something else. That knows is a bit of model. What I want to be. I don't want any nostrils. Can I just want one ship me go pull t. When I was thinking
of this character, I never imagined like seeing her sad because I
think she's like this tough, you know, rural
literally listen. You probably wouldn't even see sad story I had in my head. So during sad seems so foreign
to me for this character. But you need to do it because
everyone feels sad at some point and you never know if the guard bill will feel sad. Whatever story. Joints. I really think I need
to slide those eyebrows if it isn't being blocked
by the helmet strap. Know it's sad I'm going
to make the hair droop. Unlike CO and this
first one here, it's kind of popping out. I'm going to make it
true as though it's a wet because I really want
to make her seem small. I might even drop the
helmet some more, like right above the eyebrows. For me. Really sad. Sad eyes. No, I don't think I
need to put tears, but I do need to bring
those eyebrows, nose. I mean, to put your wrinkles, you get one year frowning. Again, also need to
bring up the chin. God, I really want
to make everything really pack for this side. I just want everything
to just close up and make a few of
the really small. I mean, you could see like compared
to the younger, everything's kinda spread out. Everything's much wider. And this side one I kinda
squishing everything they own. She's been defeated. She made me lost
a friend and just kind of imagine like a
story in my head too wide. This character would be sad. No face that do not
have prominent. And there we have it. So there we have some basic emotions for
our expression sheet. And you can too, they're so much more emotions. You could do reaction shots. You can just do like
situational emotions. But for now, because this
suggests an introductory class, we're going to just focus
on the basic emotions. Alright, We did happy here. P, we did confused, angry, and sad. Now we're going to move on
to the assignment and you probably already know what
your assignment is now. So let's get to that.
8. Character Design Lesson 8 Character Poses: Okay guys, Welcome back. In this lesson,
we're going to talk about character poses
and corrected gesture. So here I have my character, my fully designed character, Roller Derby girl, that
goes along with my theme. And what are we going to
do is that we're going to start drawing a character poses. And again, character poses. Just reference for
the animators, storyboard artist to see how the character looks and acts. So how I go about doing
character poses is that I go back and I gather up
some reference material. Right now. I, my, my theme is Roller Derby. So what I did is what? I went on YouTube and I went on Google Images
and I sewage rule Adobe. And I looked at the
pauses that I think my character would be in and
would suit my character. And those are the references that I filled it out into these. Alright, so what I'm gonna do is just I'm
going to reference these poses and
I'm going to draw my character in
these poses, right? So let's start off with
a pretty simple one. We'll go with this
one here first. So I have to kind of
move back and forth. So you guys could see, alright, again, means to me. So we can focus on this pose. All right? So let me do that
on a new layer. So when you're doing
your character poses, again, you have to pay attention to the shape of your character. And usually when I'm
doing multiple bruises, what I would do is
I would actually draw the character poses
first without much detail. And then I would go in
and make adjustments. The detail that you need to after my first pores, right? No, looking back
at my reference, I need to move this
across a bit more space. Now, one thing that is
really, really important, withdrawing your
character poses is having a really good
understanding of gesture. And basically, for those
of you who may not know, gesture is basically
capture in the action of a character and not
necessarily the anatomy and warn about the anatomy. It's more about what is, what is this character doing? What, you know? Is he running as
you're walking, as, you know, and communicate
and not action clearly. So that's why so far I'm just focused on the pose
of the character. And again, we want to make
sure it stays on Model and it communicates the pose
of the character accurately. So I'm going to
tweak this a bit. All right. I'm actually going to
bring this leg up. Now. You see once once I haven't
started the detail, I can make adjustments
to the gesture easily without getting too frustrated with making mistakes and not getting it
right the first time. Normally if I draw the
pose of the character and I think I get pushed
the balls even more. I will push the pause
more again before I start worrying about detail. So in the reference, her
leg is actually bent, but I want to get that feeling of going really fast
in that direction. So you don't have to worry
about this size yet. You can always make
adjustments to that later for you. Push it. I just focus on the gesture. Alright, so i'm, I'm
liking this post. I'm going to put all
the detailed us. Yeah, right, So this is basically my first
pose for this character. And I'm going to move
on to the next pose. Pools. Actually, I'll
move this one down there, create a new layer and
work on the next pose. So the next pose, I think I will try. I'm really liking
this pose here. This one here. So I'm gonna work on that one
until all characters are, all my characters are
relatively character. So a lot of the pose is going to be the character
on roller skates. So when you're drawing or
deciding on what Paul is, is you're going to choose
for your character. You want to try
and choose pauses. That a lot different
and a lot dynamic poses where you could see a lot, a lot of different
parts of the character. And you don't want to draw a bunch of poses
that, you know, they only show the front or the character they
don't show like decide or true quarter
or any of those things. So you'll want to
keep it dynamic. Now, I'm just using, if you'll notice the references, I'm kinda pushing the
references again because I want the pose to
feel really dynamic. So again, knowing gesture, well will come in really handy. And doing these poses. All right. Got a lot
of that movement. Just move this across this way. Again. You don't need to be super
clean at this stage. Just keep it rough. Finally, pauses. Find the mass of the character. Make sure everything matches up to your original model
because you don't want to change things, right? And make sure you're
happy with the pause before you move on
to the next pose. Because once you
start adding detail, you don't want to
have to go back and make a big change
to the polls because he just realized that
you didn't like it and that can be
frustrating sometimes. So this is my second poll
is, let's look at it. Alright, so we have the character to skate
and positions. Right? Now. I'm going to move
this one across down here. So there we have
two poses already. Those are two action poses. Some gonna do something
a bit more stationary. So let's try this pose here. It's a bit more stationary. We can do here. Again, don't be afraid to
look back at your friends, your references
there to help you. It's not dare to be
copied entirely, but it's dear to help you. They go to pause. Maybe you could use, just
use the reference as inspiration for oppose that totally different
from the reference. That's fine as well. Sometimes I would start off with a reference and
then I get totally inspired by the pores and see something else that I could try and deposes end up being
two or three different. I don't know if that will
happen here, but if it does, you'll see that if it doesn't, hopefully my explanation
sheds some light on that. Alright. So this is more of a
stationary pools character is moving across the floor. No. I would do like a whole
bunch of different poses. And if they're poses, I don't like, I
would just know it, I get rid of them or just draw a new pool is like say if I were to do six different
poses and I didn't like one, I'll just do a new pause. I wouldn't try and
make that pause force that pulls to
fit like this pause. It's not that great
because it doesn't have a good silhouette. Silhouette isn't
really that good. So I'm not sure if that pulls
would make it to the end. But I would keep it for now. And I would go onto
a next, next pose, which could be stuff. I'm going to try this one here. It's very dynamic pose again. Hopefully it fits
in this corner. All right, As I said
before, I like to keep, keep it dynamic so you could see the characters from
different angles. Might be sounding
like a broken record, but repetition is all
the things stick. I'll keep saying it just in case it slips
out to your mind. Know, even I've designed
this character, I haven't fully fleshed
out her personality. All I have is like this really vague ideas of who
she is or what she could be. So what I'm trying to say is that the poses
that I could draw, it could be a little
more intimate. More of who, who personality is. Right now, these
poses good fit like any rule Adobe
character, I'm guessing. And they don't really show who puts them
out beyond the sport. So you can have different poses. You can have a more
intimate setting, interacting with someone else, doing something Monday and
not hood character would do. But right now, I haven't
figured out all those details. As a character designer, you probably won't have
to worry about that. I wouldn't be in a
job description. But just something
to keep in mind. Alright, so there we
have four pauses. We have 12 tree
for most of them, I didn't really change
from the reference. But what are we gonna do
now is we're gonna go over these poses and
site adenine that detail so you could see more
of the character, right? So let us start with the
first one that we did. Right? Now what I'm going to do, supposedly as here. Alright? So I'm going to reduce the opacity of this
and zoom in a bit. Actually, I'm going to go into carry this up so I
can see the reference. Now, I am going to
start adding in. Some more detail. Now, this, this past that I'm gonna do. Now, It's still going
to be a bit rough, but it's going to
have more detail. And it's going to be
fleshing out the character. Some, all right. So nothing to, to, to, to clean. A lot of people they tried
to do clean instantly. You don't have to. It's all about getting
it done right foods. You have to make sure all the
important stuff is really, really important
stuff is there first before you do detail. So I'm still going to
keep my reference there. Yes, I could refer back to
the pool was perspective. So as I go along and
I do a new layer, I want you guys to
notice how I just subtly adding more
detail to the character. Definitely going to make some
mistakes in this process. And that's why I'm keeping it rough right now because I still, I'm not a 100% sure
of where everything goes and all the perspective
and all the details. So still figuring stuff out. I'm, I'm, I'm
looking at this arm. I'm thinking that the
perspective is off. So I'm gonna look
back at my reference. I think it's this leave. I'm not sure if I
should enjoy it. Like Coleman, right
above her shoulder here. So I'm still, you know, figuring out I still
have some problems. I have to make sure we get all foods before I do like
the last last clean up. My first rough version, I didn't even draw the wheels. I'm going to add those
in this past for sure. Alright. I find this leg is
looking a bit too thick. Then that down a bit. Bringing her back a bit here. I think I may need to redraw this arm because
as I clean it up, I'm noticing that it looks it doesn't look absolutely right. I'm gonna do a quick rough because she's charging forward. I'm adding in more detail. So I'm making things a little
more clear for myself. So when I actually go in
to do the actual cleanup, you know, things will
be a little more Clara and my lying
wouldn't be so fury. Now what I'm gonna do here, since the most of her
width is on this, I'm going to actually be exaggerated and squish
the wheels a bit. As though she's like
squeezing down on the wheels, even though that probably
wouldn't happen in real life. Exaggerate that feeling and
should add center wheat, which is pretty cool. Now given that, give the
gesture bit more life. Right? Now. Let me go. I might need
to go back and fix that. So so I'm gonna do something a little
bit weird here just so I could keep
looking at the face. I'm going to bring
it across like this. Really weird. But yeah, go on the face. Now, this pose is
very aggressive, so I'm going to try
and make aggressive. And this facial expression very aggressive. And again, it doesn't have to be super clean dishes on the other side. All right. So I'm going to
move her back over. All right. Alright. So I'm gonna
try and fix this. So bear with me. I have to look back
at the reference and make an adjustment. I think the shoulders
too far down. Making it look a bit weird. Perspective still
gives me trouble. As you could see. Some occasions. She's going forward, so
breeds would be going back. All right. Now, I'm trying to
give her a logo. I haven't I don't know
what the logo is yet, so yeah, sounds like a
placeholder there for the logo. I'm going to make a stomach
come in a bit here. Let us craziness going on here. That's why it's so rough, still. Keeping it off. Before I did brought versions, I didn't, I actually didn't do as much rough
illusions like this. And go over the
piece and, you know, try to find the right
pool is on stuff I would get so frustrated when I
realized I read so far, added so much detail
and then I realize, Oh, that arm is not working, that this pose not working. A lot of things aren't looking and I get frustrated and I just, you know, get complacent
and just leave it at that. Alright, I'll show some movement
lines just to be fancy, I probably won't even have
them in the final solution. Alright? Alright. So this is the second
pass on the same pose. Now, what I'm gonna do now
is I'm actually going to go and do another pass
and try and clean it up. I'm trying to create
and talk as much as the reference that I'm using right now, the first reference. So again, what I'm
gonna do is I'm going to drop the opacity, right? And go on a new layer,
start cleaning up. So normally I would
do the pauses, like all the pauses and all the second pass and the second row of Sunday
to Ross altogether. You know, I want to keep
these classes short and concise and get the information across as quickly as possible. So I'm not gonna do all of them in the same video because it's basically
the same process. And it says repeated
with different poses. So I'm just going to explain the process
used in one pose. And then you guys can just
use it as a reference. Working on your poses. So as you can see now that
I did this second pass, it made it easier for me to do a cleaner version now because the second rough pass
cleaned up stuff and made depose and some other
details a bit more clearer. So I won't be guessing as much. In this case I'm stage. He could leave the guessing
to probability second. Second pass. No, I wonder if I should put the here in front of the
shoulder behind. So sometimes you encounter some things and you have
to make some decisions. Alright? So this is going to be much faster cleanup process. This is going to be
a faster process. Now, sometimes I would get like a full cleaned up version
on the third pass. But sometimes I would still, maybe if I still think things need a little
more tightening up and, you know, a little more clarity. I would do afford paths
a clean it up even more. And I will personally, for me, cleanup isn't as fun as
actually coming up with the the actual causes or
doing the rough sketch. You know, all the
all the fun thing good and stuff is gone or door. I know it's just about refining. And, you know, refining could
be fun for some people. But I find that, you know, like your real fun is doing the rough sketch and
coming up with the pores. And I guess this process is
pretty straightforward. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to speed up this video so you can see how it
looks after this path. And then we can move
on to your assignment. So let's do that now. Alright guys, and then we have the first pool is
fully cleaned up. So basically this is what I want you guys to do
for your assignment. I want you guys to
do some research, gather some reference to help
you guys and do at least, at least four pauses. If you can, you can do six. You could actually do as
many as you want to get a few Fate character and do those pauses and
get them ready. And then in the next class, what we're gonna do is we're going to talk about
how you choose the colors for your
character and find the red colors and create
an incident options. So good luck guys, and see you in the next class.