Character Design for Beginners - Create Your First Character

1. Introduction: Hello everyone, welcome to the character design for beginners, create your first character skillshare class. Yes, you heard right, character design. I know it is a giant topic, it is an intimidating topic and it is a topic not really for beginners. But if you have been with me for a while you'll know that my superpower is to make things easy for beginners. I have done my research, I have read books and articles, watched videos and tutorials, attended workshops and seminars, analyzed the artworks of my favorite artists, and I came up with a 15 step process that will take you from an empty page to an illustration like this. Throughout this class, I will carefully guide you through this 15 steps, through which you will learn strategies and skills that you will be able to apply into your future artworks and illustration practice. You will be able to come up with your own characters, create powerful silhouette, add eye-catching features, use harmonious colors, create balanced designs and create compositions. You will be able to set mood in light and shadow, and most importantly, you will be able to tell a story. Because what is illustration about? Storytelling. If you're seeing me for the first time, my name is Alexandra Gabor and I'm a professional art teacher with a master's degree in art education. I'm a painter and a self-taught illustrator and am in the face of my own self teaching, and what i'd love today is to share my new discoveries and knowledge with you guys. So for this class is I am going to use the iPad Pro and procreate. It is recommended to have these supplies and have a working knowledge of procreate. But don't be afraid, I'm commenting on every step in detail and leave no tear in there so that you can easily follow along. You can use a different program as well, for example, like Photoshop, but you will need to adjust the steps for yourself. Regarding the artistic background, this class is perfect for beginners. So if you are at the beginning of your illustration journey, you are at the right place. Either you are willing to take this as a professional path or you have it as a hobby, the skills you will learn in this class will open so many doors for you, not just by leveling up your technical skills, but by changing your mindset about approaching a project. Either it is a client work or your personal project. And what is the best about this class is that by the end of it, you will be able to create an illustration like this. How amazing is that? So if you are ready, let's get started. 2. A Few Words About The Class: Welcome to the class. I'm so glad you decided to take it. In this video, I would love to talk to you about how the class works and about their resources. As I already told you, the whole process will take 15 steps, and I generally divided it into three sections. The first section is more about ideas, inspiration, and experiments. The second stage is about designing and decisions, and the third is about painting and illustration. There will be more videos than steps naming the illustration part because I didn't really want to make longer videos than 10 minutes. I divided the whole process into those sections so that you can take breaks. It took me several days to shoot this process. Definitely don't want to do the whole class in one setting and the rush through it, give yourself time. Giving yourself achievable goals will help you to stay on track and stay engaged, and it will be less probable that you will drop out of the process. Let's get into the resources. We have tons of resources to download, go to the class, go to the projects and resources tab, you will find the project description here and all the 16 resources here. You need to click on See more to see all of them. I have prepared so-called templates for myself for the class shooting, but I'm giving them to you so that you can really follow along and that you don't need to care about any of this stuff, just download them and start working. I will show you these templates. These are the templates that will help me to guide you through this process and then providing them to you so that you have them as a reference and that you can actually work in them. I will just show you how to download. This first 10 under these 10 templates for the first 10 steps. Just click on the template, hit download, and then you go to your files, you will see that it is downloading. It is a little bit different as it was before because I updated my operational system on the iPad, so maybe you will have differently on this process, but you just click on it. It will import into procreate and you will have it like this. As you can see, you will have it empty like this, but it is not empty. When you go to the layers, you'll find everything I create in the videos. For you to use, for inspiration, for reference, you can modify them, etcetra. You will have all these templates from this tag, like this and you can work in these. You can just create a new layer and create your own stuff about mine that I have in these files. After these templates, you will have the original full illustration that I create in this class and that is this one. I have cleaned up the layers and named them so that you know, what things these layers were present. I have the value checks catch signature, foreground variations, shadow, light, silhouette, flattened image, body, hands, land book, plants, features, references, and background. You can just use them as a reference take a look while layers I have and also here I have this sketch that I didn't include as a separate resource because you have it right here. There is an option for you to do the same exact artwork like this, maybe with different colors or something. You can just hold down on this couch and it will relieve all of this layer. You can export it as a PNG and you can start working. You have this option as well. Let's go back. Then, you have a composition grid PNG. I'm not sure if I have included it in the templates that we are going to use it in. I just wanted to have it here as well, just click on it, holds down add to photos and you will have it on your camera roll so that you can insert it into the file you are working in. Then here, my famous brushes, the liner brush, and the shader branch. In this class, I'm going to use only these two brushes to create this artwork. I guess that's the maximum I can get out of these brushes and I promise that in the next class I will have something new, but these are just enough because they are amazing brushes, I promise. If you have done any other digital illustration class I have on skill share, you already have this, but if you don't, don't worry, you just click on it, download, go to file, it is downloaded, click on it, and it will automatically import into procreate and you will find it down here and imported brushes, as you can see, I have done this process several times. If that doesn't work for you, because for some of you, it's for some reason they didn't didn't work, you can go to my website. My website is www.theartmother.com. You can go to procreate brushes, and you will find these brushes right here. To download, hold down on the download button, open a new tab. Go to the new tab, and it will open something like this. You have a download button here. It will be the same process, hit download, go to files, it is downloaded, click on it. It is imported into the brush library. That's about the brushes. Now there is a step-by-step guide, JPEG. It is a step-by-step guide I created for you about 15 steps. You can follow along the whole class with these. It is a free size document, so if you want to print it, you need to print it in a bigger dimension because these things are small. In A4, I think you will not be able to read most of the things. If you need it as a PDF, contact me and I will send it to you over by email. But this JPEG should be enough. You will have it in your iPad and you can just go through it. Let's go back. Here is the character designs watches. This is the color palette that I used for the illustration. I just included it so that if you want to follow the tutorial in a 100%, you can do it. I don't recommend it because you should be a little bit creative and at least use your own colors if you are using my sketch. I would be most happy if you would use your own sketch, own design and own ideas. But you can download just click on this, download this watch, go to files, click on it and it is important and then you go to the pellets, you will have it at the bottom called character design. You will have these colors for yourself. If you need any help, don't hesitate to contact me in the community tab below and ask your questions there. You can also follow me on social media, on Instagram and Facebook where you can find me as a the theartmother. You can visit my website, www.artmother.com, and you are welcome to join my Facebook groups, The Artmothers online item, which is an exclusive community to my students and you need to answer the questions to get in, don't forget that. I also have an open community for digital illustration for beginners. Where you can just connect with your fellow peers and get immediate feedback to your work and that is amazing. One more thing, don't forget to follow me here on skillshares so that you get notified about my announcements, about competitions, winners and new classes, and also when they review box pops up, don't forget to let me know what you think. It is really important to me. That's all. Let's start with the first section. 3. Step 1. - Find Inspiration: Hello and welcome to the first video where we are going to find inspiration for our character, your first character. Now, the first step is always the hardest, how to start, you have several ideas but you don't really know what to draw, how to draw it, how your character will look like, so you just sit down and scribble and stuff and you will end up not having a finished idea, but if you follow this process that I will guide you through, at the end you will have this wonderful character and the whole process starts with finding inspiration. If you have done any of my classes with me you already know that I love to use inspirations from nature. The reason for that is that, nature is the most creative thing on the whole world and that means that you can't even think of things that are better than what nature already created, and what I mean by that is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are so many things in nature that you can get inspired from. Now, I have chosen six topics and your task in this part is going to be, to find one inspiration from each topic. The first one is plants, mushrooms, butterflies, bugs, fishes, and birds. Those are the six topics that we are going to get inspirations from. I don't want this video to be too long, so I prepared these inspirations already, but I will show you how have I done it, what is the process of it and you can watch the whole video of this canvas at the end of this video. What I'm doing is I go to Google and write things like, interesting mushrooms or weird mushrooms or weird birds, colorful birds and you can use these birds. I have interesting mushrooms here because I'm going to show you this little process on this ones, just look at these mushrooms, they are magical and look really interestingly sometimes. There are so many interesting textures and colors and shapes. Look at this, there are so many interesting things in nature and what I've chosen is going to be this one, I'm going to do a screenshot. Let's go to Procreate, what I love to use is screen sized canvas, if you create a new canvas is to go to gallery, hit the "Plus sign" and hit "Screen Size", you will have a screen sized canvas. I will go back to this one and add my drawing to this. I will just turn off a few so that I have space to work. I will create a new layer, hit the "Arrange button", "Insert a photo" and insert a photo of this mushroom. Now, what you can do is to hit a the "Select" so either draw around this mushroom image. Three fingers slide up, cut and paste and now delete the layer below, Delete and now you are left with the inspirational image. I will turn off these dots as well and this part as well. Create a new layer above and choose the liner brush that is provided, there are two ways to do this. The first one is by observation, you just pick a color and start drawing and observing the plant or mushroom or bird or stone that you're working on and go round and round or you can just go into it and we'd want color, just do the main shape. Draw these shapes around, I will speed this up. You don't need to be as precise as this. This is really about getting an idea of shapes and structures and patterns and colors that you can use, you will just have an idea by the end of it. I will create a new layer below this one, choose the darker color that we have here, and I will just add the background to it. You don't need to shade this, you don't need to add details, this is really about just creating actually a mood board but with already drawing things for it. I have this one, I will just merge it, these two together and delete this one, turn this back on, yes, and choose this and place it into my mood board. This is the simplest process you can do. Again, your task is to go find one representation from each six topics. By the end of this video or this stage, you will have a mood board like this with at least six a little easy drawings. You don't need to build color palette, you don't need to go into details, the point is to get an idea, get an initial step, just starts the process and you will see that by the end you will have the motifs and colors that you like. For example, I loved these little dots in this bird and I really love this fish and its colors and its shape and eyes, how his eyes are looking, I really love this plant, so as you can see you will have some great things. Now, you can start to build your project before this class already, so when you are done with this mood board, this should be the first thing that you add to your project. When you are at the class, you hit "Create Project", you can choose a photo that represents your project, you can name your project. You can start typing and add some comment that you like, go to Image, yes. Go to Procreate, Share as a JPEG, Save image, go back to Skillshare , Photo Library, Recents, Done, and you will have this first part. I want you to include this in your project and the whole process with all your drawings. See you in the next video where we are going to do a mind map to get more idea what do we want to do. See you in the next video 4. Step 2. - Create a Mindmap: Hello and welcome to the second stage. I hope you'll like the inspirational apart and that you are already inspired with colors and shapes. Now we are going to make a mind map. I am providing you this worksheet into resources so just download them. I will choose this dark blue color and a liner and I will just fill it in. In this stage we need to answer the questions what. So what we are going to draw. I don't really want your first character to be a no-imaginary, like something that you invent. However, we are going to invent a creature but based on something on a natural inspiration and I don't really want to step into their character design in meaning of drawing humans yet, because that is the next stage. I want your first character to have a character, because it doesn't matter if it is an object, a human, or an animal, because character design is about a character. Let's start with the first question of what species. Choose one from the six that we have explored. I thought that I would make a bug. I would just write bug here. Let's answer the question, what gender? I know gender is not cool in 2019 but I want it to be male. The reason for deciding if we want a male creature or female is that it will have different features. We can add to the character of the creature with male or female features. How old is he going to be? Maybe a young adult. I'm not sure. Now let's continue here where this bug will be and I thought he will be in the grass standing on something. Maybe on the grass. I'm sure standing on something. What size? I thought he will be small, like bug sized. I will not write it there. Let's go to something more complex. What emotions will he have in this image? Now that is a good question. What emotion? I thought he would be shy and playful. Maybe he is having a toy in his hand. He's shy and playful. He's standing in the grass. I can really imagine that but if he has a toy, and he wants to play, so let's answer this, what are his intentions? What does he want to do? In the situation that he is in the grass, he is a bug, and small, and male, and young, and he wants to play, and he already has a toy. Yes, he will have a toy. I will change this. He will not be a young adult, but he will be a kid. As you progress in answering these questions, you will have a clearer idea. How could you create this character. Others specifics. You can add some more details here. I don't really want to go into clothes if he is having clothes or anything like that. Maybe, he will be chubby. He will be a chubby bug, in the grass, he's small, he has a toy, and he wants to play. By the end of this video, you should have a sentence like this. I'm really interested in your mind map. Again, what you need to do is to answer these questions and keep this in mind. You don't need to add this now into the project, you can but the reason is that maybe you will change something on the road as we are progressing in the character design process. So maybe this is not final. If you want to you can share this into your project as well. You can just export it as a JPEG and upload it into your project and I'm really excited to see what ideas you have. You can also write your sentence down here if you want or just add the sentence into your projects, so I read them. Let's move on to the next video where we're going to talk about shape language. 5. Step 3. - Understand Shape Language: Welcome to the third video where we're going to talk about Shape Language. What is Shape Language? It is part of the visual communication that communicates your idea and the ''character'' of your character to your audience or who is going to say that. If you remember any Disney character, shapes clearly communicated. Rounded shapes are connected to softness and kindness. If you remember any positive character from films, movies or cartoons; they were rounded. Now, rectangle represents stability and strength. Most wise and strong characters had rectangular shapes in their bodies and straight lines. Triangles represent fear and danger, so negative characters got pointy edges and triangular body shapes. I just sketched some little heads here to show you that, for example, this little head is from rounded shape, their hearts, the eyes are rounded, the head and everything. It is a soft kind little girl, similar to the grandma. Now we have here this man who represents stability and strength. Now we have this pointy edges and pointy shapes; this vampire is really not the positive character. What I want you in this video to get this worksheet, turn off these heads, create a new layer, and try to draw heads. I know we are not designing human characters now but I want you to get an idea of how this could work. So I have nice things. Some easy heads, okay? Try with the rectangle, he will have the hair here. He will have the glasses, let's say like that. He will have ears, he's a little bit like a zombie, but he's strong. Now the danger doesn't need to be triangle like this, but it can be a triangle like this and it will be a fox. I'm not sure this is my best drawing but the point is to play around with shapes and try to get the idea of how these work and how these represent. Obviously this can be like building more complex ways. If your research Shape Language, Character Design; you have a little curved girl, the strong man and the pointy things to represent the badness. All right, I just want you to do it in a totally simple way only with the faces, simple lines and drapes. So that's your project for this video. Let's move on to the next video where we're going to choose a shape and build a shape for our character that we defined in the Mind map Video. We are going to choose an appropriate shape that represents our character. So I'll see you in the next video. 6. Step 4. - Choose a Shape: So this is now going to be really easy. I want you to create a new layer or create a new canvas. You don't need to use all of these worksheets if you don't want. I am going to work with this dark navy and the liner brush to build a shape. Now the question is, what shape my bug will have. We can really just play with the shapes. So it is going to be a bug. Bugs usually have a head and a body. Maybe I want it to be a chubby one. So I will try to make it a little bit like this, or he will be like this shape. I don't know. So let's just go and think about it. I am going to fill this worksheet which shapes and I am not going to add any hands or legs yet, only the body. So here's a pro tip. Never research or never do your research before you lay down your own ideas first. So I laid down six shapes actually three of them are almost the same and now this is the point where I need to do a little research. So I will go to Google and just take a look on some shapes bugs have. For example, this one, this is similar to what I've already done. Bug shapes or I will just simply go to interesting bugs. Wow! These are interesting. This looks fine that he has this head. This is so cute. Look at this. So just wander, get suck into the worm hole to Internet and these topics of bugs or birds, which you have chosen. I really loved that face so I thought he would have a face like this, or head like this, and maybe shape like this. Maybe he will have this shape. All these stages that we are going through right now are before the sketching phase. So we are now not sketching, okay, just playing with silhouettes and possible ways of representing our character. One more shape. I will choose I'm not sure, something like this. If you have done the digital illustration rockfall hacks course with me, you already know that there is a really useful practice that when you create shapes, or creatures from scribbles. So if you are really lost and you really cannot choose a shape, you can just do a scribble like this and fill it and do a bug from it, for example and the next stage. I will just do several of these scribbles here to see what I can do with those shapes and yeah, now I'm really using dam as shapes. Well, this looks like a snail, maybe I will do a snail,a chubby snail. Okay, I haven't thought of that. As you can see, it is really good to do these kind of things. So I will just do the scribbles. Looks interesting, I will just fill it again. Wow, looks great. So if you cannot find a shape that you like or cannot come up with the shape that you like, do this scribble thing and you will just find something that looks great and don't forget about shape language. If I would do a strong character, for example, I would go into this shape exploration a bit differently. So I have chosen a different color and let's say I would draw this stronger one. I would do shapes like this, and maybe this. I will do all of them in this manner. When you want to approach it with the scribbles, as you can see, I have drawn these scribbles with curves, but if I would want, their strong character, you can do the scribbles with these edges as well and for example, fill that shape. You can do this as well and on a new layer, I will choose a lighter color, and I will just try to do it with a pointy manner so that my character can be pointy and also the scribbles. You can do the scribbles really with these pointy edges. You have already a shape here like that. This is a really interesting activity and maybe if you are not really sure here what kind of shape you want. You can just do the same to see how those would work. Let's continue to next video where we are going to play with the silhouettes. Okay. If you want to work in the next template, here is how you can export your final shapes. Okay, so what I'm going to do now, I will just hold down this so everything else turns off. Turn off the background color so you have all the shapes and share as a PNG, save image and I will turn on back everything. Go to the gallery and play with silhouettes and I will do create a new layer and add insert a photo and I will insert my shapes here. Yeah, so I have my shapes here.See you in the next video where we're going to play with the silhouettes. 7. Step 5. - Play With Silhouettes: Welcome to this video, and in this video we are going to play with the silhouettes. It is all about adding more features. By now you should have all these little shapes. I'm just going to choose a lighter blue and the liner brush. We are going to add some more features. We are not adding details like eyes and mouth and stuff like that, but more like hands and legs and things that stand out from silhouettes, because the silhouettes of our characters need to be great as well. If you look at the silhouette of any Disney character, you can recognize it right away. You can see Pluto, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck here. We also need to make our simple shapes a bit more special in this tab so that they have better silhouettes. We can just play with adding, I don't know, legs. As I have a bug maybe my bug will have more legs and hinds. Maybe he will have something on his head. I'm not sure I can actually do this. Again, different layer. But I've added it into this layer, doesn't matter. You can add a layer below this shapes so you don't interrupt the shape as I did here, and just work with it. You can add some wings, for example. Again, you can focus on the shape language here as well. Maybe we'll have four legs. I don't know. Whoops. Great. He can have like things like this. This looks cute. He will have maybe these big wings. I liked the idea of of these zombie legs and I loved these things on his head. He will have something like that. As you move on with your ideas you will have a clearer idea of what you like and what you don't like. Maybe like this and he will have hands and legs. I'm not sure. This looks cute. Actually, I haven't thought that this shape will work for a character. But looks great. I'm delighted to speak things here. I'm not sure what kind of legs I like. I like this legs but I also like this that he has four legs. I don't know. Small wings big hinds. Maybe lots of legs, and maybe here he will have something like this. Maybe wings here and here, and legs, hinds. I don't know. Here, where's his head? He will have a head here. Looks weird and this is a snail. I will not add anything to this. He also has a wing here, so this is a wing. Maybe he will have another wing. Maybe legs. I'm not sure. I'm satisfied with my silhouettes. I have several ideas and what I want you is to take a break now. Right now. You need to take a break because you are over loaded with ideas now. Go have a tea, go out with your friends, go for a walk, have a sleep, have a nap, play with your dog. I don't know. Put it aside. When you return, you will see better what you want. This is the end of the first stage. In the second stage we are going to choose or form, add more features, play with color variations. We are going to compose the scene, at the second stage we will have a sketch and then we will just create illustration. Actually by now we are done with the a third of this process. See you after your break. 8. Step 6. - Choose a Form: All right, in this video we are going to choose a form, which means that we choose a silhouette from the silhouette that we have done in the previous video on the previous section. The one that I've chosen is this one. You need to revisit the amendment that you have already done. It is a good idea to go through it and think through it and visualize your ideas. I thought eight will be a bug, a male bug that is a kid, is shy, playful, has a toy, wants to play with the toy as choppy, small and is in the grass standing on something. The main point is that is the kid, chubby and male. Go through the silhouettes that you have done and just look at them and try to find the one that defines your idea the most. I found a desk shape defines it the most. What I've done is that I imported it, cut it off, saved as a PNG and put it into this template. You can do this whole class in a one template to places that you don't need to do these more cuts. I just want you to see what we are doing and a video that we are in. I have this little form here. What I'm going to do is to lower the opacity and create a layer above it and choose sketching 6B pencil. I'm going to do draw the outlines of this main shape and maybe correct it a little bit. This is a small kid bug. As a positive character these are his wings, you can play with that. I want this to be a bit more pointy like this. I will play with the features more in the next video where we are going to define the main features. But now your task is to just correct the chosen shape a little bit and enhance their hands. As it is a kid his legs are going to be maybe this small. You can adjust the proportion a little bit if you want. What I want by the end of this video is to have a silhouette that you are going to double up into your character. See you in the next video where we are going to define the main features. 9. Step 7. - Define Main Features: Hello and welcome to the defined main features video. At this stage, we are going to refine our main shape and main outlines of our character and we are going to define the main features as we have it written here. What main features? The most important thing will be the face and the facial expressions. So regarding, for example, the size of the eyes and the mouth, if he has a nose, et cetera. We are going to play with the hands and the legs and as it is a bug for example, I'm not really satisfied with the hands and the legs that it has. I'm going to slide this layer and hit ''Duplicate''. I'm going to do this several times, more than five times; eight. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. The reason why I am duplicating this one is that when I'm going to select the shapes and move them around, I'm going to hit ''Freeform'' and resize them this way so that I got bit more of a variation already in my shapes. This will make sense in a second. I'm just resizing it differently and placing it all around the canvas. As you can see, I already have smaller ones, chubbier ones, longer ones, et cetera. There is already a little bit of variation within these shapes so that I can start playing with them. Now I'm going to do a thing like this. Oops. I already have it on one layer and I will actually place it a little bit higher. What I'm going to do is to go from a one to the other and I'm going to just place different features. I will start with refining the main shapes. Actually, I love these wings and I will have these leaf-like in these wings maybe. But what I thought is that even though it is a kid and it's still a bug, so bugs are usually disgusting so he will have something pointy and little bit dangerous on his head. I will just make it like this so that you can see better. Maybe he will have these big eyes so that he is cute, and mouth with some teeth. Actually, bugs have more than four legs usually so maybe he will have these legs and maybe hands will be more. There are really more of them. We'll see. Let's move on to the next one. This video is going to be long because I want you to see the decisions I make and why I make them. I will try to make the shape of the wings a little bit different. It is all about playing. This will be smaller or bigger and he will have something like this so that you can see better that it has a wing. Maybe he'll have eyes sideways. Why not? Like this, and bigger mouth, and maybe he will not even have these legs and hands, but like this. Looks interesting. Don't forget the main features. It is a chubby kid bug that can fly because we have wings. Maybe the wings shouldn't be that dominant. Maybe he can have small wings like this and bigger things like this. I actually love the idea of having four hands than one hand and then I can decide what is he doing with each of them. Maybe he will have his eyes down here. You can play with the placement of these features because each of them will have a different expression. You can play with the types of eyes as well like this. This is cute. I like this one. Next one. He is chubby. Let's just play with his face. I don't know. The small little mouth or this thing, they will make him a little bit chubby. He already looks cute. Eyebrows, he can have eyebrows. I haven't thought about that. Let's add one more hand. He's like a fly. This chubby one, I guess he could have legs like this. Wow, this looks not cool. He will have eyes in the middle and these cute eyes, maybe this big mouth. Let's play with hands; one hand. You can choose one feature and you can just experiment with it. What I like is that he has four hands. He will have four hands and maybe a different leg. I don't know. Like this. He can have wings like this. I like this one. This is cute. Maybe he will have his eyes up here like this. I like the wings that are this bigger. Maybe this could be bigger as well, pointy. The last one, this small one will have giant eyes. Again, for some reason I love this idea of this cute little kid to have these small eyes, maybe even have some teeth and two more. Let's give them different legs. By the end of this video, you should have the same shape developed with the main features in different ways. Make at least eight. You can make more and you can spend more time on it. I just didn't want this video to be too long. By the end of this video, you will have a little more of an idea what kind of features you like. I will just highlight things that I like. What I like is that these things are pointy and big. I like this one more that he has really not dominant legs like this and maybe hands like this. I will play more with color on the body. I like the eyes that are a little bit rounded shape and about this level, so not that low, not that high, not that small, not that round. I don't know what shape this is. Then about the wings, what I like is these ones. Actually, I'm going to combine these all together in the next video, where we are going to define and explore more features. In the next video we are going to put these things all together and think of more ways of giving character to our character. 10. Step 8. - Explore Features: Welcome to the Explore Features video where we're going to finalize our character design. So what I've done is that I imported the main shape again, and then I exported from this one as a decent holes catching thing. As in pingy, insert a photo and I'm just having this one. I will make it smaller and put it sideways so that I have a reference. Now we can play with the proportions. What proportions or character have? Actually what I thought is that, having these- okay, I will go back to the Navy. Having these longer legs would be more interesting for him, and having longer, longer, hands maybe. So I have the legs, I have the hands. I'm not sure how this will look like. This is why I'm just having this circle at the end. I said I want this to be more pointy. So I will just draw it and actually, I will place the wings a bit differently. I will make them smaller like this. So about the eyes, I will make them round, but a little bit like not exactly a perfect circle. They will touch each other like this. You have this nice smile. In the wings he will have this leave affects. Actually I think I have everything. Now this is my main character, but this is not finished at all. There are so many other features that we can explore and that can add character. So we have a kid and a male kid. What I actually thought of, let's just go back to the mind map. We started here as shy and playful. This is the time when we have some kind of an emotion that we need to express. Actually you can do a little research on Pinterest. I will just go there on Google, for example, shy expression. Let's just take a look on this expression. So maybe he is like hiding his face. He has glasses. That's a nice idea for this kid. As you can see, the expression of the body as like crossing, hands, hiding a little bit. Maybe, let's say, let's add illustration. Shy, as he has the eyebrows upwards. So actually we can just play with that a little bit. Actually I just already tried it, that, he has this eyebrows and it already makes this facial expression a little bit like shy. I don't even need to do anything with the hands. Just this eyebrows make his expression a bit different. Maybe he can have this mouth like this. No, I will have it in the middle. He's playful, and now I thought maybe I will try to add a toy. This is the time when you can just sketch around some things. Maybe I will add toy car into his hands because my son is actually playing with toy cars a lot lately or maybe he will have, I don't know, lamp in his hand or maybe he will have a ball. Yeah, maybe a ball. I'm not sure. We can play with things like accessories, so maybe he will have glasses. Actually these glasses look great. I also thought about the baseball hat, but that would not work. It will be a geek, a playful geek, geek bug kid. Maybe he will not have a toy, but he will have a book. He is a book buck. As you can see, your idea can double up a lot. So maybe, I don't know. I love this idea of having a geek or nerdy bug kid reading a book, holding a book. Okay, this will be fun. Again, I will repeat what I have done in this video. I took this rat brains, put the features that I liked together into one character. I thought about how to express the emotion that is connected to this one, so I said he's shy, so I added this eyebrows. You can do a research, how to express this with eyes, for example, or facial expression or body gestures, etc. You can point add accessories to express the characters. So it was a kid. Actually the idea of glasses hit me when I saw this kid. Here. Where is it? Here. As you can see, you can just see a picture and just immediately got ideas. I wanted a toy, but I decided that he will have a book and maybe he will hold it somehow in his hands. He will ask us to come and read me a tail, maybe. Okay, so you can play with this idea. At the end of this video you should have a drawing like this, okay, because we are going to play with colors in the next one, and you will need i think to color. All right, so see you in the next video and let's explore the colors. 11. Step 9. - Colorize: Welcome to the next video, where we are going to play with the colors. First step, you need to go back to the drawing that I refined a little bit. Hit select, draw around it. Three fingers slide up, copy, paste, hold down this one. Turned off the background and just export as a PNG, because we are going to use it again. Save to files, cancel but save Image. Amazing, I will turn everything back on, and now we're going to go back to the first one. We are in the find inspiration part and I told you not to build a color palette yet because we are not going to do it and the way that we've done it previously, but we are going to go individually with the elements, and we are going to colorize the character. With the one color palette of one element. I will show you what I mean. We need to have this as a PNG. Turn off the background, turn off the decorative elements if you have them, turn off the topography and you will be left with the elements that you have done and you will just need to share them as a PNG. Again, we're going to bring these all together in the colorize section. I will create add, Insert a photo. I will add this color reference here. I will add my sketch. We are going to play with this things on the video. What I'm going to do a first is that, I'm going to duplicate this six times; 1,2,3,4,5,6 times. I'm going to actually put this onto one layer again. I am going to select first the bird one. I'm just hitting the select tool. I will move it up here. If you have done the digital illustration work full hacks class with me, you know that I love to squeeze out a colors as the color palette. What I'm going to do is to take the illustration liner brush and just create a little colored palette here with the colors of the bird. I have this one here. This little orange and I have these six colors. I will put this on the same layer. I will just cut and paste and move these together. I now have this. I will move it here. I will just colorize it. Create a new layer below these sketches. This will be the color version. I will make the body blue, and maybe with this light I will draw the eyes. I love this light blue dots. Maybe we'll have these dots. Somehow and Maybe his legs will be like this in the hands with a little orange. I don't know. [inaudible] I'm not sure, and then maybe like this. He could have like colored eye. Like this, its too cool. I will just repaint his wings. We'll have dots on his wings as well. Like this. Looks cute, amazing. Let's continue to the next one and I will choose this fish. I will select it again. Put it on the new layer. Cut and paste, move up here. I will again make a little color palette. I am using the liner brush the whole time because this is just really the colorization part. Pick at least six colors, and let's try it. I will make his body dark red, and maybe use this light for the eyes. He will have this white dots because I forgot to tell you that I really loved this dots. I thought that I would implement that. You can have like orange eyes like this. This can be like this. I forgot to book. Doesn't matter. I will return to that. I will add some of this here. I'll make the book like this. Looks fine. Let's choose the orange book or the brown book, looks fine. I have shown you in the main process of it. I'm going to do the same exact thing with all this. I don't want this video to be too long, this is why I'm going to speed this up. You can see what I'm doing, what I'm going to do and at the end of this video, I will just decide which one I liked the most and work from that so I will see at the end of this video. I'm done with the six color versions, it was so much fun to do. Actually not really sure which one I'm going to choose. This is the reason I'm going to have a break again. I advise you to have a little break as well. Then we will continue to build a whole scene. See you in the next video. 12. Step 10. - Compose The Scene: So hello and welcome back. In this video we are going to move on and compose our scene. But at first, I wanted to tell you which one I've chosen and it this cutie on this color poet. The reason is that this expresses that it is a male and it has balanced amount of warm and cool colors. I will play with the colors a little bit more when I will be painting. But that's a good choice for now. Now, let's continue to decompose the scene parts, where we are going to create composition thumbnails. Now we need to think about how we are going to place the character. So now I will choose my navy coloring and the 6-B pencil because I'm just going to go for it. The first thing I need to decide if it is going to be a portrait oriented canvas or landscape. I usually go for the landscape. I will just draw, i don't know, six landscape oriented canvases here. Now what I'm going to do is to play again with silhouettes. I will just insert my little character here so that I have a silhouette, so that i can use it. I thought that he will be standing on something and that the whole scene will be composed of three elements. There will be a blurred background so that we don't need to care about it too much. We are going to just lay down colors and blur them. There will be a second element that will be in focus. The little bug will be standing on something. There will be this middle focus element and there will be the third element that will be some silhouettes of leaves or, or grass, etc. Because my initial idea was that the bug will be in the grass, I will need to plan a scene that it is in the grass. I will just take a look on my little character here and think about the composition. Well, there is another thing, the rule of thirds. That means that if you divide canvas into three even parts, horizonally, and vertically, you will get this points. If you place something touching these points, it will be more interesting than if you put something into the center. So I will place a piece of grass here. My little bug will be standing on it, holding his book and waiting for me to read for him. I also thought that I could play the light so I'm going to just make another silhouette. Then he will be holding a candle or a lamp or something. It will be really interesting. Maybe there will be some silhouettes of grass, here and there, maybe a leaf here. Looks interesting. Well, let's continue to the next one. I will divide each of them like this. This doesn't really need to be detailed. It is really about laying down compositions. What if I place my little creature here? Maybe you will have these legs here and the grass will come from this site upwards like this. He will be holding the book and the candle or the lamp. Maybe there will be a little leaf. There will be grass in the front, I want this thing to be like as if you would peep into the hole and see the little creature in the middle. So what if I don't draw the character first? But let's say it will be like a little circle in the grass, so here is grass all around. The little creature is just standing here. Maybe he will have a couch or sofa in the grass. I'm just playing with ideas. So there will be grass all around and he's just there. These first lines help a lot so that you know what you want to draw down. What if he will already sit the couch? There is the couch, like this, and our little bug. I will just draw silhouettes. He's sitting in it, he looks out here, and he is having the book in his hands and there are grass in the front. I don't want this one. Okay? Let's move on. I have two more canvases to fill. I will play with the shape of this grass. So maybe this is a piece of grass like this, really curly one, and he is simply standing here holding the candle. Grass here, leaf here, grass here. So difference between this and this is that he's higher than the grass but I don't like that. He's a little bit smaller. So let's go to the final try. Let's do something different. What if the grass comes like this or what if it's a leaf already? So it's a leaf. Here is the lamp. Okay. So by the end of this video, you will have six of these composition thumbnails, and you will need to choose one. Actually I choose this one. I chose this one because it is more balanced. The little bug is not bigger than the grass itself. It will be easier to create that scene, I guess. I don't really want to have some unnecessary elements in this image. For example, like the sofa that I had in mind. It will be interesting to play with the light, with the candle, and this grass that is curling back. I think it will look pretty great. Okay. See you in the last section where we are going to create a whole illustration altogether. See you in the next video and let's start grating. 13. Intro To The Illustration Part: We arrive to this pose where we start the illustration itself. We have gone through the first 10 steps. You have made all the decisions, you have the idea of the illustration in your head. But to ensure your success, you will need to follow a basic outline for the illustration. Otherwise, you have artistic freedom from now on. I will just show you. You will need to have a blurred background at the back obviously. You will need to have the illustration, and the main elements in the middle, and you will need to have some silhouettes in the foreground. Obviously, you don't need to have only free layer. This illustration part will take so much more. I will just show you the end result. It's like this amount of layers. I'm just referring to the general outline of the finished artwork and actually describing how your project should look like at the end. You have artistic freedom from now on. You will need to keep this layout and you obviously have the option of following this tutorial that you will see in the next five videos or next five steps, and to do your version of it, or do it 100 percent, which I actually don't really recommend, use at least your own colors. This outline I just described to you will give you a barrier that will keep the illustration together, and it will make a bit of a cohesion on the class projects. In the next five steps, you will be watching me personally do my illustration. The videos are packed with useful tips, so it is really worth it to watch them. I will be commenting on my process including the brushes, layers, colors, etc. But you will see the full raw illustration process of mine, including my mistakes as well, and see me being in the flow state when I'm really doing the illustration, and not being clear about the instructions, I tried my best to be as organized as possible. I am leaving notes here and there so that you really don't miss any points. But feel free to stop and re-watch any parts that you need. If you are stuck anywhere, don't hesitate to use the community tab to ask your questions. The way I recommend to progress in your illustration, either you follow me or take your own path, as by following the steps described in the videos and the step-by-step guide. When you, for example, arrive to the satellite video, watch the video, and then go to your illustration and try to implement things from the video to your own artwork, and only progress to the next video if you are done with the step, so step-by-step. If you're ready, let's start with the sketching. 14. Step 11. - Create a Definite Sketch: [MUSIC] All right, here we are at the final stage and that is where we are going to create our illustration. As usual, I will create a screen sized canvas. You can go bigger if you want, but I don't. Screen sized canvas and I will create a reference layer, which means that I will insert a photo. I will add my original character. I will add the composition thumbnail, like this and I will add the colorized thing. Actually I can delete this one if i want because I already have it here, but I wanted everything to be in one place. Then the next thing will be to merge these, I can rename down and call this references. I will create a new layer and choose classic and agree and I will fill this layer and color and this is the value check layer. I will rename it. You can find this trick in the digital illustration for hacks. It is value check layer. That I do in every working file, because I can check the gray scale and I can see if my colors work well. Now we will arrive to this catching phase side. You'll create a new layer below the value check and that's will be the sketching. What I will do in this video is to create a whole sketch for the ant egg. I will create it fully and I will speed this up because I don't really want to bore you with this. At the end of this video, you will get the exact sketch I will create so that you can use it if you haven't gone through the whole character design and you just want to create illustration and practice. If you need decomposition grid you can just go insert a photo and you will have one here that will fit this screen sized canvas. You can just lower its opacity and it will just help you to create a whole art work. One more thing, never ever start anything right at the corner because it will lead out the viewer from the image so you can start your things for example, like here not exactly in the corner. [MUSIC] When you are ready, with the musty sketch. You can turn off this grid You can lower the opacity of this sketch and create another one above it and make sure that your lines are nice and you can turn off the references as well and focus on the overall picture so that it is nice and clean all before we start drawing a painting. Now when the main sketch is done, actually this step could have been done in the previous stage, but actually I forgot. It doesn't really matter. The point is, what I wanted to do is to select the layer of the sketch and flip horizontal and you will see that there are distortions and now I can see that there is a giant distortion here, but it is not that big. Mainly I have something wrong with this main shape of the body. Actually it is not a big deal that I'm doing this right now. I was just so excited that I got to this stage, that doesn't matter. This is part of the process as well everyone does mistakes, don't forget. All right, now let's flip it back and it's fine. Amazing, I think I should add one more small leaf here. I think it could work. Let's see. It's pointing too much that way. I want it to return here, maybe I will add this leaf back up there. This flipping horizontally and vertically will really relieve bear mislead your eyes. Because as illustrators and as artists our job is to guide and tell the story with our artworks and lines and shapes. Our job is to make them work with the story and to guide the audience where we want them to go, and maybe having a leaf up here. Because I think it is area is too empty, but I know that want those little things in the front, we'll see, like that, yes this can work. All right, so I call this sketch to be finished. I will obviously a refine details when painting and I think it looks pretty great and I'm really excited how the whole thing will turn out and how your art work art will turn out. I want to encourage you to share your sketch with us in your project, you can just simply add it into your project with all the other phases of the process because this is the last one that we have here and we are going to work in decimal, you can just export as sketch that you can see that and to see how you put all these things together that we have created, you can take a break. Again, It is really good to look at your artworks with a fresh eye. I usually do this so i work on it and go away and I have these stacks for character design or an illustration and just work a little bit on it always with a fresh eye because it helps me to stay more focused. See you in the next video where we are going to start painting and just blocking the main colors. See you there. 15. Step 12. - Painting The Main Elements - Part 1. - Setup And Body: All right, and welcome to the last stage where we are going to paint this amazing character. And actually what we need to do now is to decide the colors. So, if you have done the "Digital illustration workflow hacks" with me, you know that I love to squeeze out the colors for a pallet, and actually I'm going to do that now, so I will just hide the sketch for a second. I will go to the references, I will get closer and I will just grab these colors to have them bigger with the illustration liner brush, I want them to be bigger. So actually this will be the colors of the character. I will play a little bit with the character, and I will grab more of the color. As you can see, there are four different reds here. And let's see the greens, I have a really dark green here, I have a bit lighter green here, I have this very light mint here, I have some kind of a teal. So, four reds and four greens. Now the thing is that we need to decide on the colors of the background and the foreground as well. Now, as this scene is in the grass, I thought, so these, I will just put this there as a character, character colors, and we need some colors for the background as well. I thought that we could add a little bit of orange into the whole image, for some reason I miss that, and some, brownish colors, I will just put some here reddish brown. I will share this color palette with you in the resources section so that you can grab them. A little, darker brown, this will be for the background. The reason is that I choose these saturated colors, I will add a little bit of more reddish-orange as well, is that I want this character to pop from the background and as I said for the foreground, we will have some silhouettes. I'm not sure yet, if we will use this light yellow, maybe some gray and maybe a little bit of black we'll see, foreground. Okay, so here is a color palette. If you want to work on these colors a bit more, obviously, if you are doing your own character design, you will choose your own colors. But my main point as that, as you can see, I have lighter, and darker versions of the same hue, or the similar hue, so I have a light green, dark green, light red, dark red, etc, so always take more versions of the same color so that you have variation within your image. Now, I will turn on my sketch, I will make the references a bit smaller here, I don't even need this, but I will keep that here, up here. I will start with the character, so I will create a new layer below this sketch and choose a color for the main body, and I choose this teal actually, I really love this one. I will just simply start to fill in the shape of the body. I'm doing this with the liner brush that you can download with this class and I know this is my, unless you're at third class where I use only these two brushes, I promise I will have new brushes soon, but actually, I can do anything with these brushes. I can prove that you don't need, I don't know what kind of extreme amount of brushes, you can use this. Pay attention to that these textured brushes leave out pixels around, because of the texture, so when you are filling a shape with dragging the color, it will leave out this white line that you can just simply fill in, it is not a real problem, but you can do that. Okay, What I forgot to do with the sketch is to lower its opacity, and make it to multiply. I will go back to my shape and I can see now that it is far from perfect, so what I'm going to do is to just play around and make the shape as good as possible. Okay, now I will create a new layer above it, and I will need a color for the eyes, the main eyes and I don't want it to be this light green as I've done it in this little color sketch, but I want a light beige, so I will choose this dark yellow and I will actually put this color here. You will have it here, okay, so, this little light. Okay, I need it to be a bit lighter. Okay next, I will create a new layer, for these things, and I will use this dark gray but darker, almost black for this pupils. Yeah, now I can say that this is a little bit off, I need to put this part of the pupil a bit sideways, like this, and it's okay. Now I will alpha lock this layer of designs and choose a lighter gray and a shader brush. I will add a little bit of this light down here, I will make it smaller, even smaller. I want this light to be like this here, looks great, now I will choose the white, okay, un-alpha lock it, choose the liner, and I will just add this, looks cute. I will add one more layer below these pupils, this will be the colored iris, now the question is what color it will be and in the original I used this magenta, and I will do that now as well, so I will pick this color, and I'm on the layer below the pupils, and I will just add that here. Actually it is really fun to add that, into this iris parts as well, so what I love to do is to, alpha lock this, and choose a darker version, get the shader, make it small, go around the edges so that it will be darker, like this. If you want a bit glowing effect, go to a lighter version. So, I will add a line into the middle, with the shader brush and a lighter version, just here. We can add the little lines, I will choose the sketching the 6B pencil because it works just fine, choose a darker version and just simply add some lines here. It is cute and actually I want this also to be a bit shaded, so I have a shader brush and I will choose this lighter version, even lighter one, make it bigger. Oops, not like that, I will alpha lock it, add bit of light here, and maybe make it darker down here, so that there is a bit of a variation, maybe even darker. Let's see what it does, yeah it looks great to me, make it smaller, yeah, and now I'm going to choose this light color. So, I'm just playing around adding shading here and there, and I can do this through the main body as well, so I will alpha lock it choose this darker green, I have the shader brush, and I will make it bigger. I will just add a bit of the shading at the side, and I will choose this mint and add that with, so it is a bit of, glowing effect. Can you see this texture? It looks amazing, cute. Now what about the dots? Yeah, I forgot that the dots will be, this light mint, so I will choose the liner. I will create a new layer above the main body shape and just add. It looks good, I will turn off the sketch to check it, looks fine to me. 16. Part 2. Painting Main Elements - Bodyparts and Details: Okay, but I want to dapt to this. I will alpha log this little circles, choose the darker green, and we the liner I will add some things like this. Now, this is to light. The darkest like this. As if it was like a hole or something. Now I can see that I need to fix the eyeball so a little bit.I am able to do that. Actually not a big deal, because we will have the glasses on. Now the question is, what kind of glasses will we have? Turn on this cat. You know what? I will just place the layer above everything. I will just use the black. We will see a shape circle. This is a quick shape function, which means that, it corrects your shape, if you cannot draw a proper one. It is really, really useful. Now also the question is, what color the features will be? I will add, like the mouth and the eyebrows will be this dark green. Like this. Okay. Let's move on and add this part. This will be like this red. I will place it below the body and I will select parts of this body with the features and group them and just simply rename body. I have them in shape. Again, Alpha Lock it, choose this shader. I will choose this darker magenta. Actually I will go through it. So it is not that vibrant. Like this, maybe even darker. At some point. Yeah. Looks cute. Again, a new layer below the body and we will need to do the legs now. I will choose this dark green and choose the linear brush. I want them to be a bit thicker, at the top. Actually it can have things like this. Yeah, looks weird and more realistic for bogs though [LAUGHTER] I will just keep it here. Again what I'm doing, Alpha Locking it. Choosing a red color because we said that it will have like this reddish ends. I'll just dot here with the shader brush. Because with the shader brush, we can do this amazing like gradations from one color to another. I will Alpha Lock it. I will choose the darker green again because I will add with the liner brush, the hand that I forgot here. We will have a thing like here. I just realized I have a dot here. This is what I hate. I guess it is in the glasses. I will just delete that. Let's get back. Delete on, I mean, hands. Alpha Lock, choose the red, and I will just add red to this part of his hands like this. Cute. [LAUGHTER] Now let's go and take a look on the wings. The wings, I said, it will be green again. But I think that would be too green. Don't you think? Maybe it could be something like this dark. I mean, a light, maybe transparent. I think it should be transparent. What I'm going to do is, to go into the background color and make it darker. You will see actually how the colors work. We can play with its transparent theme. I have this new layer. I have the liner brush. I will just do the line brush about this. I could change the color if I hit select, choose a different color, go back and hit fill layer. I think this bird is just simply better. I will just simply place these below the hands because as you can see, it was like hidden. Next thing that I will create, I will turn on this cat and I will create this book. I thought that this book could be this light pink. Actually I will add this light pink up to this horns or what are these? Just pick it up. So that it also glows a little with the shader. Where is the shader? Yeah, it needs to be bigger and just up here. Just a little bit to the edges. Now let's create the book. The book needs to be about the hands, so it is just below the body. I will take the liner. I have my color and I will just fill in the main silhouette of this book. I will go to the layer of this hands, so like this part, free fingers, slide up and cut and paste. It will put it under a new layer. I can't just put it above it. I already have it above these book. I want this lighter beige. I will add back this side of the book, to be this gray. Grey works. I will go back to the liner. All right. Now let's move on to the next one. To the lamp here. I will just do this simple dark gray, the liner and just fill in the whole shape again. Now, I will do the same again. So go back to the hands. Select and draw around this one. Cut-and-paste, and move this layer above it. It will hold it immediately. I will go back to this lamp here, Alpha Lock it, choose a lighter gray and choose a shader. You really don't need to overdo this. It is just for fun. Turn off this cat and then see that it needs those lines. I will go back to the linear and just enhance them. I will choose a darker one and add them back. Looks fine.All right. In the next one, i will add a little bit of light to it. Put it behind. Choose this light beige. I'll just paint behind it. To feel these things. I will Alpha Lock it again. Add a little bit of this. We need a shader brush. To make it bigger. We will add the glow outside of it later on. But actually we have our character designed and we need to move on to the environment. That is what we are going to do in the next video. See you there. 17. Part 3. Painting Main Elements - Grass: Okay, so what's the OED environment? And I will choose this dark chlorine to take the shape of these plants. With the liner brush on a new layer that is going to be on top of everything. So I will make it a bigger brush. And my job now is to only really fill this main shape. I will create a new layer below it and choose this lighter gray or, I mean green to continue to shape. Looks fine. But we need to add dimension again, and again what I'm doing is blocking these two shapes, hitting the shader brush and add for one color to each other, like the colors to each other I mean. So I will choose this slider run, go to this, this one, make the shader brush bigger and just add to it. And I will add this [inaudible] smaller version into the middle, like that.Okay, i will urn off the sketch. And I see that I will need to darken this side and this side as well. So I will just choose this dark and add as if a continuation of this shape to this one. But with less texture. Yeah, actually, I forgot to do the value check and actually it works pretty well. So I can turn that off. So I will need to create a new layer. I will create a new layer. Choose the dark green. Choose the liner. And add a line. Okay, so I have this line finished here, and I will alpha lock it. And again take the shader and just play with it with darker green and one side I will just make it smaller so that it pops a bit. I will take this mint. And I will just take a darker one liner on alpha lock. Unlock. And even darker, almost black one. I will just add these little things. These are just details but I love to spend time on down now. Okay. That's enough. So I just put this sketch back and add these free leaf. So I will create a new layer, choose this green. And I will just, not that green, this green. And I will just add the shapes of these leaves here. Fill it in. Actually, you can take a break now as well. I actually got tired. But I will finish this because I will not have the time to finish it [inaudible]. I will need to put this behind the books. So, okay. Alpha lock the leaves. Choose darker green. So the same exact process again, shader brush. I will create a new layer above so that I can add this line work here as well. What I want now to do, group things together, then move to the next step. 18. Step 13. - Create a Blurred Background: What I want now to do is to deal with the background. I will create a new layer behind everything, and I will add background colors with a giant shader, I guess. I'm not even sure a liner. I will just pick this color and add this. I got this much, and I will just go around it and smudge these colors all together. The dare is this movement from one side to the other, here we'll come the fun thing. I will just hit the adjustments Gaussian Blur and I will blur the whole thing, like this. It is a wonderful background, but it is as if the forest would be burning and I don't want that. I need to think about a different color combination, and what came up to my mind is the black and dark blue. Let's see what that does. This looks fine and it is like really a dark night scene, but I miss some dark greens. I will add dark greens with the liner. I just like the color mixing at the background. I really enjoyed this process actually because it gives like so fun ideas and possibilities, and it got this, two lights and diamonds, the blacks, I will add black to dark, I guess. I would love to add even more green. This is what I'm going to do in the next few, hopefully minutes that I will find a way and I will add a bit of this orange tip. I'll just hit Gaussian blur. This looks fun. This is as if there are like some kind of lights at the background. It looks cute. I love it. But maybe I would need to just a little bit. Now, I will hit to Gaussian blur, and it looks fun. I love this little orange thing, but as you can see, I will just turn on the value check and his legs got lost. I will need to add something lighter to the background. I will add this orange here and now, hit the Gaussian blur and something happened. Interesting. Value check. Not that bad. But I need something more because it is too dark. I will keep the background like this, because I really love it. Actually, it's really fun. I will need to lighten may be this part of the leaf. I will just go back and find it. I will choose this one and a shader and maybe make it a bit lighter, like this, maybe this part is pale, cute, and these leaves. Looks fun. I will go to the value check and already looks better. I need to do something with the legs. I will go back to the legs. Here are the legs. I will turn off the value check layer and I will back to them. I fill up just a little bit. Maybe, go back to the value check. It looks better. I think it looks amazing. Lets see you in the next video, where we are going to add a lot. 19. Step 14. - Set the Light: Let's set the light in this video. What I'm going to do will be fun. I will select the light that I have painted into the lampion, duplicate it and the one that is lower, and unlock it. It needs to be unlocked. Go to Gaussian Blur, and voila, and you can actually make this bigger. This is a giant light. You can duplicate it to make it more intense. Duplicate it four times and put one in front of the lampion, and then you can play with lowering the opacity of it. Just how do you impact off the lights? Now let's just add one more layer of this light below this ones, choose it and make it bigger. It is already affecting this and our little character. What I love to do as well is to create a new layer above all the lights, choose black, choose the painting brush, make it big. Actually make it on top of everything below this catch, and just go around the light area like this, hit Gaussian Blur again. You will have a bit of a shadow everywhere apart from the delight source, as you can see. You can add more light onto the character. "Select" the body's slide and "Duplicate", "Select" the book, hit "Duplicate", and put it below the first body. You can actually put it into the body roof. Then "Duplicate" the plants into the upper body, this. I have everything in here and then "Duplicate" the features and put them to this group again. I have this. What I'm going to do is to hit and flatten. When I do this, I have this whole on one layer. Maybe I'll need dots, so I will duplicate it. Keep this hidden "Select" the layer, and fill it with black layers. I have the whole silhouette. "Select" this, create a new layer above it, so turn on the body, turn off this, turn on everything. I have everything. Now, go to this layer, and I will choose a color for the light. It should be a little bit orange. This color and a little bit more orange. I will hit the shader brush, make it bigger, and I can just add onto this layer, and it'll look like pretty amazing. You can just add like this, hitting this part a little bit on this leaf, little bit on this leaf, a little bit on this leaf, be here, and beyond the legs. You can add the sharper once with a liner and maybe a bit of this lighter one right here. This light, lights like this and I'll "Select". Look at this. It looks stunning. I have this shadow turned on. I think this looks incredible. One thing is left and that I will do in the next video is to do the foreground. I will actually turn off the references because we don't need them anymore. We'll have just some little things and a front and, our artwork will be finished. 20. Step 15. - Add Foreground: Welcome to the last painting video. I will create a new layer above everything. I will choose black. I have the liner brush, which will be the biggest. I will make this small so that I can have a thumbnail look. I will add some things like this, I'm not sure. Maybe some leaves, so that it has the idea of someone's looking at this creature from behind this grass things or something like that. I will find the perfect shapes in a second, but I will show you what I mean or what I will do. I will blur this as well. I will go to Gaussian blur and blur it a bit. If you can see, Gaussian blur, it will have the effect that someone is behind this grass and is looking at our creature. I think it looks amazing, but we need to find imperfect shapes and it will take a little bit of time, so i will speed this video up so that you can see what I will be doing. I have the value check here. Actually the only thing I don't really like is that these get too lost in the background. Maybe what I can do is to go back to this background layer and hit "Use Saturation Brightness" and make it a bit brighter like this. Now let's go to the value check. It's now not dark enough, so let's play all around with that. We'll make it a bit darker, just a little bit. I go to the value check. I think it works pretty well. What do you think? I hope you like this illustration. I'm in love with it. Maybe I don't like this one, so I will just go back and try several types. The point is to point the viewer to this little creature and don't over dominate the whole image with these silhouettes. You need to be smart about it actually. I'll just check the value check. I will try these different variations and I'm not sure which one I like. I think this is too much. I think this might work. This looks great as well. Maybe that's too much as well. This looks great. I think I choose this one, the first one. But at least I tried. I can do one more thing to make this leaf pop a little bit because I have a problem with it a little bit. I will create a new layer here below the plants, add a little bit of this orange or white, just paint it there, smudge a bit, and I can Gaussian blur it and make it smaller. If I want just a little bit of this like that. Then I'll make it smaller, just a piece of this to make it pop a bit. Take a look. Looks good to me and I call it finished. Actually there is only one thing left, so I choose white. I go choose the studio pen, create a new layer, and sign it. That's all. You will have this whole procreate file for yourself to explore. I will just show you that what layers I have because I made a little bit of an order in the file, so I have the value check layer, sketch, signature, foreground variations. You will have this. I have turned this on. There are several types. There's the shadow, there is the light, there is the silhouette, the flattened image, now which is turned off. There is the body, the hints that are in the foreground that they need to be about, for example, a lamp and the book. Then we have the lamp with all the light layers, we have the boo, we have the plants, the features, and the references, and the background. In the background group you will find this last spot that I have created to make the value thing good. What you can do is to download these and go through them and check them for reference. Maybe you will learn something new from it. See you in the final video where we're going to sum up what we have learned in this class. 21. Final Thoughts: Okay, wow, congrats. You have gone through to whole class, finished it, hats down to you. You are amazing, I'm really proud of you. Please don't forget to post your projects into the project gallery. I'm really excited to see what you create and include the working progress to your projects, because it is really interesting to see how you get from an idea to a final outlook. If you can export the video from procreates, I encourage you to do so and to share the video into Facebook groups so that we can see it. It will be amazing. Let's do a little recap about what have you learned in this class. Through the fifties, that process you learn to take inspiration from natural creators. To create a background story to your character with the help of a mind map, to use shape language, and to choose a shape for your character accordingly. You will learn to create a powerful silhouette and form. You'll learn to express emotions and expressions for the position, shape, and size of features and accessories. You'll learn to use colors to express your character, with the help of natural color palette. You'll also learn to compose a scene by the rule of thirds. In the illustration part, you were able to build a simple environment with a blurred background and foreground elements. You'll learn ways to enhance light and shadow. And now you have finished illustration you can be proud of, and you're a packed with useful skills that you can use in the future. If you haven't already, follow me here on Skill share so that you get notified when the next class will be out and until then, check out my other classes. It was amazing to have you in this class. Thank you for taking it. See you.