Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you interested in learning character design in
the style of Nintendo? In this course, you'll be
given all the tools you'll need to design your very
own hero character. My name is Felicia, and I am a concept artist and instructor at winged Canvas. In this series of lessons, you'll learn how to construct your character's body using
proportions and form. Draw each feature on a
female characters face. Draw a trust for the
character to wear and add color and shading for
a simplified 3D look. By the end of this course, you will have completed your very own Nintendo
style character and have learned tools that
you can carry to all future character
design projects. You're welcome to draw
along with me step-by-step, if you're a beginner and modify traits to customize
your own character. Otherwise, feel free to design your own original
character in your style. This demo is drawn digitally, but you can draw in the
medium of your choice. I'd love to see what
you create at the end. So please share your
artwork with our community. Have fun in class.
2. Drawing a Body Outline: Today's theme is Nintendo. Beam is nintendo. So if you have a favorite
Nintendo character, great. But if you don't have a favorite character
or if you don't like Nintendo or anything like that, feel free to change it up
into any character you want. When we look at most
Nintendo characters, the ones that aren't
super, super simple, they're all like
humanoid characters. I'll make it a little
more cheapy today, so it's a little
more fun and simple. We'll be drawing Rosaleen and I'll show you guys
how to Dr. Rose Alina. I was deciding between
rows, Alina and link, but a little Nina
looks more flat. I like her hair shapes and stop. Some other characters
like Kirby. Kirby is way too simple. Kirby is a circle
with arms and legs. So you could draw him on
the side of you like Kirby. So I'm just pulling
up some images of Rosaleen out that
I can reference. If you haven't warmed up
today, get nice and warmed up. So let's start with her head. Just like this. Remember, I start with the head, the torso, and the pelvis. However, with a TV character, it's a little more forgiving. And Rosaleen herself is
really petite looking. She's not like she
doesn't look like a normal-sized human character. So you can really squished
like the, the torso. Make the head a lot bigger. Like H-E-B. Let me pull up an example. I believe I drew a pencil. So there's our funds
allows a TV character. This is super,
super, super cheap. You like. She's really
squished, really deformed. Rosaleen is gonna be
a little different. She's not gonna
be that squished, but just to show you
guys some inspiration. So what I would do next is
draw in her hips, pelvis. With female characters, the
hips are a little bit wider. That is my planning. This is our basic body and
then I want her to be, she's gonna be facing,
facing this way. So I'll show you
guys my planning. She can have her
arms out like this. Her legs won't actually matter too much because you've already
got a really long dress. So it's gonna look
like this any way. You could come up with like
a leg position, whatever. If you have characters that have their legs showing
that being said, I'll draw legs and then I'll
cover it so you guys know, can see the steps just in case you're drawing a character
that's showing their legs. Next, I will come up
with her clothes. I haven't been drawing next on my characters because personally, that's
what I'm used to. But if you need to draw an a neck to help you
out, like where is it? It's the same thing.
It's just like drawing a stick like
the arms and legs. Arms. I just want to draw
her with her arms out. I really like that look of her hand just gracefully there. Then this one can be similar. And again, at this stage, you just want to make sure
your measurements are correct because since her only in the stage where we're
throwing sticks and stuff, you can draw a line
like in your head, you don't have to draw
it on your paper, but kind of measure out because everything line
up doesn't make sense. One arm is not longer than the other and then
you're good to go. A good way to avoid drawing like weird-looking bodies
like that aren't even. Because we want to
draw the arms and legs like, like the same line. Realistically
speaking, some people might have shorter arms and
legs compared to each other, but that's getting into
different territory, different realistic territory. We don't have to get
that deep into that. Her legs. I could
have stick joint. Just like this. Let me do something
more a little more fun. I could have one leg back then one leg
going up like this. Let me try it on the side. It'll make more
sense. And her legs are going to be covered. But I'm just showing this
to you guys just in case. Again, if you are drawing a
pose or character with legs, this is how I would do it. So just like that. And then next I would draw over these six with cylinder shapes. Cylinders, rectangles. Cylinder. I was bright, 3D, 3D. Because the human body isn't 3D, I always accidentally go
over this stuff if you want to flush it out or create
the shape of the head. More had like sketch in a central line following
the contour of the circle. And then you can connect
the chin here, over here. And Rosaleen and looks
pretty GB already herself. So if you don't know
what a TV character is, I already showed an
example of a puzzle, but she'd be characters are essentially like their
proportions are really squished. So they have really big
heads, early tiny bodies. And I'm sure you guys
have seen them before. But that's what they're called. I have her head like that. And then I could plan out where
her eyes are going to go. So we get a break because
her hair covers one eye, so we only need to draw
an eye on this side. I'm still going to put in
the guideline for her eyes because we still need to
know how everything works. So you guys can see I drew the guideline a little bit too big. So I'm just erasing. I just redrew a line and
then I'm erasing there. And just a reminder. The way that guidelines
for the eyes work is that you're essentially just planning how tall the
eyes are gonna be, like, See how I
space these lines. So that means that's how
tall the I is gonna be. But you can always make
changes as you go. Like maybe you look at
it and you're like, oh, that's way too big,
That's way too small. You can always change it. You can always change it
in the guideline planning, cleaning up and sketching stage. You can always change things. Unless if you're
outlining on paper, then can't really change much. So next, I can connect her neck. Just like that. Here. I'm just connecting
it to her torso. So our torso is just
this shape over here. I could draw a center line
of her body to help me out. I can connect her waist. Her torso is actually
really, really tiny. So I can draw a line going in
here and I'm going to her. Speaking of nuts, no,
I actually forgot. Today's theme was Nintendo. Now that I think about
it, I was up probably around one in the morning and
my brother was asking me, Do you want to play Mario Party? And I'm like, no, I can't. I have to get up a ton. But then I realize, Oh, I could have played
to get inspiration. I'm just going to merge
these layers together. Let me drop down this opacity so you guys can see what I'm doing. Okay? So I have the head
planned out, the torso. I've connected already
now I can start putting in cylinders
for the arms and legs. Let me put in a cylinder here. If you've ever seen one
of those like ball join two dolls at the art store
or maybe if you own one, there are really good example of like cylinders in the body. And thinking in 3D. They're not very poseable actually like they don't
have any range of movement, but it is a good example of 3D. So if I were to
draw her other leg, I could just draw through
crawl through here. Circle for the knee. And the other cylinder. Foot shapes are okay. I'm just going to draw this as a foot a little bit on the side. So remember that wedge shape. So a foot in 3D, foot on the side and a
foot from the front. So that's just a little
helpful reminder. So here I'm thinking of this
wedge shapes or her foot. Same thing here. It's pretty much the same shape. And I'm making her feet
a little bit bigger. So with chubby
characters, you can, you can kind of decide to have bigger feet
or smaller feet. I actually like the look of a bigger see on TV characters. It just looks more
unique and cuter to me instead of like
little tiny feet, but it's up to you. And then her arm so I
can put in some folders. Again, Rosaleen is very petite. She's really tiny anyway. So I wouldn't make the
joints like really big or normally proportion. So tiny circles like the odd
for her shoulders is fine. Cylinders, arms, her arms
are also pretty thin. I'm not going to make my
cylinder is really, really wide. Circle for her elbow and then
a cylinder for her forearm. And then her forearm.
I actually can't tell if it's just an
illusion of her dress. Because her dress
is kind of like a witch Sweave it gets it
gets wider at the bottom. So I can't really tell if
her forearm and hand gets bigger or if it's just an
illusion of her floats. But her hand does look pretty big because
her head is also big. And if you guys
are ever curious, your hand is about the
size of your face. Of course, not exactly, but a general measurements. It's the same thing if you
guys are ever curious, the size of the foot is actually the same size of your forearms. So I'm just drawing a another
cylinder for the other arm. The next fix the
shape of this hand. And that's okay. That is her basic body. And then from here, I
can add in any details.
3. Adding the Face and Details: I'm going to merge layers, turn it all into one layer. I'm going to be drawing on top. I can continue to add
details like her face. So I'm going to
draw her one eye. She again, she only has one eye showing the rest of it
is covered in hair. So I can follow this
guideline that I made for myself and start
sketching a top part. She has really long
eyelashes so I could put those in our
sketch them in right away. A little bit of
an eyelid on top. So if this is too small, let me just draw it on the side. I'm thinking of
this basic shape. And then I'm starting
with this top arc. Eyelashes. So when you're
drawing eyelashes, so a little specific
on eyelashes, try not to draw straight
lines like this. Think of curves and
that little loose hand. You can just sketch them out. This kind of applies
more to realistic eyes. It also looks a lot nicer than drawing these
SpongeBob sticks. The bottom line here for
the eye is actually really, really thin because the way that these Nintendo characters
are drawn are styled. They're not, they're
not really enemy. They are a little bit, just because Nintendo
has a style of its own. It's like a mix of cartoon
and a mix of anomie. The eyes aren't
entirely animate to me. Iris would be like this. So just pretend you're
drawing an oval or circle. Highlight of the eye pupil. A little bit of shadow. You could add bottom
eyelashes if you wanted to. She doesn't have any. But if you wanted to, you could. But okay. So I'm going to move her
eye example over here. And you can also
drawn the eyelid. Now I have to cut
my layer again. So that's just my
thought process. I have the I over here for
you guys to reference. And I'm going to sketch
in the rest of the eye. And I'm just using that. So you can see the eye
that I drew in is about the same height as the
guideline that I planned. Eyebrow. So she has
very short eyebrows, so it's just barely tiny
on her face, like five. And I can draw her
looking to the viewer. Her iris is closer
to the left side, closer to this side. Highlight of the face. So if you're drawing on paper, when it comes to
highlights, to me, it's a lot easier if you sketch out the shape of the
highlight first. So when you draw the pupil or
when you shade or anything, you don't color it in, you avoid coloring in
that part of her nose. So the center line that
we drew in for the face, I'm just going to follow it
and then draw a little slope. Just like a little
triangle shape. And let her mouth. You could draw her smiling or
just like a neutral mouth. I just have a little bit of a curve here to
represent the lip. So another tip with like
cute or Quibi characters. Just make sure that the
features of the face are pretty close
together because that's what makes these
characters cubed because their eyes and their nose
are all like close together. Yeah. Big foreheads
is another thing. If you look at young characters or even just like
kids and stuff, they have big foreheads. So it's the same thing
like chubby characters. And then they have
big hair and stuff. I'm going to draw
on her other eye. This is actually what I
would suggest not to do like drawing one I finished and
then drawing this I next. Because if you ever struggle
with drawing the other eye, this may be why it's always
easier to draw step-by-step. So if I were to draw one, I
hear like the top arch here. I would draw the top
arch on the other side. So that way I can constantly check between the two two sides. Since I messed up, I'm going to just draw
on her other eye. Her eye on the side would
actually be a little bigger just because she's
in a three-quarter view. So the other side the side of her face is a bit
further from us, the right side of her face. So we won't see as much. Since her head is turning a bit. But if I were to draw her
other eye, I would have this. It doesn't matter how
long I've been drawing sometimes if I have
an off day drawing one I complete and
then moving on to the next will make things
more difficult for me. So I went, why would I do that? I have her face in and then now I can start adding
the rest of the details. So her hair does cover
the side of her face, but a little bit of
her ear shows through. So just think of a
half circle shapes or the letter C, Letter D. I wouldn't stress
about adding a lot of ear details like you could
just do this little nub. And then a little line that
follows the shape of it. That's enough detail. Honestly, it's not like
we're drawing full odd, realistic ears or anything. There we go. I have my head, I have a body so I could work on her fingers. Next, what I'm gonna do is remember how I showed you
guys how to draw simple hand, like think of a mitten. Another method is to group fingers together
similar to the Min. But what I'm gonna do is
draw in my phone first. I know I want one finger
are going out here, her index finger going out here. And then I could group the
middle and ring finger. And then I can draw
the fingers and place. I can fix things as I go because
this may not be perfect. I could add in a little
bit of fingernail details. You don't have to, but
personally, I like the look. It also helps create
a convincing hands. So if I were to draw
like over here, I wouldn't draw a
fingernail like this. Just just do a very
thin line close to the edge that suggests that
a fingernail is there. You don't even have to
draw the whole thing. Like I just drew a
couple of lines. Because sometimes you
just need to be subtle. And then since we're
drawing in like a cartoon slash animated styles, it will be simplified. So I'm just going to move
the thumb over there. So her other hand is
actually her left hand, which means I can
use my left hand to reference because
I'm right-handed, I'm drawing with my right hand. This hand would be a
little bit on the side. So hands on the side
are a little different. They're their own thing. They can be simpler and they can be difficult at the same time, just because you have
to understand work. But I would start with
the thumb like this. It's connecting
into her home here. I'm also checking the
other hand that I drew to make sure that
they're about the same size. If I only draw her
thumb and index finger, we're left with this
like chicken foot. Just going to draw
her hand on the side. I'm going to draw on
the other fingers. Yeah. If you've never drawn a house on the side before,
it can get weird. I still find it
weird. Sometimes. It doesn't come so naturally. Just adding the fingernails, her hand, and then
this is pretty much it for my construction stage. What I'm gonna do now
is start adding in her hair and her clothes. So what I could also do is start to get rid of
these construction lines. So since I already have
a better drawing on top, I could start to erase
what's underneath here. Like her joints and stuff. But I might keep that. But I could get rid
of these lines. And over here, this whole
hand on the side thing. And yeah, that's that's
pretty much all I would erase just because I haven't drawn in her clothes
or anything yet. It's kinda looks like
a ball joint, a doll. Right now. I'm going to adjust the size of
this handle a little bit, make it a tiny bit bigger and I'm going to start
planning out her hair. I'll work in another color. It actually covers this I, but I'm gonna get
rid of this eye. But she has one bang, one fringe that goes like this. And it covers her entire eye. And then let me drop the opacity for this so you
guys can see what I'm doing. So she has one giant friend. Like thought, you
could draw a couple of lines to show hair detail. I wouldn't worry too much. I want to make the
site a little wider. It takes up quite
a bit of her face. Then she has to swirls
just like this. Stick out, think of
like whipped cream. I would say it looks
like cremated me. Or if you've seen
Princess Peach, It's a similar hair on the side. And then it's the same
thing on this side. And then I could
soften off some areas. Here. I don't want these lines to be so harsh of those
shapes that I drew. I want all her hair to connect together as fast
as possible so I could go over everything on top and just make sure
all her hair looks fine. So she does have
fairly long hair. Oh, she also has some
hair on the side, so I could probably
flip of hair like that. And here I'm just connecting
this piece of hair. I'm drawing it to
this other frame. So it doesn't look like it's
just sitting on her head. Her hair at the
back. What I would do since it's long hair, you can kinda draw through
broth through here. Top the shape of her hair. So it's two spikes again. And it gets thinner over here. Another another spike because it's just a bunch of spikes. She has really spiky hair. I feel like that is
a little too big. Shrink up because our hair
isn't actually that long. It seems like more
of a medium length. Her body is so she be
like and so squished. It looks long. I could draw some hair that's
sticking out on this side. Erase many overlapping lines. And then here what I
could do is erase a bit. And while I'm still
working on her head, she does have a crown like one of those tiny, tiny Crohn's. Think of a cylinder and then
add in 321 triangle shapes. And then I can erase
any overlapping lines. Gems on her crown. And that's pretty much it
for her hair and crown.
4. Sketching the Clothing: Let me draw on her clothes
first because we want to get all of the big shapes
finished before, uh, we, we move on
to any fine details. The entire shape of her
dress is very simple. Oh, let me connect
her shoulders first. Her arm. She has this kind of straight line that just
goes over her torso. And then she has a
it's a star shape. It looks like a badger
or crescent or whatever, right in the middle here. I could start by drawing a star. If you have trouble drawing like a simple star-shaped
from an outline, just just draw like
a regular star. Just like, just like that. Erase the overlapping lines. There's no need to attempt
to draw a star from an outline because it'll look like I'm just drawing
a normal star and then erasing any
overlapping lines. It has a gem in the
middle so I can just cross circle right there. So her dress has a
bit of detail here. Like on her shoulder. This part, all fabric that
connects to the star. I'm trusting this a little bit. And that's the top of her dress. Thinking in simple shapes. So her sleeves are alike. They're like bell sleeves. So what I would do
is actually draw the open part of
her sleeve first. So I would draw this
shape like this. And then on the side I
could have it like that. Her right hand, since
it's facing us, we will be able to see the
inside of her sleeve here, while the other ones,
since this hand is facing away from us, we'll see the outside
only, not the inside. And then from here you can kind of connect everything together. So notice how when I'm drawing
over her elbows and stuff, I'm just adding
some wobbly lines so that shows that it's fabric. And then I can just connect, connect the sleeve like this. And I want to do the same
thing on the other side. And then her arm sleeves
are actually waving. I just wanted to get
this basic shape in. And then after I have
this, I can go back in. Let me use another
color and then I can draw like a wavy shapes
around the edge. Just think of squiggles
and then draw some lines. Show that that it's
like loose fabric. And then I can get rid of any
overlapping lines as usual. Same thing with this sleeve. I can just add some waves and then get
rid of basic shape. For details, I can just
add a like a line here, show that the wavy part is
connected to her dress. It's not all 11 fabric.
And then that's fine. I can move on to her dress next. What I can simply do is draw a big triangle shape or
her dress covers her legs. So I could just do this. I want to draw her dress
going behind her sleeves. Try to make sure
that when you're drawing things
overlapping each other, it may look weird because you
might run into a tangent. So if I draw this dress
any closer to the sleep. So if I show you guys here, like if my, if the
dress was like here, this, this is called a tangent. You want to avoid
something like this. So you either want the dress
to be not touching it at all or it's like going
through the sleeve. So that's how I would
avoid tangents. Because if you have tangents
and you're drawing, and I know this is like we're getting into more
advanced territory, but it's nice to think about like those are some
things that can make your drawing look
funny and then you want to know how to avoid it. I'm just looking to see
which one I like better. I think I like it
like this better. And then I can make this side of her dress a little thinner. Adding salt, cooling,
cooling folds here, they're the fabric of her dress. Hunched over here. So I could draw fabric lines. And then the bottom
of her dress, imagine a line, a
middle line up, going down the dress like this. Then you don't have to draw that line, but just imagine it. It does a little
swoosh like curtains. And then the inside
of her dress is more like the scallop shapes. This is the inside of her dress. I can just add any details
to sushi affect progress. And then they can
merge everything together. And there we go. I'm just going to change
my base sketch into red so you guys can clearly see
what I'm going to do next. I'm just going to turn
off these example layers. So it looks like
I'm working on it. Good coffee now. So
what I would do next, see how I turn my Rosaleen, a sketch like the
original one in red. Now, since she has
clothes and everything, I can get rid of everything. This is why I said, if you know, she's gonna be
wearing a giant dress and you can't see
her legs anyway. You don't need to draw
them, but I did it just to show you guys because now I'm gonna get rid of it. The guidelines and drawings
I don't need anymore. Goodbye. They're there. They're
getting erase now. But since I did all of
that construction works, she looks she looks like
she makes sense because I know what goes
into drawing a body. Guessing. By two half her hand can
even see most of it. And then, oh my
goodness hurt her. I say goodbye to her because
it's covered by her hair. And then any overlapping
lines are gone. There she is. Her hair looks a
little weird to me, like this little flicks. So I'm going to erase this and then try again to
draw another one. And as I fix my hair shape, you guys can catch up
for another minute. Still fixing the
overall shape of her hair because to be fair, I did draw it or a
little randomly. It's not flowing
that Well for me. I feel like the side
of her face needs her hair to really be showing. I'm just going to fix. The spike is a little too high, so I'm just kidding.
To just erase. I still feel like this trunk of her head doesn't
sit right with me. So I'm just going to
extend this up in more with the line I redrew. I'm just erasing what
I am underneath. It feels a bit better. So that's a good sign. I'm just going to erase a
little bit of her hair here. At this point, I'm going to turn my sketch into black brown. So it's all one color can
work on any line weight. Make some lines thicker
than the others. So your entire drawing isn't
just one line thickness. When you add line
weight and makes your drawing more interesting. And you can also
make things that are closer or areas of your drawing that
you want to stand out, you have control over that. So since her hair is
overlapping her face, I can darken the
lines of her hair. I can darken this area. There's a lot of overlap, intersecting lines over here. Then I can outline a bit of her sleeves just
overlapping her hand. And also this area of her
dress because it's two pieces. I can outline the overall
shape of her dress. Just because one, it's super big and it's a little
bit close to the viewer. Since it's one giant piece, we don't want to have extremely
thin lines outlining. I guess I can call it a sash. I don't I don't really want it. The part of her dress us,
it's over her shoulders. And then I can clean up
any dirty looking lines because I have some
smoky sketch lines. Just darkening her lines a bit. So next, I'm going
to color her in.
5. Colouring and Shading the Character: So she has a like peachy
peachy skin tone. I'm working with a light pink. I'm just coloring in her skin. And then just a reminder
whenever I color, my method is
especially on paper. I want to work with
my lightest colors and then move towards
my darkest colors. And that's the reason for that
is because if we ever make a mistake or if we accidentally color over
something with a lighter color, It's a lot easier to fix
than if you were to color, say it was like a super dark purple or
something like that. Again, for digital art, because I know some of us
are doing digital art. That doesn't really matter. But personally, whenever
I'm coloring anything, I like to start with
the skin tone first and then work with
my other colors. Skin layer and then
color in her skin. And I'm finding a lot of
dirty spot your lines, so I'm going to erase that now. You shouldn't have
that problem on paper. But digitally sometimes
somethings don't pop up until a certain time. So this is where I'm finding
all of my smudgy marks. And then a digital art trick for anyone who is working digitally. I like working backwards. Three words in my drawing, meaning that I like coloring one thing and then I add layers underneath that color
so I don't have to worry about overlapping lines, so I tend to color
in the details. I'm gonna call her
and her hair next. It's a pretty light color. I have her hair colored. Next is her breast. And her dress and her eyes are actually built the same color. So it's like a light teal blue. It's pretty desaturated. I think that looks about right. I just want to alert
in those higher areas, her entire dress is
this color except for this sachet area and furloughs
and curls on her dress. Like the bottom of her sleeve. It doesn't it's a different
color, so I'm going to leave. Okay. Sulfur her sleeves and
this part of her dress, it's like a light blue
as part of her dresses. More on the blue side. So less green or blue. I'm just going to color that in. And I'm just going to
color in this part dress. Oh, you know what? I forgot to give
her her earrings. Or if you're at a
stage where you can't add anything, That's okay. I'm just going to give her her earrings because I
feel like she needs it. Her earrings are just
these star shapes. Just like OK. I can. So my light source is coming from the top right and I'm just going to be cliched,
Rosaleen on in. If anyone who's
working digitally as curious about how I shade, I just shade on a multiply layer and then I tend to
work in one color. And if I want to change
anything around, I could use
saturation adjustment for I can pixel lock and then play around
with different colors. That's right Now you
may have noticed that even though I'm using a light blue and it works
well for her dress, for her skin tone, it
looks a little dull. So I could pixel
lock and then go back in and change the
color of the shadows. There. A little shadow for her nose, lips, and around her eyes. I can just pixel lock
and then go in here. Choose a darker
color for her skin, and then brush in,
airbrush that color. And then you can
notice how it fits a lot better with
her hair. Like that. Orangey orangey shadow tone. Because of blue looks to
a lifeless for her skin. And there we go. I'm just adding some
highlights to her hair. And then I can add
highlight to this gem here. Earrings. I want her lips to
be a little pink, so I'm just going to put in some paint and erase it a bit and add a little
bit of highlight there. Just a tiny bit
highlight for her crown. Because that only makes sense. It has to be shiny. And then yeah, thank you so
much for joining me today.
Winged Canvas, Classes for Art Nerds
