Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you working on
illustrating picture books, but you might be having some trouble drawing
your character consistently through the pages of your book or your dummy? Drawing characters
consistently is an issue that a lot of
illustrators struggle with. I've created this
class to give you my best tips on how to draw
characters consistently, no matter what pose you draw in or what angle you're
looking at them. This is a key skill to have
in picture book illustration and what art directors and editors look for in a portfolio. In this short class,
I'm going to be sharing my favorite tips and tricks that I use to draw characters consistently
in my books. By the end of the class,
we're going to create a character post
sheet where you'll take one character that
you worked on either in the previous class or pick a new character
for this class. And then you'll draw in
multiple different poses on the same sheet to practice having that character look
the same in each one. And I'll also explain how to do three different
illustrations with the same character
that are best used for portfolio to show your picture book
illustrating scales. Hi, I'm Mika, and I'm an award winning picture book
author and an illustrator, and I've worked with
publishers big and small. I've worked on non
fiction books, I've worked on concept
picture books. I've even done some
graphic novels, and I've illustrated with
different techniques ranging from printmaking
to digital to watercolor. I'm passionate about kids books, and I love sharing
what I've learned over the years as an artist
and an illustrator. This class is part two in a three part series on creating
picture book characters. It's great for beginning illustrators who
want to get into picture book illustration or more intermediate
illustrators who already kind of know the basics of illustrating
for picture books, but who might still
be a little bit insecure on drawing characters consistently or how to
figure out how to make animal characters for books or getting their poses
and expressions right. Are you ready? Let's get our pencils out
and start drawing.
2. Project Description: I'm so glad you're joining me. In part one of this class, we learned how to create cute and appealing characters
for picture books. In this class, we're
going to learn how to get them moving and drawing
them consistently in space. In the first class, I
used the folk story of the gigantic turnip as an example project on creating
picture book characters. And so in this class, I'm going to take one of
those characters that I created in there in
part one of this class, and I'm going to create
a post sheet for them where I'm drawing them
in multiple poses. And if you wanted to go
a little bit further and create extra pieces that you
can put into your portfolio, what you could do is create three separate
illustrations with that character and then
color them and make them into final
illustrations that you can then put into
your portfolio. And I'll explain all that a little bit later in the class. Any resources that I'm using in the class like books
or websites that I might mention are going to be in the handout in the resources
section of this class. You can choose to share any of the exercises in this class
in the project section. And if you are looking for feedback for one of your pieces, you're not quite sure
or you're looking for advice on how
to draw something, you can post that in
the discussion section, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that
you might have. I'm on Skillshare
just about every day, and I'm happy to answer questions that anybody
has in the class. Going to be using the
iPad and procreate to work on the sketches and the illustrations
in this class. But you can work on any
other digital program or paper and pencil if that's what you're
comfortable with. The reason why I like digital is because it allows
me to just layer things on top of
each other and I can cut and paste things really
easily and resize things. But if you're working
on paper and pencil, then what I recommend is using transparent paper when you
are in your sketching phase, so that way it's easy to
layer things and draw on top. Or you could use a light
table or even a window to trace things through as you're working on kind of
successive sketches. All right. Now, let's get to work and get our
character moving.
3. Simple Shapes: Tip number one when
drawing characters consistently is starting
with simple shapes. A big part of drawing your characters consistently
is being able to break them into
simple shapes and then doing details on
top of that shape. And when you're
drawing simple shapes, if you think about cones, you can think about you know, squares or you know, any shape of a rectangle. Maybe it can you know when I
think about Masi and Tweed, they're usually
kind of a square or a rectangle where it's
skinnier on the top. And then I think of them
as kind of being rounded, rounded on the top. And you can even add lines for yourself if you want it to to help you kind
of visualize it. Or you could even think
about just tubes. I think of Masi and tweeds hand arms as being kind of like little macaroni
noodles. Are bending. If you have a basic
understanding of how to draw and turn three
dimensional objects in space, then you are in a
great place to draw your characters consistently if you build them up
from basic shapes. If you have a hard time figuring out how to draw
shapes consistently, then you could take simple
things like boxes in your home and turn them and rotate them and draw them
from different directions. There are also sites online that will help you learn how to draw three dimensional
objects in space. To look at Massy and
tweed, basically, Mossis body is a square that's a little bit skinnier
on the top and as I said, I imagine it as being
not quite a circle, but like a flattened circle
and that's the body. Then for the arms, they're basically cylinders, but they bend where
the elbow is. If I just put the
arm straight out, They start not at
the very tippy top, but they start a little bit
lower from the shoulder. Same thing, I can just move move these noodles
anywhere I want. Then for the legs, there are two sticks, basically or two lines. Then for the boots, they're basically two squares that have triangles on them. That's the boots. Then
for the for mossy, they have the same
size head in the book. For musty, it's an
oval on the side, and then for the hat, it gets I cut it in half. And then the top of the hat is just slightly
bigger than his head, and then it just
curves into a J shape. Then the ears are letter Cs, eyes are ovals that are obscured
by the hat a little bit. And then he's got eyebrows
actually on top of the hat, three lines for the hair. The mouth is some
of a curved line, and then for the nose, I see it as being a triangle. Like this and it comes out
to a point in the front, but then the insides
are curved like this. And so I usually draw it. That's from the very front. Then the same thing, and
then if I'm drawing hands, my hands I usually think
of them as a square. Sometimes the square might be a little bit bigger on the top and then there's just basically four sausages on the top and
one sausage on the side. I usually try to have the first two a little
bit longer and then they get smaller as you're going towards
the pinky finger. But in general, you want to keep your fingers short and chubby when you're drawing cute
characters. All right. That's basically my basic
it's a bit small over here. But that's basically
the basic shapes that I use to draw my Mussi
and tweet characters, and then from here, I can
add all the details to them. It's easy for me to take
these and turn them in space. If he's going sideways, then he's going to be
a little bit skinnier, still going to be a rectangle. The hat goes a little bit
further down in the back. I can draw it like this. The ear and the nose and the eye, and then however I
want my shoes to be. But just having those
basic shapes at the bottom then makes
it easy for me to turn the characters
around. All right. So I will also show
you really quick, my basic building blocks
for my cat character. At first glance, maybe he looks, I don't know if he looks more complicated or simpler to you, but the basic shapes for this character are
also very simple. What I do with him is he starts with the
hexagon for his face, and then there's two
triangles on the top. And then there is an
oval for the muzzle. His nose is heart shape, and then there's usually two
lines come down from there. He's got a spot on one eye, eyebrows, half circles,
and then pupils in there. That's his basic shape
and his whiskers. Then for his body is like a bean shape that
goes out from here. There's some sort of
curve for the tail, and then for his legs. They are basically two
triangles on the back leg. They're a little bit more
curved on the front side, and then basically sticks
with the paws at the end. And so that is my basic
kitty and cat character. Then I draw it nicer, I draw have this
sketch underneath, and then I add the fluffy lines to the top and all
the little details that I might have for it. Lastly, I just wanted to
bring this picture back up. If you look at the
characters over here, you can also see that
all these characters are drawn, fairly simple. Almost every character has
a very very circular head. This one is a little bit more of a square with rounded edges. But if you look at everybody, everybody's got round heads, and everybody's following
about the rule of thirds, where the head and the
body and the legs are all kind of one part to each other. And if you look at the
legs and the arms, everything is fairly simplified, a lot of them have noodly looking arms or
very simple arms, and there's not a lot
of angles and not a lot of corners when you
look at the characters. In general, a lot of the
hands and the feet are small. And so that's kind of
the basic building block for putting your
characters together. And in the next
video, we're going to look at tip number two, which is proportional markers.
4. Proportional Markers: Tip number two is
proportional markers. And what I mean by
this is keeping track of proportions
in your character. So thinking about where the eye level is in
relation to the head, where the fingertips
extend on, you know, next to the body, and also comparing characters to
each other on the page. Alright, so for this point, I'm going to keep going with
Massy and Tweed. All right. So for Massy, I know
that for his face, I know his face is
kind of an oval shape. And then if this is
kind of the midline, his hate kind of just I know his hat goes
just over the midline. His ears are right there. And then the eyes, and, you know, however
you want to do that. And the nose and the mouth
go in between over there. And then the way that
I figure his torso is, if you look over here, it's around kind of the same width, so it starts narrow, but it goes kind
of down and it's about kind of a square shape, if I would to draw it
out into a square, but the top of it is a little bit skinnier than the bottom. And if you look at the kind of the proportions, here, here, And here, you'll notice
that the head is, you know, if this is where kind of
the top of the head is, and then I always draw the
hat a little bit bigger. The head and the torso
is about the same size, and then the feet are a
little bit short for him. And so these are
about the same size, and then I know that the feet are a little bit
shorter than that. As I said in the previous video, the shoes are squares with the triangle on it
because if this is his collar, his arms kind of start at
the top of his collar, and if his arms
would go straight, this is about kind of
how far they would go. And so I just kind of
keep that in mind as no matter which way I'm
drawing the hand. And then wherever kind
of his arm pit is, whenever I draw his hands, that's kind of usually where I start the top of his stripe. And then he always has four
diamonds. On the front. Those were kind
of markers for me so that no matter how
I drew the character, if it was from the front or the back or even
from the side, I knew that there
was four diamonds, and then he's got
his elbow patch. That would be depending where which way his
hand was turned. Then if I compare Mossy
and tweed to each other, if this is kind of the
the height of Masi, Massy and Tweed
had the same size. So then comparing the
proportions to each other, they have the same size head, but it's just flipped on the, up and down with Tweed, and then he would have a
triangle hat on the top. And then his eyes would be
around the middle over here. And then tweeds tweeds his eyebrows usually kind
of go into his hair. And then his nose was
kind of around where the bottom of where
his eyes were, and then the mouth goes
in the middle over there. And then for him, his shirt
is kind of the same size, and his feet are a
little bit longer. And so maybe somewhere
around here. And then he would just
have slightly longer feet. They had about the same
size, same size shoes, but the feet are longer, and then the torso is longer, and wherever Mossy's head is, that's where Tweeds
shoulders were. And his arms, kind
of, as you can see, the marker for me
was that, you know, his hands would go just a
little bit past his shirt. And that felt like that was good proportions when I was drawing both
of my characters. In general, when you are
drawing your characters, some other good proportional
markers to have is wherever in the middle
of your torsos, this is like what he looks
underneath over here. Wherever the middle of this is, this is where his
belly button is, and then wherever
the belly button is, that's usually about where
the elbows would be. Um, so just some good kind of markers to have when you
are drawing your character, where to bend the elbows, and then for legs, whenever you're drawing legs. In general, so if
this is the leg, and then you have a ankle here, wherever the middle
part of your leg is, that's usually where your
knee is going to be. Hopefully, that's
helpful in figuring out how your character
is put together. And in the next video, we'll look at how keeping your characters
close is helpful, when you're drawing
your illustrations.
5. Practice Makes Better: My third tip, which is
probably a little bit obvious, so we'll go over this quick is just practice drawing your
characters in multiple poses. We'll talk about this when we talk about the exercise we're going to do or our class
project in a couple of videos. But basically, once you figure out what your character
is going to look like, for generalities, then
it's time to practice your character and start
drawing it in multiple poses. A lot of times the poses
that I draw are poses that I imagine that my character is going to be
taking in the story. And so I just showed
as an example, when I was talking previously about in the first
part of this class, about testing
different things out. And these are it's basically the same character
that's been drawn in multiple I've just
copied and pasted it at multiple different
times and kind of the only thing that's
changing is the nose. I was trying to figure out
what nose would be the best. And then I actually sent this to my critique group and
asked for feedback, which character they thought or which one looked like the
nicest character for tweed. In the end, this is kind of
what I ended up going with. You can see that in
these early sketches, when I was practicing him, Mossy already had this shirt that had the four
diamonds on it, but Tweed, I had him in
a sweater and then he had this little vest that I
thought would be really cute. But once I actually started
sketching the book, I realized that I did not
like the best for him, and it was just an
extra thing to draw. And I just I just ended
up wanting the nones to have kind of similar sweaters
and similar outfits. And then that way they would they'd kind
of stick out from the forest a little bit more. Here's the
cover of the book. And so I just
wanted both of them to have some sort of a graphic
element in their sweater. Instead of having the vest
like we have over here, I decided he's going
to have this kind of zigzag pattern in his sweater and then Mossy stayed the same. I picked similar colors. Both of them have the red
because the red is then easy to spot out from all the
natural colors in the forest, and then the gray
because I figured, those are kind of colors
that you can find around in the forest if you're dying
your own wool over there. Practice your character and
the more you practice it, the more comfortable you
become withdrawing with it and And then once you start
working on your book, then it's just faster and easier to to draw your characters for
it and to sketch them out. It kind of becomes second
nature to you as you go.
6. Keeping Characters Close: Kick number three is keeping
your characters close. I always keep a character
sketch sheet and colors on hand when I'm working on
illustrations per book. That allows me to draw my
characters consistently and also keep my colors consistent for my characters
through the book. So whenever I'm working
on my sketches, I always have some sort of
a character pose sheet. Sometimes it might be
I might have them in multiple different poses or
shown from different angles, and sometimes I might just
have them just like this. And so these are the
characters that I came up with in the
part one of the class. And this is just a scene that I was sketching with
those characters. On the iPad, I can
bring my image here as a an extra reference image, and I can scythe this. I can make it bigger, smaller, I can zoom in if I'm
just working on the kid, I can move it out of my way. But most of the time, I just like having my illustration
on the corner. I co cut and paste
it on the same one, and then I can turn it on
and off if I feel like it, and so you can see over here, I can show you my layers
really quick for the sketch. So this is kind of
my initial sketch of what I was thinking. Then these are some of
I did some foliage. Then I usually draw
on top of each other. Let me bring this
up a little bit. I might draw a little bit. You can see I made the girl
a little bit smaller and I've I've changed my grandpa character,
the pose a little bit. I always start with a
really lousy goosy sketch, and then I put a new
layer on top of it, and then I diminish the opacity of the sketch
underneath and that way, it's easy for me to
draw on the top. And then I'll do another layer, and then on top of this, I'll sketch it even better. I ended up moving the head, as you can see over
a little bit and adding the the foliage. Then this is the final
final sketch that I did. I always keep these in mind, and a lot of times
what I will do, is if I'm having a hard time. This is looking from the front list is
looking from the side, but a lot of times what
I can even do is I can even either move this
or just duplicate, and then what I'll do is I'll
bring it on top over here. Let's make it the same size. In this one, the mouth is open, so the jaw is a little bit
lower than what it would be. But this is about the
size of the head. Now if I move it around, I can line things up, so it's a little bit off
with if you look over here, you'll actually notice
that right here, it looks about the same, but we nose end is a little bit
different and then if my mouth is over here. This is a little
bit of a different. Let's see if I make this
bigger, will it line up? Still about the same size. Maybe it is about right
the way that I had it. The eyes look a little bit
bigger bigger on this one, but maybe because she's
looking more surprised, maybe the eye is a
little bit open on it. I usually just line up
one eye or the other, and then I just see how
things are lining up. You'll notice actually
the ear is bigger too. If I wanted to, I could either make so once
I start sketching, this is usually when
things start changing. What I could do is I can either change on my sketch over here. I can resketch this to
make these more the same, so I'm going to here you go. This is the bottom of the nose. Maybe it needs to be higher. And then the eye looks
about the right size. Usually if the eye is a
circle looking forwards, I usually make it
a little bit more an oval when it's on the side. That's where the eyebrow is, and then the ear
is a lot smaller. And then I got to make sure I
make it in the right angle. If I wanted to fix this
and make sure that it's the same as
in my other one, then I could make
these little changes. Changes on here. Now
when I take this off. Now my girl over here matches with the outlines
of the girl over there. It was just a little tweak
with where the nose and the mouth location was on the other one and making
it a little bit bigger. Then if I feel this
one looks better, then what I could do is make the ears a little bit
bigger over here and move, move things around over
here if I felt like it. Either way would be fine. This is basically how I use my sketches to make sure
that everything lines up. And then if I happen
to have a sketch where a lot of times I'll
sketch her front ways sideways, and maybe three
quarter of a view. Then that way, it's easy for me to move the head
over and then just compare and make sure that all my all their
features line up. And here's just kind of
the same character as I've drawn her in
multiple different ways. And so if you're just trying to compare
and contrast things, you can also just draw your Lines and make sure
that things are in general in general lining up. You can see that
there's tiny little. Over here, it's a little bit more tilted up and the eyes are maybe a
little bit higher. But in general, if I draw these proportional
markers here, we can draw one
more for the mouse, trying to make sure that
things line up in general. Over here, she's got
maybe a little bit more of a neck than
maybe over here. Then a lot of times
I will make this partially visible and
now I can tell that, the eyes look okay on these two last ones
and I might just need to bring her just some
features over just a hair. Let's see over here. I'm just using my *** ot and moving these guys
down a little bit. Maybe they can be
slightly bigger. Nose looks okay. Maybe
could be just a hair. Maybe something like
that. Other character. And so there we go.
So that's how I would kind of fix up some issues that have to do with
consistency for the face. This is still a video
five keeping characters. And I just wanted to show
you this other example. This is from This
is from my book, Little Season's spring seeds. And for this one, what
I did was I actually had quite an elaborate
color palette. I had a lot of a lot
of different seeds, and I just wanted to
make sure I'm painting every seed the same way on each spread
with the same colors. And so I had a little chart with all the colors kind of picked out and all my
character pictures. And so that way, I remembered how I did what
brushes I used and how I did shading on my
different seeds whenever I would draw them
on a different spread. And so It is kind
of a big palette and what I would do is it was always on a separate
layer on top, and then I would
just move it around. So if I was working
on this side, I would have it on this side, and then when I was, I would just move it
around and move it out of the way depending what
I was working on. Then a lot of times I would also pick some of the
colors down here, then it would be
easy for me to pick colors from here as
well rather than always picking it from there if it was specific colors that
I needed for a page. And lastly, if you happen to
be working in watercolors, what I do when I
work actual like on actual paintings
is sometimes I would just do a
little color palette on a separate piece
of paper and make sure I have that always next to me whenever I'm
mixing my colors. But kind of what works for me as a little bit
more of a shortcut, I would say, is once I had
kind of my first painting, let's say this was the
first painting that I did, then I put this in front of me, wherever I'm working, and then whenever I work on
consecutive paintings, then I will use this
first painting as my reference and make sure
I'll test my colors appear, if they look good
when they're dry, then you know, I would paint
my characters afterwards. And a small little note
if you're planning on doing any kind
of a pattern or a picture on your character, just make sure that it's
consistent, however you do it. So for this character, I try to count how many stripes, and I try to do
the same amount of stripes for each picture. I think there might be
a little bit less over here because it's such a
small little thumbnail. And that way, you
know, it just looks consistent through
all the pictures, and it looks like
my characters are wearing the same
clothes because, you know, has the same
amount of stripes in it. As I was doing more paintings, I would just have
everything kind of lined up in front of me. I paint again, you know, on a table against the wall, and so it was easy for me to
just lay things on the wall, you know, against the wall in front of me as I was painting, and that way, I could reference multiple paintings at a sign
and to make sure that I was kind of staying consistent with my paints for the whole process
of painting for the book. And in the next video, we'll talk about strong
characteristics that will make your character instantly recognizable
on a spread.
7. Strong Characteristics: Tip number four is having strong characteristics
for your character. So if you have strong characteristics for
your characters, things that make them stand out. Then if your drawing
is a little bit off, then having those
strong characteristics or strong identifying
markers for your character will still help your audience figure out where your main
characters are going. So for May and Tweed, you know, they obviously had their
outfits that they were wearing, and I do introduce a couple of other There's 12
nomes over here. So I introduced a
couple of other nomes. And for the nomes in general, kind of what I figured
was all the nomes have these red hats
that they're wearing, but then Masi and
Tweed are the ones that have the kind
of red highlights, and then the other
nomes have, you know, kind of similar kind of gray
tones and natural tones, but none of the other nomes had the red details
on their sweater. So that way, I figured
it's easy to spot Masi and Tweed if there was a crowd
scene with a bunch of nomes. Another example that I
wanted to show is this is Princess from the Princess and Black book series Lewin FAs, you'll notice the Princess and
Black character over here. She's got a black
superhero outfit with a black eye mask and then
she's got this flower on it. Then if you look at
all the other ones, nobody else has similar colors, and so that's how she's able
to stick out of the crowd. So no matter what scene
in the book we're at, we can always figure out
where our main character is. And then I wanted to show just kind of an extreme
example of this of having something very identifiable
with your character and then being able to get away with drawing it
a little bit off. And so this example is
from the marvelous fluffy, squishy di bitty by
Beatrice Alemania. In this book, we have
this main character, and she wears this
neon pink coat, and then she's got this
kind of shaggy yellow hair. And those are kind of
her identifying markers, and no matter what scene
we have in the book, we're always kind of able
to pick her out because she always stands out because of
the way that she's drawn. And even in this kind of a very, very busy city scene, you can kind of pick her
out wherever she's going. She's like a little dotted, neon pink line that
goes around over here. Because those are kind of
identifying pieces for her, even when she's not drawn, completely, you know, the
same in each one of these. You know, the noses are different
and the eyes, you know, here she has kind of
eyes with pupils, and here she has
just black dots. Over here, this is just looks completely different kind of proportions than some
of the other ones. Like, you know, it's just drawn kind of a little
bit more haphazardly than some of the other
illustrations that we've been looking at But we know who the main character is based
on the clothing and like her physical description or
attributes on each page. And so even though it's drawn a little bit differently
in a lot of the spreads, we can still tell who she is. And the drawing style
goes very well with just the general drawing style of the book where everything else is also drawn a
little bit wonky and, you know, kind of Lucy goosey. And so that way, it's not out of place and
everything kind of goes together well with the book stylistically
as a whole. All right. So I hope
that makes sense. And then in the next video, we'll talk about
using three D models.
8. Use 3-D Shapes for Reference: N. Right. So the third option. If you're having a really hard
time figuring things out, you could get like, so if you have a character
with a roundhad, this is a ping pong ball. And what you could
even do is you could even draw your cross
hairs over here. And then you could
draw your eyes, draw them over here, and
then nose, and then ears. And then when you turn it, you can figure out you can even draw their
hair over here. So if I'm thinking, this is kind of my that
girl character who I had, eyebrow over here,
Brow over here. And so if this is my
girl character now, depending when I move it, now it's easy for me to see
where her features are. Then secondary, if you wanted, you could even add pieces to it. So this is some modeling
do that I have kids, so we always have some around. You could even add details if you wanted to glue or add on. She's got a little
bit of a nose. I could even add a nose on. You might have to
glue them on too big. Or if I was doing
my Masi character, it might be easier because
he's got a bigger nose. Then you could add ears. I
don't know if it'll stick. But you could make either the
whole face out of this or you could attach them to a
tennis ball or whatever. Maybe it'll be easier if I
just do the whole thing. Over here, so this
could be my face, and then I'll add a
little bit of a news. Make sure it's kind of looking the right way from the top. It doesn't have to be perfect. And I'm going to add
my ears to the sides. And so I'm kind of making it a wedge shape so it
kind of sticks out. I'm just going to let's do
something similar to this. And then do one on
the other side. So this isn't even like perfect, and then I'm going to
add a little bit of hair to my character. So I'm kind of just
squishing my dough out and then laying it out. That way, I can
kind of tell which way and I usually don't do the
back of the head too much. I can kind of figure out the
back of the head as it is. And so just making a flat piece and goes up this way and
then it comes out this way. There you go like that. I know this is a super not
the greatest looking piece, but that way, it's just
giving me some ideas, and then I can do my neck. I'll use the rest
of it for the neck. And this is I made like a
tree trunk shape over here, and then it would be over here. It's not the greatest
looking three d knot model, but now at least I can tell
when I'm looking at it from the side or from the top,
which way things go. And so I could set this on in
front of me and look at it. I've actually made I had a really hard time when I was drawing Massy and Tweed. As a real life example. I had a really hard
time figuring out what one of their houses look
like in three dimensions. So I actually did build
this side of sculpe clay, which is a clay that you
can bake and harden. And so I didn't worry too
much about the back side, but I just needed to know
because I was drawing them from the I needed kind of a top shot kind of from
like this angle, but then I also needed to draw them from the front
and from the side. And so I needed to know
what the house looked like. And so I ended up building this little model so that I could get it to
look consistent. So I do use this technique
sometimes when I have some kind of more complicated some more
complicated things that I want to draw. All right. And in
the next video, we will talk about
the one exception to the rule that I've
kind of figured out.
9. Pose Anomaly: All right, so we've
been talking this whole time about how to draw
our characters consistently. But what I've actually found is there's kind of one
anomaly or kind of exception to the rule that I've kind of found
out over the years. And so that exception is when you're trying to draw
your character either kind of looking down
or from the top or then from the bottom
kind of looking down. And so like one
example over here, with Kitty or over here, with Mossy or over here, or m where he's kind of
looking straight up. And sometimes you will have it something like this
where it's completely, you only see kind of
part of their face. But what I found is that a lot of times illustrators
will fudge a little bit. And so a lot of times because
faces are so important, and if we can't
see our characters faces in the illustration, then it's hard for us to read the feelings and the emotions
that they're feeling. Very much like what
I was talking in that first part of this series, how it's very important in illustrators because
we're only showing 11 moment in time instead of like an animation
where you have you know, time to show your
character feeling things. We only have that one
kind of snapshot, one still shot of the scene to show how our
character is feeling. So a lot of times
what I've noticed is, even though this, you know, dad figure is looking down and we're looking down
at this baby, you know, a lot of times illustrators will kind of fudge and
they'll turn the head so that we can see the whole
face or they'll kind of fudge so that we
can see everything. This is also from
Sophie Blackall's book, same book Hello
Hello Lighthouse. And in this illustration, they're actually looking down at some animals in a savannah. But like both of them their faces are showing
drawn looking up. Same thing with
this bicycle girl. It's just the eyes
are facing down. Same thing over here.
We see the eyes and the nose in a little bit,
suggestion of a mouth. In this one, and I
just love these ones, we have these characters and
they're down and looking and the mouth is a little bit going down so we can't
see their chins. But in other, we have
their full eyes and their full noses over there so we can see what their
expressions are. Same thing with this
girl in the handstand. This is by Mark Butamon. And if you have a kid
who's doing a handstand, there's no way
their head would be completely looking at the front. But the way that he's
chosen to illustrate it, we can see the whole face and her sticking out her tongue. Then this is Julie
Kims, where's Hmony. She's also, you know, it's the
character is looking down, but we're still seeing the
whole illustration of it. And so I just wanted
to bring this point up if you are in the same kind of a
predicament where I was, where I needed to draw a
character looking down, and I was trying to
figure out how the heck. Do I make my
character look down, where I can still
show the expression? And that's when I
started noticing all other illustrators
are doing, and I figured out that
a lot of illustrators, they're just keeping
the head kind of up. They're keeping the features
all visible and then just putting the eyes so that
the eyes are looking down. And so that's just a
nice a shortcut or a nice tip to know for when you need to make your character look like they're looking down. All right. Now that we know
how to draw our characters consistently and what the
exception to the rule is, now let's get to our assignment for the class and drawing a
character post sheet.
10. Assignment: Pose Sheet: Character posh. For this
kind of first exercise, before you work on any kind of final illustrations
with these characters, let's work on a posh. And so I always work on some of these like you saw the one
with Massy and Tweed earlier. I always work some of those in just so I know how my character moves and get more
comfortable in drawing them in different poses from
different viewpoints. I always start very sketchy like you've seen and then do usually one or two or three
layers on top of that to refine my sketch
and tighten everything up. And so these are the characters that I designed for the
first part of this class. And then for my post sheet, I decided I wanted
to work, in general, I just like working with
kid characters more than I like with
these with adults. And so I decided
I'm going to take this girl character and then
work her into a post sheet. So when I start working on
my character post sheets, what I usually start off
with is my so this was kind of my first
sketch that I brought over from the first part
of this class that I did. And then I will usually
draw these lines across. And as you saw in
the earlier videos, you can do extra lines if
you want to have lines for where the eyes are or
where the top of the eyes, where the bottom of the eye is, where the mouth or the nose or, you know, whatever makes
it easier for you to draw. And Procreate, the easy
thing is if I draw a line, let's say like this,
I hold my pen down, it draws a line,
and I can move it, and if I put my hand down, then it makes it into
a horizontal line. And I can also go here, and then it snaps it into all these different kind of
angles that are kind of even. So just a good tip to
know in Procreate. And when I'm sketching
these characters, they're usually very
sketchy at first, and then I do my
successive layers of drawing on the top and I always just
decrease the opacity, start a new layer, and
then draw on the top. And so you can see there's
some differences in them, and but most of the
stuff stayed the same. And then once I kind of
have these guys down, then I start sketching
my other characters, and so you'll see have
some sketched over here, and I was kind of thinking, what this girl character could be doing in the story
of the great turnip. And so I have her kind of
pulling on a weed over here, and I thought in the first picture like when
they're planting, she could be trying
to catch bugs over there or maybe a frog
or something like that. And then from there, I refined some sketches. So you can see there's
a second sketch over here where it's
progressively refined, so first sketch over here. First sketch is very messy, the second sketch on the
top, gets much better. And then once I
get the last one, so I'll And then from here, you can see that I've moved
the head over a little bit, and then from
there, then this is the final final sketch for that. Same thing. With this character, you can see it was very sketchy. I've ended up moving
the legs a little bit. And then those are kind
of the final poses. The final poses that I
did for this character, I made a little title.
Over here for it. And so I have her
pulling on something, and then I have her
catching a butterfly, catching some sort of a frog or something and then
just looking at, you know, a caterpillar
or something, just kind of how she would
spend time in the garden. And this would be
kind of my character inspiration sheet
that I would have close to me when I'm
starting to work on my book or illustrations
for the book. And I bring this with me and use this as a reference
as I go along. And then having the character kind of ready in these poses on my post sheet when I
actually go to sketch my book, then I'm not coming everything
up from scratch already. I'll have some of these
ready, and I might even cut and paste these into my
illustration sketches, and that just makes the sketching the book a
little bit faster. And in some of my
previous projects, I've tried cutting
corners and not spend a lot of time
sketching my character before I start
working on the book. Masi and Tweed is a
great example of that. But it ends up taking
up longer time at the back end because as I'm working on the book
and illustrating it, The closer I get to
the end or the longer I've been drawing the
characters for the book, I get more comfortable with
them and they get kind of more smoother and
they get easier to draw, and my characters usually end up changing a bit
towards the end. And if they end up
changing a lot, then what I need to
do is then go back to the beginning of my
book and then re draw all the characters that
I did so that they look like the characters that I was drawing at the
end of the book. And so that's why doing a lot of sketching
in the beginning is just helpful because that way your hand gets used to
drawing those characters, and that way when you
start doing the book, then there's not going to be as many changes that you
want to do for it anymore. And then the next video,
I'll talk a little bit about doing a series of
final illustrations. This is just optional
if you want to go above and beyond in this class, and it's also a
chance for you to get some direct feedback on your illustrations if
you would like that. I'm on skill share just about every day or at least
every couple of days, and I try to reply back to anything that students
post fairly quickly.
11. Assignment 2: Series of 3 Illustrations: If you're a picture
book illustrator and you're working towards having a picture book
illustration portfolio. What I recommend doing is
once you have your character, you had two characters that we kind of designed
in the first one, and if you want to
do post sheets for both of them, that's great. But what is even better is if
you can have three kind of finished illustrations that you can add into your portfolio. Because we're working on books, and we're drawing
the characters, multiple times over directors. Before they hire you, they
want to make sure that you know how to draw your
characters consistently. And so having a set of three illustrations is that with the same
characters in them, kind of telling a little bit of a story is a great
way for you to have something in your portfolio
that really convinces an art director that you are the right
person for the job. And so over here, I've created a series of
three illustrations, and so for each spread or page, I've added my characters
onto the side. And so I'm telling a story with these three illustrations. And so in the first one, we see the little girl and the old man and they're kind of planting. Instead of just showing them, I've also put a fence over here, some other things that you
might find in a garden. Dandelions are always out kind of first thing in the summer. So I've added some dandelions
and there's going to be a little bush that has
little green leaves on it. And that's my kind of
idea for the first one. Then for the second
one, I thought, you know, they're waiting
for things to grow, and so he's kind of in the
garden with his little shovel, and then we've got
the little girl and she's catching butterflies. And then in the
third illustration, I thought I would do
a full spread kind of horizontal spread. And then in this one, we
have the giant turnip, and I was going to draw the two characters
pulling the turnip out. Just kind of a note that
I wanted to say about these illustrations
is you can have them all kind of be the same size if you want them to
all be the same size. But even better, if you wanted to have them kind of be
a little bit different, where in this one I'm trying
to show a horizontal spread, that's like a full spread. In this one, I thought it would be kind of like a
spot illustration. And in this one, I thought
it would be kind of once I draw a sky in there and
put some room for text, then this would be
kind of a full page like even though it doesn't
look vertical right now, but then this would be like
a vertical illustration. So in these three pieces, I'm basically showing three
different layout types. I have a full page, a spot, and then a spread. And then I'm showing my
characters in different poses, and I'm showing them
with different emotions. And that is really
showing my skills as an illustrator to
art directors or editors who might come
and look at my portfolio. So you don't necessarily
have to do the giant turnip. It is part of the resources in the first part of this class, and I'll also add it
to the second part. It's a very kind
of a simple story. You can take that story
and make it your own. You can add things to
it, or like in this one, it doesn't say
anything about the little girl catching butterflies or what she's doing in between, or then what happens while they're waiting
for the turnip to grow. And so it can be
your imagination. You can fill things
out on your own. Or, like I said, you could work on your own
story if you have characters and then just
do three different scenes, try to do different formats, and then illustrate
them as finals. And for this one, I've already finished the final
illustration for it. Okay. I'll share really quick, just the process from Procreate, you can export the process video of me designing
this illustration. Again, I start with really
Lucy Goosy sketches. The him posing on the
shovel was really hard, and I tried to look
up some illustrations online on how people
are leaning on shovels. It was a little
hard to find, but I found some reference photos, and I also tried to
act it out myself. And I couldn't figure I was having a hard
time also deciding whether I wanted
him on a rake or if I wanted him on a shovel. And in the end, I
ended up deciding that the shovel was going to
be easier for me to draw, so I went with the shovel. I think the rake I should have it didn't look
quite right to me. And so, as you can
see, I started with really loose sketches and then each kind of
successive pass. I keep getting a little
bit more detailed with it. And I ended up moving the
head over a little bit, and I realized that, you know, with if he's wearing
kind of a plaid shirt, then it's a little bit looser. And so I added a
little kind of a bump down at the bottom over here where the shirt would
kind of hang over. And so it's just a little
tweaks here and there. And a lot of times
I'll do my characters and my background
on separate layers, so that way it's easy for me
to turn things on and off. A lot of times I will start
with just the flat color and then use variation of that color to add
some texture to it. I'm just working my
background first. I was thinking maybe even a
pink background would work. But in the end, I
ended up changing it. I'm doing the little girl is a little bit of
a lighter skin, and I figured the old man, since he's worked on a farm, his whole life, he
would be a little bit of a darker skin, maybe. And I thought it
would be cute with a little striped striped pants for the girl. And
then I'm testing. I decided I'm going to give her a T shirt instead of
a long sleeve shirt. And I kind of have a
general palette that I'm using that I kind of use
for all of my illustrations. For the net, what I
basically did was there's two layers of white over there overlapped on
top of each other. And so one just goes on
the back side of this net, and then the other one
goes on the whole area, and then I put a little bit
of a dot pattern on there. And then I'm testing
out different plaid patterns for
Grandpa's shirt, figuring out what seems
to work the best. In general, I try to stay
fairly simple with things. I want to make sure that with
whatever that I'm drawing, that there's going to be enough of a difference
between background and foreground and between
the characters so that each item in
my illustration is, you can visually tell what everything is and what's in the front and
what's in the back. And then adding some
shadows and some lines just to give a ale
bit more definition. And I gave the Grandpa a little bit of a
5:00 shadow as well. Figured it would be a
little bit more useful. And so that's kind of
the final illustration and the way that I painted it. And I'll post all my
final illustrations in the classroom for
you guys to see. I know that doing final illustrations
can be a lot of work. So if you feel like if
you don't have time, what you can do
is you could just work on a character post sheet, and they can be as sketchy
as you want and post that into our classroom
projects page, or then if you do want to work on those final
illustrations, you can either post sketches
of those or you can post the final illustrations
into our class page. And meet me in the last video
for some final thoughts.
12. Post Work in Class: Thanks for joining
me in this class. I hope you've learned
a ton and are ready to put your new
skills into practice. If you love the class,
a great reward for me would be if you have time to
leave a short review for it, the button is right
below over here. The second great things
are if you want to post your project that you've been working
on in this class, either in the project section, or then if you wanted to ask questions or get
some feedback on it, you can also put it in
the discussion section. If you want to post your project on social media, you can tag me. I'm at Mirca Hokan on
every other platform, except for Instagram where you can find me at Mirca Draws. Whatever you post and if
I get tagged in them, I'm happy to come and like
and comment and also re post. If you want to see the other
classes that I've done, I have several other picture
book related classes and also watercolor and
basic drawing classes. You can click on my name above and find my
classes through there. And you can also go
on my website to see my portfolio and other
things that I've done. I also have a newsletter
that you can subscribe to. Thanks so much for joining me in this picture book character
design class Part two. If you haven't
seen Part one yet, you can go check that
one out on my profile. I can't wait to see
what you create, and I'll see you in
the next one. Bye.
Mirka Hokkanen, Illustrator/Author/Printmaker/Educator
