Transcripts
1. Class Intro: Who doesn't love a
good character design, who isn't thrilled by a character on-screen
who is captivating visually and who really connects with the viewer on
an emotional level. The impact your designs
can have on others is something truly
unique and special. Almost like a superpower. Designing a character
is fun and exciting, but it can also feel a little daunting if
you haven't been taught the fundamental laws
of good character design. Welcome to the character
design fundamental series. My name is Emma Gillette and I am a professional illustrator with experience in the publishing and
animation industries. I have a BFA in
animation and art directed the student Emmy
nominated short film tie G2. I have been working
as an illustrator for five years and my clients
have included Disney, random penguin house, and American girl among many others. This is part two in a
three-part series all about character design
basics and fundamentals. In this series, I'll
help you level up your character design
skills by taking you through all of the rules and basic fundamentals that
I learned in art school. In the last class,
you learned all about basic construction
and shape language. You designed two characters, a hero and a villain. In this class, you'll learn
how to put your designs into dynamic and
expressive gestures. If you haven't taken part
one of this series yet, go ahead and hit pause and
take that class first. You're going to need to
design your hero and villain before you can complete the
class project for this class, the next and final
class of this series, you'll learn how to
take your designs to finish with color
and line work. These are tools
of the trade that every professional
character designer knows and soon you will too. In this second part of
my fundamental series, you're going to learn all about acting for character designers. Have stage fright, don't worry. You don't have to get
up in front of anyone. You just have to learn
all about how gesture and expression are key to bringing life to your
character designs. It isn't enough to design interesting character designs
and boring static poses. You need to bring
them to life with dynamic and interesting poses. I'm going to show you simple but important
principles that are going to help you draw poses that look and feel believable. I'll also share some tips
and tricks that will help those causes explode
with life and movement. Combined with the
principles that you learned in part one
of this series, you will be able to tell powerful stories
through your designs. Today's class project is to put both the hero and the
villain that you designed in part one into two gestures that showcase their
personalities and story. By the end of this class, you will be equipped with the tools necessary to make your character designs shine with expressive and life-like acting. If you are starting out on
your creative journey or are looking for ways to
brush up on your skills. This is the class for you. If you consistently apply these tools and principles that I will teach in this class, you will be more confident in every new creative
endeavor that you enter into throughout your
artistic journey, you will be amazed by
the growth that you make by practicing these things. I am so excited to see what gestures you come up with for your character designs. So let's get started.
2. Class Project: At the end of this class, you will demonstrate
your knowledge of the principles of
gesture and expression using the hero and
villain character designs that you did in part
one of this series. You will place them in
dynamic and exciting poses. If you understand the
material in this class, you will be able to pick the
perfect pose that helps tell that character's story and sets them apart from
their counterpart. Help them become living, breathing characters by paying close attention to their
personality and stories, then pick the pose accordingly. For this class, I
encourage you to keep your drawings
loosened sketchy. In the next and last
part of this series, I'm going to be showing
you how you can polish those designs
with line and color. But for now, having a
loose sketchy look in your drawings will help and aid them to have life and motion. Here's a little pro tip. Drawing from your shoulder
helps you keep loose. Drawing from your wrist
encourages short feathered lines, which contributes to making a drawing feel stale and stiff. Drawing bold,
confident strokes from your shoulder gives a punch of expressiveness to any drawing. Try it out. I'll be using the
gesture brush from the retro max pack on procreate. But you can use any
medium or brush that works best for you when you have
finished your project, I would love for you to put them up in the project gallery below, especially if you are
looking for critique. Receiving critique graciously is the easiest and fastest
way to grow as an artist. Also, if you share your piece on social media such as
Instagram or Twitter, go ahead and tag me
in it over there. Here's my handle
for all accounts. You can also ask for critique over on those platforms as well.
3. Gesture as the Designer's Performance: Whether you're designing for
comics, movies, video games, or books, acting is a key and important part
of character design. Think of your character
as an actor on a stage. Their performance will determine
whether the production gets a standing ovation
or boost from the crowd. Just as an actor is uninspiring, just standing and reading
lines from a script. So as a character design
standing in a static posts, staring blankly at the viewer when you have spent so much time carefully designing a character using the other
principles of design, by which you then put them
a lifeless and boring pose. You can learn so much about a character just
by how they walk, how they scrunch up their
face on their angry or what they do with their
hands when they're nervous. Don't miss out on this
opportunity to really dive into the quirks that
make your character unique. Learning to draw characters and expressive poses is a mess, especially if you are looking
to impress video game or animation studios with your character design portfolio, the best portfolios
usually will have a character sheet that includes a static pose
of your character. And usually in a T-Pose for animators to
use as reference. But after that, the
portfolio is going to be filled with drawings that really push the characters limit and range to show
they're acting ability. Art directors wanted to
see that a character is interesting to
watch an animation. And it's the character
designer's job to prove that even if you're just
drawing for personal reasons, learning gesture will improve your drawing
capabilities immensely. So why not learn now?
4. Get in the Habit of Gesture Drawing: Making a practice of
regular gesture drawing is one of the best things that
you can do as an artist. Gesture drawings
are quick sketches that prioritize
flowing movement, fluid lines and emotion over carefully constructed
drawings that focus on form and anatomy. Gesture drawing is
so important to animation studios that they usually hold weekly
gesture drawing sessions for their artists
to get practice. Gesture drawing is where an artist test their
ability to tell a clear story through as
few strokes as possible. Gestures can range from 10 s or 5 min depending
on how you're feeling. 10-second gestures
are really great for learning exaggeration
and storytelling and usually end up and less defined drawings
that are more expressive and
suggestive of movement. Five-minute gestures
are more for storytelling and usually include a model that's wearing costumes. So your drawings end up a
little more detailed and use the costumes to aid
in telling the story. There are different ways and places that you can
do gesture drawing. A quick Google search will
let you know if there's a local gesture or figure
drawing class near you, you should call and ask if they hold gesture drawing sessions. Regular figure drawing
session will typically have models that hold the poses
for even one to 2 h. Whereas in a gesture
drawing session, the model will be frequently
changing up their poses, allowing you to
get more practice. These sessions are fun and give you the opportunity
to draw from life, which is a vital skill for
every designer to have if circumstances prevent you from going to a live drawing session. There are several
different ways that you can draw from the comfort
of your own home. The first is to invite family or friends
over to pose for you. You can provide
props and costumes. And if your friends or artists, you can even take turns
posing for each other. The second option is to
use an online gesture drawing service and draw
using images on your screen. There are several
websites that have massive libraries of
photos to cycle through. They have options for clothes
models and you'd models, prompts, action poses, and even have timers
that you can set. I will have a few of
them linked below in the projects
and resources tab. Try them all out and pick
which ones you like best. There are no right or wrong tools that you should
use for gesture drawing. Either. You can use pencils,
charcoals, markers, pastels, crayons, whatever feels fun
and inspiring to you. That's what you should use. You can do small drawings in a sketchbook or an a clipboard. Or you could do big drawings and a big figure drawing pad. You might try several different
mediums and formats and decide which inspires
you most and keeps your drawing
free and flowy. And just as a reminder, don't forget to draw
from your shoulder. Starting a practice of regular gesture drawing
will keep your skills sharp and to
encourage you to stay loose and expressive
in your drawings. Gesture is all about
feeling and movement and transposing the energy
that you see in the model back onto the paper. It isn't so much about copying the pose
exactly as you see it. But getting a feel and an understanding of the
energy in that pose, and then getting
that same feeling and energy onto your paper. That may mean that you
exaggerate the post, tweak some things here or there, or add motion or movement
in the hair or costuming. A fun exercise you
can try is to look at the pose and imagine what character they are
and what they are doing. Maybe your model as a pirate
leaning on her sword and you add little elements here and there to
help tell the story. Whatever you do,
have fun with it.
5. Line of Action: When doing any kind
of gestural drawing, whether that's a quick study
or a more sustained pose, It's important that you first
find the line of action. The line of action is
an imaginary line that carries the main energy or action of your character's pose. The posture will follow along this imaginary line and find it's balance and
the center of gravity. The center of gravity is an
important and crucial part of gesture work and
is something that you're going to need
to learn very quickly. It is an imaginary point
around your belly button where your weight is balanced between
the upper and lower body. We will go into more detail
on this in lesson seven. But for now, just know
that your line of action must always pass through
the center of gravity. Let's look at some
photos and see if we can determine what their line
of action might look like. Now, looking at this photo, we're going to determine where this model center of gravity is, which is approximately here. Now starting from
the top of her head and going through the
center of her gravity, we're going to follow the general arc of her pose
all the way down to her feet. Now let's find it
for this model. Her center of gravity
is about here. And again, starting
from the top of her head and going through
the center of gravity, you find her line of action. Can you find the center of gravity and line of
action for this model? You'll notice that
these lines are very simple and not complicated. But these simple lines tell
a very important message. The purpose of starting with
a simple line is to evoke a strong and clear message
with your character's pose. The simpler your line, the more clear and readable
it will be to the viewer. You may be tempted to draw an S curve for your
line of action. But in most cases
that will not be clear enough to create
a strong gesture. As you can see in this example, the gesture utilizing the
S curve is not nearly as forceful and clear as the
gesture using the simple arc, you can really feel the
energy of the second gesture. The first just feels lackluster
and kind of awkward. Well, you should keep
your lines simple. You may find
sometimes that having a second line of action
may come in handy. E.g. if your character's
arms are spread out wide and you want to get a
feel for their general motion. Using a simple arc allows you to use exaggeration
to your advantage. See the difference in energy
between these two gestures. The more extreme you make
your line of action, the more expressive
your pose will be. Something interesting
that you might take note of is
that the same line of action can tell
two different stories depending on how you use it. You see how just by
orienting my character in different directions
along this line creates two very
different energies. For being such simple lines, your options are endless and
don't forget that prompts, tails and costumes can be extensions of your
character's arms or legs, and thus can be included
in your line of action. I want to show you an
example of drawing a gesture starting
with a line of action. The first thing I
want to emphasize is that when practicing gestures, it's usually best if you focus more on the movement and feeling of the pose and not get bogged down in
details in anatomy. Gesture drawing, especially
for cartoons and animation, are often very, very
rough drawings. I'd like to demonstrate
that for you as well. I'm going to begin by deciding
the pose I want to draw. So I would like to draw a waiter serving a
plate of hor d'oeuvres. So the first thing I'm gonna do is pop a little head in there, just a little circle. And then starting where I believe the base of
the neck is gonna be. I'm going to draw
my line of action and it might take a few times
drawn from my shoulder, I'm just going to try and figure out a line that best describes the pose
that I see in my head. All right, So this I
think is pretty good. So the next one I'm
going to do is put in my lines to denote where the
shoulders are going to be. And then I'm also going
to do that for the hips. Now I'm just going
to start to fill in this drawing. This
little smaller. Really want them to be
reaching out with his platter. Kinda bending over. And I think it'd be kinda
fun to have his arm just a little tucked behind his back. Like I said, this is not a super pretty dry or
just trying to give the general feeling and emotion that we want
from this gesture. So it's just good
practice in putting your anatomy and body
construction skills to use to see if you can create a believable gesture that communicates the
pose that you want. Plateau right here. And I'm not afraid when, especially when I'm
drawing digitally to use the altering tools. It's a little harder when you're doing it with pen and pencil, you might have to just
try drawing again. I think I may actually
try this again. I'm not quite happy
with the flow of this, so I'm now going to
maybe try to exaggerate. I don't think my line of
action was exaggerated enough. Really want this guy to
be super lean forward. I feel like that. Is that better gesture? Like I said, it's not
a beautiful drawing, but this would be the
skeleton for which then I could go and draw over
my character design. I'm starting with
just the basic flow and feel of the drawing. So that when I start to get
into the nitty-gritty of actually getting
into the details of the anatomy of all of that. That I may still have a really solid story coming from the
gesture and the pose. So that's why I went back and
made it even more extreme. Because the more extreme
it is in the beginning, the more that you'll still have the feeling of the gesture
at the end of the drawing. If you go super conservative
in this beginning phase, you'll lose almost all of the energy by the time
you've finished the drying. So this is my
encouragement to you to exaggerate more than you
think that you need to. Let's talk a little
bit more about exaggeration in the next lesson.
6. Exaggeration: Something important
to remember about character design is that
animated characters and drawings are more similar to stage actors than they
are to film actors. Have you ever watched a Vaudeville
performance and noticed how exaggerated all of the
actors performances are. When going off stage, they wind their arms
and feet back and then thrust forward and March
off the stage at a tilt. They do this because
they want their acting clearly read
by the audience. No matter how close or far
away from the stage they are. The same applies
for a drawn images. For some reason, the brain is
more able to read an image and understand its gesture
if it's super exaggerated. To demonstrate here is a
photo of a model and an action pose that I
have drawn over. Now I'd like you to
compare that drawing to a drawing of the same
pose, but exaggerated. Can you see the difference
between the two? You probably didn't notice
that first house style, this first drawing looks, for some reason the
models pose just doesn't hold the same
energy as the drawing. In the photo. We see the tension in
the models muscles, the way they interplay
with the light around her. But that doesn't show
up in a drawing. So we make up for it
by using exaggeration. One way to achieve
exaggeration is to really push your line of action and the beginning
of your drawing. But you can achieve
exaggeration in more ways than just using
the line of action. You can stretch the
legs or their neck. Or if your character
is really stretching, you can straighten
them up like an arrow. Or if they're sad, you can
fold them up like a ball, drop their jaw or shoot their eyebrows up
super high on their face. Don't hold back.
It's much better to go too far and then
have to pull back on a drawing than to be
too timid and then end up with a lackluster
drawing at the end. You can use the animation
principle of squash and stretch to help you along
in animation or motion, always either begins in a
squash and ends in a stretch, or begins in a stretch
and ends in a squash. This gives the motion and
feeling of flexibility in life. Without it, the motion
feels rigid and stiff. Try to imagine that you
are drawing a frame and an animation is
your character and the squash or stretch
phase of their motion. Try to exaggerate accordingly.
7. Grounding and Balance: You're having fun,
exaggerating your gestures. You need to make sure
that you're keeping them grounded and balanced. You can make nearly any gesture believable as long as you remember these two principles to be grounded is to have
your feet solidly planted on the ground when you draw a character
who is standing, the first problem
you may run into as a novice is that you draw
their feet too close together. Try standing with your feet, touching each other
and notice how easy it is to topple you over. Make sure that your character's
stance is wide enough to make them look
like they're not gonna be pushed over to easily. Another problem that
you may run into is how easy it is to
unintentionally draw your characters
feet so that they look slightly or floating. Well, let's look
at this example. As you can see in
the first drawing, the character doesn't
really appear to be firmly planted
on the ground. Almost like they are
floating a little bit away that you
might avoid doing this is to either
lightly sketch out or imagine the ground plane
below the character. Using simple perspective,
determine the angle from which you are observing the character and where the
vanishing point is. You can roughly determined what the ground
plane looks like. Using this as a guide, you can now draw your
characters feet so that they look like they're
flat against the ground. This will also help you
to avoid making one leg too long or short
compared to the other. Thus throwing off the balance
of the character's pose. With some practice,
you will need to use a guide and we'll be able
to eyeball it yourself. Speaking of balance, now is a great time to talk
about the center of gravity and how you can use it to create balance in your poses. As I explained previously, your center of gravity is an imaginary point around
your belly button, where your weight is balanced between the upper
and lower body. It falls over the
weight-bearing leg. So if your character is
standing with their weight distributed equally
between both legs, the center of gravity
will hover between them. An important thing to
note here is that humans rarely stand with our
weight distributed equally. Lakes. We tend to rest over one leg or another
at any given moment. Try to remember that when drying your character and
his standing pose, you can position their
center of gravity over just one leg to give them
a little spark of life. A little hip hop can go a long ways where the center
of gravity becomes really important is when you are
drawing a character that is leaning forward or
backwards in any capacity, it's important to learn how
to draw a character who is leaning and who isn't about
to fall over immediately. But let's look at this drawing. She is planted solidly
on the ground, but she looks like she's
about to fall on her face. That's because her
gesture is not balanced. The center of gravity
divides the mass of the body into two
imbalanced parts. Whenever the center of
gravity shifts forwards or backwards from a neutral
position over the feet, the pose becomes unbalanced. If nothing is done to meet
this change in position, balance will be lost
and gravity will take hold on your character
and topple them over. As you can see in this example, the character center
of gravity is hovering pretty far
away from her feet. The majority of her
body mass is hanging on just one side of
her center of gravity. She's going to have a hard
time staying out without doing some major straining
to get her balanced, we need to shift your
hips back over this line. Can you see how the
distribution of her body mass is now more
equal between the two sides. Now, if she were to
lean forward even more, perhaps would have to adjust backwards to find equilibrium. Again, depending on how
far extended she is, she may even need to stick a leg and arm out
to stay balanced. My last tip for bringing
bells to a gesture is to remember the shoulder
and hip relationship. I mentioned earlier that pop in your characters hip can add
a lot of life to a dry. This pop happens when
a character risks most or all of their
way over one leg. And easy way to bring more
balance to your standing poses is to set the angle
of the shoulder is opposite to the
angle of the hips. This is an abstracted use of the squash and
stretch principle. Here on this side of the body, you have the tension
of the load bearing, drawing the shoulder
into a squash. And on this side you have
the non load bearing leg and it's shoulder free
and a relaxed stretch. That may have seemed
like a lot to remember. But the more you practice
these principles, the more that you'll start to understand the physics of them. And then be able to just
instinctively and intuitively know how to fix your poses
if they seem off balanced. Using references also
never frowned upon either. Reference is an
artist's best friend. So don't stress out too
much about feeling like you need to be able to draw
every post from memory. These principles are
here to aid you, not stress you out.
8. Straights Against Curves: A curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted
with a straight line. These are wise words
and the premise of a very powerful principle of
animation and characters. If you'll remember, in my
first class in this series, I talked a lot about bringing contrast to have interest
in your designs. And one way to bring
in contrast into your gestures is to use
straights against curves. There are many ways
that you can apply this principle from an
anatomical perspective. You can use it to denote the place on the
body where a bone is close to the skin and the
soft flesh opposite it, like the bony shin and
fleshy calf on a leg. It can also be used to guide the viewer's eye
throughout the design. Streets move the eye quickly to the next place in the design, signaling to the viewer that
there isn't much to look at their while curves slow it
down with interesting details. You can strategically placed your streets and
curves throughout your design to direct your viewers eye in the
ways that you desire. You can also use them as a way to easily create an area of interest for the viewers eye to land on by using their
contrasting natures. Or if you really just want to emphasize a specific
curve in your drawing, take Robert Henry's advice and throw it a curve
against a straight, or a straight against a curve.
9. Gesture Drawing Demo: So now that we have gone over all of the principles
of gesture drawing, I would like to do
a demo for you. I want to show you how I
use the line of action, exaggeration, grounding and balance and
straights against curves. Live as I'm drawing, I'm using just an
old sketchbook. And this is a woodland pencil. So this is gonna get
me some good variety of thick and thin lines and
will help me to stay loose. And I'm also going
to be doing my best to draw from my
shoulder, my wrist. I'm going to be using
line of action.com to get my models to draw from. I'll put the image that I'm
using as reference over to the side here so that you can
see what I'm working from. Alright, let's get started. So here we have a model
who looks like she's in a running action pose. So we're gonna start
with the head, like I like to do. And her line of
action is very bland, so I'm going to go ahead
and exaggerate the angle. Hover, running at
more of a full tilt. I'm noticing I'm trying to take stock of what angle
her hips are at. I'm thinking we're
going to put the medic angles like that with
her shoulder and hips. Bring her chin up
a little further. So thinking of straights
against curves, I'm going to have
this be kind of like my curve section right here and go ahead and do a straight. Same with her shin bone. That's a good place for us. Straight. Then a curve for her calf with her arm right here. I'm going to just do
a bagel straight. Right now I'm going
to do the next one. So here we've got a guy
in the middle of a punch. So I would like to give a little more curve to make it really look
like he's throwing himself into that punch. I'm just going to draw him
up here in this corner. I'm actually just going
to start with the arms since that's just
front-and-center. So I'm having my shoulders
angled this way, the hips angled this way. And I'm gonna have this kinda
be my stretch right here. This is my squash. So a lot of my
streets will be on this side and my curves
will be on this side. Again, another straight right
here and a curb right here. You're going to have his
arm coming up like this. Really want to emphasize this? I don't think I quite got the
energy that first go round. Obscured by his arm. You see I almost covered up this drawing
with my other gesture. And that's the great
thing about gestures, that it's mostly for practice. And it doesn't matter if a kind of meld into each
other a little bit. Let's do one more down
here in this blank space, right Here's a
good seeded posts. So let's go ahead
and get started. I think I'd like to give
her more of a slouch. That's when I'm judging her. Head out more to the left. Kinda give her like she's super
slouched and grumpy look. Can give her a little grumpy
face to emphasize that. Now I'm realizing that
this is much too short. I think I'm gonna give
that one another go. I could erase it,
but I think that I could probably
just do this better. So I'm just going to turn
the page and try it again. There's no shame in
starting a drawing over again if it didn't
work the first time. Already, I'm feeling a lot
better about this drawing, so I'm glad that I
decided to start over. Go ahead and add the profit
she's sitting on to, so she's not floating. So again, I think that
this one turned out much better than that first one. So definitely a recommendation to start a drawing over
if you don't like it. Even when you're finished
with the drawing, take a second pass
if you need to. Alright, so that is my
gesture drawing demo. I hope that seeing the principles play out
in action really helped you get an idea for
how you might be able to apply them in
your own practice.
10. Applying Gesture to Character Design Demo: Now that we've covered
all of the basics of gesture drawing and
had a little practice. Hopefully, let's apply it to our hero and villain designs. If you have not
taken the first part of my character design series, this is where I want
you to hit pause, go take that class because
you're going to need to design your hero and
villain in order to complete the project
for this class, if you have your
character's ready, let's go ahead and jump into
creating the class project. Remember how in the
last class I had you draw your characters
and static poses. That's because in today's class we're going to put them in exciting and dynamic poses using everything that you've learned in the lessons previous, you will now be able to enhance your designs by having
your characters act in a moat in ways that are true to their personality and story. Take some time to think
about how your characters might react and move
through their world. Then pick a pose accordingly and watch your
characters come to life. Pretend like you're
capturing them in a still image from a movie. Try to capture them mid action. Like I mentioned earlier, don't worry about making these super clean and
polished drawings will be doing that
in the next class. If you get stumped
or need some help, please share your drawings or any questions you
might have down in the discussions tab below, I'd love to give you
critique if you want it, or to help work through any problems that
you might run into. And of course, once you're done, please share it in the
class projects have below. I really wanted to see
what you've come up with. So if it helps you, I'd love to show you
how I went about drawing my characters
and their new poses. Okay, we're going to watch
me draw the villain first. In order to keep consistency. I am throwing my
first drawing of him up in the
corner and I'm even going to begin drawing over that original
drawing on opacity. This helps me keep
the initial sketch within the correct proportions. You'll notice that I
use a line of action, but I don't carry it
through the entire body, just through the chest. For me, I don't always need
the full line of action, just a suggestion of it. And the torso is often
enough for me to build off of this initial
sketch is very messy. But here I'm just working on that general flow and energy and we'll
build on that later. I'm trying to remember
that things like his hair and beetles wings are important aids and communicating the
energy of this gesture. So adding motion to the hair and extending the
wings down and out along the line of action really helped to
sell this gesture. My villain is an angry old man. So I wanted to make
sure that even though I have him in an
aggressive pose, thrusting his cane out, that he remains
slightly hunched over. Like it's taking him a lot
of effort to do this motion. Once that initial
sketches out of the way, I'm going to put that on an opacity and start
fleshing it out. I'm taking extra
care to add life and emotion into his facial
expression and again, giving some motion to his hair and even the sleeves
of his tunic. Now it looks even more like
his arms are swinging down. Notice how far extended his left leg is to compensate
for his forward lean. Now onto the hero. I'm actually going to put her in a similar pose as the villain, but you'll notice that I make
some important decisions that make her gesture have a
completely different energy. I keep her chest open
and pressing forward. So her forward lean is not
aggressive but curious. Her arms are splayed out
instead of close together, which makes her look
vulnerable and open. This helps to make her
seem approachable and like a hero as opposed to closed
and scary like the villain. So even though both
my hero and villain have similar lines of
actions and poses, you can see how different
their gestures turned out. The options are really
endless when gesture drawing. I hope that this demo
was helpful to you. And like I've mentioned before, I am always willing
and able to do it. You're over for you if
you run into any trouble.
11. Silhouettes: Now that I've sketched
out my gestures, I want to test my
drawing strength by checking out
their silhouettes. This is easy to do digitally in a new layer
above my drawings. I'll trace around
their perimeters, then fill it in
with a solid black. If you did your drawing
on a piece of paper, you can scan and copy it or trace it and then fill it
in with a black marker. The purpose of this exercise
is to see if the shapes and gesture that I've chosen are striking and
powerful enough. I'm looking to see if my
character's design as clear and recognizable
at a distance. This exercise is
particularly useful for animators and video
game designers as they want to make sure that
their characters will be easily recognized no matter
where they are on the screen. However, you don't have to be designing for video games or animation for this exercise
to also be useful to you, character design no
matter what purpose it's four is all about
communicating story. So if you can read a clear story just from a black
silhouette, you know, you've got something
special going on with your design if you
complete this exercise, but feel like your silhouette
is maybe unclear or vague. Don't fret. That just means that
you have room to clarify your shapes and gesture. Don't give up. Success is just
around the corner. You can always ask for
critique from a friend or put any questions you have
up in the discussions tab, I'd love to do a
draw over for you.
12. Final Thoughts: I want to give you
a big round of applause congrats on
finishing this class. I'm really excited to see your characters in
their new poses. I hope that with
the tools that you gained in this class
that you are able to add just that little extra punch of life into your designs. I also hope that you
see the value of creating a habit of
gesture drawing. If you will routinely
add just a page or two of gestures
into your practice, you will be amazed
at the growth that you see in just a
few months time. Even though it may
seem like a lot to remember all of
these new tools, I promise that as you use them, they will slowly
become ingrained in your memory and it will just
become second nature to you. Soon enough, you won't even be actively realizing that
you're using these tools, you'll gain almost
like a third eye. There'll be able to
tell when a gesture as off and then know how to fix it. It'll also help, you know, if a gesture is to tame, it needs to be pushed a little bit to give it
that spark of life. Just keep drawing. It
will happen soon enough. You will be amazed at the
growth that occurs just from a consistent practice of the things that you
learned in this course, please share your
completed project in the class project
gallery below. I would love to see your work. And of course, if
you have questions, if you want a critique
or a jar over, please ask for it in the
discussions tab as well. I'm so happy to help you and answer any
questions you have. And if you share it online, don't forget to tag me in
them using this handle. You can also ask for
critique or help from any of those social
media platforms as well. This was part two of a
three-part series that I'm doing on the fundamentals of character design
here on Skillshare. If you liked this class, please give it a review. This helps get it out to
other potential students. If you're also interested
in my previous classes or wants to know
when the next one in this series comes out, give me a follow so you
can stay up to date with all the things that
I do here on Skillshare. Well, thank you for
joining me friends. I'm so excited to see you in the next installment
of my series, and I'll be seeing
you again soon. Bye.
Emma Gillette, Freelance Illustrator
