Character Design Masterclass: Design your own characters

1. Character Design Masterclass: Design your own characters: Hey, are you looking for a course that will teach you all the important design principles and show you how to apply them to character design. And this is just the course for you. And this course I will go over all the important principles and design rules that you should know to create amazing and stunning character design so that they sued exactly yearnings. We will look at everything you need to know. So starting with the basics like shape design, we're looking at big, medium, small, at the negative space and Silhouette. But also rules like the 70, 30 rule. Never heard of it. It's because it isn't so popular what it's definitely really important. So we will learn. So you're learning all the important principles and how to apply them to both character design and all of your illustrations in general. This is an older rounder package for your Art to bring it to the next level. Alright, but who am I? My name is vanquish APA and I hadn't been painting and drawing pretty much my entire life. And if you've done a lot of character designs, because character design definitely one of my guilty pleasures. And I've done multiple for them, both for clients and of course for myself. I also learned all of these design principles from my mentor who's now working for big titles like Apex Legends. I can promise you all of the rules and principles aren't just something I made up. They are the foundation for good character designs. So there's nothing really to wait chord, if you're looking for a course that will teach you all about anatomy and facial expressions. I'm sorry to disappoint. This isn't quite what we're going to learn here, but all of these principle can, can be applied both character design and two illustrations. So it's definitely worth giving it a look. Hey, what are you waiting for? I will see you in the course 2. What you can expect: Hello and welcome to the Character Design course. I'm really glad that you want to look into it, and I'm sure you'll have lots of PFK-1. First of all, the introduction. I'm just going to tell you a little bit about what to expect and maybe what you can do already before we even begin. So this is one of the character designs that we're going to make over the course. And I will explain to you exactly a bit by bit what I'm doing and why I'm doing it so that you can understand it and make great designs yourself. Over the, the amount of the course, I will go into all kinds of design topics. And they are working great for character design. But they are also working great for all kinds of other illustrations. I myself learned from my mentor materials much ascii. And he teach me all of these rules and making these in quotation marks because rules always sounds like you're making the entire thing less FUN. But mostly they're just, let's just say in principles more than rules. And they are working great and they will teach you how to look at designs and illustrations and really understand why things are working and why things aren't working. So my suggestion to you right now is to take a few of your own character designs that you've maybe already made up until this point. And maybe make some notes or some mental notes, some written notes depends on what you want to do, on why you think they are great and why you think they might not be as great. And then watch the entire course. And at the end of it, you can go back to your notes and think, alright, I think about it again and really think, okay, what did I learn? Why do I think now that they work and why do I think now that they might not work? Because I'm sure there will be plenty of the stuff that might have changed over the time of watching the course. So let's get into the next section on how to best use this course 3. How to use the course most effectively: Alright, how to best use this course? What exactly do I mean? Of course, the course is structured so that you should watch it from the beginning till the end. And it would make the most sense to watch it that way. But also, if you maybe already watched several courses on character design or you already looked at these principles for a longer while. There's plenty of things that you already know and you don't really want to look at them anymore, then I understand. If you might want to skip a few of the basics. So I tried to start with the very basics like shape design. So maybe it's something you already know, maybe not. Then just go ahead and watch it. And then I tried to be gradually more complicated with design principles that are less known. So if it's something we already know, alright, I don't really need it anymore. Maybe just draw and sketch while you listen to it to see if there's anything new that maybe you haven't heard of yet. And lighter, just pay more attention. Also, I'm going to make a lot of exercises and I would suggest to try and make them as well just so that you really get the knowledge into your nice little brain and can use it without always having to look up the course. So that is another thing. Also, I will just try and have a lot of tips and tricks scattered all across. And you can always look at the names of the different lectures. Of course, I tried to always implement them where they belong. But if something comes up along the way, I can't promise that a valuable tip for you won't be somewhere in-between. For the most part, it's nicely structured. And towards the end, for this project, I will mostly use all of the knowledge and all of the principles that I explained, explained in the beginning and make one design from it. So if you like this design the most and you're just skipping to it and then you don't understand what I'm talking about. That's why. But alright, that's enough talking. Let's start getting into the design principles. 4. What is shape design and why do we need it?: Okay, let's start with the, with the very basics. And that is shape design. So what exactly is shape design and why do we need it? For this example, I have a bunch of Pixar characters here. And let's just see how, what they exactly have in common with shape design. Maybe you already know quite a bit about shape design. But even here I think there's still some things that you might be able to learn. So let's look exactly what we can find. Shape design. I chose a nice red color, is basically everything about cubes and squares, circles, triangles, and organic shapes. So what does it have to do with all of these characteristics? Well, let's just quickly, let me show you how they use a lot of shape design and do it in a really easy to see ways. So first of all, here we have this character who has basically two squares as a body. One Square for the head, one Square for the body. Then next week we have a character who is almost a perfect circle and has two tiny triangles on the top. Another character here, it's just one big ellipse. Here's another one. Next character, again. Nice square here as well, one Square and another one. You can start to see that they are basically all just different simple shapes at the end of today here as well. And also over here, a lot of squares. So if we start breaking down all of these different characters, we can easily see, alright, they have these really basic shapes as their main part of the body. And now we want to know why is then why did he get a box and why did he get an ellipse? What exactly is the difference? And why do we want to have more characters that are more rounded or that are more box shaped. All of it comes down to different meanings that we associate with the different geometrical forms. So let's look at each one bit by bit and see exactly what is associated with what shape 5. The cube/square: Okay, Let's start nice and simple with the cube or Square. And what exactly do we associate with Square with this shape? So first of all, if you want to, you can pause the video on this point and write down all kinds of things that you associate with this shape and see how much matches up like the normal descriptions. And maybe if there's something new or if you associate something else with it. Or maybe you never started associating anything with shapes, which is totally fine too. Then I will show you exactly what I mean and why we associate certain things. So let's first of all, I will create another box shape here, making it a little bit prettier. Alright? And now if we look at it, we see, okay, what could this be? For example, maybe tower, skyscraper or something, which is just basically tons of different squares and boxes placed on top of each other. And then we can ask ourselves, what do we associate with sky crisp skyscrapers and houses? And we will quickly get to simple things like stability. And they are flexible. So let's just quickly write some of that down. So it's stable. It is unmovable. They are strong, and maybe also rugged. So all in all, just pretty a pretty tough shape. And we'll also just put this in the corner. And now let's just try and quickly make some more box shapes. Here. Doesn't have to be super pretty. And I will quickly just try and paint a nice figure, more or less nice. And let's see what do we think about this kind of figure out? What does it tell us if it has this kind of shape? So things are figures like this as silhouette like this, mostly provokes things like strong, for example, as you already have it here. Maybe also trustworthy. Doesn't really look like a shady person, more like someone. Then you could go to and ask maybe what also kind of towering on top of you. And maybe he's also steady. So all in all, this would be a good shape to make designs. Maybe like robots or a night or something. It really works well. So here now if we make this and give you maybe boxy shield and a boxy sort, then we have just a lot of boxes. Okay, this one tiny sharp design would otherwise it's just boxes. And we already have a night and we can read this more easily. Then again, also a good way to use for more of a robotic design. I'm not exactly amazing at drawing robots, so please don't hate me if it looks kinda bad. I'm more of a fantasy type character. But I will try and prove my point here by making a spider kinda robot and mostly giving it some box shapes. And you can see, okay, we can make some designs that are kind of robotic with these boxes and we don't really need any other shapes. The cube already on its own, has a lot of potential. And these are the kind of things that we associate with them. So if you want to make a character that has any of these traits are that should go into this direction than using a lot of cube shapes is definitely the way to go. And this is the first shape. And now let's look at the second one, the square or the circle. The circle, not the square. So let's look at the circle next. 6. The circle: Alright, Next on the list is circle here again, if you want to, you can do a small pause on the video and write down all kinds of things that you associate with it. If before there was already there was still a little bit unclear what I meant. They're associating different traits that I'm sure now you have an idea of what I mean. So if you want to just pause it, writes them down and then look afterwards how close they were to what we are going to write down now. Or if you have maybe something else that I missed, one that you associate with it that isn't as common. For example, if you look at the circle, what do we, what do we associate with it? Well, if I'm going to say things like soft baby face, then there's already something here. It's soft or something else, maybe like innocent. Another one we could put up here into the corner as the circle, as a basic shape and just put some things around it. And suddenly we have a son. So also things like happy and maybe also harmless. A lot of small animals or as I said, a baby or all of these have a lot of round shapes or sometimes faces that are really like easy to talk to audit are generally looking nice to us. Often have like a radiant round face and then another shape. Then we can just try out here and I will make just Color Fill. For example, if I'm just stacking three on top of each other than we already have like a snowman. So generally, as you can see, there is really all kinds of positive, easy, soft things to connect with its solid shoes, right? Friendly down as well. We also connect things with it. Like for example, let me show you. If I take this one and I will just move it here and stretch it, then suddenly. We can also connect things like movement with it. You can also think about some kind of bowl that is going down, dropping down somewhere and moving around. So a lot of round shapes we have to do with movement. If you lay down a marble, it'll immediately move. So these are things that we connect with it as well. And the other thing if we're looking at it, is things like infinite, for example. So generally that's a lot that we connect with the circle. Generally unready, nice, open form. Let's just quickly make an ugly looking smiley because I'm not this kind of stuff. Just trying to prove my point here. Give him a tiny round nose and a happy mouth, which has some corners of course, but generally it's big and round and we trusted and it's all nice when we can even give it some round eyebrows, maybe in to the other direction. So the ICER and we have a nice-looking face. So these are all the things that are connected with roundness and what this shape. So if you want to have a design that is more happy, nice, friendly based than triangle with their circle. Alright, now that the circle and the principles of it are down, let's next look at something like the triangle 7. The triangle: Next shape that is one of my favorite shapes, so to say, is the triangle. And for the triangle, there is two versions. So to say one which is the stable 1.1, which is the less stable one. And if you want to, you can again go ahead and write some down, pause the video and then compare to what you have to the things that I'm going to write down now. And so for the triangle up here, what are the things that we connect with it? If we think about the pyramid, we can think about something like balance for example. And also if you think about a lot of ties or whatever, it was balanced and oftentimes you will find some triangles on it. But aside from that, There's also more. And again, if we think about the pyramid, there's also something like mystical or maybe even divine. Also, if we're thinking about musical than I only really have to do this in here. And you will know exactly why we think about mystical and what the triangle in such a popular shape for this kind of stuff. Just to think about the eye and the triangle and the Illuminati and immediately to triangle will be connected to these things, then also Illuminati, we can also write down something like evil for example. And also if you think about this shape than in traffic, you've probably seen it already. It's just there to Warners. So it could be something like danger as well. And also of course sharp. And if it's upside down, it's also a lot of imbalance. So it could be balanced but also imbalance. Hope it's written like this. And if you put a triangle this side, it could be also something like a leading type of feeling to it. So really all kinds of things. And again, it's really cool shape to connect to all kinds of things. And if you just take it and want to make it into a danger type of shape, you really just have to put another one in there and then maybe fill this out. And then you already have a dangerous symbol mode. If you think about the kind of mountains and maybe there's some divinity, some godly Hold on top of it. Then the mountain and the triangle suddenly stands for the divine. So these kinds of things are all connected to the triangle. Also, sometimes if you want to make a character is a bit more dangerous or arrogant. Sometimes maybe you just take some small, tiny horns and you add them on top. And they are all triangles as well. So this is generally a good shape for adding mystical, divine, whatever. Just making the whole design a little bit more interesting if you're trying to go away from a good, Totally nice guy kind of character. And then definitely try to triangle. And it'll be more evil and mystical and maybe a little bit less predictable 8. Organic shapes: Alright, and now for last, are organic shapes that you can read a categorize, and any of the other three geometrical categories. And they are just as important anyways. And now again, same thing. You can pause, write down some stuff and compare it. And already if we look at the shape that I just drew in here so that you'll understand what exactly I mean with organic shapes. We can immediately think about things like nature. If we think about water than maybe also flow. If we're there, then maybe also something like flexible and unpredictable. But of course there's also organic shapes. Maybe like some clouds. And we could connect things like freedom with them. Also just quickly draw branch in here. I think maybe you can also tell that these are some of the shapes that I really like as there's a lot of, as it already sent me a lot of freedom and how you draw them in order any bound by too many rules or too many restrictions. And you can basically just go however you want. One other point is also in here is creative and maybe also unusual. And all kinds of shapes go into the organic shapes because whatever you can really categorize as a geometrical shape is and organic shapes. So if you find an animal that has scales, maybe you can't really put them into boxes or triangles. Then it's probably a organic shapes. Using them for any kind of designs that are supposed to be more nature-based and, or a character that is more creative, or maybe close to nature and earth. Then using organic shapes is definitely the way to go. And you're going to have a lot of freedom using them. And I hope now you understood all of the different shapes. And if you think back to our characters from the beginning, maybe now look at them again and think, okay, why does what character have what kind of form? And then you will understand, alright, this isn't just made because someone thought it was a funny shape, but because there is some design thought behind it. And next let's see if we can, how we can put this in some exercise so that you can really remember it and start using it for your own designs. 9. Exercise for shape design: Good. Then let's look at a nice, easy, simple exercise to try out these shape design. And for this exercise, and we'll basically just take my shapes that I just used and just stack them on top of each other, kinda similar to the snowman that I had in the beginning. Just going to stack some shapes and see what kind of characters I can make out of it. Maybe also try to fill them. So do we have different silhouettes? And then just try and fill the entire canvas with all kinds of shapes and see what happens. Of course also you can start connecting them and make different designs with different shapes and just see what you can come up with. And also just stretch them in different ways so that you can try and see, okay, what happens when I change something in another way? If I make them smaller and bigger, what does my brain associated with it? And then try and get a feeling for these shapes. And they don't have to look great. It's really mostly all about understanding the shape and seeing what it does when your brain, if you use it. Or maybe you can find some animals or some objects around you that remind you of some shapes already. Then of course you can try and break this down as well. For example, here just trying penguin, which is basically it's just a lot of rounded shapes on top of each other. And of course just trying some organic shapes as well. So what happens? I'm doing this kind of shape. So we can see that if I put something and organic shape in here, immediately I have a lot more flow in the whole thing compared to the other ones that I'm kind of keeping within the limits. And this definitely can help you make character designs. If you're going for something more dynamic than maybe try and have more of a organic shapes in it. And if you're trying to go for something stable than have more of the boxes shapes in them. Here also, then when I'm just doing this kind of Pokemon kind of look to it, I can immediately tell you that it's probably going to be a great idea. If you already know plenty of Pokemon or you don't know them, to just Google this and look at the kind of shapes that they use. And you will also see that they have lot of shape design in them. So this isn't really looking like a proper Pikachu, but you can still kinda guess it and you can also read it really easy because we use these simple shapes that we can associate them really quickly and easily. So try and see where you can find a lot of designs of four characters and then break them down into the different shapes. And see, and think why they used, what shape do they want to character to be evil that I want to character to be nice. What shapes Do they use? Why did they use them? And that way you will also learned a lot quicker. And it's a really nice way to understand designers and understand that everything they're doing and all of the shapes are a deliberate process and there's no coincidence. And within a well-thought design 10. Practical use: Great. Now that we looked at all the different shapes and the basics of it, Let's try and put them into use. So here I have three basic poses prepared. And as you can see, the one in the middle already Hazard Layer behind it. And I just trace the outline and then I filled it with a light gray. So there's no crazy magic to it. If you want to use exactly the same one, you can do the same. Just select a pose here, just take selection tool and then select the whole thing. It's pretty inseminated at symbol and then fill it with a really soft light gray. And next, I'm going to get rid of the other two. I made a group here. Sorry, It's so in German, know your group. It's new group. I'm just going to rename it new group. And then I will duplicate the whole thing and place them next to each other so that I can make three different ones. And just try out how it works exactly. Okay? Now, what I'm going to do is first make the background just a little bit more gray or even darker gray. So that if I use any white tones or anything, I can clearly see them. And then I will make a layer above. Where is the one I want? These are the other two, this one the middle. So I will make a new layer and clip it to my gray layer. So now here it's this middle one and I clipped it. And then I'm going to use a brush and start looking for shapes and start looking for designs. And focus mostly on the basic geometric shapes. So just see if I find something that looks cool and work with them. Maybe this one is too dark. And then just see, okay, what happens if I use these basic shapes and try and find something, some kind of design that works. Of course, also, if you're immediately more into mixing them, you can do that too. For now, I will try and somehow restrict myself so that I can see how well they work and if I liked. And already you can see just by layering some of the basic shapes on top of each other. We also get some other interesting shapes that might be interesting later. And this method is just really easy because we don't really have to do any crazy kind of painting. And just by layering the dark color on top of the lighter one, the eye already perceives as some kind of clothing. So we're not so amazing and painting any close, we can just use this method. Even if you're amazing and painting clothing, this is just a quicker method to simply layer these on top. And when we have that later, It's also easier to just use these shapes. And then imagine what kind of material or what it could be later on instead of imagining that ride from the beginning. Alright? And then if I want to, I can also use some layers and put them on top so that I can paint over it and outside of it and try and do even more stuff that maybe matches. So here if I want to expand the shape, I can just draw over it. And then just try see if I liked the idea or not. This one, maybe not the best idea ever. So just going to see what looks cool and what doesn't. Maybe in this case, I will put it behind the character so that I won't paint on top. So just the opposite. And then just try more and see what kind of Silhouette might look cool if we also remember is doing the silhouette shapes. So we can try and expand on that as well and see if there's something that invokes our interests. And now it's basically just a bunch of circles and ellipses. But we already have some kind of futuristic, I would say, Design. And let's also try and give her some kind of hairstyle. And maybe finish it all with a simple round shape. And already you can see it wasn't too much work. And we already have an interesting looking design. Maybe I can make another circle on top. And now with only mostly just using round shapes, we already have something that we could work with. But now let's try and do the same for triangles and also pox shapes. So I'm going to close the group and then do the same thing with the other two. So let's just see what can I do with triangles? Again, it's an amazing shape and it really works great on the body in my opinion. So I can just do a lot of triangles and a lot of cut, cut out and just see how it works. And he would can see there's already one triangle. Maybe we want to get another one. In my, in my opinion, to triangle shape just really works well on the body because you can just layered on top, decides can kinda hug some areas. So now we have triangle here. Some more triangles. Just really works well. And we can just put even more all around. And of course, I'm just still going to use some slightly rounded lines. Because if I imagined that there is some kind of fabric going over the leg, it should still be rounded because the leg isn't just a straight line. And then also see if I can do something that is a bit more asymmetrical. Because if it's too symmetrical and predictable than the design is also a little bit more boring. So I'll try and have some, some irregular patterns in there. Okay? Alright, and next, I'm also going to use one again that is on the top. And then see if I can do something around the head with a triangle. That might look cool. Good, try and make some kind of modern, which for example, and I'm just going to make the head, even though it's triangle based, still give it some volume in the back. Otherwise it might just look a little bit strange. So I'm going to make a layer behind here and just fill it in. So this is around with shape, but otherwise it doesn't work too well. And all in all it's still reads as a triangle, so to say. And then maybe on the top, this layer that is overlapping, it can also make it On top of the sketch and try have something to triangle E here as well. Maybe some kind of clothing that makes it triangle that folds around here. Then clean it up a bit more. And I can do the same for decides maybe on the back and just have some kind of clothing that goes down and make some triangle shapes. And already it's making it a lot more interesting by breaking open the silhouette, so to say. And I can of course also see if I want to make anything on the shoulders. Alright, already looks pretty good. So maybe just going to make small triangle here for some kind of hair. And we can see, alright, this design is really triangle based. It looks a lot more, just more edgy and evil compared to the other one. But it also works pretty well. So let's now also do the same thing, but with more box shapes. Again, layer above clipping. And then I can start painting on it more easily and see what I can do with some, some boxes. Of course I'm not going to make the edges to straight because again, the body is pretty curved, making it super, super straight. We'll just look weird. But overall it will just be boxy shapes and straighter lines. And it's also totally fine to start with something that is unlike demos, crazy, new inventive ideas. So just having, so to say shorts and a top for the beginning is totally fine. And we can always add interests later by implementing something that isn't as usual maybe. And here also just trying to get something a little bit more irregular by not having the same height on something. And now again, I can see what I can do up here. I'm having too many layers. So I'm just going to quickly merge some down. And now I can paint again. And then here just trying to have a kind of boxy haircut, which of course I'm also going to round out because he had his round. Some terrorists limits to our box units. If I make just a box as a head will maybe be a bit weird. Although it can also stretch to form pretty much. And it still works and is readable. And now for the Silhouette to make it even more interesting, just going to see maybe trying to give her an oversized big boxy jacket, which I'm also just going to make with a lot of just boxy shapes here. It's not like a perfect cube that I'm going to use as a shape. What it's going to be really big and blocky and boxy. And in probably some pretty heavy shoulders. So it's easier to read as some kind of QE form. Then currently it might not be easy to read the overlaps ear and what? That's always something we can change later. For now, it's just interesting to see if we like to form and the oval shape. And maybe giving the whole thing a few more interesting points by adding something to the silhouette behind. So maybe some kind of straps that are also boxes at the end of today. Just some really, really stretched. And they can go from the arms or from the back somewhere. It doesn't matter as long as it looks nice enough. Don't really have to think too much about the how exactly it works aspect of a design yet. Alright, and just adding these in already makes it look a lot cooler in my opinion, at least give some interests to the whole thing. Make some smaller shapes in there as well. And I'm just going to make it bit more softer here. Alright. And now we already have three designs that are basically just working with the normal unspectacular shapes. But again, you can see what kind of feeling they invoke. This one is a little bit more I don't know, it looks a little bit more futuristic to me. This one has more of this witchy vibe and this is kind of a more modern things. So just try out what you can do with the different shapes and see what they tell you about character. So that you can really understand what shape does, what kind of stuff. What already you can see. You can do quite a bit and come quite far with just these shapes. And I didn't even make a design with the organic ones. So there's a lot more possibilities. And of course, as soon as you start combining those, then again, even more designs, there's unlimited possibilities 11. What does 70/30 mean: So if the course has been helpful so far, then maybe do me a favor and leave a positive review. I love to help you and you can help me out by leaving a nice rating. So please go ahead and do just that if you haven't done it yet. Okay. 70, 30 rule. What exactly do I mean by it? When I tried to Google, it wasn't exactly helpful and it wasn't a lot that I could learn from it, but it's something that you should definitely keep in mind and that is used all the time in designs and not just in character design, but an illustration in general. What exactly do I mean by it? So there's the 70, 31, but together with the 70, 30 will also be the at 21.60, 40. I think you spotted a common theme because together they always are hundreds. So 70, 30, it's all about percentage. And so what exactly do I mean what this rule? So let's just look at a nice square here. And I will take some colors and just fill it. Try and fill it. Half and half. Alright, let's fill that in. And then maybe the other part with a yellow. And we can see that this is nice and simple and it works, but it isn't quite so interesting. I wouldn't really say that there is a special design to it, or that it has anything crazy going forward aside from the two colors. So let's just do the same again. And this time, I will try my best to fill the whole thing. Would 70% of this color and then 30% of the rest. So maybe this is around 70%, and now the rest and the yellow. So maybe around 30%. There's still a small white line. We can already see that here. There's definitely a lot more going on. Maybe over-excited rating a little bit. But I think that you know what I mean? That now the yellow has a lot more important, so to say, because both colors are not divided equally anymore, they're suddenly is a shift in what's important and what matters more. And let's try and do the same with 6,040.80, 20. So for this one, even less space for yellow here, mid more space. Of course I'm not measuring this absolutely perfectly. What should be good enough to get the point? Now we can see, the more I reduce the yellow, the more important it suddenly gets. So while it is getting less, our eye is focusing on it more. The more I just reduce the color, the more it starts to be the main object. And the rest of the collar is moving into the background. Now, I will try and do exactly the same again. But this time instead of just doing this, doing the boxes like this, I will instead take the red and fill all of it. Now if I take my yellow color and I'm just going to make one big yellow square in the middle. That is maybe taking out 20 to 30% of it. Then suddenly my point gets even clearer that suddenly the one that is less starts to become more important. So definitely really important if we want to have special recognition for attention to really reduce the rate and what we're showing light and dark. For this example, I did it with two colors. But really we can just take another layer and just going to make it here like a gray. Put it on top of it and say Color. And then suddenly everything is unblock and white. And we can also see that it's the same with the values. I pretty much just used two colors to make it a little bit more appealing. But it really is all about dividing light values and dark values. And the more we just push one, the more importance it gets. So now that we know what it is, Let's look at a few more concrete examples so that you really understand my point. And we don't have to look at these boring boxes any longer. 12. Readability through 70/30: So let's talk readability. I already explained you what the 70 30 is about. So now let's see how that helps us when we make designs to make them more readable. For these explanations, I just chose to use several already finished artworks so that you can see how other illustrators and designers use them and how I use them. Instead of just me making a bunch of ugly quick drawings here to try and get across my point. I think it helps more to see some actual artworks and see how it was implemented in professional work. So that's why we're just going to look at several and I will show you exactly what I mean. So we look at this one, we can see, alright, the main aspect, the main value of this design. Also there is only Art. Artists are written down, so go check them out. But here the main aspect of the design is white. So if we look at the thing, the whole thing is supposed to be some kind of, I don't know, I don't know what a character. But I guess there's some holy divine this to it since we have a son pattern here and this white golden color. What we can also see that whoever made it, he made it, chose to not go completely white with a whole design. And we look, we can see, okay, the skin tone is a bit darker and we have these black parts within the design, instead of all of them being a white. Although the percentage, I would say is a lot less than the white. So it may be also again 70, 30. So most of the part is light value and bright and just a little bit is darker. And now, if I am going to be a little bit rude and just draw over some of the black parts. Then you can see that the readability will get worse and worse. Because we can just CLS and less what is even going on. Because the darker parts just to help us divide the whole thing into different sections. And if I just destroyed the order that is built up here and make everything bright and white. Now, it still works as upgrade design because as a design itself is great. But it's just a lot harder to read exactly what is going on here. And if I make some parts even brighter in here, then it's just a lot of areas fighting for attention and we don't really know where to look, just like one big mass. And if I turn this away, then it's super easy, super clear to read. Suddenly the whole design, it makes it a lot more sense than if everything is kinda the same brightness. So that is definitely one example that shows it really well. Just using some parts that are way darker than the rest. And just having a nice, easy way for the eye to look at it. But of course it also works the other way around. If a design is really dark and which should be a little bit brighter. So let's look at another example. Here we can see mostly the painting you can say is a darker painting. But of course here again, it isn't all just black and dark colors. Otherwise, we can't really see anything. So there's just a bit of a brighter color here in there. So let's see here. I use a nice read. And of course you can see this part is super bright than the head is really bright and it's sticking out. And we also have some parts down here that are relatively bright. And I would say this one is like a medium. Brightness would definitely still counts towards to bright compared to these darker parts. And again, if we think about it, I would say around 70% to 80% of the painting are darker values. And just a little bit the smaller part that is supposed to be important are the light values. So we are immediately focusing on whatever it's supposed to be important. And the design in itself makes a lot of sense. So if I'm just going to be a little bit rude again and just take a darker color and paint over it. I'm trying to make it relatively well sorted. Isn't just me trying to make a super bad job here. But I think already you can tell. Then it still works. And I still try to go with the lights so that this source is a bit brighter than the rest. But it's also suddenly a little bit more boring. And the whole thing and not only focuses on the head, and it loses a bit of balance on the overall design. And if I take it away again, it looks way more interesting and it's way more easier to read the silhouette. So if I make a pretty small and I put the dark color, it's not really easy to see where her body is going exactly. And as soon as I take it off, then it's really easy to see what exactly is happening. So this is a great way to focus on readability. Make the whole design more interesting. And just really try and show the viewer what is going on and what is supposed to be important. So that is one aspect and we're just going to focus on making it more interesting aspect a bit more and I will show you some more examples so you really understand what I mean? 13. Creating interest with 70/30: Alright, next up, we have some more character designs by more different artists. Again, be sure to check them out. They're all amazing. And if you don't know Art session, this is your call to go on the website and really start bulging yourself in it. It's greater than it's filled with so many talented artists. So definitely be sure to take a look. So next up is creating interest with the 70 30 rule. Here again, we can see that the overall design choice is bright with light values. But of course they are really super parent and super easy to see that there are some parts that are really, really dark. So immediately we can see, alright, this is not just a dole design. We already have some points that are catching our attention. Again, making them also more readable and making the whole design more interesting. So by just placing these darker parts on the design hour, I immediately knows where it's supposed to look. So these are the points of interests on the design. And here, for this example, it's also a character from a video game. And if we think about having these kinds of designs for video games, it's important to know this one is later shown pretty small in the video game. So whatever we see should be something that is easy to catch even if the size of the character is rather small. So if I make this kind of small, It's pretty easy to read still. And we have these really big dark parts and it's because these kind of tails, whatever are the weapon she uses. So they should be really easy to see and easy to read. And it's probably why the Illustrator decided to make these really big areas that are dark, same with the feet. So it's easy to see where they're going and how it looks. And the tips of the hand here also in the hands are really dark. And there's some on the head over here. So it's always easy to see where the head is, where the hands are going. And of course, the most important one where the weapon is. And again, if I would just take a color and go over it, then the design suddenly starting to be a lot more uninteresting and more boring because now it's just like one big pink, whatever. And suddenly it's not really that much more than interesting anymore. So doing these and creating interests with the 70, 30 and really placing some different values wherever you need them can make all the difference even though whatever is shown, there might not be the most interesting thing ever. So here, I don't want to be rude, but like grips are not like a crazy design invention, but they work really nice and it looks super cool because they are just way darker than whatever the rest we see. Same here on the fingers. It's not like there is a crazy shape that has never been seen before. But just to contrast makes it that much more interesting. And of course, I myself, I'm trying to do the same thing as well. So when I'm making characters, I'm trying to see, alright, what is the point of attention and what's supposed to be important to the viewer. What's important is supposed to be important is always the phase and the upper part of the body. Legs, mostly not so much. So here in this design, most is like medium to light values. And then all the dark values and all the contrast is around the face. And that's just when we make it a lot more smaller. We're not paying too much attention to whatever is going on at the bottom, but only to what's going on at the top. So here I would also say it's like maybe 60, 70% are light values. And then the 2030 to 40% are darker ones. And they are pretty much all placed on the top. Here we have some darker ones on the bottom. But there's like really dark ones next to read the light ones. So the contrast will still make our I go and look up there. But of course you can also see this one maybe works even better because it's even clearer. Where are is supposed to look. When you're making a design. And you're not quite sure if it's working or N, If the attention is drawn enough to the places you want it to have, maybe try and darken the whole design or lightened the whole design, and then add some really dark or light contrast points to wherever you want the viewer to look. And I'm sure it, and I can promise you, it'll work like magic. 14. Focus and guiding the view with 70/30: And last but not least, I'm going to talk about focus and guiding the view. And for this part I will use some examples that aren't directly just simple character designs, but have a little bit more to do with illustration as a whole, although it works, vice versa. So if you have a character design, what I just explained, it works really well. What I'm also just going to show how we can use it in entire illustrations to guide the view. I think it's always nice to learn these rules and know that they aren't just applied for character design, but rather all kinds of design aspects in whatever you're going to make. So let's look at it here. If we look at the values, we can see it's mostly a bright and light picture. What do we have this giant chunk of dark color up here. Aside from that, we also have these high contrast and darker colors that are around here. And the rest of the picture aside from smaller parts here and there is pretty light, is pretty bright. What does that do? So when we're looking at it, our eyes are immediately drawn to the points of highest contrast. And since most of the picture is super bright and we have these really dark high contrast areas around here. We already know where to look immediately. An hour I just wanders straight to this area. Would widen. Do we have this super dark area on top? Couldn't it just be light as well? That is simply because if we made the entire picture is super bright, I can see, if I can make it might not look super great. Then we can see suddenly for some reason these parts aren't as interesting anymore and they're kind of losing significance because suddenly everything is just a big wash of color. Of course, this one still has the orange tones, but it still doesn't work as nicely anymore and there is some balance missing suddenly. So here by having this super dark part and having this area which has really a bright values and really dark values, our view is immediately guided. Plus, since it's on the top and the top part is kind of dark here. We look at the painting and up here there's nothing going on there as pretty much no details underwater. It's just pretty much a dark mass. So if we look at it, our eye immediately already saw everything it wants to see. It's like, alright, this is a dark part, That's it. And then our view is wandering down. And as soon as our view is wandering down, we have these points of interests on which we want to look at longer. Because if our view keeps wandering down, we see this area is like super bright. And that is also really easy to grasp right away. There is more detail in there, but it's kind of washed out and doesn't have this super high-contrast area. So we just keep ending up looking exactly where the artist wants us to look. And it has a nice balance and the painting isn't looking boring or something because we have this pretty big dark area. That just again uses the 70, 30 rule. So instead of like 90% being bright and only like ten per cent having some darker values. We have this nice balance of light colors and dark colors. Then next up here, another nice example on how the view is guided things to the rules and of course other aspects. But here we can see that we have a character is somewhat in the middle. And then we have this area over here, which is kind of dark and taking up maybe 20 to 30%. And then the major part of the image is more bright. And immediately our view is guided from the darker part that has pretty much know details, no interests towards to character. And the character itself is bright, but has a lot of areas that are a mixture of darker values and really light values. On this part. Here again, on the hand, we have a darker value in the folds and into clothing. And then we have a more brighter values with the fingers and the background. And also super parent here, we have this dark part that is the hair and then this really bright part that is the background So it's creating a lot of contrast and our eyes drawn to it. And if there was just a bunch of darker elements all around the background. So for example, like these parts of the branches, if they were over there, I can also try and see if I make I can make a really bad job. Just copy pasting it in there. Let's try and copy paste it and make it over here. Of course, it looks pretty bad. But I think you still understand my point. It still works because there is some bright areas. But also you can see it immediately starts losing interests and it's not as easy to read anymore than if we would have just this dark area over here and just a bright area over there. It's a lot more nicer on the eye and easier to look at. There's still some branches in the back, but they're super, super bright and far away so that our view is guided more easily. Another thing that we can see here is that a lot of what's going on, a lot of the values are also placed in a way that they are leading the eye directly to the character. So there's darker ones here which are going up. And the branches are also dark. And all are pointing to the Character and to the interesting parts of the painting. And also if you look at the overall values in total, we can see that one of the most interesting points that we are supposed to look at is this one probably because there's something happening here and the artist wants us to look at this effect, which is hard enough to draw. So if we look at it, we can see, alright, This part is definitely the brightest part of the entire image. So we have no other choice than looking at it and looking at the face. And our view keeps circling around. And only if you really start to force ourselves to look somewhere else, you can see, oh, here's another character and there's another character. And then there's actually a dragon in here. So this is a painting I've already looked at multiple times and it took me really long, like two or three times when I looked at it until I realized that there was an entire Dragon in the background. That's because our view is so focused on the Character and all the details and values and contrasts in here. It really takes some time until we look at anything else. So yes, I hope you understood how important the 70, 30 is, how much it can help us directive you get some interests in the painting. And in general help make all kinds of designs, not just character design and lot more readable and lot better to focus on and just overall work a lot better 15. Exercise for 70/30: Okay, and easy exercise you can do for it is just filling your Canvas. May the bunch of boxes. Or alternatively, if you can't see anymore boxes, you can also use circles or triangles. You're kinda open to what shape you want to use. I'm just going to use boxes to make it easier on myself. And then you can just use whatever colors you want, or maybe just try and restrict yourself to black and white. I'm just going to quickly make the entire background darker. And then I'm just going to work with black and white and see how I can fill these shapes and see how I can create points of interests by playing around with the amount of lighter values and darker ones and see, okay, does it work? Does your rule apply? How can I focus how can I guide the view to focus on specific things that I want to be focused on. So here, use the example. Darker values are the kind of background and the small lighter values are immediately what our eye is starting to focus on. And if I would start to make the entire thing more brighter, 5050, then suddenly it would lose a lot of interests. And this one would still work the best. Even though before it was really clear and easy to see what I wanted the viewer to see and focus. Of course, the other way around with darker ones. That works as well. And then I can see Orion, what happens if I just put an object here of interests and then maybe try and make setup that guides the view towards it. So this is our high contrast one. Just remember the illustration we had earlier. And then we're going to use a lot of shapes that are kind of pointing towards it and see if it works or not. I'm trying to keep them here on the bottom. And already we can see this is our point of interests and what's important. And this element of the painting is just helping it, so to say, so that we know exactly what we want to look at. Now I'm just going to use a mid gray on purpose and see what I can do by making some darker areas. Generally in works really well if we have a darker bottom and a more brighter top. Because this is a kind of setup that we're used to from nature. Mostly the sun is shining on the top and then it gets, we have less and less light towards the bottom. So it makes a lot of sense to have the brightest on the top and then get gradually darker. And now that we've, I have this setup where it's separated. You can already see, okay, I've put more emphasis on doing it darker colors on the bottom. And now let's make something, some kind of point of interest here. So I'll just make the rough silhouette of a tree, for example, that kind of emerges from the darker colors and then branches out towards the top. And of course, I could've used all kinds of different shapes. Just use entry now becomes relatively easy for me to quickly painted and illustrated. And things to the differentiation in light and darker values. It's super clear to what we want to look at here. And it still looks like a mostly dark painting. Doesn't really look like a super happy setup. But we still want to use some brighter and lighter colors so that we know exactly where the point of interests is and what we want to look at here. And of course I could push that even more. And it would probably have an even stronger effect. You can already see if we make it small. This already Simple, already works as a kind of composition. So really you can just go ahead and make a bunch of boxes and shapes. Maybe try start filling them with a mid gray and then see what you can do simply by adding some lighter elements to it and try and keep it 70%, 30. And I'm not drawing any characters here. I'm just doing whatever. Of course you can also do the whole thing on characters already. I'm going to apply this more to my character in the next step. But for now, just trying this on shapes that are indefinite because it's easier to draw whatever shapes and drawing and tie your characters would if it's something you wanna do, then of course, go ahead and try it out. And here, just having these kind of landscape P, Mountain View to it. And you can see it also applies to environmental design. We wanted to try and keep it 70, 32, so that the viewer knows what's important here. What's always impulse to look at? Just really making it easy to guide the view. And just try that out. Of course, you can try and implement some kind of stuff into the painting, which you can also just go ahead and make some gradients. See if you like more of you, maybe IT person who is more towards the 70, 30, or if you prefer 60, 40, or maybe at 20. It's also a little bit of personal preference. And of course, whatever you want to depict, the more dramatic you want to have the illustration and design, then choosing at 20 is probably better. If you want to have a more harmonious and calm design, then using 60, 70 is probably the way to go. Alright, I think for now, of course I haven't filled all of them, but I think it goes and proves the point. So just try and go ahead and do this exercise as well. In the next step, I'm going to implement it on some of the character or someone then designs that I've made before and just see how well it works. 16. Practical use: Back with the designs. And as you can see, I decided to keep going with one of them, the box E1 because I think it has enough potential. So let's see what we can take out of it. And I want to go into any crazy details for now. I will only try and look at the values so that the 70 30 is applied. Currently, if we look at it, we can see that it's already kind of work here. There is some darker values, so I would say maybe around 70% of darker ones and then a few lighter ones because of the skin. So let's try and see what happens if we try and push it or maybe change some of it. So I will Alpha Lock what I did here and then try and work with some darker ones on some parts and maybe lighten them up on another area. So let's just try and make a dark pair of pants and maybe a pretty light top and maybe some lighter boots. Alright, I think this is a little bit too dark, so I'm just going to lighten it a tiny bit. This is not a tiny bit. This is a tiny bit. Alright, and then next, now that I've darkened these, I think these parts of the arms can also be darker. Maybe here. And then I will continue going around and maybe lighten some of them up. Can probably be even lighter so that there is some contrast between the skin tone and D here. And now I can also see what happens if I make the check it a bit lighter. And of course there's some contrast missing now, so I'm just going to make some parts just be darker so it's more easy to read. And then I'm also missing some color here. Alright. Again, just using Emmet bit of shadow. Otherwise, you'll have a hard time seeing what I'm painting. Okay. So this is more of a lighter kind of design. I would say. Of course it would make D pens even brighter because currently, if we think about the rules, were drawing some attention to the bottom and we don't really need a lot of attention on the bottom. So I can make them a bit brighter. So that we're having more attention up here because right now this is a really high contrast area. And if I want to push this even more, I could go ahead and maybe get some gradient in the hair. And it's not super easy to see currently. Because there's a lot going on. But already you can see, alright, there's some more contrast going on at the top and less on the bottom. So our view is going to the area that is the highest contrast. And I could push this even more by adding more and more dark contrast shapes and values on the top. Alright, let's go to the next one. Also for this one, just make it a bit easier to see what I mean. I'm going to just make a small box around it. And make the background darker. So and how it's way easier to see. And not just all blending in with the gray from the background. So depending on what kind of design you have, should never need to pay attention that the background is not fighting the colors within the character. So let's try the same here. And maybe make the overall thing darker towards the bottom and then make it slightly lighter towards the top without having the difference too big. So even darker butt's probably. And then maybe some really bright and white hair again. And already you can see it works pretty well if we're having a lot of the parts really dark. And just drawing out of attention to the top by having some of the only really bright and light values there. And maybe leaving the jacket in a middle gray. Alright, I'm not going to change it a lot more. And now going to the last one, I think I want to have a kind of a light jacket. Maybe even brighter. Just try out what happens if I make it really bright aside from it being a mess. Okay? And now I will take all their elements and make them even darker. So just making some really dark hair. And then form the rest of the clothing. Just going to see what works. I think maybe a maybe also having a gradient could be interesting. Then also definitely works for the socks slash shoes. I could do it the other way around and let it get more lighter towards the bottom. And maybe just have some points of interest here so that the design isn't just drowning in the dark spots down here. Same here. I can just make some white ends and then make the top parts Docker. Alright, and already we can see the different designs. Or I tried to do some kind of stuff and implement something that our view is directed to where it's supposed to be. I would say these two are a bit stronger than this one because this one is still missing some contrast. So I think I could just, for example, make some darker parts here. Because right now we don't really have a really strong difference between dark mediums and light grays. So making some more even darker blacks could definitely make it more interesting. And of course on this, at this stage, I can also start introducing some of the other basic geometric shapes. So if I want to make a triangle here, there is nothing stopping us now. We can try and implement whatever we feel like implementing. Alright, I think for now this works well. You can see the more you push it, the stronger you make the contrast between lights and darks, the better design works. In a more interesting it looks. And the software it is doing more harmonic and maybe more normal it looks. So just play around with it. Take your own designs, try some of these shapes combined, some shapes combined, some lighter in some darker values and see if you can already come up with something that you like. And we will continue to add even more interest to the design. So with the next steps 17. What does big, medium, small mean?: Hey, have you already left the review? If not, then go ahead and do me the favor of leaving a positive rating. If I helped you out so far, helped me out and go ahead and do just that. Okay, cool. Next principle. Let's get to big, medium, small, which is probably one of the most important rules over all in character design and design of any sort. If you're doing graphic design, character design, illustration. If we're talking about design, we're talking about big, medium, small. So what do I mean with big, medium, small? And what does all of this about? Before we jump right into N examples? Let me first explain you what this is and what it means. Big, medium, small is basically saying exactly the name is self-explanatory. But as soon as I show you what I mean, this is the square. It's a nice big square. And now into the big square, we're going to put medium square. If it wants to work. Alright, good enough. And into the medium square we're going to put a small square. And immediately we can see how this works out. Quite nice. Looks pleasant enough on the eye and works. So let's now take another square next to it and just divided into equal pieces. And I hope you can see that this square, which has uneven pieces and he has a small piece and a medium one. Looks a lot more interesting than the one which is equally divided. Let's make another example. And just put something here so that there's a medium shape. And let's just make a small shape here by dividing it. And maybe make this one medium one. So now you can see we have a big shape. We have some medium shapes and we have small ones. And it already looks like we could start making a design out of it. Maybe by putting a window in here. There could be in point of interests, you could be a door. Maybe there are some stairs going on and can be a house or something like this. So there's already some kind of design behind it. And now the thing is about big, medium small, that we want to keep the ratio of big medium, small, similar. So a small amount of small and medium, amount of medium and big amount of big. So if I make a bunch of small shapes, and I can also really start destroying the whole design. Just by adding too many all over the place. Then suddenly our eye has a really hard time focusing on what is important and we're driving point of interests away from the viewer. Because suddenly this isn't really important anymore. Suddenly everything's kind of the same importance. So big, medium, small is about making designs to really get the viewer to focus on what you wanted to focus about. So for example, on this one, we're going to look at the small one because it's the only small shape. And the big shape kinda just works as a background, as an area for our small shape to really lift. So let's just make the same with other shapes so that we don't only have boxes for make a triangle here. And let's make a medium triangle somewhere else. And a tiny triangle in there. Then we can see that this tiny triangle has some importance and there's some kind of design going on. And let's make another small example. And I will try and divide this triangle into kind of similar values, similar thickness here, and then make the same thing over here, but make them different. So now I'm going to make a big one that is kinda big. And I'm going to make a medium, one that is somewhat medium that even smaller one. And make the the spacing in-between these smaller as well. So then we have a bigger one and then a smaller one, and then maybe an even smaller one. And now if we look at these two, this one is also a little bit crooked. It should still get the point across. Oh Lord, please be a triangle. Okay? This one should work. So if we look at these two, we can immediately tell, alright, this one is pretty predictable and that's what makes it kind of boring. And this one has a lot of difference between thickness and the different ways it is shape the notches all in an equal amount of distance. And it makes it more interesting. And that's all. Thanks to big, medium, small. There's, of course, again, is all on very basic shapes. So in the next few examples, I will show you whole principle to you on better examples and illustrations so that you know exactly how people use it for characters and not just squares and triangles? 18. Separation of designs into big, medium and small: Now that you've seen enough grade boxes, Let's go back to some paintings so that we really understand what I mean with big, medium, small, and separating the whole thing. So I will show you some drawings and explain to you how exactly it works and how you can find the separations pretty much everywhere. And verse, I'm going to start here with something simple. Let's get my nice red color out here again. For this design, you can see that there is quiet a lot going on, but overall, it is so readable as one design and we still know what is happening. But then again, there's enough interests, there's enough detail in there. So how does that work and what does it have to do with big, medium, and small? First of all, let's look at the easy parts that are immediately nice to understand. And that is like, for example, the cape here, which is just one big shape, doesn't really have much going on. There, snow crazy patterns on there. There's nothing else happening. The only part that is kind of still working for big medium small is the big upper part. Then we have a medium middle part and a smaller down part. Same here. This one is kind of big. This one is medium to small, and this one as well. So definitely makes the whole thing more interesting than if I would have divided the Cape into three exactly same shapes that are exactly the same size. But again, we can find it everywhere else. We also have some big parts here in the hair. I made a big part here. Then I made some medium parts here, and then edit a few smaller, small parts. So if you want to, you can go over the entire painting and find it everywhere. So for the clothing and might not be super easy to see at first sight. But if we look at it, we can see that it's pretty much one big part of just white clothing. And then I chose to make a medium darker part here, which is also still going for the arm. So we have one big white part is also continuing here on the arm. Then we have one medium part that historic over here and another medium dark part on the leg. And then to make it more interesting, I implemented these smaller, darker parts so that it breaks up the bigger chunks into smaller sections. And you can find it all around. Because otherwise, if it would've just been white, it's a little bit boring. But by breaking up these design into different ones, it's making the whole thing a bit more interesting. So if I just take the color here and paint over the different designs that are implemented, you will pretty much immediately see what I mean. If I also destroy the belt here, then, alright, it still works, but suddenly the whole design is a lot more boring. It's so easy to read, but it's lagging a lot of interests. Again, if I am getting back all of these smaller medium parts, then suddenly we have a lot more interests going on and design. Even though there's like one big just one colored part of the painting here also 40 medium dark part. To make it more interesting, I implemented a few smaller, lighter values. And it's pretty much how I went about the entire painting. A big white area, medium grayish area, and then some small light parts. And it's always about holding the balance between not too much small, more bag and medium amount of medium. Here also for the jewelry. It might've been even more interesting if I would've taken the one in the middle and made it really big. And this may be true, big, made this one bigger, and then maybe made this one more medium. And this one really Small could have definitely worked as well. But for this part it also works this way. But also here you can see, even though the jewelry itself is kind of the same size, you can see that here. It's getting larger and larger. The spacing in-between the jewelry. So just go and look at your own designs to look at other people's designs and try and find it. Here. You can also see it really nice example of big. Then we have some medium shapes and small shapes. So it's all around, it's everywhere. Now let's look at another example. So for this one, it's also mostly one. A lot of stuff going on, what it's really clear and somewhat easy to read. Of course, they could have done a little bit of a better job around here because it's kind of drowning in some darker values. But it still works. Here also, I have a big part where the I can just rest, which is just a dark value. But of course to make it less boring, I took some of the lighter values and implemented just some small, tiny details. So for example, here we have our big shape. And that big shape is ten separated into two medium shapes. And around medium shapes are smaller details. And this is happening all around all kinds of designs. And even if I have some areas that are just big shapes for the eye to rest. If I want to make them more interesting, I can take some small shapes and add them in with like really low contrast so that they aren't distracting too much from the overall big shape but still adding some interest to it. He also on the shoes, you can see I implemented some smaller details. And I took the big shape and then made several smaller shapes. And here also, this one line is thicker. Then I'm having a thinner line. Or here I could have just let it be over there. But then it would just be one medium, one, edit, another smaller one, so that we have our big shapes here. Then we have our medium shapes and these small shapes. So really it's happening all around and I'm trying to keep the small shapes to a smaller percentage as well. So overall you can see the biggest amount of shapes are these big ones here with a lot of free areas for the eyes to just rest. Then we have a medium amount of medium shapes. For example, pets here or this part of the arm. And then we have a smaller amount of small shapes so that we are not overwhelmed with details. So yes, try and look at the designs that you've come up with so far. Or again, designs that you really liked from other artists and just really see if they made similar decisions. So if you've done a design and so far, you've had some kind of pattern and it looked like this. And you've made it into pretty much just same size of differences between and the spacing. Then maybe just try and implement some irregularities and push them maybe further to the side and see if that already helps make your design more interesting. So here you can see just having a big shape, medium one, small one. And then we can still go on and separate the small one into a bigger one than maybe medium and small. And of course they don't have to be behind each other. I can also put in more irregularities by making the small one right here and then medium after. So read it, just go around your design. Tried to find these shapes and change up everything between big, medium, small here, make. Then we have medium and small shapes. It's really everywhere. It's one of the most important rules. But next, let's see why exactly it is so important and why our eye is drawn to it so much, because there is very specific reason behind it that will make a lot of sense. So let's just take a look at it. 19. Golden ratio, natural separation: So here is the answer to all of our secrets and why we are naturally drawn to big, medium, small, and the proportions for it as well. Because this is the golden ratio. Maybe you've seen it already if you've already been on our journey for awhile. If this is totally new to you than welcome to one of the most important ratios then we can find in our paintings and in Art and general golden ratio, this is just something that has been over the years. I think. I don't all just going to say it's scientifically found out that this is the ratio that keeps appearing in all kinds of parts of nature. So just try maybe Google golden ratio and examples in nature. And you will find so much. We're also going to look at some here, which you can also place this ratio on top of a lot of different objects in nature and you will see that it always matches and somehow lines. So what does it tell us? Well, if you look at it, you can see the golden ratio has since giant block, that is just one big shape where nothing much is going on. Then we kinda have this medium shape here that takes up the next bigger amount of space. And then we also have this area down here, which gradually is getting smaller bodies, having more and more stuff in it. So as you can see, since this principles coming from nature, it's something that is found everywhere and nature is the best designer. At the end of the day, we're all just humans. We're all coming from nature. So we're drawn to what is proportionally closest to the proportions we have In nature because our eye is just used to seeing them for so, so many years. Whenever we look, whenever we go outside, look at human faces, look at plans, look at animals. They're all based on the golden ratio. And that's why they work so well. And if you want to make a design that is kind of abstract to the eye or isn't. I don't know that it's invoking some feelings of bewilderment in the viewer than maybe completely destroying this kind of ratio could be the way to go. Because of course, there's always exceptions to the rule. So maybe you will find a design that isn't really based on this one put will still work. Great. But now let's look at some examples here. Already have some lines. Let's make them again. Alright, so we have a nice small bit off nature here. And let's see where we can find the big, medium, small shapes. And I think immediately we can see that there is a big shape in the middle and some more bigger shapes on around on the sides. And they are directly focusing on RI, on some parts and are giving us a lot of space to look at them. Of course, here we also see the 70, 30 rule. Most of the painting is stark and then we have 20 to 30% being light values, but also big shapes. So it's really easy to see them and focus on them. So even more big shapes here. We see these really big leaves here as well. Or this pretty big leaf. So as you can see, a lot of bigger shapes that are making it easy to focus on the picture. And then next, if we wanted to look at more medium shapes, we can see that there are smaller leaves behind that are already a lot smaller in size, making the whole thing into more medium shapes. And then the small shapes are also found everywhere. For example, We have this big shape in the middle, which is then separated by a small one. The branches themselves are also more on the smaller shape size and here as well. So pretty much all around. We also have these small drop shapes here. We have the separation, the natural separation in big, medium, small. This is just a picture of oranges. So obviously there wasn't really a designer taking the oranges and designing the orange tree to be a crazy design object. It's just how nature works and what is naturally happening. Then again, here's another easy example. So we just have this fern leaf and big medium small is happening two times here. One, which is easy to see is we have these big shapes on the bottom. Then they are getting medium. So we have this medium amount of medium shapes. We have this big amount of big shapes. And then they are getting smaller and we have a small portion, which is small shapes. And if you look at the amount of small shapes, they are pretty much the same size as one big leaf. So here again, you can see the ratio keeps applying to it. And the leaves in themselves also have the same rule. Applying. They have a big amount of bigger shapes than they have a medium amount of medium ones and an small amount of smaller. So this ratio is pretty much everywhere. Here also with the spacing is a big spacing between then we have more of a medium spacing. And it keeps getting smaller and smaller. And it also is just their differences and it keeps its already repetitive too much. There's bigger ones, they're smaller ones. So even in nature we have a lot of contrast. And so really it's everywhere. You can also go ahead and just look at a bunch of nature pictures and see if you can find the ratios everywhere. They are found in flowers and plants, in animals. So basically, everywhere when we look at nature, there's big, medium, small, and we can just make use of the same principle for our designs. So next I'm going to look at a painting and see how we can keep the balance and what we can do to make the whole thing more appealing. 20. Creating interest and holding balance: Okay, For this example, I took a painting that is not completely finished yet. Then it's unlike a medium sketchy phase, already has some designs going on here, but isn't quite finished. And first of all, I'm just wanting to show you that if I take these and just get rid of them first, that already the design will be a lot less interesting. So just quickly getting rid of it here and making this whole one big shape. Okay, and it still works. We still have some clothing going on here. There's still some interest with these shapes down here. But overall, we can already tell that our design has become lot more boring and R is just wandering around. There isn't really much that is happening. So now it's also going to wants to head because there is still the most interests. But overall the whole painting is kind of boring. So if I remove it and we have the different elements again, It's already way more interesting. And let's look exactly on what I did here. So we have this big shapes on top shape and a short shape, so to say. And then I separated them into medium shapes by implementing some lines here and changing it up. And then on the lines, I also implemented some smaller shapes, same here. I cut it up into medium shapes, then made even more smaller shapes in the middle and edit different small shapes on around. Important is also to keep the balance. So here you can see there's still, there's some stuff going on, but it's also not completely overwhelming. Because if I just keep adding up more and more than it's starting, it still works. But at some point it's just getting too much an hour. It doesn't really know where to focus on anymore and one is important and what isn't. So if I just keep adding up buttons everywhere and make just a bunch of rows of buttons, then the design isn't working as strong anymore. And suddenly it's also just becoming one big mess. Then if I am just start, starting to limit myself to this amount that I'm having right here. And same goes with these shapes on the side. If I keep adding onto them, then our design is just getting less interesting here. It of course, can still work as a design. Now it looks like a funky pair of pants, but we are having less of a focus point. And the amount of detail is kind of fighting with the face and the amount of detail up here. Because now we don't really know, are we supposed to focus on the pens? Are we supposed to focus on the face because both is having a lot. And it's also, as you can see, it, pretty clear silhouette. So I didn't add a lot here on the outsides. And there's also for good reason because if I keep adding weird small shapes, then it's also less easy to focus on the overall design. So you don't want to go completely overboard with the small and just have too much small shapes everywhere. Because what it can add interests to some places of the design. Going completely overboard with small shapes can also just end up in a weird design that isn't really easy to read. So try and limit yourself to a medium amount of mediums, a smaller amount of smalls, and the big amount of big. That way it's really easy so to read. So if I wanted to have more interests on the face, I could also go in here and maybe add some patterns here. Maybe add a bigger pattern, then add a smaller one, and maybe another medium one next to it. And then we already have something more of an interests going on in here, which is making a bit lighter than it's also easier to see. And overall these are small shapes. But even within the small shapes, I can change the big, medium, small ratio. Same here with the buttons. I could of course also make some bigger and have them get darker. Darker, gets smaller towards the bottom here. That's all about what works for the design. If you liked the idea or not. What it can work. But of course, having the same size could also work easily what you can already see by just changing the size up here and having it gets smaller towards the bottom. It's also helping our view go up here. And here also, if I wanted to add more interests without overloading the design, I could then go and break it down into even more big, medium, small shapes. So use this one as my big shape. At a small shape. Maybe another smaller one in here. And we still have the same amount of detail or we have more detail, but the same amount of focus that it takes up. So that is also a way of keeping the thing in a balance by just trying to have some points where we implement something small. And then maybe using these small elements to make even more small elements in them and really keeps some big areas without crazy amounts of detail. And how sometimes it might seem like the more detailed the better. And it could be the case to some extent. But it should still leave some room to breathe for the eye. Let your breath sound that it's easy to see the overall design and it's not just completely clustered with a lot of stuff. So really try and keep areas untouched and then go to other areas that you want to have more interests on, like the hands, for example. And then start adding some design choices there. And maybe go with big, medium, small on these places. So here you can see the more details I add somewhere else, the more of view is guided there. And this is generally a good fool to have a nice design with a lot of interests. Well, that isn't going completely overboard. 21. Exercise for big, medium, small: Next, let's try and put this into use and make a small exercise for it. Of course, I could have just filled any boxes again and made some shapes. But I think there's two exercises that are the best. And one is simply you looking for a bunch of designs that you find interesting than just take them onto whatever device you have, whatever program, and just try and break them down yourself into big, medium, small. So you get adjusted to seeing it and realizing how it works. And the other one is kinda similar to the one that we did in the beginning. And I will just use this, this time another silhouette. And again this similar principle. And start with really big shapes. So I could just, for example, make most of the bunny darker. And just really make some mix shapes that don't really have a lot going on. And then see how I can make it more interesting with big, medium, small. Also going to take another one and just add to the silhouette. I feel like this pose calls for a more dramatic kind of dress. And when you have a silhouette that works, this should be behind. Just really try and get an overall interesting shape that is really big and doesn't have a lot of variation going on. And then it's nice to just go into it and start cutting out medium shapes. So for example here, I could say, alright, I'm just going to remove some from the legs again. Just, I'm also going to merge these probably. Just so that we get to more interesting look on the character. It's going to quickly clean it up. And then it will merge these and start cutting into the design and see how I can make it more interesting by introducing medium shapes to it. And always just look okay, what is interesting and what isn't. Here. I feel like it should probably go over the foot, but have some medium lighter parts here and then start making maybe something more smaller. So I could just maybe start making some cutouts. And then keep going and adding more design choices that start making the whole thing more into big, medium and smart, smart small ones. Small is smart. So here I can say, okay, this is already starting to look like an interesting pattern. So maybe I'm just going to add another small shape down here. And then by introducing more and more and only adding them on some parts while leaving others relatively untouched. It's going to be more interesting. So now we have a big shape here, medium one here, and a few small ones. Then I can also repeat the pattern here and see what happens. And now we're starting to get some interesting parts going and get a viewer looking where we want them to look. So introducing more medium shapes, then I can add another small shape. And you can already see that just by starting to cut down the design into more and more big, medium, small, that it starts to be more interesting, even though we just started with one big shape. They can really just work on it and make it more interesting by breaking it down. So here it can also say, okay, maybe I want to have this bigger shape around the arms and then introduce some smaller shapes. So for example, I can take it darker color and then make like a rim, rounded. And maybe making more interesting design. My cutting it into different shapes sizes. And here, there's also just a big open space in the middle. So we can start using some darker lines to cut it further up and introduce more big, medium and small shapes. And the more we do it, the more we can see that it starts to be more and more interesting. So just looking around, searching for a spot that is maybe not interesting enough, or that should really be a focus point. And then keep getting smaller and making some delicate designs and details while leaving other places. Just really empty and easy to read. And of course you can do this with just lines. What do we can also go ahead and use colors we wanted to, or just like light and darker values. And here as well. Let's just quickly try it. For example, let's just give her some relatively unspectacular pair of pants. And then I'm just going to see how I can make them more interesting. Okay? It's just nice quick pair of pants and maybe just top. Now we have a very basic way of just portraying clothing. And if I want to have like crazy designs in it, I can now start cutting up the whole thing into more big, medium, and small shapes. So I'm just going to use the eraser again. And then maybe erase a medium shape into Depends. Just so that there's something going on. Then to make it even more interesting, I could just repeat the pattern, would make it pretty small. Same here. I could just make some kind of cutouts. Then maybe make smaller ones and make it more interesting that way. And already, our pretty uninteresting shirt and pants combo is getting more interesting. And here it can also just introduce smaller details and add more and more interests that way. And just by adding these small details here. Now we already have some kind of robotic looking design. And making some really small, small somewhere, just adding a few will already give the whole thing the feeling of a lot more detail and interest. And it really is just that easy. Alright, and now we still have our mix shape here. We have some medium shapes in-between. Then we broke them down into small shapes. And then just added a small amount of really small shapes. And our design already got something working for it. So just try and use some silhouettes. Start with really big shapes, their work overall. And then keep adding more and more medium shapes to it. And then break the medium shapes down into smaller shapes. And just see if you can try and hold the balance if it works out. And you will end up with a bunch of different and interesting looking designs. 22. Practical use: Here we are back again with the design. I chose disk color value combinations. There's no colours. Thank you for saying colleagues this value combination because I thought it was the most interesting one. And now I want to go over it and start introducing more big, medium, small shapes. You can already see that there some little bit of stuff going on. But for the most harder isn't too much happening here. And it's also important to note that big, medium, small can also be found in shapes like shadows. So if I want to make the whole thing here more interesting, can also try and cut it down some shadow shapes when I have to try and keep the overall image of the jacket working. So trying to make some bigger shadow shapes and then cutting that down into smaller ones as well and medium ones. And trying to get some shape in here looking that it's easier to read. I think here I can also get rid of a little bit so that the shoulder easier to see. For example, now I can see if I can make a zipper design or something in here by just adding a small design for the overall big shape of the jacket. And make the whole thing a bit more interesting that way. Made me also get some kind of connection here. I don't know if it's going to work or if it's going to look weird, maybe a bit too boxy if it looks like that. And then here on the back, I'm just going to introduce more of a shadow color. I definitely think that these parts of the clothing still needs some interests going on. So let's introduce some shapes. And I can make some smaller ones in-between. Maybe it's going to be something like buckles. And just get some interests going by having this big shape here and then introducing some smaller ones. So now we still have doing big one. We're starting to add some medium ones. And then we can also add some smaller ones. And that way it already looks way more detailed and there's some stuff going on that it's worth looking at. And as well depends. Still don't really have a lot going on for them. So I can see if another kind of top part could be interesting. Maybe already adding something like this could be cooler. And then maybe just starting to cut it out. Some shapes on the side And introducing even more small ones in radius, mostly about just trying it. Once you can already see that there is something more interesting happening already. What I'm still leaving some areas just big and open so that it isn't too hard to understand what is happening in the design. And again, I'm just seeing if I can add some small details like buckles so that it looks more appealing and interesting. And here the leg is also still one big shape where nothing much is happening. So I can maybe try and get some of the light shapes and at some of them in there. And then maybe just add a small detail here. Can also try to introduce some of the light color in the dark design. May maybe just adding some stripes or something across it. Or also looking at some of these shapes that were already established and filling them in and seeing if that works, looks cool or not. Because you might be surprised. If you start changing the values of some of the forms. Same goes with these ones. I can make some darker and gets a lot of contrast gone. And if I have a big shape and I feel like it isn't interesting enough, I can always make some medium kind of cut outs and see if I get some new ideas. We're doing so okay, already looks pretty cool. So now I'm just going to see for the hair, for example, it still has this really blocky shape. So something that could make it more interesting by keeping the overall form could be to simply have some strands cut in. Then I can easily do this just by using the Selection tool, for example. And then just getting some cutouts. And then I can also just take these and fill in some small strands to make it more interesting. And bring back the big, medium, small and the hair as well. So now we have a bigger shape and then we can have more, smaller ones introduced. Alright, pretty nice. So last but not least, I'm also going to add some stuff to the ones in the back here. Maybe some smaller stripes to add some variation to our shapes. And I think here, I also still want to make it a bit darker and get some proper ends here for the jacket. Okay, alright, I think already looking pretty good. So now I'm just going to leave some easy to read open areas like the jacket here in the front, or some parts here on the pants, the shoe area, and the hair. And just introduce a lot of medium and small shapes in-between. So the design overall looks like it is detailed. What it still keeps, the simplicity of it and it's easy to catch immediately what I'm trying to show. Alright, so far, so good. Let's continue with even more principles. 23. Why repetition: Alright, How has the course spins so far? If you haven't done any rating for the course yet, then maybe try and help me out and do this just now because I'm trying to help you out here and I'm trying that you have a good time. So maybe you can do the same for me and leave a positive rating. Alright, Next we're going to look at Repetition as a design principle and why we want to use it, and what exactly do I mean by it? Repetition by itself doesn't sound too exciting for new and creative designs. Why should we repeat something? Isn't repetition a little bit boring, all of this kind of stuff. So let me just quickly show you what I mean by repetition and why it might be a good idea to have some repetition in your designs. So this time, so we don't have to look at inboxes any longer. I'm going to make a nice circle. And now I'm just going to build up crazy and just fill the entire circle with different shapes. So let's make a star and here, let's make a hard in here. And now the nice square box comes back and I'm going to make it in here to make a circle into the circle and filled it up. And then maybe make some organic shapes into our so-called doesn't have to look super great, only get the point across. So really just all kinds of stuff maybe also here. I don't know what it's called. English again, it's from the car game. Exactly what I mean. I just don't know the English word, but as you can see, we just have all kinds of stuff here inside. And of course your company's triangle. Well, it is, exists in, but I wouldn't really say it's a great design. So let's just see what happens if we are going to make some more circles here on the side. I'm also just going to take this one really quick and put it on the side so that it isn't completely in the way. And then make more circles. And now I will just stick to one thing into one shape. So for example, the star, if I liked it, Let's just take it and fill the whole thing with a bunch of stars. And they can also be different in size. And maybe to some degree also formed. What for now, let's just make a bunch of them on here. I think you can already start seeing what I mean. So this one already has a lot more consistency thanks to the repetition. And now if we want to, we can also introduce shapes that are similar but still within the family. So just make few different kinds of stars in here. And repeat these as well. And of course I can't just let you off with one example. So I'm going to do the same again. Going to make another circle and just start filling it with shapes, but stick to a similar shape. So let's go for something organic but only fill it with organic shapes. And you can see, even though I am kind of restricting myself by just sticking to one of the shapes from our shape design. I am making more interesting and better designs that are easier to look at and have a better design communication than just the one where tried to combine a bunch of stuff together. Of course, this one is quite extreme. And you can always go and mix these up. That's why I put two different ones in there. But the more you try and go for one consistent theme and repeat it, the better it's going to be. So we dream, we drew me, draw a bunch of nice circles here. So in the next step, again, I don't want to keep it at these simple geometric shapes. So now let's put the whole thing into more contexts and look at illustrations and pictures and see how all of this is implemented in proper designs of whole, entire artworks. 24. Nature as role model: So Mother Nature is coming in again as our role model and as the reason why repetition in itself is such a good idea. So let's just see why exactly. We like it, why it works so well without being boring. And I have a nice little plant here that I will just show the plant and itself. I would say we would perceive it as not boring. You would perceive it as a great example for a nice design, even though it's just a plant. And you can see Repetition wise, it's really easy. There's one off shape that is kind of a parent and that is to leave shape. And it's just all over. So the plant in itself didn't just decide to have a different shape leaf for each one. Instead, it is looking for the same shape all over. So it's just getting repeated and repeated on. But there is a variation in size kind of like, again, here is the big, medium, small rule applied. Even though it's just a planned it as it applies to rule. And again, if you're also going to zoom in, we can see that even within the plant, it's also Repetition with the patterns. So there's one line going down the middle and there's multiple lines going away from it and then different ones in itself, which are all different in size. But the overall shape and the pattern keeps being repeated all throughout the plant. And this isn't just only one. We can look at other plants as well. And this one makes it grind great design tool. Because as we can see again, the shape of the leaf as a heart-shaped, heart-shaped shape, which is getting, which is here the same for each leaf. And then within, if we look, there's the, the way the pattern works here with these dark edges and then it's turning into some more light edges. And it's the same for each leaf while being, being a variation. So no leave is exactly the same leaf as the other one, but they're also always having a similar pattern. So it's really interesting to see how they work. And if you look at animals, then mostly the patterns are being repeated to same here with the colors. It's always the same kind of pattern with the colors towards the dark ones on the edge. Then it's turning to a darker green and then it's pretty light. And the repetition here is all over. So if you're having an idea that works, just do the same thing as Mother Nature does. Take the idea, take the shape, and just make some variations of it while repeating it. And keeping an image that works in itself and isn't all over the place. So take the examples here. Look at multiple animals, look at multiple plants. And you will realize repetition is everywhere and it's not boring 25. harmony and consistency: Okay, so I will show you some examples where I use repetition in designs to keep a certain harmony and consistency in it. So that if you look at it design, it doesn't just look like a bunch of shapes thrown together. It would rather like it's one design that belongs together. And you can see here maybe if you look at it for a second, that there is definitely one accessory, one design that keeps repeating over and done are these, are these kinda small chains. You can see that they're going all the way from the bottom until the very top here and are getting just repeat it. It's the same one over and over again. Then I also implemented it on the arm here is connecting. It's also found here on the horns. Same thing here on the ears. So you can see it's repeated again and again. And also on the shoes. I implemented it as well. So even though it is, it keeps getting repeated. It isn't like starting to be boring or uncreative. It's just helping the whole thing connecting to one another. Same thing with shapes like here on the tail, it's pointy. Then we also have some pointing nails. We have a pointy ear, we have pointy horns. So really if you're looking at it, It's point you will over the place. I also could have implemented pointy shoes if I wanted to put a not a fan of pointy shoes, so I didn't. But it's also repetition to keep consistency in the design. Same here with the hair. It's just kind of a pointy end instead of super wavy curls so that it works better as a design. So just look at designs. You will see that almost nothing is coincidence. Pretty much everything that is placed is placed for a reason. Here also on the shoes. There is just a really easy repetition of a design here, such as taking some bends and just repeating them on the shoes than way. They get some nice consistency and belong together. For another example, we're going to look at a bigger illustration with a background. So as you can also see, that it happens not just in the character design, but an entire illustrations as well. So if you look at the whole thing, one of the things that definitely go into the eye on it you can immediately see is the big pattern, the big thing in the back on the window. And if you look at it, you will see that a lot of the stuff that has gone on back here also is repeated through the entire design so that everything connects to one another. So we have these really soft and rounded shapes. And also here with a pointy end, we can find it as well here on the shoes or this similar pattern. Draw it next to it. It's kinda looking like this. Here, it's getting repeated and smaller details. Then we have shapes like these, which are also getting repeated. Also he of course, in the clothing. It's just a repetition of these shapes again and again in the weapon as well. We have a repetition of these shapes. Even if I look into the details here, It's a repetition. It's really everywhere. Everything is always kind of repeated. For the books as well. There's a repetition in shapes just with these things on the back so that you can immediately tell that they belong together. So, yes, look for some shapes, look at some images, see if you can find these again. And then you will realize that a lot of it is not like completely one-on-one repeated for the overall ideas. Same here with the kind of patterns and the clothing. They are really similar to what we can see in the window. So yes, look at designs, look at pictures, and try and analyze them. Look at the repetition. And soon you realize, the more you will repeat and very the shapes, the more your whole design will look coherent and like it belongs together. 26. Breaking the repetition as a style principal and creating a focus point: Okay, so we should repeat everything to keep it consistent and harmonious. But now what happens if we don't apply to that rule? And if we want to have some kind of tension and break the entire thing a little bit. So I will just quickly make a rectangle here and fill in with a mid gray. And now, just going to use a darker color and kind of put some pointy, spiky shapes around it everywhere. And kind of just repeat this shape and frame the picture, kind of. Okay, So this is definitely a nice repetition here. We're having some consistency. What we're seeing here definitely belongs together. And now if we say okay, we want to create some kind of interest, or we want to break the entire thing, then we could just take in another color, maybe low color, a darker color. I'm just going to use a lighter. Keep saying color, it's black and white. And lighter value. And now if I just take a shape and I put a triangle here in the middle, then suddenly it becomes a lot of importance. And it, by breaking the entire shape design, like breaking the shapes, suddenly everything around and all of these forms are kind of secondary and they are just helping to bring the focus to our triangle. And if you were to make a bunch of triangles everywhere, then they would probably the one in the middle and would lose some of its importance. So the more I won't repeat the whole thing, the more we would start looking away and the focus wouldn't really be on the middle one anymore. So using this principle to just break the design and use another shape that isn't repeated anywhere. So we have another focus is definitely a nice thing to do as well. And I can just use a character here to same kinda character you've seen her before. She has these triangle kind of designs and pointy ones. And if I would just take the skin color and suddenly make a giant circle on her stomach area. Then we will immediately focus on it because this kind of rounded circle shape isn't really seen anywhere else. So breaking this directly, let's ask focus on another part of the painting. So breaking designs is definitely also rolling. Breaking the shapes. Definitely a nice way of directing the focus to something else. Even the fire here is pretty pointy. So let me just quickly remove the circle. And I will, instead of having fire in the hand, just give her inbox shape that isn't really here. Which are caused looks great. But I think you easily get the idea that if she would have an item in her hand isn't really shape, why seen anywhere else? It would immediately catch a lot of attention. So if we wanted to give her like an interesting accessory, like a book or something using a shape that isn't really there and in the design draws attention to it and therefore makes it more interesting than having a design that keeps repeating the patterns that we already have. And if I take some of the clothing here and make it more boxy as well, then the book would already be little bit less interesting than it is when I keep everything else triangle shaped. So now we see that this kind of repeated. And now the focus isn't as much on this box shape anymore. So breaking it can definitely work for giving some attention to some part of the details that otherwise maybe wouldn't have had so much attention or importance to them. So keep that in mind if you want to have a focus point. Use with the uses 70, 31, use big, medium, small. You can break the shape design. A lot of things go into it. You can really push the entire important and viewpoint just by simply doing all of these things in combining the different roles 27. Exercise: repetition: So as I established earlier, Mother Nature is our role model for this rule. So a great exercise is to just take several pictures of all kinds of things. And you find nature as animals or plants and all the things you can find that have some kinds of patterns in them. So basically anything you can find the nature has some kind of pattern in it. And then just start breaking these down for yourself and just trying to imitate them. And just really look at the variation and study it. So if I wanted to look at this part down here, I'll just go for the shape and I look at it and see exactly how it is repeated and how there's a difference in the shapes so that there's some interests created. And I'll just take this and kinda draw needs quickly and sketch them out. And I can see, alright, this is kind of the overall form here. And it's also repeated around itself, but in different ways. And same here with this one. For the other circulant. The overall form is kind of a rounded shape with a tiny pointy tip. That's the oval shape. And then I can look at the planned and kinda see how, how it's repeated and stacked on one another so that there's still interest while repeating what I'm seeing. And just really try and understand how it works and how it's built. Just going to look here, this one, there's the next one. And how are they all stacked and how do they work? And you will easily see that, yes, even though it is the same shape, repeated again and again, just by having size variations, variations in how it's placed. Immediately, there is some interest in it, and it isn't just some boring repetition. So yes, just try and get some examples and break them down. Look at how it's done. Same here. We can see, okay, there's this big shape at the bottom. And then it starts. There is some other ones added on it. And how are they varying in size and shape so that it's one consistent looking design, but still interest and variation in it. And then try to kind of copy it to just see how it's working. Then you can see, okay, it's kind of the same one, but it's not really stuck on one another like this. And instead, it's just going in-between is another one so that there is some interests to it. And here's another one in there. Just looking at this part right now. And really understanding how it works. And then you will in some point understand how you can implement these into your own designs to same here for this little fella. I can see, okay, there's some repetition. What, how is the repetition working? That there's still some interests. And I can see, okay, the way that they are overlapping is always kind of different. Because it's not just looking like this, then it's an boring design and there isn't really a lot to it. But instead, there's differences in the size and the way it is overlapping. Am I making these studies from nature, most of the best teacher. You can start and realize how it works and how you can implement it to. So here I can see, alright, really how it's supposed to look. Because mine looks kind of messy while the photo doesn't look messy. Okay, so this is definitely a nice exercise that I would do. Just look at a bunch of designs from nature that you find interesting. Search some of the stuff that you find in it and try to analyze it and copy it to your own paintings and to your own studies. And then maybe if you're feeling like it, you can also go ahead, use these shapes that you find and try and make a character out of it. After all, the good thing is nature isn't copyrighted. So if you're making a character design based off of the petal shapes of his circulant. They won't be anyone telling you, Oh my God, you copied my design. It's a succulent. No one belongs, it belongs to no one, no one owns the design of a pigeon. So if you want to make a character that has all the elements that a pigeon has, you can go right ahead because no one can say anything. So look at nature. Have a lot of PFK-1. Try out all the different designs. And you'll see it's gonna be great. 28. Practical use: So now putting it into practical use, you will soon realize, hey, you already did aid on the design. And if you look at it, you will see that there's a lot of repetition. So I really went for the most basic shapes just along line, and I repeated it all throughout the design. So there's these lines going on here, and I also repeated them here. They're just slightly rounded, but it's still the same. There's lines going all the way around here and super thin ones on the leg. And same goes with the line work here. I chose a line that is straight and then kind of arches. And I did this all the way here. It's an arching line. And then here it's straight. Here in straight and then goes around the corner. I did the same here, straight and then kind of going around the corners. So you can see already a lot in there. So now you can just try. If maybe I want to make the whole thing even more, please undo it things. Okay. So let's see what could I still repeat if I wanted to, I can see if I can maybe make some buckles and some of these lines in the silhouette. If it works or doesn't work when we something that I have to find out later. So, alright. And just take some off the darker lines. Can also see if I put some into the jacket. And just repeat that design over here. Maybe this way it looks even better. Just doesn't check. It looks like one big blob. If I do it like this, I think it's maybe better if I make it smaller. Okay? And just try and make some small repetitions all throughout the design. So if I wanted to it and see if maybe somewhere I can make that design on the jacket and have a line going through. Of course there's folds. So it's not going to be a straight line. But as the person looking at it, we will understand that it is supposed to be a straight line, but the folds kinda make it wrinkled. This one is also an interesting shape. So I could try and make it somewhere else. So for example, here on the leg could make that and then repeat the thing here. Maybe just put smaller and maybe also try that somewhere here on the upper body. Good. Just try and make one big line going across. And then have some of these small shapes coming out. So just look at your design and repeat some aspects all over the place. And you'll realize it's gonna be great. So now we have D repetition going on here. Because always a little bit also of personal taste if you like it or not. What I think it can look pretty nice. Maybe also make a smaller variation down here. Have been big, medium, small going on. Although I think that is too much. So we're going to remove that again. I think I'm going to remove the belt here just so that it's easier to read. And then add some lighter design inside. And also just repeating some of these white lines. And we have going on here. I'm not sure if I'm a big fan of the white dots, but maybe I want to have darker dots. And repeat them the design. And just by having these small repetitions, there's more detail and it all looks like it belongs together. Okay. I think that gets the point across and says already so much repetition that went on. Anyways. I think I can pretty much leave it like this for now. And everything has been pretty gray so far and I kept talking about colors, although there aren't really any. So why not start getting some colors and evolved? 29. Most important meanings for the most used colours: Hey there, remember to leave a rating if you'd like to course so far. And we'll do me a big favor and definitely helps me out by a lot. Finally, let's start getting some colors into our designs. They can stay in black and white forever after all. So first of all, let's talk about the most important colors with the most important meanings. And I'm just going to go bit by bit, just painting them down and explaining what kind of is part of it. So it start with red. And you can also think for yourself what you kind of connect with the color red. And I'm just going to write down some of the most basic associations that make it easier to think of something. When making a character designer with red where connecting stuff like action or LOF. Then also, of course, when we, when we have Lafe, we can forget about passion and strength. Maybe also energy. And where does strengthen energy come from? Well, if we think about our body and if we cut ourselves, then we get some blood from it and off the old, that's what we call the life bringing juice. So blood is also, of course then connected to something like danger. Android is also a great color to use for something like an adventure. So these are the kinds of things to me what connect to, read. A bit smaller and move it up. Then next on the list, we're going to go to purple. And think about all the things than we connect with purple. And you can think for yourself what you connect with it personally and see if it's a lot different from myList. So purple, what do we connect with it? Well, definitely something I like fantasy. And if we think of fantasy, we can also think of something like mystery and secrets. But also interesting things like spirituality. Just think about a lot of designs for witches and all of these characters. Most of the time they have some purple and wolf than them. But also something like royalty likes to use purple and Art in general. Because if you want to do something more creative and artsy design, then purple might be the right fantasy, might be the right color for you to use. It's a good to speak and read at the same time. So we have red, we have purple. Let's look at blue and make some nice blue dots here. And a nice light one. Okay, in blue, what do we connect with blow? Well, there is definitely the easiest associations also, I'm still wanted to write down fire because the first thing I'm going to write down for blue is water. So if we think about blue, There's definitely water and sky and everything about the sky and of water. Then we can also think about freedom and associate even more things like security or maybe com and loyalty. Mod also things like confidence So if you want to make a character and none is more of a helpful figure, then maybe it's great to use some blues in it as it can also be used to portray power. So a good color for all of these kinds of aspects for character design is just going to make thin line in-between. So it's easier to see, just has to be further up. Otherwise it might be a bit confusing. Okay, So that is blue. Now let's look at the next one. And that is going to be green. We're just moving around the circle one time. So let's make some nice green colors here. And light one. For green. There also some obvious ones. Of course, overthink about green. We have to think about nature. Aside from nature, there's also the common aspects of health. So if you think about an impulse, the carry, then it mostly it's green. Or if you think about any characters that have healing magic and video games, they are most of the time green. Pretty much every time a hallway stare green. So green also connected to health, but then also safety. If you have a safe zone on area and a video game, you can probably also be marked green on the maps. So green also for safety, but also other things like harmony and luck and prosperity. But if you are going for a crazy neon green, it could also be associated with something like poison, for example. Now just have to write it correctly points. So there is green. And now let's look at two more that are really common. So next one, we're going to keep moving up is yellow. And make a nice and bright yellow here. Okay, So what do we associate with yellow? One, there's some obvious ones as well, like warmth and Nissan, but also things like joy and happiness. And also positivity. If you write this down, we can't forget about positivity. But I would also say something like clarity can belong in here too. And also something that I would add is if you think about these colors, we can associate them with gold and gold can be associated with riches. So yellow, also the color for wealth. If you want to make a super rich, fancy character, there may be dressing them all up in golden yellowish tones is the right thing to do. And maybe even a connection of yellow and purple could make for character that looks super loyal and rich. And now lastly, what I'm going to draw down is orange. And what do we connect with orange? So let's see. I think orange isn't, is one of the more harder ones as to what we associate with it. So let me help you with some of the meanings here. Orange is also for optimism. I guess, since it's so close to yellow and mix it all off since then. We also have something like or original associated with it. And emotion and pleasure. But also definitely a good color that we can use for any kind of desert settings or Earth. In general. Everything that's kinda of like earthy and nature. Kinda something. Any, any designs that are supposed to be both the In nature ish, shouldn't have some orange tones in them since obviously dirt and rocks and stones, oftentimes have some orange in them. Alright, so now we have an idea of the different colors. I'll just move them down and I love how my writing got smaller and smaller. Action in love and passion is still really vacant then we have a tiny emotion. But you understand the points. So these are the colors that are most commonly used. And now we're just going to look more into how we can mix them up so that we get exactly the kind of, I'm exactly the kind of look then we want for our characters 30. Colour contrast + 70/30: Next on the list, we have colour contrast and to colon cancer contrast. The 70 30 also somewhat belongs together because already when we looked at the 70 30 earlier, a lot was done with color too. And here it's the same. So let's look at colour contrast and what we can do with it and help our designs and illustrations in general. So here I used an illustration that I made a while ago because it's just a really nice example to show the color contrast and what it does. You can see there's mostly going on, some green colors in here. Well then we have this really, really strong orange, which is immediately Drawing our I2, the main part, the most important part of the picture, which is again, obviously the face. So I use some strong color contrast here to get the viewer to look exactly where I wanted to look. And even though I have some more red colors going on down here so that the orange isn't completely lost. If we look really closely, we can see, okay. Even though it's supposed to be some kind of read clothing in really isn't a proper read it all. We're here somewhere in New Rand, super desaturated, not really properly read at all. And that's just because of all the colors around all the green lighting is going to make the red look really dark. And yes, of course, we can see the orange. Again when we think to the meanings. It's like optimism and pleasures. So while green is a rather calm, like it's a mix of blue and green. So it's rather calm and denature definitely comes through. But then it's bringing dance pop of color, pop of joy, so to say with the orange and making the whole thing more interesting. If I would've just used a green color for the umbrella, it really wouldn't have been so interesting. I can try and just quickly cut it out here and then change the color to something less fitting or less contrasty. Okay? Now, if I go here and change the you have to be on the right. Okay, now, I changed you make a green. You can immediately see that overall, it's still working somewhat because it's brighter, but it really isn't as pleasant on the eye. Same if I make it turquoise or blue. It is working. But it's just way more interesting when it's orange and red because it's just a thought she a strong contrast. So definitely think about these design aspects and they're really easy to apply. So to show you, I'm just going to show you a few other examples that I made here for this one. First of all, I just filled the entire block with a purple and then started working with some tones on it that are all in a similar spectrum. So I used some darker purples, some lighter purples, and even some brighter blues. And itself, it's already working, even if we make it smaller. There's some composition going on. We kinda have to 70, 30, we have 70% being somewhat light and then 30% being pretty dark. But if we want to add even more interests, we can just take some tiny spots of yellow and just add some more interests to it. And immediately we can also associated with something like a night sky with some stars or something. And it works way better than if I would have just taken a can, just take the yellow and make it another color. It still works because it's within the same spectrum, but it definitely loses some of the interests. So if we make it orangey yellow and has the strongest contrast. And that's simply because if you look at the color wheel, then we can see that most of these color combinations, if we want to have a really strong contrast, than they should be on the opposite side of the wheel, or at least almost opposite leg Here we have this turquoise and took was green and on the other side is an orange. And it's quiet. Contrast works so well here we also have our purple and blue. And on the other side we have the yellow, orangey colors. So it works really well. So you don't have to go perfectly across on the other side. Maybe sometimes going a little bit in a curve can have a prettier contrast. But generally, using the colors that are opposite has some of the strongest contrast. And definitely will work for getting a lot of attention to whatever you're showing. I also made it by also starting with a darker purplish tone. Then I added in more darker purple tones, but also some greens and yellows. And let's look at it again. We are here in the purple, in the reddish purple spectrum, and on the other side is green and yellow. So by using these, we get super high contrast. And you can pretty much to it with all the colors. You can also make a blue rectangle. Then go ahead, go to the opposite. Use a brighter color I like to use. When to use these contrast principles, I mostly use one color and make it darker in value. So here for the blue and use a darker blue, it can make it even darker. And also kind of the saturated. And then I go on the opposite, making a lot brighter and saturated. Then make some highlights in it. And it will pretty much always work out and have an easy contrast for the eyes. That is definitely how we can work with colour contrast and our designs. If we want to make a design that is more calm, that isn't going like all over the place. Then of course, we can also choose a color that we want to and then only work within the similar areas. So now if I'm just adding a bit off turquoise tones and some other darker blues. Then you can see, alright, this is still working and it looks really pretty and there's color variation. But there isn't anything crazy going on. But of course, for some designs, you don't really want something crazy going on. So keeping within the similar spectrum definitely works for design stuff should be more calm. And if you want to have some that are more action-packed than using some color contrast, is the right decision to make. So yes, I hope this was clear and we're going to continue looking at even more FUN things we can do with color 31. Colour combinations: So I already showed you color contrast and color combinations are definitely just, just as important as maybe the wrong way, but there are just a bunch out there. So I just made a little layer here and put a bunch of squares on it. And now I'll just try to fill them with all kinds of colour combinations so that you can see what's possible. Already did some in the past. And I'm just going to do even more and mostly keep it on this level because I think it's just generally more helpful. So Let's just go and see what we can combine and what looks great and what doesn't. So I'm just going to start up here, going to use a yellow, fill it with the yellow, and then use some colors around it. And maybe make some kind of gradient. Make it even stronger and darker. And make different color combinations. And with these combinations, and we'll try to mostly go from something darker to something lighter. And just kinda use the 70 30 rule in the back of my head. And I would suggest to do something similar while I'm doing it. And just fill a layer with a bunch of boxes and get some colors on there. And start combining them and see what you can get out of it. And also here, I can do this kind of glowy effect if I make it really bright and the middle, and then make it lighter and lighter. And we need to see, okay, what works. What doesn't, what looks good and what could I use for future designs? And look at other artworks to just look at something. And some artists made that you really like and see what kind of colours stay combine and maybe try to figure out why. So what kind of character that they portray and what colors did they pick for it? Here course. And we can also try out to implement some of the strong contrast in colors and see what happens when we do so. We can see that this way, we can easily put some contrast in here and get some interesting combinations go in. With only using a few, collapse. Just use something really bright pink to, since I really haven't had done yet. And try see what I can do here. Maybe keeping a pretty minimal to then also use the same color and maybe connected to another one that can work like yellow for example, in pink is really cool combination. No, I can mix some darker tones and maybe get something more bright in here. And try and figure out some interesting combinations. And just by making these small squares, you can already have some different assumptions in different associations with these colors. So just by making a blue one and then adding in some lighter and darker spots. It already looks kinda like a watery painting. So really it's just great to start practicing and getting into the mindset that no colour should just be used for the funds East. But rather because you wanted to portray something and have some kind of expression in your painting. And of course there, So, so, so many to choose from that I can't use all of them here. What I just wanted to try and give a in general and what is possible. And when I do this, I mostly pick one, as you can see in the beginning. And we'll use that as the main color and then place the other ones around. So to say that they are less. I hope you can see that it's really starting to make a lot of sense how to combine the colors. And there's really simple principle behind it. To either use some within a close range or use some that are connected just by knowing about it. So here for green, we can only go up to yellow and it should have an easier look to it because they're pretty close together on the scale. And I would say yes, is an easy combination. And then putting something saturated and bright, maybe in-between. And really just making a lot of combinations. And of course, you can mix more colors, but the more colors you mix, the harder it will get. But I would suggest to Google a color palette generator because there's different websites that offer color palette generators, which will just automatically make some color palettes for you. So you don't have to figure out what works. And if you have a character designer, you're not quite sure what kind of colours you want to mix. You could just go and google it color palette generator and see if there's any combination that you like. And then just mix the colors that way by using some palettes that you'll find. More. Just generally look at other designs and rip the color palette without stealing anything which is use similar colors for your design. Because if you have a completely different design, use similar colors from another Illustrator or from another design choice. It should be fine as long as you're not copying, but only drawing inspirations. It's all fine and days, no problem with doing so. So here you can see there's just so many different color combinations with so many different kind of like associations then we have like this one looks way more alien, crazy like and this one looks really calm and nature like. So just try a lot of colour combinations. See what you like, what works best for what type of character. And just don't forget to have FUN with it. 32. Connecting colours to character traits: The pixel characters are back. And that's because if you look at them, they are super colorful. And I just want to go over some and just show you why some of them are as colorful as they are, and why some of them maybe aren't as colorful. So for many characters, it's important to have strong colors, especially if they are the main characters so that they are easy recognizable. If you had, for example, here with nemo and Dory, they are always in some kind of underwater area. And the colours of them are really super strong so that no matter what kind of background, they are always easy to discern. And here also for nemo, again, we have orange, which is associated to optimism and all of these positive aspects. And for Dory, which you have the combination of like yellow and blue. Of course, no, it's based on real fishes. It's no, it's no. There's a reason why I picked exactly nice fishes for these characters. So blew my more columns. So she's a friend type of character. We immediately know, righteous, no danger. She's friendly. And she has these yellow parts that are also like happy and she's like super positive character, so it makes a lot of sense. And then for the turtle, I mean, it could have, they could have chosen and turtle that is like super green. But I chose one that is more brown. And that's mostly because he is a side character that isn't as important. So using a color that isn't like super crazy and doesn't pop out as much. Definitely works in this context. Also here for the monsters. They're super easy recognizable. Just a strong Green who is also relying more on the happy side and the turquoise. So they definitely choose a lot of strong colours to easily recognize the character. Like, even if I take all of the features within them away and only use the silhouette and the color. You could probably immediately recognize the characters if you watched a movie. Here for rotatory, It's a read. So they couldn't use anything crazy like a strong pink or anything. But they still use the soft pink in all of the body parts that are nicotine. So they don't have any further that make it may more appealing so that we immediately know, alright, he's a friendly character. He has this soft pink going on. And also differ. Isn't really a dark gray, but more like I at least softly bluish type of gray, I would say like if I go in here, yeah, here you can see this is a turquoise blue color and not as strong gray because then it would look less friendly. And for the sweet grandpa from up, we can see that he has this more darker, dull tones. And it's basically because his character is pretty pessimistic. He isn't like super into his whole life and how it's going. So these darker colors definitely resonate with the way he's thinking. But also his skin dislike pretty bright and percolation, purple, pinkish so that it shows alright, he's still like a good guy. He's still alive and doing his thing. And for Wally, obviously it has this orange again. This is more dull than nemo moderate still there. So they're still part of positivity, which of course is combined with the rust and him working together with the environment on Earth. But later when they are on the spaceship, he is way more recognizable because he is standing out with his rusty look compared to all of the colors that are around him. So as you can see, when you design a character, choosing the colors for it is definitely an important aspect. So here when I made this very character, when I chose the colors, I decided to go for pastel and pink and purple ones. Again, if we think about purple, There's fantasy and mysteries and secrets and all of this kinda stuff. So definitely works and fits for it for a very, and it also goes to the blue. And blue is calm and nice. So we associate her with being more of a nice character. For the wings, they have the green. Green again was nature and health and these positive aspects. So there's no, this isn't a coincidence either that they are green and red, for example. And for the pink color, it goes towards the red, which is more about like passion and adventures. So using this strong character, the song colour for the Character and for a hair, definitely draws a lot of attention towards the top of the head, towards the face when we want to viewer to look. And it says a nice contrast. There is a bit of Bitcoin on, down here, on the shoes and on the wings. But generally it's drawing the attention up because these are rather calm. Color is compared to the strong pink. Here also, I made a strong contrast between the orange and the purple. Now, if we look at the color wheel again, we can see purple is here in orange is almost across. So using the purple orange combination, like it's almost a cross. And at the same time and someone next to each other. And there's a lot of red in it to, so using orange and purple, like going into the yellow is doing both do contrasts and at the same time more of a harmony. So it was a choice both by knowing that the character has Redskins. So there wasn't much of a choice that I had to. They could do. And her staff and equipment was purple already for a while. But it works quite nicely combining these colors, especially when using a lot of tea saturated ones in-between. And then using really strong contrast in colors like this, pretty yellow shine on the sword, and it's pretty intense pink on the staff because they are almost contrary colours. So yes, I think about to college the one when designing them. Here, it was a little bit hard because it was supposed to be a character that is both a rogue and also it drew it. If you don't know what to draw, it is more of a magician than is allowed to do with nature. So it wasn't hard combination for me to do to have both the rogue and assess and aspect and the Druid nature loving aspect because these are both character traits that you wouldn't really mixed together. So I tried to go for generally more dark designed to have the DSS and aspect and then use some white and washed out lighter tones to get some of the nature aspects back in. So, yes, think about these aspects when designing character or if you know, okay, it's supposed to be more of a darker one like this one, which has the idea from the designs from blood-borne the game. Then I didn't want to go for a black and white one because of course, like unwind, it's just not there anything we don't have a black and white wealth. What I wanted to go for a lot of desaturated colors. So I used to blue one to make it dark and mysterious, but also Kom, he isn't like a crazy action-packed character, more laid back. So desaturated Blues were the way to go. So yes, look at characters, look at their designs, thinking about the colours to use and what kind of emotion stay invoke when you see them? 33. practical use: Now it's finally time to bring some color into the designs. So I just took the design then I duplicated it so that I can try two different color variations. And it's in black and white. So how do I put it in color? Well, there's one pretty easy way, and that's Gradient Maps. The other is Color Balanced, which is go into color balance and start shifting these around. And immediately, I won't get some color into my design. What I like to use gradient map a little bit more because I can really hear, start shifting things around and immediately this is already pretty interesting color combination. So I can just see what I'm interested in. Maybe get a stronger, more saturated orange here. And I can see if I want to have another column, even though I think a dark green works pretty well here as well. Just going to see what color works together. See what I like, what works. What doesn't like these green been to extremely could look cool as well with the yellow. But I think it's not quite my personal appeal. Then for the light aspects. And see if I want to have a crazy orange maybe. Looks pretty nice. I think I'll leave it like this for now. And then go to the jacket and hair. This is a bit extreme. So let's see if I want to make the check and yellow maybe maybe also a lighter so that it's a light yellow with orange exons. And alternatively, you can also see what happens if I turn the whole thing around and make the jacket Lark, maybe this works even better. Alright, I think the orange here is a bit too much, so I'm going to put it into the yellow and really just leave Dx and colours for these parts and make it even lighter. Maybe. This Oregon looks pretty cool and give her a proper skin tone. Probably something that has some more saturation to it. Okay. Now for these tiny bands here, I'm going to go back to what I had here and maybe make it more yellow. Now if you think about yellow and orange, it's energetic and positive and these kinds of things. So for a design like this, if I want to have some energy going on and it could definitely work. So this is one variation I'm going to try. So now let's go into another direction and try something else. And here you can really see that it's super easy to just choose some designs based off of the gradient map. So I think a darker red one could also be really cool. So I'm going to make some really strong accent color is again. And maybe delete one. And I can see what happens if I make another color and put it in there. Maybe blue and red together could be really cool. And then strong accents. Alright, that looks pretty nice. So now let's see for the jacket. I could make it in this super-strong read, but I don't know if that's exactly what I want. So this could also be equal X and colour. Or maybe here, this blue is something that I liked. What I think I want to get some red in it as well maybe. And then make the hair darker Something like this, and then make it more turquoise. And I can see here if I take a lighter blue, if it works better, or maybe alternatively, a yellow also looks really nice since it's a strong contrast. But is kinda connected to the read. It's not always super obvious why things work and why they don't work. So trying is the only way to go about it. And now of course you need a skin color. So let's just use this one. And now only the events in the back are missing. So I can go back to this one and maybe I think this will work pretty well. Has a lot of the strong read it again. And of course, if I wanted to, I could also take the red color now, super, super saturated red, and then maybe make some accents, accents somewhere else. And get it involved in other parts of the design. Sooner we gave finding it. It's not getting too much. I think mostly if I keep it toned down on the bottom and make it more on keep it on HIPAA tone, tone the top and make it more on the bottom. It could be even cooler. Maybe also give her some red nail exons. Cool, look, pretty nice. And then just seeing what happens if I put the color here and there, or make it stronger on some design elements. And maybe here I can make some small accents to, and this could work pretty well. And maybe also, I want to have something red going on into here. So I could see what happens if I add one red strand. I think a good work and should only be a little bit more desaturated. Alright? And of course, same here for the other one. Can take the strong orange and then maybe implemented a bit more. Another part of the design and play around with the colors. Maybe make one of the bands here, orange, see how that looks. And I think it looks pretty nice. And maybe here more stripes and a strong orange. So that we have this cool pop of color somewhere else. And of course, we can always make it even more saturated. I just don't want to overdo it, because really saturated colors can also break the design if we use them too much. What if we keep it nice and simple than it can definitely work? And that's how we can easily take our designs and apply color to them and get different kinds of feelings for the same design, just depending on what colors we use. So it's a great method. Try and find the gradient map in whatever program you're using. If you're using Procreate, It's an Adjustments and then Gradient Map. And then play around with whatever you think works best. And try and find a nice color scheme for your design. 34. Using royalty free pictures: Alright, we wanna get into photo1 patching and just a second. But before I talk about Photo-bash in, I just wanted to put this little section as like a small disclaimer here. Because it's important that when you do Photo-bash ING, you just Use pictures that don't have any copyright on them so that you use royalty-free photos. Especially if you just use photos and you cut something out and use it for your own design. Or you just make 3D obvious parts of the photo into your design, then be sure to use royalty-free photos so you don't get any problems with whoever the owner is of the picture. Because the last thing you want is making amazing aren't putting it online somewhere and then have someone writing you a fee and you have to pay something for it that would be horrendous. So just use royalty-free photos also out of respect. If you were to make a character design and someone else would steal it and just put it somewhere in the background and then sell it off as there's I think you would also be pretty annoyed by it. So show the same respect to others and use royalty free pictures. If you are doing studies for yourself and you don't plan on sharing, then sharing them or making any profit off of it, then using copyrighted pictures is fine. Just use them for yourself and of course, studies, then it's no problem. What if you make them public or if you start earning money from them, then it starts to be a problem. The only way you could maybe use copyrighted photos is that you use them and change them so drastically and that none of the original is visible anymore. What if you wanna be on the safe side? Just reassure to use royalty free pictures. And you'll be good to go. Because next we're going to look at textures. And I will be using my pictures and I got them from a royalty free database. If you just Google royalty free pictures, there are several databases. And I used Pexels for these few examples that are going to use. Now 35. Easy texture: Okay, easy texture with mixtures. So the design already works, but for example, the jacket or other parts of the clothing are a little bit flat and they don't really have a lot of texture and we can definitely change that. So something you can do is to just go into your actions when you, depending on what program you have. This feature is somewhere else probably. But generally it should be in the top-left. And then here I have to go to Add and insert a photo. Again, if you're another program, it might be in Import and then photos. So this option definitely exists everywhere. And then you can just go ahead and take a picture that has a nice texture. I'm just going to use this one for this example. And then I can make it a bit bigger and place it on top of whatever I want to have a texture for. And I'm just going to place it on top of it and then clip it to my object. And now I can, first of all see that this is clean. But second of all, now, if I want to use it, now, of course it doesn't look like anything and it's not working. But I can first of all, turn down the opacity and then also choose different layer options. So I can just go in here. And for example, also go to the top, go to saturation and just remove the blue from my texture. And maybe make it brighter or darker. And also change the size here if I wanted to have a bigger and then see what kind of layer option could work. In my case. If I use these kind of layer options, then it gets darker and here it gets lighter. So overlay is often a good idea to use as a layer option. And then immediately you can see we get a lot of texture on it. And it looks just a bit more interesting. And we can of course, to these for other parts of the design as well. And we can see what kind of textures we want to use. So this is another texture. I can do the same here and lay it on top. And again, make a clipping mask. I have to just erase away a little bit hair. And now I can again see what I want to have here and use other options. So for example, this one also overlay on it's a good option, looks pretty nice. And then it can make it darker. And I have some texture going on in here. And again, if I turn it on and off, you can see that just by doing this small adjustment, we get some nice and juicy texture within our painting without having to use any special brushes or anything. And of course, it could also just duplicate it and clip it to the rest of the clothing. And I will get some texture in here as well. And there was no need to draw anything crazy in right now. It's both on the skin and on the clothing. So what I can do for it is to DQ lipid. Lipid only to the clothing layer, merge it down, and then have a clip again. And now it's not on the skin and only on the clothing. Pretty simple. What always has a nice effect makes it look pretty different. And again, if this, for example, is too strong for my taste, I can also go in here and make it brighter, for example. And just get some of that contrast out of there isn't as apparent. What if I turn it on an off? You can see with texture and without, and depending on what kind of design you have, you can really get creative with the textures. I made another design for the gentleman variation of the course. And I use some crazy other textures in here. Just really see what kind of design you have going on and what might be working. So here is this super crazy texture that was part of a golden wall, I think. So, yes, depending on what you have, just choose the texture properly and use it. And next, we're also going to see how we can make cutouts of the textures so that we can implement these into our designs without needing to draw whatever we're cutting out. 36. Edit and implement: Okay, the next aspect we can do when it comes to Photo-bash is taking elements that we like from somewhere else and implementing them into the design without having to paint them ourselves. So let's try this here. If I say, alright, these glasses are pretty nice. Let's just try to ****** them for us. I can go ahead and try and cut them out as clean as possible and use them into an integrate them into my own Design. Lead way, if there is something more complicated that you maybe don't know how to paint, you can try and cut it out from somewhere else and then implemented into your design. Of course, this is kind of rough, could be done better. But I will just try and put it in here. I think I will do it underneath, Clipping it. I have to do it smaller, of course. And I wanted to be underneath the hair. Now I'm in the wrong room. That explains all of it. So let's go here, put it underneath. And then before I clip it, I will try and correct the whole thing so that it is more fitting towards the perspective here. So just using the distortion tool, this can be a bit tricky, maybe in the beginning, to how to get it right. Bond. The more you try and do it, the more you get practiced with it, the better it should work. So now if I take it, maybe even on top of the hair actually not clipping it. Right now it looks a little bit ridiculous because you have to even put it higher. Or maybe I could also put it on top of the head so that it kinda looks like she's wearing it on her hair. Of course, if you find pictures that are better perspective wise, then it's easier to cut out things. And I don't want to leave it with this wacky example. We, so I'm also going to use another one. I will put it into this group and then try and take some of the buckles here. Again, I'm just going to make a pretty rough job with cutting it out. If you want to properly use it, I would take my time with it and just with a little bit better. But for the purpose of just showing it, it doesn't have to be so great. Okay, and now we can also copy paste it and take that away. And now we have this buckle and we can place it on top here, not clipping it. And now if I want to implemented in use it, I can make it smaller and I can make it wrap around the body more and easily have a high amount of detail within mind design without having to painted myself. And the more time I spend faking it in here, so to say, the better it is. And then of course, with the curves, I can also try and match the colors of my original painting more. I can also go into the Color Balance and try and implement some more colors that are already in the design. And I can of course, just take this vector, my selection, and copy paste it again. Now I should have it again, he is. And now I can use it for other parts as well. So if I wanted to use it, maybe also somewhere in the back, so I'm just make it smaller and longer. I can also use it for these things. Have to use in behind the body. Okay? So yeah, here I can also implemented on these parts if I wanted to and easily get high amount of detail without needing to draw all of these things in. So Photo-bash ING, definitely a nice option to use. If you don't know how to draw things. If you don't want to spend the time Drawing things like sometimes using the texture of water drops for something that is in the rain is just saving you a bunch of time. Or maybe you're having a night character that has a lot of chainmail than using the texture of chainmail. If you find it somewhere, it will also save you a bunch of time. So use it wisely. The better you get it at, the more you can batch together photos. There are artists that are really, really good at using Photo-bash and they just bashed photos on top of each other so that the end of it, you have a stunning, realistic looking image. And I would say, it's definitely not as easy as it looks. So sometimes when you first hear of Photo-bash, Oh my God has cheating. It's so easy. They're not even painting in themselves. But if you try it out, you realize during a convincing looking Photo-bash is a lot harder than it might seem in the beginning. But it definitely is a nice way to save time and make some areas look more detailed and professional 37. Readability: We are back with the ferry and with the character that I designed. And this time it's going on about Silhouette and what it does for our character, and how important it is and all of these kinds of things. So first of all, let's talk about readability for our characters. It's important that if we look at the designs that we can also read them and clearly see what is own new paper. Instead of just looking at it and being one mess of shapes and forms and whatever. So we need a clear silhouette. Even if we're just designing some clothing and we don't really have a lot going on. We should still try and go for a silhouette that somehow makes it easier for us to read what is happening. So in this example, I made a silhouette because of mostly when I, when I made this picture, I wanted to design some clothing, 40 character. So it was still important that it's clear to see what is happening. So I went for a pose that is very simple, but it's pretty readable still. So as you can see, it's kind of uncreative, but I just put the arms aside from the body instead of having them being like super close here because then it would be harder to read what is happening. And same for the legs. I put some space in between them and then only have them overlap on the bottom so that the silhouette itself is easy to read. If I just go with a red outline, then you can see, alright, this is a simple, clear silhouette. So even with the clothing and the weapon and whatever, we just take her and outline her. Then we can see, alright, this is an easy, simple silhouette. You can clearly see what is happening. Even for the hair, it was a stylistic choice to have them be further away, instead of them being directly here. And also the tail. It's all not a coincidence that it's placed the way it's placed. Because now you can see with the red outline, it's a clear silhouette. There aren't a lot of things overlapping. I tried to keep it nice and separated so that when we're looking at it, it's not just one big mess of shapes that are overlapping. So now let's also look at the very here. You can see it's a pretty simple, basic poster, isn't too much happening. But again, I just tried to keep a clear silhouette so that when we're looking at it, we can immediately see what is happening. And that means having a, the body here. There are some overlapping parts because if we are just having our person kind of T-pose, it isn't really that interesting. So we're trying to get some interests by having some parts of the body naturally overlap while still keeping a clear, easy to read silhouette. So that when we're looking at it, we can immediately tell what is going on in here also for the wings, definitely a stylistic choice to have them not overlap, but instead be two separate shapes so that it's easier to read. And if I would just fill it out with one color, you could still mostly tell what is coming on. So readability, definitely a big part. So when you're choosing any kind of poses for characters, try to get the arms and limbs to move away from the body so that they are not too close. Here you can already see one arm is already less readable, but because the hand is also sticking out a little bit in here, I'm have some space in between. It's easier to see even for this one where it's just like one big part of the entire clothing. I still have some parts here of the body sticking out. But of course you can see, yes, this is already harder to read. And if I make it smaller, it's harder to see what's going on. But thanks to the way in this designed and what it's supposed to portray, it still works here for this one, which is made by someone else. You can also see if I would take all of the clothing and I will just fill it in as a silhouette and wouldn't really work anymore at all. Because here there's this giant mental going around this giant cape. But of course, the artist chose to make the armor in the middle way, way darker than the Cape. So decay isn't really a part, it's not a major part of the design. And at the same time it mostly as just in the background and it's just working as kind of a frame for the design. So if we would fill out the silhouette with the cape and wouldn't really work. But because the cape is a way lighter, you can see that the silhouette is pretty easy to read. The legs aren't really overlapping. The arm in itself is also individuals, so pretty much all the limbs are facing away from each other. Same with the weapon. There's only some crossing here and it's also on purpose because it looks more interesting when it's crossing. Then if the weapon, which is be completely straight than there would be a little bit too little of something going on and would be to boring. So having a slightly slanted makes the whole thing more interesting while still keeping everything easy to read and look at. So yes, that much on readability. What of course there's even more we can do with silhouettes and then we can portray. So next, let's us look at dynamics 38. Dynamic: Okay, Let's talk about dynamics for the silhouette and all. This isn't much of a character design. There's still a character in there when it's on a crazy design. But I'm just going to use it as an example and then talk about more in the next few paintings. But first of all, just so you get an idea what I mean by dynamic. If you want to have a painting or a design of a character that is either maybe moving a lot or it's supposed to be free flowing and symbolizing freedom or nature, or water or fire elements, just anything that is more dynamic and flowing. It should also be important that you use a pose that is more dynamic as well. So in this example, since it's supposed to be a mermaid underwater, which is pretty free flowing topic. I chose a pose that has a strong dynamic line going through the body. So instead of her being super stiff, you can really see that it curves around and they aren't really a lot of straight lines. So it would be hard to make it a pro-life. I can't speak. It wouldn't be hard to use straight lines to show the way in the body moves. So using a curve makes it way easier and just generally also makes it more easy for our view, for our eyes to follow the line. It looks more natural altogether. Here is another example by another artist so that you can see it's not just something I came up with. This one is supposed to be dynamic and fluid as well. And if we just try and break it down into different lines of dynamic, you can easily see, alright, DSST body lines. So it's a really strong S curve. But we have even more as curves here with the arms. So there are more S-curves than we have this one here in the hair so that they are really hang around. And of course, in the background is another giant won as well. So we have a lot of dynamics going on here. Anymore curves you are trying to put in your design. And the more you are emphasizing them, the more dynamic it'll look. So if you want to make a really static robotic design, can maybe try and avoid any kind of S-curves. And if you want to make a flea free flowing design of maybe a bird type character or a fairy type character or whatever. Then using designs that are more curved as probably a better way to go. Here, I also made another character design. And while it's kind of a neutral posts that hasn't a lot going on. There aren't really any crazy S curves here. I still try to get some dynamics in here with these flowing elements so that the design itself wouldn't look too static and still has something dynamic going on. Because oftentimes you can say it's not like a perfect rule. But if there's more dynamics, it's more interesting, It's more action, action packed, so to say. And depending on what you want to portray, definitely the right choice to use. When of course, if you want to use something and if you want to portray something like a night that is more heavy static character than using something crazy dynamic. It can still work. But just for the design itself, using impulse that is pretty static, can definitely already go along way. And you don't really have to do much more and have to emphasize like any crazy dynamics. If you want to make some kind of monk fighting type character and really wanted to show with the sketch itself. Another character is really active and moving a lot. Then choosing a pose and a silhouette that is, has a lot of fluid lines is pretty much a must have. And last but not least, I want to also show you how you can use your poses and connect them to expressions and the Character, and how they look like so that you can choose the right pose for a character that you want to portray. 39. Expression and personality: So here I'm going to look into three examples that I've made and how I use the pose to give some kind of characteristics to all my character without having to draw any crazy facial expressions or anything else, or make the design skull wild just with the pose alone. So for this first character in the design itself belongs to AHRQ evil here on Instagram. So it wasn't my design what I'm repainted the character. So here for this one, for example, she has this slightly mad, crazy vibe going on. And I tried to portray it just by using impose that somehow looks a little bit unusual, like a normal person wouldn't just sit on and then turn like this. So I wanted to show the aspect of it being more unusual just by simply posing her that way, having her lean forward towards the viewer. And I could have pushed it even more and maybe it would have had an even crazier effect for this part. I'm already happy with how it turned out. And I definitely wanted to have this crazy dynamic somewhere where she isn't like where normal people aren't supposed to sit feeling for the painting. And that's why I chose this silhouette on this big lamp. And now let's look at another example. Here. I wanted to make a painting and really wanted to portray that the character is kind of like an evil villain vibe that doesn't really care about what you're doing next or it is kind of So periods. So I used a pose in which she was seated down because obviously it's either imposing if the person is standing on top of you and you're looking up, or maybe if the person is also sitting down in here, you're also kind of further down and looking up to her. So you're not really towering over her, but more towards from the bottom and looking up. So that is definitely one part that helps to pose. And the other one is that in the way that she is supposed to look superior. And on top is that she has this slightly, I would say, board body language going on. So it clearly shows that she is relaxed and she's in a calm state and isn't nervous about anything at all. And that is here because she is leaning on her hand. So that's something you would do when you're maybe waiting or when you're just relaxed and calm or sometimes tired. And also having the legs crossed, which just shows that she's in a relaxed state. And here the hand as well is not in a fist or anything that is showing here, showing that she's in under any stress. Everything about the body language and about the pose just shows that she is sitting there and not planning to move in any second is being superior, relaxed, powerful. So all of these things are in this pose. And here I just made a little bit more of an dynamic in the wine because of course this one is pretty stationary. So to make some small points of interests in, in something like this in here. And also until to the perspective so that this part is closer to the viewer than the head, just to make it more interesting. But overall, I use this pose just to portray what I wanted to do viewer to think. And here for the third one is a more dynamic, action-packed pose so that the viewer feels like she's currently in the fight. And she should also be someone who was heroic and Miami like fighting for justice or trying her best to be out here and survive. So here you can see, again, it's kinda like a dynamic pose here with some parts that are sticking out. So that it's more interesting to look at is stronger silhouette that should add to the character. Because if I want her to look powerful and strong, I will take some of the limbs and add some dynamic to him and make them away from the body. Because if you think about more shy characters, they mostly have their arms towards their bodies. They won't really put their legs too far away. Everything is kind of close in. And the more courageous and the more people like the characters are sure about what they're doing, they will start moving their limbs further away from the body. So someone who is maybe trying to be imposing, you can have a pose where they are crossing their arms. Something that we also see as, I don't know more. It's more close towards the person. But then if we combine the closed arms, wish some legs that are moving away from the body, then suddenly we don't really have a shy pose anymore. We have a pose that is kind of menacing. And if I would take the closed arms, but instead have some legs that are going inwards and then maybe here having some legs next to each other inwards. It looks more like a certain kind of character or more reserved. And then maybe if the legs were crossed over one another, then it could look more shy away from him. The ugly sketch, what I hope you can see kinda what I mean. So the more the character is closed within the Silhouette, the more and we associate things like shyness and humble and all of these kind of more inwards type of emotions. And the more we open the Silhouette, the more you really let the Character have more spacing in-between, the more it looks like a courageous one or creative one and active one. All of these kinds of things. So choosing the pose for the type of character you want to create is crucial. And we will also look at different poses and how to pick the right one a little bit later. But this is definitely something that should think about. So always before you start a design, think about what kind of character is the person supposed to be? Does the character have a strong personality trait that I really wanted to push out and then really go for the kind of poses, the whole thing. So the more courageous, the more open, the more shy and introverted, the more close the body should be. Alright, that's pretty much on about the silhouettes, I'm going to explain now. So the next thing I'm going to talk about is negative space, which is closely connected to the silhouette 40. Readability through negative space: All right, Next is negative space. And of course the question for some of you, who, what is negative space? Maybe you've never heard of it. That is totally fine. I'm just going to quickly explain it and then explain you the three major things that we can do with negative space. So first of all, what exactly is negative space? It is super close connected to the Silhouette, since the silhouette is the person and how they are outlined, if we would just look at everything around. And negative space is basically the space in-between that we can see that is created by the silhouette. So here if we wanted to talk about negative space, then these parts are the negative space of the silhouette and then are created. So if the Silhouette would be the plus, then the negative space that is created would be like T minus soon as a little bit more easier to imagine, maybe, hopefully. And yes, as you can see, there is just a lot of negative space going on around the character. And the first major power that we want to achieve with negative space is readability. So that's why it's super connected to the silhouette. We are sticking several limbs out from the pose so that it's easier to spot. What of course, if we're doing this and then we're just taking the background and the negative space. And we're just filling it with a bunch of details. Like having some dark petals going on here and having some crazy, I don't know, flowers or whatever happening. And having this happen exactly in the negative spaces that we carefully created by having our limbs stick out, then you can see it's destroying the silhouette in these different spaces. So picking the colors and picking the background for all the negative space is important because if I wanted to have this kind of flower design than I could probably make it alongside here so that it's not taking away from any of the important parts that we established for negative space. But instead, That's why I also have these petals going on around here and not here, so that it's easy and clear to see. And I keep these parts in here that make it more easy and readable. So making a character it's important. Choose a background, of course, from which it stands out. And also the leaves it enough space to have some negative space in here. So this one here, for example, or here's also a clear color, even though there's a gradient, I'm leaving all of these parts open so that when we look at them, all of the negative Space parts are still easy to see. Even here. Even though it's super dark and not easy to see, there isn't a lot happening in these parts. It only black so that the character is still cut out from the background. And the negative space is, so to say, just existing in a black void so that everything above it is working. So when using negative space when choosing your background in, be sure that you leave the parts that are important to read the Silhouette open and don't put too much, too much stuff in-between. So here also took care that it's not too much happening. Just going to make this off that there's quite a bit happening. So some parts of the negative space already a little bit harder to read because of the moon phases. But all in all, I didn't touch it too much. And I took care that here it's white against dark here as well, so that it's not drowning out our character. So when choosing it, when filling something in, always think about all these small, small parts, then we want to keep visible in order for our silhouette to be readable. But we can do even more with it because we can also use negative space to emphasize and focus. So let's look on it next. 41. Emphasis and focus of the character: Okay, For this, I chose this painting of the character to be. So this is my design. This is from the video game near automaton. Just wanted to quickly pointed out. And I'm just going to talk about negative space and how you can emphasize your silhouette and the character by using it correctly. So here you can see that the whole design has a lot of black and white going on for it. And the background as well has a lot of black and white happening. So I chose to have a really dark skylight or sky light. And really dark sky right here on the top because we have some white elements, like the white hair and the white weapon. So having a really dark here makes it super easy to read. Here the negative space in between these details of the sword is really easy to read and it really pops out. And then further down, the clothing is black. So having a super black and dark background against it would be really unhelpful for the whole thing. So I use the light that these flowers, flowers are emitting and I really pumped it up all around the character. So you can see here is way darker and here it's way lighter on around the top where the black top S. So that we create again negative space, the emphasis around it, and have an easy focus on where the viewer should look. And further down here, where it's getting less important. You can see that the contrast between the knee character and the background is less extreme. And that exactly also helps look up to where I want the viewer to look. Using the negative space to make the whole thing more or less visible in the negative space. Definitely helps a lot. So using Silhouette, combining it with either software colours or darker colors depending on what we have in front or behind, can help a lot same here for this example, you can see in the top part of the character, we, the face again is where we want to look. So that's where some of the highest contrast is and the highest values. And here, even though it's still bright and the Harris bright, we can still clearly see the difference between hair and background. And further down when we go here, we can still see the difference between the background and the character. But the contrast is getting lower and lower and it's merging more. So everything is again on purpose so that here these things work for the details and one D viewer to pay attention to, like the hands and your weapon. We can see that there is a strong contrast between the hand color and background color. And for things like the clothing that aren't as important, the contrast isn't as high. And here for the phase, we have strong contrast between the shadow color of the hair and the background color. And same here for these different elements. So using negative space to really put the focus and emphasis on all the different points you want the viewer to look is a good way of really pushing your design to the next level. Darker on the bottom, more light on the top. Strong contrast between the colour of the phase in the background. Just go and look at all kinds of pictures that you can find of all kinds of origins that you like. And you will keep seeing that this trick, so to say, is used again and again. Always look forward to face and a part that is most important and look for the background around it and see how strong the contrast is. And sometimes you don't really realize that there are a lot of convenient placements of backgrounds. Elements, like a window right behind the face or some kind of lantern right behind the face or any kind of light source. Maybe if there's a sky, then there's just amazing part of sunshine directly behind the face. So this is definitely something that you should also start to implement when you want to draw your characters and at some point. And moreover in background, using negative space and contrast to really focus the view on where you wanted to look. And last but not least, which is still going to talk about directing the gaze with negative space and the background 42. Directing the gaze: The final aspect I want to talk to you about negative space is directing the gaze. So here on this picture, this tiny, here in this picture, you can see that there's a lot going on. But of course, I still wanted to have a, the, make it easy for a viewer to look at the picture and also look at the parts that I spent the most time on. There is no use if I spend hours and hours upon the phases. And then suddenly this dark corner is the most interesting place and a picture. So what did I do with the background and with the negative space to really help guide the view. So first of all, I want you to just pay attention here that I'll use a lot of negative space to really divide up all of these different elements. Here there's the weapon and there comes another weapon. Then there is the start of the head. There's one horn, another horn. And then there's the hand. So you can see there's really a lot going on up here. And I kept negative space in between all of them. So it's easy to see, an easy to read. And also I've made the back one quite light right here. So if we zoom out, you can see that quiet around here or on the characters, the sky is the brightest and everywhere else it's getting darker. This is definitely no coincidence. And same here with his face because she is in the foreground. So she is the character that is easy to spot in his further in the background. What of course he should be important too. So I placed the moon right behind him. So that when you look at the painting that there is a lot of contrast going on as well. And these are some of the things I did. What know, what exactly do I mean with directing the gaze? And that's why I want you to look at all of these darker elements that we have going on in the background here. In just look how they kind of curve around the painting. So they are coming from the bottom. And they are mostly going all around characters and going mostly all up. So if I just make some nice arrows on them, then you can see that they're all going round here and kind of leading. If you towards the top and towards the important part, which are the characters and away from the bottom, which isn't as important to look at using elements and placing them. And especially also going with a darker value and the bottom and a lighter value on the top. And using it to read a director gaze can do quite a bit. So for example, if I would use a multiply layer and use a soft brush here to just push this even harder. So I'm just going to use a darker purple and just really want to make it darker, please clip. Then I can make that whole thing a lot darker and more and make it darker the more. You are just forced to look where I want you to look. Of course, this is just black, so there isn't anything going on when here. I can also put it on 95% so you can still see what is happening on the bottom. Well, this is definitely the brightest and everything else leading up to where the focus point and where the contrast is. So if I would want to, if I would feel like this effect isn't strong enough, could still dark enough. The bottom darken up negative space. And here you can still see the silhouettes. You can still make out what is happening. The contrast is just way lower. So automatically we will start to look up. So if I would say, alright, this is a bit, this isn't strong enough. I could place it in here, make it maybe own only 16%. And now if we turn it on and off, you can see that there is a small difference. What a difference nonetheless. So using the background and using new background elements to guide the view definitely helps quiet a bit. And these can be done on different things here. There's also not too much going on in the background and then it's getting more condensed around the head. And it's going really unsaturated and with low contrast towards the bottom. And that is no coincidence as well. And just really look at a bunch of different paintings. And you will keep finding this aspect here as well. Since there is a lot and a lot and a lot happening in the painting would of course, is to one tree. The attention to be on the character. I use this super bright window that is framing the character and that is really making her stand out against the background so that she isn't just merging with some darker elements on the side. And also just to quickly show that as well. I have a lot of things in the background helping the view go back towards her face. So here we have all of these elements pointing towards the middle and we're, her face is here as well. Look at all of these lines. Look at the tricks every artist is using. And here also 40 perspective lines. They're all going towards the face of the character and just really emphasizing the most important point of the picture. So whenever you're looking at anything, It's all the hair right there in front of you. It's really obvious tricks and it's super, look super complex. But we're in placing the painting using these easy ticks, ticks, trips. Easy tips to really exploit this kind of effect can definitely help your painting and bring it to a new standard, to a more professional look. Just try and see, okay, what do I want to have? What can I implement? Can I maybe make some mountains look exactly the way I want? Or as what we saw earlier with another painting using some branches that are kind of framing the character. Just try and think of everything you can put into the background, everything you can put somewhere, and just really have all of these point towards the point of interests that you want to emphasize. And you will have a painting that is way easier to read and it will always bring the eyes and if you are exactly to the point you want them to have. So thanks a lot for listening to that. And next, we're going to continue with even more interesting aspects. 43. Rendering advice: Alright, already are design is and a pretty nice state. But there is still a lot of roughness going on here like this leg for example, there are some random line somewhere, they don't really belong anywhere. And we just want to have all of this in a little bit more cleaned up and rendered a little bit better. I'm not going to get this on a super, super high crazy render like some other paintings that I have. But I'm just going to show you some tricks to just render it a little bit more quickly and get an overall nicer feeling for it. So I'm going to start by looking at my sketch. I was smart enough to paint the jacket on my sketch layer. Then it wasn't a very smart thing to do. I want it to keep them separated, but I didn't do it. So this is not something you should do. Try and keep them all separated, high messed up somewhere. So now I have to live with the consequences. But it should be mostly fine because basically it's just the jacket and hair and the rest is the sketch. What I'm going to do is take a brush and just go in here. Really clean up a lot of these sketch lines because they are super irritating for the eyes. And try and just get some more clean areas in between there so that there's lots sketchy lines on over the place. And here I can see that I have to pay attention so that I don't erase into the jacket. There's also a lot of sketchy lines in here. So generally, I'm just going to go over the place to try and get rid of them as much as possible so that it is more clean. If I need them somewhere, I can still keep them. But if they aren't really necessary that I'm just going to get rid of them all together. So that is one part. Of course, if you maybe you made a cleaner sketch, maybe also work with my sketch. That depends what you did. Then. I would also suggest cleaning up some lines of it and then seeing what you would lines you want to keep what you need and just getting rid of the rest. And now I've mostly got rid of a lot of lines on the legs especially. And it's looking a bit cleaner already. It's not looking too crazy. Great right now. What we're going to work on it next year wasn't really messy. I can't. And on a super duper, high rendering artist in what it takes a lot of time when sketching are generally don't really like to spend too many hours on just a sketch phase. I rather just get the design down and worry about all of these details later. So now that means I have to do a lot of cleaning up in this part of the process, but it's fine. So now that we have it on this stage, it already looks better than before. Here. It's just going to make angry, angry, eraser noises. So now I wanted to give the whole thing more depth because it's really kind of flat right now. So I will take a new layer and I will place it on multiply and use a softer brush and use an desaturated orange kind of and give the whole thing some shadows. So here on the edges maybe that's only with too much in a bit too dark. So just a tiny bit of shadow on the legs here. Less is more generally. Alright, that is already giving it some depth in there. And same here with the stomach area. Just giving the whole thing some stronger shadows here. And also of course, the head is making a shadow. So I'm just going to make a stronger shadow there and give one on here. When the hair is making a shadow. There shouldn't be a shadow to it can also turn off the jacket and how it looks horrendous. But it's been a little bit easier to see how the anatomy works on that, on these places. And it's an easier orientation Alright. And I want to keep them kind of tone down and soft. I don't want to have shadows that are too heavy, so I'm probably going to soften the whole thing down a bit. And then maybe here on the handle, I'm also going to put in a bit of shadow. And this mostly works for the skin tone already. So next, I'm going to merge this down, since I'm going to just merge all of them in a bit. And now I will merge this one down as well, create a new layer, clipping mask, multiply, and use Raby more of a saturated purple tone and place some more shadows on here. I'm also going to go down with the opacity because some brushes strong and play some shadows where they are going to be from the jacket, for example, or just anatomy wise. And just darken the thing up a little bit to where it needs to be darkened. So here underneath the knees should be some shadow. And here maybe on the feet. And of course here, this part should be darker since there's the jacket on top. And same with the kind of choker there. And then I can again make it just a bit softer. It's not too strong. And if I like it, I can also just leave it separated for now. Then I will merge the thing down here and then make another multiply layer and give some shadows to the jacket. And I'm going to use a desaturated orange, reddish orange. And try and give some more dimension here so that it's easier to read what's in the front and what's in a bag. And here, of course, I can also try and paint in some folds so that it's easier to see what's happening. Okay? And then again, I can make it softer or I can change the use of it. So maybe make it even more pinkish. And then I think I will just erase some parts away so that there are stronger contrasting shapes. Okay? And here I'll go back to this one. And again, darken some areas, some more. And try and make some strong shadows which are being cast by the jacket top. Another thing I can do is make a new layer. I will again clip it and make them multiply one. I could do it on the same one, but I sent it already have the opacities so low, I will make a new one. And then I can also make some small shadows that are being cast by the clothing on the skin. Just so the whole thing looks a bit more three-dimensional and a bit less flat. Can go over it and just give the whole thing some shadows. And then went already looks more convincing. So here for example, if these straps some shadows on the body, that way we believe that there's actually some fabric folding on top of each other. And maybe here as well should be a stronger shadow directly under the ear. Alright, and now if I wanted to render it out even more, I would probably go into the layers like this. Again, a brush that isn't super soft. And then start cleaning up these shapes so that they work better. Take some colors and just merge them with one another. So that ultimately we get some really nice clean shapes. What it also really depends on how rendered you want to have the whole thing. Rendering and itself is another giant topic. What I also made a course blog, realistic painting. And you can look into it and maybe see if there's some tips about rendering and putting highlights and learning about all of these topics. Because there's just too much to go into it. But mostly I will just go ahead and really clean some shapes up so that they are easier to look at. Same here. Cleaning up some shapes. And I could do this kind of stuff pretty much for ever. And the more I know about all of these kind of drawing techniques, the more realistic I can then start rendering the thing. So if I know how folds are working, then I can start implementing some of these looks. If you want to also be more knowledgeable in this field, I would suggest to do a lot of studies. So if you wanna be more knowledgeable when it comes to false, then look at a lot of paintings of folds and really see how they are wrapping around the body and how they are looking lighting wise. And then you can also start getting better at drawing convincing ones. I'm saying that an expert when it comes to folds, what I would say it kind of works for the most part. Yes. There is need cleaning up process. In this process, I can also start looking at my design and maybe think more about functionality. So if I see This strap going around here, I can think, okay, it's probably leading going around the body here and maybe it's attached up here to this element. So I can try and show that off. Same here with this one. This should probably go all the way up here and then somehow be attached or which one is in front of the other one. This really is the time to start thinking about all of these smaller details that we weren't thinking about earlier and adding these in. And another small thing, if I have this kind of shining neon elements and I wanted to kind of have them glow. I can also use the similar read to what we had and then use a soft brush. So airbrush and use a in an overlay layer, but maybe I need a hard light one. And then just slightly going over the element. I think heartland isn't the perfect one. I'm just going to try overlay and just making a soft kind of shine around it. And you will see that it looks basically like it's glowing. So implementing small features like these to your design could be pretty cool as well. Maybe even on the hair strand. And then if I make it brighter, it wouldn't look even more like it's glowing. Alright? And if it's on a spot where you like it, you can take your group and you can duplicate it and then flatten it so that now we have the entire design on one layer. Then I'm going to alpha locket and fill it with a gray tone. So filled in here and on some part. So now we have our character bond. It's completely grayed out. And then in the next step, I'm going to take this one and put it underneath. Here is also a good moment to check if your character design is working. If the Silhouette this readable. So now if I make it small, you can still clearly see the head You can still see the hands and legs. Of course, there's some stuff in here. What I mean, it's supposed to be have some interesting elements. So for the most parties, silhouette is readable enough. So it works tennis. One good way to check it. And then we're going to use it. And we're going to use to stored. And now if we place it on the bottom into knee, back for example, then we can use it as a complex looking shadow without us having to worry too much about Drawing any and it looks way cooler and more professional. And then I will just say I'm just going to alpha locket. Still use a eraser and just erase it away a little bit more further. It gets away from our character so that it's the darkest around the character and then kind of fades out. Another thing for the background, we can either change the color so that it fits whatever theme we're have going on here. So maybe we want to have a really dark desaturated purple or something. And then of course, we can also implement elements that might fit to our theme. So I'm going to use a light brush here from Procreate. But there's different versions as well. This one is basically just a quick version to do what I want to be doing. And I could just implement some designs into the background to just make the overall thing look a little bit more interesting. And then with a multiply layer and a super big soft brush, find a place, make the shadow multiply as well. And now with a soft and big brush that I'm just going to fill with a gray or maybe a desaturated purple. I will just make it darker on the bottom and lighter on the top. And again, this helps direct our gaze towards the top part of the painting. And I can basically do the same for the character itself. So if I say, alright, this is great, this is finished. I can again duplicate it just to be safe and then flatten the whole thing. And now make a new layer, make a clipping mask, put it on, multiply two and do the same with all character. Darken the bottom a little bit and make it more light towards the top that way. And also has the same effect on can I just, and I can just make it a little bit less opaque than where it's not too strong enough, destroying our glowing effect too much. And I can also go into the curves and see if there's anything I want to have darker off, I have gone I have to lighting lighter and just play around with it a little bit. Same with the color balance. So if I want to see if maybe some other colors would be better if only design, I can go into the Color Balance and push some of the colors into different directions and try and find something that best suits my preferences. Alright, and that basically concludes the rendering tips I can give you for your character. And I hope they're helpful. So think about placing some basic shading than making the bottom starker same with the background. Maybe adding a graphical element that will make the overall design more interesting. And rendering as much as you can. If you're not a graded rendering it, there isn't much I can tell you aside from look at other people rendering, look at references. I didn't really use any references here, so the painting probably would've been even better if I use more references. So always look out for that. And we're going to look even more into ideas and inspirations in the next parts. So stay tuned for it. 44. Finding inspiration: Now let me tell you just a little bit more about finding inspiration. Because I know it's definitely a topic that many artists struggle with. Where do I get some inspiration from? What are you inspired by? All of these kinds of things. And maybe also give you a tip on what you can do to practice character design and what to best do. So here I just have a bunch of pictures together. And as you can see, inspiration can really be found everywhere. So we're just can use inspiration from typical character elements. So clothing from people, so real pauper character assets. Or maybe you find cool ideas and people being tattooed or jewelry or all of these kinds of things. Pretty much whatever you see and you find interesting. Just try and save it somewhere. Make a folder on your PC and just save whatever you can save. What don't limit yourself to getting inspiration from real people and from humans. Here a also put in a CRO, so maybe you see something on an animal and you'll find it's really cool. Whether it's a pattern or the way something is shape, or it can be basically anything if you find a flower that has a cool shape. We also know that plants earlier, if there's anything that you find really cool, use it for inspiration as well. And also you can always use architecture and any older buildings as inspiration. Basically just put a bunch of pictures together to show you. It's really not limited inspiration can be found anywhere. So if you don't exactly know where to look, just open your eyes, look into the world and you will find a lot of inspiring things. Another thing that is FUN to do is using bunch of these pictures and then making a character design based off of it. This picture is made by Cheng Wei Po1 and this by Jennifer whistling. So this one node, the artists. And here I just took a bunch of pictures and I just mash them together on one side and then decided to make a character design based off of them. I tried to include some parts from each picture into my character design. So definitely a nice, a nice exercise to make when you want to practice the whole thing more. This is one that I did. There is still a, another one. So here I just tried to make some kind of tree design so that it would look more like a creature living in the forest. So really just three pictures of a tree can already be enough to try and spark your inspiration for a character design. And then the third example was made by my mentor materials, my jet ski. And he showed me this trick and showed how easy it is and how little you need to already start designing characters. So really just take some pictures of things that you find inspiring and cool looking and just place them together. Or maybe ask some friends and family to look out for some pictures for you so you don't have to do it yourself and can be surprised. And also, if you're just googling character design generator, you will also find some generators online that will give you a bunch of words that are thrown together that you can make a character design out of. So inspiration really, it's unlimited. Watch movies, listen to songs, Watch Series, play video games. It's everywhere. Don't limit yourself only to characters. Just see whatever you can find whatever has a cool shape and try and implement it into your next design. 45. Choosing a pose: Let's talk poses. So as I said earlier, they silhouette and the pose is also really important for the character you want to make. And maybe also in the beginning you saw the poses that I provided and they weren't quite the thing you are looking for. But you might not be the best when it comes to anatomy yet. First of all, keep practicing, you'll get there. Anatomy is hard when we will all eventually learned. And second of all, if you have a lot of character design ideas, but only the anatomy is holding you back. Then I would just suggest to go out of your way and cheat a little bit. So things you can do our 3D programs, like there's one that's called 3D, which is used by some bigger artists as well. So go out of your way and Google it. If you wanted to try it out. There, you basically have like a mannequin and a 3D space that you can pose the way you want to pose it and you can Pele sliding. It's just quite a bit of work, but it really is limitless. So when you have a specific pose in mind, but you can't really get it right. You can pose your character in there and you can even let it render out and then paint over it. So that is one possibility, but it's a little bit more time-consuming. And the other one is to simply use more photographs. So I have this photograph of this lovely young lady here, and I will just use it, make it a little bit more desaturated and then kind of just draw over it. I don't really want to completely trace it because oftentimes it looks kind of weird. So I'm just going to play some circles and ellipses for the most important part of her body. And then just go about kind of connecting them and trying to keep some more loose shapes. Same here with the upper body. That way we can get more shapes and don't really have to be experts when it comes to anatomy. And we can just get some more variation. Of course this one isn't super crazy dynamic. But I think you understand the point regardless. And if you find a pose that is more dynamic, you can of course do the same with it as I'm doing here. And kind of just try and get a feeling for the pose. And maybe you're already more experienced and tracing over some stuff which is important that you don't directly trace and copy from stuff that is in your own and then artists don't want to have copied. So if an artist spend a lot of time creating a pose and coming up with it and learning the anatomy. Don't just go ahead and trace over it and call it yours. Goes pretty rude. Instead, either ask the artists for permission to use it as a reference or just again, choose some references where you know, no one will be met if you take them. Maybe also just look into some fashion magazines. There could be plenty of cool poses as well. Or comics have some really cool poses if you need some inspiration and ideas. So there's lots of different ways going about it. And now if I take it off, I already have some kind of silhouette that I could start working from. And they could I just could just fill it out with a gray color and then immediately get into sketching. So that is one way. And the other way that I keep using is to simply make a picture of yourself, even if you maybe feel a little bit weird while taking it. But just you're pretty much free to pose however you want and you don't have to show it to anyone ever. '70s. I also wasn't planning on ever showing these pictures, but I ended up being popular, not popular, but it ended up going into the internet anyways. But it's fine. I don't really have anything to hide here. It's all about the educational purpose. So just go ahead, take pictures of the way you want your character to be post. And then later if you start tracing over it, absolutely, no one can be mad about it because it's just you posing yourself and tracing over your own body and over your own proportions. That is the easiest and most effective way to go about poses. And next, I just wanted to show you the impulse that I came up with for the next character I'm going to design. Since I already had some ideas in mind, I wanted to make a character that is more bird Raven based. So I really wanted to have a post that is more dynamic. So I looked for a posted in captures it and then try to sketch it. Don't really like tracing myself as I don't have that much of a problem with anatomy anymore. So tracing over any photos doesn't really give me any kind of learn effect. So I tried to draw these poses myself just from a reference. And if I can draw them out of my hand, that's great too. When using reference is definitely a great idea and advice. And yes, that's about poses. Try to find them wherever you can, maybe also watch movies and pause them. Use screenshots. They are all around. You just have to make proper use of what you have 46. Searching for design ideas: Let's try and make a, another character design. And you can see there are just a few inspiration references that I've put in here. Mostly just a raven kind of and these dark tattoos that I will try and implement. And otherwise, I just really wanted to have a pose that has this really soft flowy kind of dynamic. And I added the same thing. I made two groups. And it's exactly the same pose and just filled in the silhouette. And now I'll just try and make to ideas. Just look for something if I think it's cool or not, and try different versions and then go with one and keep rendering the whole thing further. So I will pretty much go the same way as I did before. Make a clipping mask and try out what I can do if I block in some shapes, if I like it or not, and see what happens. And again, in this process, I'm just going to be really open and loose with the different shapes. Make some big ones first block in some parts, see if I find them good or not, and then go from there. And here I'm also just really trying to get some of these feather-like elements in there. Seeing if they work, if they have the kind of shape that interests me and get some repetition in as well. And if I have some rough ideas in there, I can start also looking at more detailed ideas of the shapes. Kinda just imagine what I can maybe see. If there's something that invokes my interests. Just try and implemented. Work on the overall silhouette. Make it more interesting. And always of course, work with big, medium and small shapes. Also going to go behind so that I can have an easier time filling some stuff in here. And going to look at the wing here and mimic the shape to some degree. And you can see that I am lacing these purpose, purposefully in a similar direction as the silhouette is already going. So trying to get the direction that is moving this way so that I'm not destroying the flow and dynamic of the entire illustration and character design. And here I can also see that this looks really spiky. So it could be cool to make some of that in here as well. So I'm just trying to put some of these same kind of feeling shapes into the design And again, repetition is key. So putting in another circle and also thinking about big, medium, small, and making a smaller shape in here. And implementing this idea to just get more interest on the character. And also here, I will leave the negative space open so that extra silhouette at some more easy to read. And then since I already have this tattoo thing in here too, I can see if that is something I can put somewhere and get a cool effect. And here and just erasing it away. Because I think while this might be a cool idea, there would be too much going on here. So I think I'd rather put it on down here on the bottom part of the leg where there's already something happening. So rather just introducing this idea down here and dividing it into big, medium and small shapes. And here also I'm just implementing some smaller shapes from the big shape and just making them smaller. That way I just have the nice separation in big, medium and small. Then I can also make this a bit more here, just showing the smaller shapes in these silhouette. I won't really worry about the details in here too much yet, since I can also easily do that later when I decide to go for it. And then I can still spend some time working out the exact details in there. For now. I just want to get some shapes down that I like. And of course, if our design isn't forced to have any strong logic to it, we can also implement cool-looking shapes that wouldn't make any sense physics wise. Like some floating bits and pieces here and there. But if we're not forced to make a design that has some strong logic behind it, then we can easily do that too and add some interests in that way as well. All right, and here also for this part further down, since I want to have more of a feather like feeling, I can try and implement the shape a bit better. But also I can just go in here and make some shapes that are more typical for feathers, like these irregularities in there. And just add interests that way to it and make it more easily readable. As feathers And I was already more easy to see what I'm trying to portray with it. And adding and removing, adding and removing. It's totally legitimate because sometimes it's not really easy to know exactly what you want to add until you've edited. So just going back-and-forth and removing, putting in new stuff is probably the best thing you can do. So don't be hesitant to remove some stuff again, if you don't feel like it adds to the design anymore. Now I can also use a little bit darker color and go here on another layer and just add some more orientation to maybe the clothing so that I know where it's coming from and where it's going. Now we can already see, okay, now we know that there's these clothing and fabric coming from the top and then moving down here. And maybe I want to put that even more into smaller sections. So I can easily show that just by adding some darker lines and just adding some details and some points of interests in here. Thinking of how I want to break them down. And here I can see, alright, there is some smaller ones and then there's bigger ones and the feathers up here are really small. Also, I could have used a better reference. If you are free to use whatever references you can use a better one. I was just looking for some royalty free pictures. Use as reference here. And I couldn't really find ones that were a lot better. So these aren't exactly me ideal references. There definitely are some out there that are better to look at when it comes to wings especially. Alright, I would say that is one idea already down. So now I'm going to go to the next one and see what I can do there. Try and make another one that is kind of Raven based while making something new. Hopefully. Let's see how it goes. And maybe for this one, I'll start slightly different because they think I want to implement some kind of wings. So I'll just do that first. Now it looks more angel ligands, so since the wings are still white as well. So that's definitely something I still want to change. So it has more of the raven kind of feeling and less of an angelic one. I think first of all, I'm going to kind of block some darker color into the wings and then see where I'm going to go from there. Already we can see that the whole thing looks a lot less angelic. Know that the wings are getting a darker color. And now I want to see what I can do here. So I don't really like this kind of shape. What I want to see, what else I could try and make sound. Let's make the whole legs with darker. I'm going for a more traditional kind of body, sued. And I want to see if it's something I'm interested in because I want really like this kind of shape. So I'm trying to use this here too. I also like this aspect. Then it's kind of dark here. One here I'd made me want to see what happens if I make the shoulder darker. Alright. So far, so good. But it's still lacking some interests, especially compared to the other one. So I will work on implementing more interesting shapes, especially still around the head. Since this one didn't really have proper hair. I will try and make some more normal here in this one. And see if I can use the shapes of the hair to make an interesting silhouette with it. I'm Amy, also feather-like feeling from the ears, like placing some accessory on the, the height of the ears can often work out pretty well. So if you haven't tried that out yet, try implementing that as well and see what works for you. When I'm not sure, maybe I just wanted to put something behind the neck. So I think I'm gonna go to the layer that's behind and see what I can make here. Alright, and then I'm just going to see for the hair, if I can get a cool dynamic shape in there. Since the design itself is somewhat more nature-based and organic base, that's why we using a lot of organic shapes so that I can really make a lot of use of the dynamics here, since we learned that organic shapes are having this free flow of freedom kind of aspect to them. So if I wanted to really a lot of emphasis on it, then using these shapes is a great idea. And I'm also trying to keep the hair and bigger shapes so that it's still clear to read. Always thinking about big, medium, and small. And now I think everything is going to be just a bit darker so that it matches the other Design. And here should be behind the wings and behind the powered around the neck. I think here we need them have a bit less volume around the head. And let me see what happens. If I play some really long kinda claw like nails on the hand. Making the whole thing look a bit more like a harpy, I would say. Definitely also a cool design idea. And now I still feel like they're definitely has to be some more going on here. So let's see what I could try and put in there to make it more interesting and detailed. I'll try and make some kind of skirt, so to say. And place it around here currently. Just makes the whole thing more dark. But in a second you'll understand what my idea behind it is. So now if I turn down the opacity made looks more like some see-through clothing, although I'm not exactly sure about the placement. So maybe somewhere else it could be better. Maybe just like some ruffles around here. Could work nicely. I think I also want to try and implement some kind of tattoos on the arm. Just making the whole thing a little bit more darker because I thought it was a cool idea on the legs here, having this kind of gradient. So doing the same thing here as well. And then using this area to make some kind of patterns in it. And one thing that I really liked about the tattoo up here was the negative space here off the skin parts. So I'm just gonna go in with a eraser and erase some patterns back in here. And I think if I make it even smaller and more proper patterns, it could look really cool. All right, then it's already pretty cool. And I think I will do something similar for down here as well. Just using these shapes and cutting into it when my eraser and adding some interests to the design that way. And now I can take these shapes then stayed here and I can make some feather-like shapes off of them so that they are more coherent with the whole bird topic. And that way It's already way more interesting than it was before. I'm also wanna go to another layer up here maybe. And add some small elements to the legs. Right, Brittney, nice. So last step and we'll do something similar, like edit here. And we'll just take the colon and it's a bit darker and then paint in some small details here and there's so I can see better what exactly it's gone on. That way. It's already a lot easier to see what my ideas are in later. If I want to continue working on it, I have an easier time figuring out what exactly is even happening here. Alright, I think that's pretty good. So I have to designs. And in the next step, I'm going to choose one. Take a second to think about which one I want. And I'll continue working on it and render it gives us some color. All of the things that I previously discussed. And just do this with one of the two designs. 47. Rendering a design Part1: Okay, I ended up going with this of the two designs. If someone was totally in love with the other one, I am sorry. A decided to take this one. And I'm going to work on edit a little bit further and then render it. So what I'm going to do first, I want to take some parts of the design and at something that I liked from the other one. So I really like the super strong claws. So I wanted to implement that as well. Having super long claws and nails is also just equal to pleasure that I have. So I really like how it looks. Pretty cool. So I want to implemented as best as I can, just shouldn't work just fine for our purposes. Of course, I would do it a little bit better. If this was for a more finished illustration. For this kind of setup, it should work. Okay, so now I've put that in here. I can also see if there's anything else that I made me want to take over. And I think so far, maybe these lighter parts so I can go to the legs and make them a bit darker and put all of Dan a little bit higher up. And by doing so, I can then again take the eraser and erase some light parts inside and really have some cool patterns going on here. You can also see that the reference pictures are gone. That's simply so you can see a little bit better what I'm doing and I'm not too zoomed out. So I removed them. And if I need them, I can always just turn them back on here. And 40s, random organic shapes. I don't really have a, a proper reference. I've just painted so many over the years that I just developed a feeling for what could look nice. Of course, using reference is always a good idea. Alright, I think that's already pretty cool. And now I'm going to go back to the head piece here. I think it's down here. It's kinda mixed up all over the place, not the perfect layer order. And maybe I12 implement the structure of some hair as well. So kinda giving her a long Bob that turns into some wings. Alright. And here on the top as well. Just putting in some hair structure, having some strands happening. Maybe also trying how it looks like if she's getting some banks. Since I'm also a sucker for banks, it could definitely look nice, of course later, we kinda have to get rid of the head structure. Otherwise it will never really truly look connected because then we can always see where these, The school is going. Okay. So now I've added some more of the things that I wanted to have which weren't really visible before. And maybe I also want to get rid of some of the fabric up here just so that it's a nicer opening. I think some of design lines appended in might not be ideal. I can still change them. And I also want to see what happens if I have some more kind of jewelry on the shoulder or maybe some kind of tattoos here. Since this is a little bit bare currently. But I don't think in works too well, so I'm going to leave it as is. If I change my mind later, you can always can come back. Here. I can implement some more Dynamic structures. Okay? And next, I want to start working a bit more with color. So what I'm going to do, instead, I'm going to take my sketch layer. I'm just going to duplicate it to be safe. And then get rid of some of these stronger lines, just making it softer in general. And then erasing away some of the lines that I don't really want and need anymore. There are a bunch of lines all over the place and some aren't really helping the overall design. So I'm just trying to get rid of those. Okay? Know that this is a bit better. I can start thinking about colors that I want to put in here. And I think I'm going to go for something kind of blue themed. So let me grab the main layer here and see gradient map wise. What I can put in that looks nice. If already have anything that looks cool. These are mostly too dark, too green. So I'm just going to go with this one probably and just start working some more darker desaturated tones into it. When trying to keep a nice blue color here. And then go to the next layer. See what happens if I make a, another darker blue maybe. So that I get some variation in the brightness as well. Also want to look at the skin color. This is a bit too orangey. So I think something within the desaturated purple, red area would fit best. Then we still have this part that needs coloring. I can also see what happens if I put some contrast in here, see if I liked the idea. So I think this could look really cool. And for sketch layer, I'm also just going to make it darker. Alright, and I think here this kind of crown was on this layer. I'm just going to select a really quick and then change the EU. If I'm on the right layer and not, okay, you changing it and making the saturation and brightness way stronger and giving it a nice yellow color. Because again, yellow is the contrast color to purple here. Now too in blue as well. So if I want to have some nice contrasting colors in here, making this golden yellow is a possible good idea. Then also here for the sketch layer, I'll erase way the lines of the scalp so that it looks more like a proper hair and not just like some random lines overlapping there. And now that I know where the sketches and where the other stuff as I can also erase away some lines where they shouldn't be visible anymore because there's fabric overlapping. Like here on the arms, for example. If I'm happy with it, I think I still want to look for color that is maybe a bit more saturated, a little bit more pinkish. Okay? And if I like it, then again, I can merge some of these stuff together. I can either just go bit by bit or merge everything at once. Here speed wise, because for the most part, I'm pretty okay with it. How it is, I will probably merge most of it at once. But first I want to get rid of some of the lines here and make them just a lot softer in general because now I can see where everything is. So I don't want to have the super strong lines within my design And now if I want to be saved first, I can duplicate the whole thing. So I have all the layers in there separated form. And if I think Alright, this is good enough, I can just merge most of them together. So now all the system, often the front is merged and just some back elements are on another layer. It's just making me and making it easier for me to work on it if this stuff stays in a bag. Okay. So I think I'm also going to use the slightly darker background. And now I can go here and start working these things together. So here for here, I can just begin working them into each other so that it works better. Maybe here also start to show a feathery structure. Then again with the darker color, I can make some gradient effect so that it blends together nicely. Now we can already see that there is some more dimension coming to it. And it looks a lot softer and nicer. I can also do the same for the hair and just implement some of the blue in here. And right now, since the colors are a little bit limited, I can of course make a new layer, clip it, and use the overlay option and gifts the whole thing a bit more. Changes in there by using a softer brush and then adding some pops of color here and there. So that way, when I started working this into each other, I have some more variation. And I don't only pick and choose from the same three colors. And 40 skin tone. I can, for example, would choose a more reddish tone and just give the whole thing also a little bit more dimension in more depth. And more and more the whole design is starting to come to life. So this was before and after. So a lot better. And then I can just merge it and continue to work on it. I'm going to go back to the other brush and then maybe also clean up some parts like these. And repetition again is key. So just having this feather-like shape implemented everywhere will definitely help make it look more coherent as a design. And big, medium, small as well. So just using these shapes and making them smaller and smaller towards the top. And another thing that I can do, of course, that I haven't done yet in students adding some shadow to the whole thing. So I'm going to use a pretty light color and a multiply layer that I clipped. And then I can just make some parts darker. I think the collagen be even lighter. And then I can darken all the parts that should be in shadow. And don't character is getting a lot more depth and believability just by adding in some shadows. Here as well, should be darker underneath the arms. And in here I'm going to make it darker to and then again, I can take some of the shadows and erase them away if they're too harsh, maybe. Just going to make the arm in the Mac more darker because it doesn't. It's also important to the whole design. And it's further into backgrounds so it can be darker the way it looks like it's further away. 48. Rendering a design Part2: And then I can take a color that is again a bit darker than I went ahead and just really darken some parts that should be especially dark that aren't just really not catching any light at all. So for example here, I will also just take more of a purple color for the skin tone. And then I can place some shadows in there. And that way, the anatomy is also a little bit easier to read. And for the hair I can make some parts darker to and now if we turn it on and off again, we will see there is quiet indifference in depth before and after. Here. These ones aren't really looking to grade right now, so I'm just going to change it, make them properly visible. And here I remembered that I wanted to have the fabric kind of start here. So I can show that simply by using a lighter line and then going around here. Maybe making something darker over here. You can just emerge from there. And here I will also take a lighter color and then kinda try and show the folds going inwards here as well. Just trying to clean it up a little bit and implementing more depth. Another cool thing now is that I can take the gold color here, make it even stronger, more, maybe even more yellow. Add some highlights on here so that it looks more like gold that is catching a reflection. And then take a color that is even lighter and really get the feeling of a reflection in here. And then I can take this yellow gold color and add some details in here as well that are kind of imitating that colours. So the design is more coherent and it's not just up there, would rather appearing all over the whole thing. So maybe some gold rim around the fabric. Look nice. And then I can also use the highlight color here and make a small highlight on the gold. And then if I want to, you can also use the dark color here and make it darker towards the edges. This all comes down to rendering and the rendering capabilities. The more you know about it, the more you can, of course implement. So it's always worth studying a lot of materials. So that when you're trying to get your ideas across, you can just paint in quiet a bit of stuff without having to immediately look for references all the time. More. It naturally comes with practice and just making more and more designs. I think this one could use some more dynamic shape as well, because it's pretty straight. And then made me erase something into it. And now I will take the light color here and add some more details on the wing down here as well. And again, work in N by just choosing D darker color and going over it. Alright? Alright, looks a lot better. And I will choose pretty much the lightest color that I have here. And make an even lighter so that I can start adding in some highlights to create some interest here and there. And draw the eye to some places than didn't receive that much love in it already looks like we spent a lot of time detailing it, even though I just added a few strokes with a highlight color. More, it already gives the idea of lot of detail and dimension. And you can also see that I'm just going across the painting and just searching for any kind of color and value that I might need next. And that way, I can easily, I don't always have to go to the Color Picker and have to choose new ones. I will first just think about several colonists didn't want to have in my painting and then just continue to move this from that point on. Just makes it a lot easier than always thinking about new ones. Of course, later if I feel like I'm missing some fresh colors, I can always pick and choose new ones or use the overlay layer option to get new ones in there. And I think I'm also gonna go to the layer here in the back and use multiply again to just darken some parts up like this one. Because it's behind and should be darker. Just makes it easier to read these silhouette. And if it's too much, I can always lower the opacity and then add it in. And now that I have a darker color down here, I can also use it for several places if I feel like they need some more depth in there. And here I can also try and make a more stronger defined line so that it's easier to read. And of course for the tattoos to, I can make them more detailed if I wanted to. And always using the big, medium, small principle. So making big shapes first and then adding smaller ones onto it. Alright? I think now it's almost done, at least, of course, it's never really done. But at least in this amount of rendering. So the thing I can still do is using, again a highlight color And add some more highlights around some parts where I want some more attention to be and that are still lacking some and need some love. Maybe also on the skin I could add like small highlight here. Okay, and another trick that I wanted to show you before, I call it a day, so to say, is how I can use a rim light to bring even more interests to my character. So what I'm gonna do, again, I'm just going to duplicate the group to be safe if I need anything and then flatten it and use a clipping mask and put it to hard light. And then with a light that I can pretty much juicy color off and maybe going to use a really pale yellow. I can then implement a rim light. And what does it mean? It's a light that comes somewhere from the back are from the top. It's mostly a backline since once REM, and then we can choose where. So let's just say right there behind is a lamp. And this will just accentuate the characters. So now I will start adding some light on all of these parts. Where if there is a lamb, it would hit the characters silhouette. And this generally just brings some more interest to our character. And in most cases, it also helps make the silhouette easily, more easily readable. So it's definitely a cool idea to implement the whole rim light thing. It's really just about learning how this lighting has to be placed. And mostly you just need to imagine that there's a lamp. And how would the lamp hit the character? I'm also not crazy expert when it comes to placing perfect lighting. More. If you kind of imagine it being allied from the back, then what a most part, it's visited. It's pretty possible even though it's not maybe not perfect. And I think you can see what I mean. This way. It's just easier to read the whole silhouette and it's standing out a bit better from a background. Can do the same here for this crown kind of situation. And just make a rim light around the thorns. That way they are easier to see and they stand out more. I would say this one has too much. If it looks wrong than it probably is someone's a good idea to then remove some of it again. So always just try and see if it looks correct to your eye. And if it does, then it's probably correctly placed. And if not, just try and get rid of it. And here I can also show the shapes by going into them a bit. Alright? And we assume can see the rim light does quite a bit. Immediately. It looks more professional so to say. So adding it in a great idea. And of course you can experiment with the color, see if there is another one that you like more, maybe you like more bluish one. What I think the yellow works pretty well here, can make it even more saturated or less. And then of course, I can add some depth in the background by using a soft brush and just placing some shadow. That way I'm character isn't on this super pale gray background. And then also using multiply and doing the same for our character. And just making the bottom a bit darker than the top. Most of them just making it too dark and then lowering the opacity until I get to a point where I like it. And bonus tip, just use overlay layer. Use a colloid you one that is supposed to be in the design. Make it somewhat saturated and bright. And then you can do the opposite from the top. I think it has to be a little bit less saturated or more bright. And now you can see that it just gets a bit more color from the top. You can also see if you like the options of other layer modes. But generally overlay works really well. Soft light and hard light are good options to will. They often Fd tendency to wash out the colors more. Alright, I would say that pretty much concludes it. And I hope you like what you see and have a lot of great designs yourself, if you have any, I would always love to see them. So feel free to share