Character Design Series: Character Expressions

1. 1. Intro: Hey guys and welcome to the Character Design Crash Course. This is the first-class of the series where we will talk about character expressions we discussed in the previous class about how to draw heads and portraits. And I strongly recommend you watch that class before this one is they are highly related. I'm so excited to be continuing this series. I hope I will be able to share with you some information, some insight and some inspiration. If you wonder who I am and why I'm teaching you this series. Hi, I'm Laura. I'm a freelance character designer and the children's book illustrator. I have been doing digital art professionally for the last four years. There are many more years of traditional drawing and painting that came before that. Enough about me, let me tell you about this class. This class will cover a breakdown of multiple expressions from reference photos, multiple examples of eyebrows, eyes, and mouths, three different expression sheets. And there's a bonus that was specifically requested how to create a moodboard. This class is a part of a series that will revolve around character design. So if you want to create meaningful characters that will speak to your viewers, that will be different, special, and that will have a story. You should definitely follow the whole series. This is what the series will apply each month we will cover all sorts of things such as character portraits, expressions, full body poses, costumes, illustration, cinematic posters, even props. And finally, I will show you how to create your very first art portfolio. I know that a lot of you publish your artwork on social media. So don't be a stranger. Let's connect and keeping inspiring each other. Find me on Instagram is M laura underscore art escape and send me a direct message with a simple high. I would love to chat about art. Answer any arc related questions that you may have become artsy Prince. Come join my small art community. Starting this month. I have been active on tiktok as well, and I started posting up to two times every day. I have the same handle is on Instagram if you would like to follow me. Because I know it's really difficult to grow on Instagram. I want to help you grow faster than I did if my classes help you even one bit. That has me on your posts and I will share your art on my stories. Not only that, but if you submit your projects in the Skillshare classes from this series, I will feature your work on the next class. No one will do the work for you. So I want to compensate you for your work with a little bit of extra exposure. You will also create your portfolio bit by bit this way. So without any further ado, let's get started with the first lesson. 2. 2. Expressions Breakdown: Hey guys and welcome to the first part of this class where we will gather some references, create a mood board, and then break down a few expressions. If you are not new to my classes, you already know by now that I like giving such an introduction to my tutorials, you can first understand what to look for in a reference, instead of being intimidated by transforming a photo into an illustration. All right, let's jump right in. I always go to my Pinterest and start gathering some inspiration. It's already did this in my expression sport. So let me just show you what they found. I tried to look for some happy expressions, some sad ones, and some diversity as well. At the moment when I was filming this part, I was not entirely sure what they would end up using for the whole class. Now I want to save some images in my gallery. And for the longest time I took screenshots and cropped the picture only. Like I was a caveman of some sort. But since then I started noticing the free dots right next to the photo. And I came to realize that there was a download button already. So I'm confessing to not try and to look around too much. Okay, let's get over this embarrassing coefficient and move on. You might have noticed already that I found a lot of smiling, two references. But there are different levels to smiling as I see it. You can either go from a subtle smile to pull out laughter. Depending on the character you are illustrating. Maybe their smile only goes up until a subtle smile and maybe they are angry the rest of the time, I don't know. I explained in previous classes of this series the story is important if you skip my story and concept class, which is the very first-class of this series. Then I suggest you pause this tutorial and hit back to watch that form first. I wanted to have in mind the story for your original character before you start drumming their expressions. Alright, so let's take a look at the anatomy of a smile. I will take all the smiling photo references that I have and put them in a sequential order, like how I would see it if someone went from a subtle smile to one all output after I recently received the feedback to my class that they should show the whole process of me creating a mood board. And I realized that maybe there are more of you fulfill that foot habit, expressed it. Thank you for your feedback. I will now incorporate it. If you, however, already know how to do that, you can skip ahead about 3.5 minutes. Okay, so let's see how to create the mood board. I already have a pastel orange or gold rows, however you want to call it for my background. And on top of it, I took a grain brush with a very light orange. You might even think it's white but it isn't. And sprinkled it on the lower and middle sites. Then I went and use the picture mental brush from appropriate presets and made the few simple doodles. Actually they look it along, kept, I might try harder next time to make them look better. All you have to do afterwards is to start importing photos. Now you just grab all of your references and dessert them as photos on your canvas. When inserting photos, they automatically go on different layers. So you can select the layer and re-scale and move the picture around until you are satisfied. Since I'm mostly interested in the face, I will make the pictures rather big and they have no issue with them overlapping each other. After I add them all, I will choose a texture brush from the presets and create frames for the pictures. If you want to draw straight lines. Procreate has really nice and intuitive system for debt. Draw on naturally wonky line, but instead of taking the pencil off from the screen, when you are done, you just hold it down a bit and procreate will make it straight for you. It works the same if you want or narc, or a full shape like a circle or a square or rectangle and whatnot. So after I finished doing this, I marched all the photos on one layer, lower its opacity and get ready to draw over it. Now I will draw over the references so you can see what you should be looking after withdrawing expressions. In essence, you should look after the eyebrows, the eyes, and the MT. Other features that could change depending on the expression is the face shape, which can either shrink or elongate. Wrinkles around the eyes can form, or around the eyebrows when the character is angry or sad. Or some wrinkles may appear on the forehead or around the mouth. Let's start from the first mile. Does my only subtle, the eyebrows are in a neutral position. The eye shape is not changing. We will talk about that soon. The only indication of this being a smile is the Mount where we can see the corners going slightly upwards. The second reference is a little more obvious, starting from the mouth that has a larger smile, the point that the cheeks are affected and the foot back on if the mouth is closed. The eyebrows are also more arched than in the previous example, but the eyes are still fully opened. Let's go to the next one. The first thing that I noticed in this reference is that the smile makes the eyelids covered the eye a little more compared to the other, to the eyebrows are arched. I would say that maybe as much or a little more than the previous reference. The smile here is with the Melbourne mountain. You can tell how wide it is by the cheeks as well. In an illustration, this reference within the app squashing the head little and making the cheeks prominent to show how large the smile is. In this reference, the eyes are closing even further, which could be an indication of a bigger smile. In illustrations, the eyebrows are slightly brought more together but not yet creating wrinkles. It's around them. The next one, the eyes are fully closed, the eyebrows are pointing given lower and we can start seeing wrinkles around the eyes. This person seems to be holding back a laughter or to be even laughing. Okay, so the last one has wrinkled solo over so around the eyes and the eyebrows as well. The ice are fully shot and the smile is very large. So this is pretty much the process of the smile. Going from fully open dies no wrinkles and neutral eyebrows all the way until I stepped are entirely close to the kind of ours shutdown type and that great wrinkles. Now let's take a look at some semblance and angry once the first reference looks kind of mad, maybe a little baffled. The first thing that we notice are the wrinkles formed by the eyebrows, which are mostly for us to gather. The eyebrows also are very close to the eyes, puts the eyes themselves are in a natural position, not wide open but not closed. Either. The mouth is in a rather neutral positions. So I can see it adds or removes from the expression. The second reference is somehow worried. And a lot of the expression comes from the eyebrows, which are very braced and the eyes are opened more than usual. If this girl wasn't looking upwards, but three, the head, you might be able to see her whole iris. The final one is mad, and I liked this one because the mouth adds a lethal to the expression since it has a little pout as well. Alright, so in the next lesson, I will show you how to draw eyebrows in order to show different emotions. See you soon. 3. 3. Eyebrows: Welcome back guys. For this lesson, I prepared to free versions of Victoria, my original character, that we will use to draw different versions of eyebrows. We will see how the positions and angles of the eyebrows help to show a different expression each time. That means that take into consideration that the eyes and mouth are in a neutral position, the expression won't be enhanced by them in this lesson. So for the first free expression, so I will only play around with the height of the eyebrows and you'll see how each height can be interpreted differently. I'm sketching below the essence of what I'm trying to obtain with each model. We will start with the high position of the eyebrows, which can show surprise, disbelief, £40 superiority. The ISR slightly close. It could also be a sign of Bordeaux. Having a shorter distance between the eyes and the eyebrows can show a lethal Adler. Or it could mean that your character is focused on something. Finally, having them so close to the eyes that almost seems like they're touching the eyes is a way of exaggerating the expression to indicate anger. However, in this case, she doesn't seem that angry since her eyes are opened. They have a neutral position and no wrinkles are forming. But we will get different expressions as well and we will see how that can affect the expression overall. You'll see when we come neutral face the eyebrows still create three different expressions depending on their height. Now we will try and under free expressions, this time, they will vary in the way the arch or in their angle. The first one is quite easy to read. The position shows sadness, contempt may be betrayed or empty inside. You can always use liquify or the Warp Tool two weeks saturate the angle even more in order to obtain the desired expression. The next one is rather surprised. The arch of the eyebrows is very visible with the eyes. That's the model has right now. It almost looks like this belief. The final one is an asymmetric position of the eyebrows, so it shows lack of confidence, maybe want to confuse or sarcastic in Luke, polarized. So now we will move on to a larger range of expressions that we can obtain through the combination of eyes and eyebrows. See you soon. 4. 4. Eyes: Welcome back. In this lesson, we will draw a lot of pair of eyes to show a wider range of expressions that can be obtained with the combination between eyes and eyebrows. Let's get started. I want to start with some angry expressions so we can see how the eyes positions can influence the perception of the emotion. Over here we have a rather simple expression of frown on one of the eyebrows wrinkle to show that the eyebrow is brought forward a lot and the eyes are mostly open. Let's see the next one. This one, the eyes are wide open, the iris is fully visible. This shows a certain degree of surprise or shock, and it's accompanied by arched eyebrows. Let's add some wrinkles to show that the shock isn't generating anger as well. Now let's try to have one of the eyes more close than the other. The eyebrow of depth, I should be closer to the eye while the other one is more arched. Let's see one with the eyes closed. We can still show frustration like this as well since the wrinkles will be doing most of the job. Now we will move on to some bored expressions. We can make the upper eyelids cover more of the eye and showed that the eyebrows are quite high. And this is a typical board expression. Let's try to make the little frustrated. The eyes will be one more closed, so the iris will occupy even more of the available space. And now the eyebrows are brought down enough crown. Now let us go from incredulous look. The irises will be facing up and the way the eyebrows or position shows a disbelief towards what the character may be seeing or hearing. Next one will be looking downwards. So maybe it's a sign of superiority or might be off this cost. Now we have a different expressions obtained by the position of the eyebrows, the eyes pose. Let's try some happy ones. But these expressions will be more limited due to the fact that a lot of expressions will be obtained through the mouth position, which we will see in the next lesson. The first expression here is a rather neutral one. But due to the eyebrows, it seems like the look is warm, maybe from trusting. What if the eyes would be more closed? It almost looks like romantic look. Or if there's no smile, it could be a board look. That's why I said that in this case is the mouth makes the difference. Let's try it with the eyes closed. This one is quite obvious to be happy no matter what's the mouth shows. Finally, let's go for a surprise plan and we will continue with it in the next lesson where we will pair it with different mouth poses. I will see you guys in the next lesson. 5. 5. Mouth: Okay guys tend to see how mounts are affecting an expression. I told you previously that some expressions could differ a lot depending on the mountain position. Let's take center of ice from the previous lesson and slept some most honored him. I'm selecting with the Lasso tool, this verifies and copying it. Then I'm creating a new layer and paste it over there. Then I will add the burst simplistic mouth only so you can get an idea of how much can change. Let's also add a node so it makes more sense. It might look a bit weird since we don't have the shape of the face framing this, but it's only for illustrative purposes. In the next free lessons, we will draw complete faces and expressions together. We have a shy smile with a pair of eyes. How about we erase this and now try the opposite, a subtle from without changing the eyes and eyebrows, the month position makes a huge difference. Let's try an open mouth now and it looks like this person or this face trying to warn someone about something. Useful Liquify to lower the corners of the mouth and the personal looks less concerned. We can also change the shape of the open mouth and it looks like this phase person is flustered. Let's move on to the next pair of eyes. For this pair, we will try making some happy expressions. Let us begin with a slightly open mouth. And maybe this face person is glad to meet someone. Let's try smile with a closed mouth. Now, foreclosed mounts, I usually try to make the middle of the lips and the corners then connect them with wavy lines so as to show the volume of the lips. Afterwards, It's time for us the lower lip rounding with this curved line. I tried to avoid drawing the line art of the lips because they look better when they have soft edges. Now we feel simple lines. We can make it look as if the face person is holding her laughter backward, is chewing. Those homemaker small open smile to make it look innocent and feminine. Now let's copy another set of eyes from the previous lesson. We will use this neutral expression and try to see what we can do with it. They as thing that comes to mind is to make it neutral, sad like this. We can also make it look middle college with a soft smile. Or we can do an open mouth and it looks like it's trying to argue. Now the last one is a subtle open mouth smile. In the next lesson we will start drawing full expression sheets. See you soon. 6. 6. Angry Expressions Sheet: Hey guys and welcome back. In this lesson, we will draw a sheep demand rate expressions because anger can be portrait in more ways than one. I pulled up a reference photo on the left of the canvas and they will simply try to get some inspiration from it and not follow it towards B. Now, drawing this expression sheet will involve drawing heads who are not experienced in this. I suggest you watch my previous class from this series, which is about drawing heads and portraits. In that class I explained how I think when I'm drawing pins and what methods you can use practice drawing. I feel quite inspired. Try throwing the open mountain rage is usually explosion. I started quite doing the eyes and the eyebrows, which sets the tone for the whole expression. I also tried to show a wrinkle on the bridge of the nose. Like in the reference photo. I want to obtain a rape, so I will try to grow the irises as visible as possible so there won't be the impression that the character has *** partially closed. I also decided to make the character clench their teeth instead of having a fully open mouth. The mouth would have been open. It will also affect the shape of the face. You can't really have an expression with an open mouth without eliminating the face. The same way that the different expressions with make the face shrink. Okay, so I'll clean this up a bit and leave it like that for now until I decide what the design I should keep the character. The next expression I want to go with something silently mad with the eyes closed, but with the feasible from the eyebrows. Basically in this lesson and in the next few, we will capitalize on what I showed you until now and we will see how one or more of the framework them features we talked about. We will fit the expression, namely the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth. We can also use the liquify tool. Move around the features on the face. Don't be afraid of using your digital books. That's why they are there. Now moving on to the final expression, I want the heads to be slightly inclined in this one and I want them to be looking up. This could show a sign of a slide dominance coming from the character that this one is interacting with. I also wanted to show the lower eyelids a bit brought up which will intensify the handler. Okay. So while I was drawing. It figured I could transform this character into one of my original characters who is rather moody and bossy. This is Connor and this is an illustration of him and of Alice from the story that I never really finished illustrating or posting. Maybe someday I should get back into that. The first expression I want to add some motion to the post so I will make the banks to be a bit bouncy and the ends will be a lot spikier than usual. In animation. Details like this adds to the context and the storytelling of the moment. Alright, I will let you watch the rest of the sketches and how I in them and I will see you on the next one. Feel free to take a break, walk around patrilocal, come back with fresh eyes and more energy. 7. 7. Happy (Smiles) Expressions Sheet: Hey guys and welcome back. In this lesson, we will make an expression sheet full of smiles. I note the title says happy expressions, but the smile isn't always happy. And I think it's more interesting to show a variety of smiles bird with different expressions. This time I already picked up on original character of mine that will be the place of this expression sheet. You can see her in my reference sheet. This is Alice. Bulky. So let's start. I want to make a fully open mouth smile, the kind that goes together with closed eyes and highly raised eyebrows. I'm going with a slightly inclined head, which in my opinion shows a playful side of the character. When drawing this kind of smile, I usually go for around their shape for the mouth, and try to avoid script lines and harsh angles. After cleaning up the schedule lethal, I will start adding the hair and the shoulders and the little bit of the shirt. I loved drawing Dallas his hair because I can play around with the volume, true unkempt streets of hair-like BCE. You can see more of her on my social media. All right, Onto the next expression. For this one, I want the closed mouth smile, but still the kind of white eyed, bright smile. I will go with the partner view for the face. I will make the eyes really around and the iris will be smaller. So you could still that her eyes are wide open. I think I mentioned this before, but I try not to draw the contours of the lips. And they would rather draw the smile and the lower, if only the color will come later. Her eyebrows will be rise, then we will give her a bit of a blush. Maybe she's really happy about something or about seeing someone. Time to add the hair starting from the banks that will frame her face. Just like before. Don't be scared to use the Liquify tool whenever you want to edit some proportions instead of redrawing them. Same goes for any other digital tools that you can use. Finally, moving to the left fresh and I want this one to be the kind of sad smile. So I will be making the head facing downward so lethal and she will be looking up. It makes me look more bashful like this. The ice will be a little closed so the iris will take up much of the ice space. Eyebrows will be lower than in the other two expressions. Smile will be subtle and asymmetrical. Now I'm adding the details and the final sketch will be complete. After finishing all the sketches, I will proceed to draw the line art. I will let you guys watch the rest before going to the next lesson, which will be about sad expressions. In 8. 8. Sad Expressions Sheet: Hey guys and welcome to the last expression sheet. In this final expression sheet, you will see me draw my original character of Victoria in free different set poses. I want to start with a disparate kind of pry the ugly kind where you can't keep your mouth closed, the lower lip is going up, tears are streaming down your face. It may sound complicated, but in reality in this case the mouth. Thus most of the work and the tears are simply adding to the dram activism. I mentioned this before, but it's really important for you to understand how to draw heads before you jump into expressions. I highly recommend to check the second lesson from this series, which explains the two methods you can use to exercise heads and the different positions. The second pose, I want this add expression that will face upwards in a really melancholia equate. I will want to draw bigger races that are partially covered by the eyelid in the upper part. For some nice details, when you color this, you can play around with the lights in the eyes to make them look watery. The final pose I wanted to play around with the shape of the and make her half her eyes shut down. So much death her face seems trunk, just like the posts from before. This one is highly refined by the eyes and the mouth plays only a small role. That's it for this expression shape. You can handle around, watch how I polish the sketches, or you can tend over to the final lesson where I will be giving you your project. See you soon. 9. 9. Project and what's next: Congratulations, we're finalizing this first-class from the Character Design Crash Course. I'm so excited to be doing this series of classes and I hope you are loving it as well so far. I'm hoping to see many entries from you guys because no matter how many classes or tutorials to watch, whether they are free or paid, not working on what you learn will get nowhere. If you watched this class until the end, I know that you are one of the people determined to learn and get better results. Demonstrate that by publishing your project, you will get detailed it back and you will also get featured on the next class. Your project is to draw one expression sheet with at least three different expressions. It can be the same character or different characters in this sheet, whatever makes you most comfortable if you found this class useful in any way, I would love it if you followed me on Skillshare so you could get constant updates on my new classes in-between the class of the series. I am sometimes creating a shorter class in a drawer with me kind of style. Last month there was one about growing plants. This month will be about drawing a mermaid, since it's more money for the whole month, the filming is ready for that class, so I will need to prepare the voice-over and it also please follow me on Instagram as well. It's where I share all of my art for three to five times a week, depending on how much time I have for drawing on Tiktok, I post once or twice daily and lately it has been picking up two. I would love to see you there and gets to know you. The next class within the series will be about drawing full body poses. If you have any specific questions on the topic, don't be afraid to ask until next time. Feel free to watch my older classes for more details on coloring. And I will see you guys soon. Have a great day, a great week, and the greater growing session, Bye guys.