Transcripts
1. Introduction: Do you love character design and want to level
up your skills? In this class, you'll
learn how to draw a fantasy character
with magical powers. I'll guide you through
creating a which light character step-by-step in a cartoon style will even reference back to our
magical objects class so that you can
accessorize your character with a staff and other
magical objects. In the next series of lessons, you'll develop a character with step-by-step guidance from me. By the end of this class, you'll have designed, drawn, outlined, colored, and shaded
in your magical character. You'll have a stylized
character design that can fit in
any fantasy realm. If you're a beginner, you're
invited to follow along with me and modify character
traits to make it your own. Otherwise, feel free
to experiment and create a unique character
design in your style. I'll be drawing my
demo digitally, but you can draw along with me in the medium of your choice. I'd love to see what
you create at the end. So please share your
artwork on our community. Have fun in class.
2. Sketching Your Character: Hello everyone. Today we'll be drawing and designing our own
magical character. This character can
be a war Locke, which are wizard or any magical being that has
powers and abilities. But let's take a look
at some examples of some magical characters to get an idea of what we're
going to be making. This example here is
of a which wearing a poncho in a
typical witch's hat, with the leaves and
branches going around them. They look like a
character that uses herbs and natural ingredients
for potions. When designing your character, you can think about what
their powers may be, what makes the magical, and how are you going to show that their outfit can
be very whimsical, or maybe their facial
features make them unique. Our next example here is a three characters
that show lots of vibrant colors with their
clothing, hair, and powers. So somehow they glowing mist
coming from their hand, which makes the character
more fantastical. And also out of this world, glowing features,
swirling shapes, sparkling dust are all
things you can add to your characters that make
them appear more mystical. Our first character
here as the wizard, and they are holding a wand
as their source of power. This third character,
our last one here, has a belt holster that holds some serums or small potions. These are some items
that can be added to your character to show who
they are and what they can do. And here is an inventory
drawing that I made previously for my wizard
character that I will be doing. These are some of the
items that they may have or use for spell casting. If you want your character
to hold onto an item, you can brainstorm
some ideas or objects that you may want to include
with your character's pose. I'll be making my character
holding their staff in one hand and conjuring
a spell in the other. So feel free to take
some time to think about some ideas and let's
jump right into it. Here. I have my staff
already in here, so I kinda copied and
pasted that item. That's something that
you can do if you have your inventory and you're done with that and you'd
like to do a character. You can copy one
of your prompts or items and use that to
add to your character. And that's just an easy way of using your resources again. Oh, here I have my sketch
layer that I will start with, since I already did this staff, I'm just going to
have this here and my character will be
holding this today. Oh, here I have a
interesting little gem on there, the little swirl. I might stretch it up a bit. Character can hold it, hold it a little better. But I will start with
a sketch and I will be using the G pen today with
opacity by pressure on. This is what I use. The sketch. If you'd like to build
up your pencil lines, it just reminds me of a pencil. So that's the brush
I'll be using today. So today is going back to
the fantasy wizard realm. So I kinda have an idea of what I want my
character to look like. I'm just drawing the hand or they're holding
their staff here, going to erase part of
my staff here just so I have my fingers on top. You don't have that
kinda distracting lines going through and my thumb that's kind
of wrapping around their resting on the staff. I like to look at my own hand. You can see me looking down. I like to reference my
own hand as I draw, see how they would hold
something like this. And I'm going to
have my character be holding a staff in there one hand and then in their other will be doing
something different. Or they have some sort of interesting glowing effect
coming from their hand. Maybe they have fire, a flame coming from their hand. I'm going to begin
sketching the cloak and body of my
Warlocks character, making a hood for their
head to peek out of, just going over
the outline a few times to get the rounded
shape that I want. I know what kind of hairstyle
I want for my character. So I'm just going ahead and seeing how the curly
bangs will look. Honor. If you aren't sure
about these details just yet, you can start your drawing
with simple shapes and a basic pose before going
into the clothes or the hair. Since I have an item for
my character to hold, I started by drawing the hand first to attach it to the staff. But we typically start at the head when
drawing characters. So feel free to sketch out
basic shapes for the head, body, arms, and legs to
help block out the figure. Making my way down the body, I'm creating some
large droopy sleeves that are flowing down the arm. This will show the heavy
material of the cloak and give some room for a
hand to conjure a spell, magic sort of thing
coming from her hand. I don't know if it's a
flame or just some sort of magic little blob here. It looks like a
flame. Maybe I'll make it a different
color though. Lots of swirls. Not sure what she's conjuring. She's a good war Locke
though. She's not evil. Fixing the girl's neck
line here. A little wonky. So I'm just kinda making sure it matches both on each side. Making my character a little smaller here
because I know I want this long robe kind of
extend all the way down, gonna be a long robe here. My which kinda looks like
she's slowly melting. Maybe she got to a bucket
of water poured on her jaw, her little face. Now I'm not sure how I want
the eyes to look just yet, so I'm just kinda planning
and figuring some things out. I don't have a specific
style for characters. I just kinda have
fun with it as I go. There are many different
ways to draw eyes. I'm making my character is a bit more bubbly with
a round shape to them. You can start off
with a simple shape and add details as you go, depending on how stylized
you want them to be. After some tweaks to
the facial features, I'm adding some extra strands
of hair to the bangs, making them thicker
and curl up more. Not sure how I want these
guys to keep rotating them, keep making them smaller. I think I'm going to
stop now and then continue with coloring in
lining this little girl. Here I have my sketch
for my wizard character.
3. Outlining Your Character: I'm going to create a new
layer below it for my color, but I'm not gonna
touch that just yet. I'm going to turn down
the opacity of my sketch, this in my Layer window here. And then I can go onto lining. I'm going to use the pen. Do that as well. Make sure that
there's no opacity, weird sliders here,
it's at 100%. I get that solid
black crisp line. Going over top of my sketch. I'm using it as a guide
for the line work. If you want to make slight
changes to your drawing, you don't have to strictly
follow the sketch below. It's just there for
you if you need it. But don't be afraid to
make your final changes in this stage if you think
anything needs to be altered. Thinking about how
I wait my lines, I like to use thin lines to
outline the smaller details. And for any important
or larger shapes, I use a bold line. So when lining the
hair and bangs here, I'm using thinner strokes
compared to the hood, where the line is a
little bit thicker. I want the eyes to pop
out a bit as well. So I'm also thickening
up the line around them by going over it
a couple of times. If you have anything
that overlaps different layers will
definitely help. If you have multiple layers, make sure that you name them so you can keep
a, keep track of them. Do my little magical
squiggles here, not technically fire
to some sort of wavy line thing happening. She's congruent to spell. I'm not making any
big changes to my character compared
to the sketch. I'm using it heavily as a guide. As I'm working digitally, I have the ability to redo a line that I didn't
quite get the first time. If you're working with a
pencil and paper instead, just make sure during this
part that you're being very careful with each
line that you make. It can be tough to erase or redo with a colored
pencil or marker. So feel free to take your
time and don't rush into it. Now, lining the final
section of the character, I'm following the sketch
of the arm and staff. For the crystal. I'm drawing
the base of the shape first and drawing the rapt chords
over top afterwards. Since I can erase my line work, I'm able to remove
those tiny lines that are running through
that I no longer need. If you have anything
overlapping like this, you can just follow
the shapes of each one carefully without the
need to erase anything onto the wooden
base of the staff. I wanted to add some more
details along the curved stick. So I went over the wood grain
swirls I had previously, but also drew some more waves
to fill in the empty space. These finer details bring
more interests to the wood and we can better understand
what kind of material it is. And with that, we completed the lining stage of
our magical character. And in the next lesson, we can start to color them.
4. Colouring and Shading: To start the coloring stage, I'm going to start by
putting a base color down on the entire character. This makes coloring
different sections of the drawing a
bit easier working digitally as I can clip layers onto this
initial base one, I want my wizard to be IC and blue to reflect their powers. So I'm leaving the light
blue for the robe and having a dark blue for the
inside of the sleeves. Since this area is
hidden from the light, the color will be darker, giving a nice shadow inside. I chose a warm pink for
the character's skin tone. So I'm going over the arms, hands, and face with this color. Since I have lots
of tiny crevices in-between the
banks and the face. I'm coloring over that section carefully with a
smaller brush size. I'm choosing a warm
ginger color for my character's hair with
hints of red and brown. I wanted this color to stand out from the cool tones I
have in the outfit. And this really gives it a pop. Focusing on the
inside of the hood. I'm grabbing that same
dark blue I use for the inside of the sleeves
and using that again. Now, moving on to
the magical flame coming from my character's hand, I'm grabbing a more
vibrant blue in comparison to the robe
to color in the swirls. By putting these simple flat
colors down for everything, I have a good idea
of what I want to add later when it
comes to shadows, highlights and special effects. Taking a look at the robe, I'm adding some shadows
with a darker blue along the crevasses
underneath sections that overlap like the sleeves. Since the robe is drooping and
have some folds within it, I'm adding those darker values to break up the flat color. I'm moving on to the
staff now we're all take a brown color to fill
in the wooden base, referencing my staff from
the inventory I created. I want it to match the
colors correctly so the rope wraps around in
a more rosy color, while the wooden swirl is the same brown as
the staff space. Since I'm coloring
with Rosie tones, I'm going to keep using
that same color to add soft blush to the
face of my character. Using the same brown
from the staff. I'm filling in the eyes
with that color as well. By using the same tones and
other parts of the drawing, the characters colors
piece together nicely and look more cohesive. That same rosy color
can be used for the light shadows along
the neck and arms. So I'm filling them in before
continuing with the staff. This crystal teal here. And I figured out
what I did there. A teal crystal to
match, blue, Get up. You can be an ice wizard
to match the teal Crystal, I'm grabbing a darker green
color for the wrap around it. Since the crystal is drawn
with a slice down the middle, I'm coloring one
side a bit darker, with the other side having
a bright highlight. This is a show what
the crystals material is like and how it's reflective. With this, I'm
adding a soft glow to the outside
using an airbrush. This look can also be made
by going over the border of your drawing very lightly
in a circular motion. If you're drawing,
traditionally try feeding out your
colors by layering more color in the
middle and less around when you make your
way towards the background. After adding the glow, I'm starting to add lighter
parts to my character, like the highlights
on her bangs. Use a pretty little little, which I'm going to add some more glow to
our magical hand. Not sure if I want to
add a darker background to my character
or a lighter one. Since my character
is very light, I'm choosing a dark color for the background to contrast
the two together. This will make the
character really stand out on the page and make my glowing parts pop
against a dark background. So I'm going to call it
for my character today. Here is my finished
magical character, holding a powerful staff
in conjuring a spell. I hope you enjoy designing
your magical being that can be placed in
any fantasy realm.
Winged Canvas, Classes for Art Nerds
