Create a Character From the First Letter of Your Name

1. Intro: This class, I'm going to teach you how to find a hidden character inside the first letter of your name and illustrated. Even if you've done something similar before, you will still learn a lot from this class, and don't worry if you make mistakes because it's the part of the process and you can always try again. Of course, I'm going to give you all the templates you need, bring the examples, and be there on each step of the process. By the end, you will have a finished illustration that you can frame or gift, and I promise you, you will never look at your name the same way again. Macho Margih. I'm a multi disciplinary artist and a cartographer of visual worlds. One thing that stays constant in my life since childhood is imagining, inventing and transforming characters. I make illustrations, murals, animations, mixed media art, and I work on commissions worldwide on a freelance capacity. Join me in this class, and let's go to the character hunt together. 2. Tools and Materials: Welcome to the class. I'm happy to see you here. Now, let's go through all the details, materials, template that we're going to use to create our character illustration. In this class, we're going to use the first letter of your name, which will be transformed into a new creature. So for the materials, we will need a normal paper this is A four size paper, but you can use any paper that you can find at home. We will need the transparent paper that we will use to trace the character on top. You can find the template attached to the project, and when you download it, you can print it out. Inside, I included each letter separately in a larger scale. The larger letters will help you to go through the details more easily, and it will make your process much smoother. For the extra materials, we are going to use a pencil. Eraser. Also, the ink pen or something to trace on top of the pencil work will be useful, and it will make the entire illustration sharper. For coloring, I'm going to use the acrylic markers. I really love those. They have a smaller tip which helps me to go through the smallest details possible. But if you don't have acrylic markers, you can use any coloring that you have at home. The template offers you an English alphabet, but if you prefer your native script or to write freehand, do that. The template will help you to get started, but if you are already an advanced illustrator or writer, you can use the technique that is the most suitable for you. This class is a beginner friendly. Anyone can take it. Don't worry if you make any mistakes, you can always try again. But the Advanced illustrators could also use this class if they are searching for the inspiration. In the next video, we'll talk about how to get inspired and read shapes in letters. I will start with my letter, you can start with yours. Now, let's get ready. Get your workstation ready, and let's start. 3. How to Read Shapes: Okay, now that we have our space ready, let's start with our characters. At first, let's download the template that is attached to the project page, and let's open it or you can also print it out. You will get this file. This alphabet is already stylized. As you see, it has shades. It is three D, but you can also use two D alphabet if it's more convenient for. Make sure that the lines are not too thin because it will be harder for you to transform the letter into a character. As my name is Macho, and the first letter of my name is M, I will start with M character. I already have it ready here. Before we start tracing our letter, let me explain something about the shapes. So each letter has its curve its rhythm, its space. It also has angles and the positive and negative space. What is a positive and negative space? The positive space is the letter strokes and what is happening inside the letter. A negative space is the space around the letter, which is as useful as the positive space. You can use both. When I look at my character, many ideas come to my mind. It reminds me of the legs of somebody. It also reminds me of house. I can also use this negative space, this shape, and make ice here, for instance. So when you look at your character, at first, just look at it and think of the shape and what this shape reminds you of. You can look for limbs, eyes, head, posture, the monster inside. You can also think of your name as a character itself, what does your name remind you of? For example, the name Caroline could be connected to Carol's. What does the sound of your name remind you of? It could be the root of your inspiration. If nothing comes to your mind right now, don't worry. Maybe the next step will be something that hints to your final character. I think right now we have everything that we need to go to the next step, which is the tracing the character. See you in the next video. 4. Tracing Steps: I have my workspace ready to start. I have my letter underneath. I have something harder. Make sure that you have your letter printed out. But if you're writing freehand, make sure that it's big enough to transform. Then we're going to use this tracing paper, the transparent paper and place on top of your printout. And then we're going to trace on top of it with a pencil. At first, we are not going to add any character details. We're just going to follow the lines of the letter the outer lines here, I'm going to draw really slowly so you can follow. Here. If your lines are not straight, don't worry about it because we're going to fix everything and it doesn't matter how straight your line is now. The first time I used this exercise, it wasn't exercise during that time. I was working on a letter of a campaign, and I really enjoyed the process and I discovered this new technique for myself. We're almost done. And then here we go. Let's remove the printout letter because otherwise, it won't be possible to see our outline. And then I'm going to take an empty paper, just normal A four size paper. And put it underneath. So the lines are clear. This is what we have. So right now, everything is vague. Even I don't know what character is coming to my mind. There are many versions, and let's decide together which one is better. One version is to add ice here. And this awkward smile of the character. But this is too simplistic for me. I want something that is more complex yet easy to understand. Okay, I will use an eraser to remove those eyes. So this version is eliminated. The second version is to combine a character with an object, let's say, a house. I somehow want to use a human like character maybe to add a head here. Right now, this one reminds me of a body. So imagine the character is wearing a suit. And when you are drawing with a pencil, you can be as free as you want. You can make as many lines as you want, and don't worry about any mistakes you make. So this reminds me of a character. Maybe those are going to be limbs. Those will be hands. Yeah, like this. And this can be a house the sphinx is carrying on its back. As you see, the further I go, more the letter doesn't look like M letter. The main purpose of this lesson is not to have distinguishable character of your first letter, but to find a hidden character living inside the letter. Let's have a chimney here so everyone can see that it's a house. The windows of the house could be crooked because the house itself is crooked, something that you can find in Amsterdam. Maybe we can have a door here. And this looks like a el. Okay. And now let's create a face. It could be as cartoony as we want or as human like as we want. I think it should be something like a statue face, but also not too serious. I'm adding ice. This eye is bigger, but it's okay. When it comes to eyebrows or eyes, there are many different ways to draw them. You can use different expressions to exaggerate the feeling. You can make them neutral. You can make them surprise. You can make them angry, excited or any face that you want. I want it to be more neutral because my character is health statue. So the eyebrows are going to be neutral, like a straight eyebrows. If you want to draw surprise, you can make the eyebrow shapes like this. The set could be like this. Angry could be like this, happy face can be smiling, excited could be with a mouth and so on. It's a small detour. Let's continue with my eyebrows and the mouth. A female like mouth. And perhaps we can add some hair similar to the feet curves. My character will be the combination of curvy shapes here will be curves, the face will be curvy, the tips of the legs will be curved, but the rest will be angular, like the house shape, will be angular. So we will know that curvy shapes will be the part of the character that is alive and the angular side of the character will be object like parts of the character. Those are not straight as you see. You can always fix them like this or maybe like this, so it will be tilted. Don't add too many details right now and don't spend too much time on this character because on the next step, we're going to trace the main parts of the character, and later on the stage, we will add the details, colors, shades and everything that you need. Okay? For now, this stage is done. We successfully traced our character, and we are ready to go to the next stage, which is tracing by ink pen or something darker. Let's go to the next video and continue working on our character. 5. Inking Process: Right now, you might already have an idea what you're doing. If not, don't worry. We still have time to decide. I have the strace character. I can always make changes. If you don't know where you're going right now, you can think about it. You can take 5 minutes to decide where you want to go. You can try different shapes, different faces. Let's move to the next step, which is tracing on top of this current stage. I'm going to take another transparent paper, and I'm going to place on top of this current page. Make sure that the papers are aligned, otherwise, you might need to redo this step. Even though I said in the previous video that my character is tattoo like and I want a neutral face, now I think I'm going to use surprise face. Perhaps my character sees something that surprises it, and I think it will add more characteristics to this letter. Now I'm going to use this tracing ink. And I will do this step very slowly so you can also follow. So let's go through this outlining process. I'm slowly, slowly outlining the face. And at first, I'm going to draw the surprise face because this is the part that I'm not sure of. And if I complete the rest of the lines and the face is not good enough, then I will need to redo the step. Surprised face. So nose first. Bigger eyes way bigger. I need to move this eye closer so it's more proportional. Then And it has to have a surprised mouth. I can fill in the mouth with a black color so everybody sees that it's an open mouth. The eyebrows go higher when you're surprised. Maybe they should come closer to the nose. Mm hmm. If you don't like how it looks, you always can redo the step and make sure that you're satisfied with the result. I didn't like the hair, so I'm going to redo it something more theatrical. Add more curls here. Let's continue with the entire body to see how this character looks overall. In this class, I want to go through all the details, how to create the body shape, how to do shading theory of the character design because I covered it in my previous videos. I want this class to be shorter and easier to follow. So you also feel freer to create whatever your mind asks you to and not to have too many limitations. I can split one side of M into two. Like this. And this is another leg. I think it's a better idea than the belly. Always pay attention to your papers, make sure that they don't move too much, so you don't need to redo the steps. I like that this leg has four toes and this one has three. Maybe we're going to repeat the same here. And one, two, three. While creating your character, you can always imagine what this character is about. Is it living alone or is it living with a colony? What does your character eat? What does your character do? What is its entertainment? What does it live for? What is the purpose of your character? And so on. Maybe my character lives in the winter, the place where the snow fills the environment. The house has a chimney, which can hint that the people who live inside always need a fireplace. The windows will be tilted, so they align with the shape of the house. If I did the straight lines, they would conflict with the house structure. I made a mistake, but it's okay because we're going to redo this step with more details. Or perhaps the door can be even taller. Here. It could be a gate. And later I can add some clouds coming from the chimney. Do do do. Do do do. Here. Well, right. I feel like this character also needs a tail, something like this, and maybe a crown would be nicer. Similar to what I have here. This is what I have for now. This character still needs some colors. It needs some details, and maybe some people looking out from the window or the dogs or cats. We'll see on the next step. I believe you already have a character base of your first letter of your name. You don't have to have everything figured out right now. As you see, I'm still making mistakes, and I might make more mistakes in the future. It's right. We have other tracing papers that we're going to use in the next video, and the most interesting part is coming up. So stay input in the next video, we're going to trace our character again. We're going to add colors and patterns and perhaps come up with the story behind our character as well. You can have a five minute break and then come back and let's go to the next video. 6. Bringing the Character to Life: Now the most interesting part is starting. The coloring is your choice. If you're happy with your black and white version, you can stop there. But if you want to add more characteristics, then you can add colors. If you're a starter, I would recommend to use maximum of three colors because it's easier to navigate. But if you are more advanced illustrator, you can add more colors, of course, shading and everything to make your illustration feel complete. I'm going to take one more tracing paper. Place on top of my current one, I will remove extra papers that are underneath because they might slip and make the process more complex than necessary. One thing that is very obvious right now, perhaps you can see it here is that the upper part is more complex, and the part on the bottom is very empty. That's why I'm going to move my paper a bit on the upper side to make my character feel like it's in the center. Take a look at your character. If you want to make any changes, write it in your mental notes. In my case, I think that the curve here doesn't feel very natural. That's why I'm going to change it a bit. The tail doesn't feel like it belongs to the body. So I want use the line here, and the rest will come as we go. Let's start tracing again. You can use the black tracer before we start using colors. I'm tracing really slowly and fixing the parts as I go here. While drawing, make sure that your ink is properly dried before you move your hand, otherwise it will smudge and ruin your illustration. As you see, instead of a sharp angle, I curved the back a bit. As you notice, I have not started with a face because I was already pretty happy about my final results, but if I still didn't like what I created before, I will start with a face and move on with the body. This eye is a bit bigger than necessary, so I'll make it smaller. The nose, I can even make a different kind of nose. I think the mouth can be more simplistic that I had. It doesn't need to have fuller lips. And I will make it smile that will hint that the surprise that it did sinc is a good surprise, not bad. Then eyebrows I will add freckles later because if I add them now, when I color it, it might smudge and also it won't be visible anyways. And I will add it after coloring. The hair is pretty messy. So I'll correct it here. Now let's move to the building. I think I smashed a bit. And then the clouds or the smog coming from the chimney. Now that you have the main tracing done, you can take the paper underneath, put it next to you, and use just empty paper underneath to make sure that your character is visible, fully visible. Now it's time to add some colors. As I said before, I would recommend to add maximum three different colors to make sure that visual language is more cohesive. But if you are more experienced, you can use as many colors as you. It comes to the colors, if you don't have any idea what you are going to do, you can think about the references that we have in animations, comic books, movies, and think about the colors of specific characters. But you can also think about your name to get inspired about the colors. You can think about your preferences and colors. You might have a period when you like blue color more or yellow or pink or purple. It really depends on my case, I'm going to come up with the color based of the illustration that I have right now. As I mentioned, my character reminds me of sphinx from Egypt. So perhaps I'm going to use pastel colors and something that reminds me of sand. But I want the body to be lighter. The face can have more details and the house on the back might be more colorful. Let's pick the color. I have so many markers. So many materials that sometimes I get lost. But I like this color for my spinks maybe a different shade, a bit pink for the face, this for the cloud, this for the body, this for the face. Okay, the black color for the hair. I don't want to use gold color or should I. Perhaps I should because Egypt is connected to lots of golden colors, and it might be a good idea. I have these colors together right now. I'm still not sure about gold. Maybe I'll replace it with bright yellow color. If you're working with different coloring materials, such as acrylic paint or something that is super wet, consider the process because sometimes it will crumble the paper and it will be inconvenient. But if you are working digitally, you can always use a different layer for the coloring. And if you're working with pencils, it will be very smooth. Make sure that you're painting inside the outlines. Ah, so satisfying. I love this process. For me, personally, coming up with a character and later adding details are my favorite parts of the process. Again, don't be afraid to make mistakes. As you see, I went over the outline, but I can always fix it. Also, you don't need to fill out the color entirely. Sometimes it looks even better if you leave white parts as well. It shows that it's a hand drawn and gives crafty feelings. I don't actually want to color the entire face. I like the white color on this character, but I will add a slightly pinkish hue to add some checks and slighten some details. I'll also use it underneath the eyes. So it has more life. It's not a traditional shading. It's just my way of adding colors. And when you are making your own character based of your name, there are actually no rules. You can create whatever you want, however you want, and nobody has a say in it. It's your character, your imagination, your process. The most important part is that you like the result. Actually, I was thinking about the windows, and I think that I want to fill them with a black color because I want to keep them as a mystery. The viewer shouldn't know if it's a house where people are living or the temple similar to what we see in Egypt. So I want it to be a mystery and I'm going to fill them with a black color. Later, if I feel like it's not a good decision, I'm going to redraw them. And I will add some characters. I just want to see how it looks with just dark shades. Do you remember previously, I told you that with wet colors, your paper will crumble a bit. So this is what I meant. You can press them in between of the books. Alright, now we have the colored version of our character, but we're not done yet. Only one step is left. The next video, I'm going to use thicker outlines and also a textures to make sure that it looks cohesive and something that I like for my first initial of my name. Okay, let's move to the next video and finalize our illustration. 7. Adding Colors and Details: Finally, we are on the last step of our illustration. Let's add more texture to our character to make sure that it looks nice and we can also add thicker outlines because right now what we see is that the outlines are too thin and sometimes you cannot distinguish the character. I'm going to use black marker with thinner tips for the outlines. I'm going to use my tracer ink for the details. Let's outline our character and fix the mistakes that we made in the previous video. Do you remember what I said about the freckles? I'm going to eat them now. Just some dots are enough. You don't need to go overboard. Okay. I think it's enough. And now we need some ornaments for our body. It also reminds me of a dog. Should I add some fur instead? Hmm. I'm using short strokes to illustrate the fur. I don't want them to be too messy because my character looks pretty rigid. And I want the patterns to follow the characteristics of my character. I'm not even sure. I think you can still see the letter. But if you don't know the exercise, you might not know why this character has its body. One thing that I truly love about this exercise is that you're coming up with the shapes that you wouldn't come up otherwise. The letters whisper what kind of characters you are going to create. And every time you do this exercise, you will come up with different characters. None of them will look alike. And even if students' names will start with the same letter, everybody will come up with completely different results. The rest of the exercise is just your imagination. You are doing whatever you feel like doing. You can take as much time as you want to complete your illustrations. We're done with the fur. And now let's think what else we can do. Perhaps I'm going to add some floral elements to the body. It's more fictional. It's more fairy tale like. Maybe this one has some shapes like this hinting that it's a costume. It's not the part of the body. We need one here for the composition, perhaps another one coming from here. I'm just going with the flow. You don't have to have a specific idea while starting. You might come up with that as you go. We'll add some stars. We'll add some circles. I just to fill up the composition so it doesn't feel empty. When you are done with the texture, you might go through the entire illustration and correct the mistakes again. And the final step for me is to use the black marker and to add thicker lines. We are more or less done with our character. Of course, there are always going to be the parts to improve. But if you are a beginner, especially if you are a beginner, it's always better to stop when you don't know what to add rather than overwork your illustration and then regret it. So we're going to stop here. And in the next video, I'm going to summarize the entire class and we will see the results very clearly. 8. The Final Reveal: Lesson closes the loop. We started with a letter, and we ended up with a character. Let's go through all the steps, where we started, and where we are right now. I started with letter M because my name starts with an M. Then we imagined a character that could be living inside the illustration. We traced the letter M with a pencil, and we got this uneven shape and the main idea. In my case, there was a pink sl character from Egypt with a building on the back. Then we used a pen or black ink to trace on top of this illustration. I changed the face, I changed the hair. I edited a tale and the idea of the building. On the final stage, we used a new paper to add colors, textures, and ideas. This experience is always surprising, even for me. Sometimes it's even a healing and learning experience. When you look at your character, what's the relationship between that character and yourself. What I can learn from this character is that perhaps I need more flexibility. Also, I could see the inclination towards mysticism, which are these windows and hidden truth behind the character. Those letters could hint a lot of information about you. You want to add speech bubbles, some environmental details, feel free to do so. We didn't have too much time to explain all the details because this class is beginner friendly. But if you want to explore more about those topics, you can check my other classes. But for now, congratulations. You created perhaps your first character based on the first letter of your name. That's a great achievement, and I'm sure that you're surprised with the final result. If you have any questions, you can always ask me in the discussion page underneath the video. Now it's time to wrap up our class and say our goodbyes. 9. Wrap Up: Throughout this class, we went through such a long journey. We started with a letter and ended up with an illustrated character. Now you can frame your character. You can gift your character. Throughout this process, you learned many interesting and important skills. This exercise is really great for illustration warmup. You also learned visual problem solving. You got a personal connection to the letter and have a better understanding of your name. If you want to try it in your native script, that would be really interesting. For example, I'm Georgian and we write in Georgian alphabet, and I could try to illustrate my letter in Georgia or if you are an English speaker and you want to continue, you can try to illustrate or find characters in your entire name and see relations in between of them. You can also try illustrating your friends initials and gift it to them. Thank you so much for taking this class. I'm really looking forward to seeing your project in the project gallery. If you cannot find it, you can see it underneath the video. There are a few tabs, and there is a project gallery where you can submit your work. Even if it's a working progress, even if it doesn't look great, please still applaud it because it will be encouraging for other students, and you will get feedback not only from me, but from them as well. And one more thing. If you enjoyed my class, I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a review. With that action, other students so find this class easily, and they will be able to create their initials as well. It will help me see that people are enjoying my classes, too. Thank you for taking a risk and going for a character hunt with me. I think it's time for me to go, but I'm sure I'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.