Draw a Character Turnaround

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm psychosis. Today we are going to draw a character turnaround like this one. Those skills are useful for character designs for TV series, feature films, coming books, games, anything with characters really. I'm both French and British, and I have 16 years of experience as an animator and Illustrator. In this class, you will draw a female character from five different angles, from the front, the back, the side, and from three-quarter angles. This class is suitable for intermediate artist and beginners who have knowledge of a drawing software like Photoshop. Once you have fun with this class, I would love to see you draw your own turnaround. So let's get started. 2. Setup and proportions: Welcome to my class, will start with an existing character that I direct. Then we will determine the proportions of this character and use that as a base for drawing all angles. This is about setting things up. Okay, So this is the character I want to draw a turnaround for. Girl. Maybe she's a football player or something like that. So the first thing I want to look into is working out the proportions. And then I'm going to draw some lines in the background that we'll use as a guide to draw the side view, the front view, and three-quarter views. So the first thing to do yes, is to draw, to work out the proportions. There's a habit die a lot of illustrators have, which consists in drawing proportions based on the size of the head, relatively to the size of the body. So you go ahead and draw a circle for the head, and then you draw a few more circles underneath to define the size of the body. So you could have a ratio of a body that's the size of six heads. For example, all the societies seven heads or eight heads or shorter computers forehead. And that gives you proportions of a more cartoony character or more realistic character. So in this particular case, I think this character has a ratio of six. So in the host body you can fit six heads. So I'm going to draw them quickly. And that's going to be the base of our proportions of drawing all the other angles of the character. So I'm going to just use a normal brush, make it big enough. Is the size of the head? Roughly. So yeah, maybe something like this too much. So and then I'm going to create a new layer. And on this layer I'm going to use a black color. And I'm gonna just punch here circle. And then another 1.5. So that first circle would be the head of the size of the head. Now the one underneath, I'm going to put two. So that's size of the top part of the chest, size of the second part of the trunk. So I'm going to add another three of those to make the length of the legs. Right? So there you go. This is roughly the scale of our character, that the proportions of our character. I'm going to make this transparent. Just rescale equity. I'm going to use Control T to scale it to fit the character, that banner. And so, okay, well I'll put this aside. So I'm working here on a canvas of about 4000 pixels wide and three by 3000 pixels high. Now, you work with whatever resolution you want to, you want to use. It is a matter for this exercise. So now I'm going to use to create a new layer. So I related I create is set to multiply. So whichever software you use, you probably have a similar setting. And that means that you only see the black lines and the white lines or other colors will be sought transparent. So let me make sure this layer is empty. And I'm going to draw some thin lines across the screen. So to draw horizontal lines, you can just hold the Shift, Shift key as you draw, as you draw a line. And that keeps the line either perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal. So if you hold the Shift key as you join the line. So that's on Photoshop again, depending on what you using my dear different too. So I'm going to draw a line across the top of the head. So holding Shift and then I'm just doing this. Another one here, maybe kinins, right? I'm going to draw out one hair where the middle of the body is roughly. Another one where we're looking at the bottom of the pelvis. This is where the trunk and one for the fit. Right here we go. And somewhere in the middle here where the knees draw a line like this. So that's plenty of information to work with now I could draw more lines. And depending on why you want to make sure is you can add more lines afterwards. So this is the line layer, the back, the guide. I'm not going to touch this only, only to add more lines to it or to extend. Now. Now I'm going to go and create a new layer for the first side view of the character. 3. Side View: Great, We have set things up. Now. We'll start by drawing the side view. At this stage, we will keep the drawings quite rough. Let's start. Okay, so now I'm going to draw the first view of the different angles. So I'm going to start with the side view. I'm going to start by doing a very sketchy side view. We're not gonna go into the details just yet. What's important with this exercise is to get the proportions right throughout the time around. So I will concentrate on getting those rights. And it's going to be quite a rough sketch. And we're gonna go through all the other views. But let's start with this one. So I'm going to make things a little bit, just move things around a little bit to give myself room and go. And I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to call it side view. And I'm going to make it multiply as well. Now we're just going to use a simple black, basic black brush. So this myself here and I will start with the head. So I want the circle now free like this. So you can see kings rather bottom. Murphy place the neck and so that scientists, so there's no snow angle. Everything is going to be perfectly side being the shoulders are slightly known, so I'm gonna go with the shortest my hair. So the chest is quite important. This position to the body, so it's rarely perfectly vertical. The spine is not perfectly vertical lines, so we want to find lab mine. Depending on the attitude of the cacti, that line can change. Now I'm going to do something not degenerate here. So you have the rib-cage. Rib cage is like a balloon. It's called a rounded shape like this. Laplace says, like so. And you can see it's kind of at an angle here. So I'm not placing the vertical and the spine would go down this way. And that's, that's what naturally does. So next, I'm going to place the hips. The hips kinda go back this time. And so I'm going to do another sort of circle, maybe a little shorter like this. This is the pelvis area if you want and the stock. So this is the ribcage and this is the stomach right here, all the way down to the pelvis area. Now on a place the next, so the next kind of go down from here. And pretty much traits will just draw some straight lines. To place it tapers, tapers down like this. Now the place foot. So the sort of angle there, so sort of angle N. Here we go. And then the arms in this particular case, they're going to be just going down on either side. Now been no particular expressions. The character needs to be as generic as possible and inspires. This is something that could be used by other people to animate or design or followed for different projects. So you want to do this and communicate things in a nice neutral way possible. So the arms will be going down just like this. Keep in mind, arms are rarely straight. Nothing's always perfectly straight. So if you give the arms a little bend, a look a bit more natural. So as I'm doing here, little band and the hand goes slowly lower down than the pallets. But again, that depends on the proportions you choose for your character. That could be very different for two to another character. So I'm sketching the hand like this, so very simply. Now we, we should not forget that leg has some shape is one. So I just drew these lines to put things in place, but this character is football player, she is quite fit, so she has muscle definition. I want to show that. So usually the hips are quite rounded, the front like this. So you want to see a shape, something like this. And they're quite flat at the back. Now obviously you have some of them cheats, similar here. So you can draw a circle here to place them. And it gives you the OK chips. So then you go down and when you get to the lower part of the leg, the carbs curve the other way and the bone is very straight on the front. So you go down way, straight lightness, and then the bend at the back. This is typically a shape of a leg is quite Muslim. So that's looking pretty good to me. Um, I want to draw an extra line in the background maybe to place the eyes, eyebrows, or the Nios. I'm just going to sketch them really quickly. So we'll go back to that background layer on this one and draw a few more lines. Like so, for example. So that's roughly where the eyes would be, roughly where the noise would be, roughly where the math would be, roughly where the n-grams would be. And I'm going to zoom in a little bit. And I'm just going to quickly, roughly again to find that the profile and the facts, the nicest place to be in. So I'm gonna draw this side view and you go she has a small nose. You go to this going down for the for the chin here. So this part of the face is at an angle slightly like this. And then the rest of the head is very big and round. You want to go the back, the back of the skull goes a little bit forward, back beyond the neck. So don't hesitate to. And then the the cheekbones, if you want, the jaw line comes in maybe at the middle of the neck here night, so my hair. Okay. And so when the place the eyes quickly, so something like this. And we are grounds, maybe like this snake. Okay, now I'm quite happy with I maybe I'll just place yeah. Some way here. Roughly. Here we go. Now. So this is this is a good side view. I've called the proportions. I need here. Then we'll add some details. Later on we fall, we get into the details. I want to sketch in the same way. The other idea, the angles. So let's get to it. 4. Front View: Okay, time to draw the front view. I will show you a very useful tool in Photoshop to draw with symmetry. Let's go. Okay, now I'm going to draw the front view. Now. We're going to use a little trick in Photoshop where we can use a basically a mirroring effect so that you can only you could just draw one side and the other side draws itself automatically symmetric. Otherwise, if you can't do this, you can always just draw one side and copy the layer and then scalar, and then paste it on top of the first layer. That's one way to do it. But I'm going to show you how to use. If you don't know, how to use the mirroring effect in Photoshop. So first I'm going to create a new layer. And I'm going to call this front. And I'm going to decide where the vertical axis and my character. So for this, I'm just going to go over here. Click on this little icon. And I'll choose a direction of an axis and let me go for vertical. You could actually do lot of things with these tools. It's my handy, I suggest you investigate. So I'm gonna go vertical with this. Let's say the here. And now anything I draw on either side will be repeated on the other side. So I'll just click into, now you go and start drawing. So again, you've got the fe, the head of that, the neck, something like this. That's nice to see. Clp at the same time. On the other side, it's, it's very, very useful, very handy. You can use this equipment. So again, as we've seen before that the body is like the upper body is like a balloon, has a very Lambda shaped by this system with cage. So I'll do something like this. And then we go the hips. So it gives us the hourglass figure. Now I'm going to pace yes. So that the bottom of the pelvis will be here. And we'll go into a fairly straightforward legs as we did before. And again, I will add some details in a second. And maybe some like this. And just suggesting some ads for the moment. Maybe is my tip to you to interpret this guy from looking at the reference here on the left. In my character, maybe it's a little too large here. So the flesh In this shows something like that. So that's, that's the main, the main lines put in place. Now. I just want to allow give some shape to those legs, so this goes down like that. Then you got the call stack created curve on either side of the legs, but they're not quite the same. On the left here is shaped curve in here. It's kind of a longer curve. Good thing to know. So that's why usually the curve on this side. And maybe for the feet, just a little bit of a triangle like this. Fits. Positions may go. So the mean would be, so here, what we need to make this multiply and go. And go. Can we make these extra lines? Inside? Goes over the top like this, and it kinda goes straight down. And maybe I'll just remove that line. And I'm just going to add some flesh around the waist. So maybe something like a bass string down. Raising is a little bit that looks a bit more. Nibbana. Just revising some detail. So I'm quite happy with the way it looks now, I'm just going to finally add some details to the face. So maybe I need to move that layer to the left a little bit. So I'm going to leave the other layers when we go. So let's try to put some details. Place the eyes quickly. So I'm just looking over here what I'm drawing. I moved my drawing but I didn't make the symmetry axis. Symmetry axis is still here into the lights on intermediate axis. And place again. Let's paint and draw again. So the ions would be something like this mass. This time She's not smiling, she's just neutral expression. Maybe he is as well. So like him. And fill out. And so we've already got the side view, the front view. And now we need to do the back view and to three-quarters view the front, three-quarter and back. So Did you the back view really it's kinda easy because we would base it on the front view. I realized that the head maybe is a little small. I'm just going to make it a little bit bigger. So I'm going to select the head. Like so. I'm happy with that. 5. Back View: Next, we won't draw the backfield. The trick here is to use the outline of the front view to make your work easier. Let me show you now on to the back to you. So this one should be pretty simple because we can use the front view to make our lives much easier. So I'm, all I'm gonna do right now is duplicate the front layer and just work with that. I want to hide the other layer. I'm going to call this one back. And what I wanna do here is keep the outline, the shape of the character. And if there are any lines inside, I will erase them. And I will draw the ones that need to be drawn. So we'll erase face, chin. Because I didn't put many details in the body. So the body can pretty much stay the same except one main features and back is the bottom bunk chicks. So I want to draw those. So I'm, I'm still using the symmetrical tool and I scanned. So some cheeks can come something like this. We can also suggest the shoulder blades, something like this. Then I'm just going to suggest a headline right now. By doing something like this, would stop somewhere. Here we go. And the neck maybe can go out. And often alarm quite happy with this. We're going to add the hair maybe later on when we add the details. But so far that's enough for me. I think that's okay. I'm just means as well. Usually if the back of the knees have to cast characteristic lines that you could just draw that suggests the shape of the muscles of the back and they'd just go like this. We'll simply suggests the shape of this particular muscles of the bank. All right. Okay, maybe, maybe the elbows. Now let's just add a bit of detail for the others. Now the thing is that when I actually add the details to this, I will probably add the details to the front view fast. And then I might just start from there again to do the bacteria as well. So we'll see what we get there. The next step will be the three-quarter view. So we'll start with the front view. 6. ¾ Front View: Now it's time to draw the three-quarter views. This is a bit of a tricky angle, but it's the same process. So let's continue. Drawing. The three-quarter view is going to be a little trickier than the other two. But it's, you have to think of a pretty something in between. We're going to apply a bad guy throws the dice. So the first thing I'm going to do again is to create the next layer for this one. And I'm going to move these existing ones just to make some room for three-quarter view. So I'm going to bring back the front view. Then I'm going to create a new layer. And then a bit to make some room. We should do and call my layer three. And let's get going. Again. Same idea. I'm going to, I'm not going to use the symmetry this time, so I'm just turning it off. Okay, let's place the head first. So the neck will be slightly accented, but not quite as fast. They are the one. And I'm going to suggest the middle of the face here by drawing this line. This is more or less where the middle of the Facebook B. So the shoulders go down by the side of the neck like this, small. So I want to place first direct cage. So the same balloon shaped, but this time, instead of being straight on like this or completely an aside is some way that we do know some thing like this. So if I draw again, the middle line here would be somewhere here, obey the middle of the chest. Same for the hips. So we've got a pretty much an inverted shape. United States, asymmetrical right, top and bottom of the face and head 2. Same idea. Slogan, go too low. I'm going to place those legs similar way again. Comes down. Feet quickly. Let's give these legs some shapes. Again, we'll find a little bit of the curve here, just like here. You'll get the covenant light is well, it goes down straight little bit less and under the curve. So the second bottom half, and we'll give it both, it's going to be straight on the left, on the right. So this again looks similar to the function. So maybe here could demonstrate this one because maybe the leg is slightly tilted so that the two legs on two feet at an angle. So I'm not looking at those legs exactly the same angle. So this one I will draw as if they were pretty much Seidel. So more like this side. One leg looks like this and the other leg looks like okay. I'm going to suggest here that pelvis again. So just a little line like this. I want to give some flesh to the stomach here again. Just know you can read the shape of the petals. So same idea. It's just like a vertical tube here that joins the two. Slowly, slowly erase those lines inside. And you can see that the female shape appearing. So yes, so this is the hardest part now. We're gonna move to just draw some arms really quickly. So same idea and that kind of slightly band off the sides. I want to worry about the details later again, so as long as it memoryless in place, I'm happy. And yes, because it's a female character. We're going to have to do some tests as well. I'm going to do that with the details later on instincts. Just yet. So yeah, so I'm quite happy with the shape of the body by now. We can make amendments later. So if you know entirely happy with it, you can keep going. It doesn't have to be perfect, just right, just by now. Final thing, I'm just going to add some more details to the face. So placing the eyes and the Jew. And I can suggest the packet and loops. All the details. Just look into that later. This is it for And we're gonna do the back now and use the same trick. We're going to keep the same silhouettes and just changing the lines inside the body. 7. ¾ Back View: This time again, we will use the same trick as before and use the outline from the front VA to help with the back view. On we go. Okay. Now the three-quarter back. So like I said, I'm going to use the same outline as the three-quarter front. So again, I will just duplicate the layer, rename it. I'm going to erase this thing in the middle. So you've got this like empty shell. Let's add some detail. So the Mac here would be something like this. The eyes would probably just all it would seem system. Yeah. Just this much. You could see that lung abscess, something like this here. Actually, I need to multiply this one as well. Okay, so multiply, I'm just going to quickly draw a line here, maybe something like this as well. Yes. So for example, this home, it will come up like this in front of the chest. So that would be good to draw maybe the spine, spinal cord down, like here and here roughly. And the last details really now we want to address is this polygon. So maybe you imagine a circle like this and draw this line and curve this part as well. And maybe draw another line. So be sure to give this curved shape as well. Now we'll, we could certainly be just something here as well. Oops. Yes. So here we go. That was quick again. You see there's not much to change between one view and the other. So the next phase will be about adding details to all of this. 8. Detailing: Finally, we have all our views sketched out. We can now clean up the drawings at details and make it look nice. Let's do this. So now I'm going to do the fan power, just polishing things a little bit, adding details and making it all look nice. Through this. This might take some time and really the point of the exercise is already done. We wanted to create those different angles. Now the details is really depending on whatever design you might want to work with. So it's not so important tubular speed through this part. However, if you want to see me draw all the details at normal speed, I will have all that footage at the back of the last video. So after the conclusion, you just keep watching. And you can have the full length video of me drawing all the details on these characters. If you really want to look into some details and how I do some of these things. But otherwise I will, in this part we'll speak a little bit. So I'm going to start with the side view and adds those details. So one thing I do usually is to lighten up the color lines. And then I draw on top. So to do this and go to Curves. And then I move this one up. So maybe three-quarters. So the lines are still there, but they pay, they transparent. And I'm just going to draw on top now. So I want to bring in some of the hair style. So let's press lines here. Goes over the side of the head, like so. And then maybe like so the throne. Hey me as not to finish the piece, stay clean and that all ink to all the snow snow the points here. So I'm allowed a login to go that far. So here we go. I'm quite happy with this first side here. I've added quite a few details. Probably still need to add a few things, even lab, but this is pretty much as far as I'm going to take each one of these views. So let's continue. Okay, we keep going with the front view this time. So semi-dome. This time I'm going to bring back the symmetry tool. But first I will lighten up a bit. So my Dan will make your patrons and spoke model will try to place my symmetry axis. We will go in details. So I'm going to add the hand at the end. You can see it has quite asymmetrical, so I would have to stop using the util, the axis in the middle. But right now we'll continue with this topic. Okay, now I'm turning this symmetry ofs and I told him, okay, so I'm happy with this frontier. And then we'll go back to the back for you again. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to use this font here, that free tool now to create the other one. So let's do that. So for the bucket view, I'm going to reuse the front view and use the previous pack for you as simply a guide setup. I can see the lines that I've drawn before. So I'm going to duplicate first my phone view again. Move it across to you. Okay, I'm going to make the backfill very transparent. And the front view. Now we're going to do what I did before, which is to remove the lines inside. So we're done now. Okay, So this is the back view based on the fovea. And so we've done a lot now. What slashed his frequent views and same idea, we'll start with the front view and then we got to backfill. So let's do that. Okay, So same process for the three-quarter front view. So let's go ahead and stop. I'm making this a bit more transparent. And I'm going to draw on top of this. No, I think I'm quite happy with the way she looks now. In three-quarter view. So there's only one more left is the three-quarter back there. So again, I'm going to use the first image. Just remains the lines inside It's a transit time. So let's go ahead and do that. Okay, final angle, final view, the three-quarter back view. So I'm going to say go do what I said before. Let's get on with it. Okay? I think this is it. We've got all of our characters. I'm toning all the angles and the views. Yeah, I'm quite happy with the way she looks now. So let's wrap this up. 9. Conclusion and Extras: You're watching this video.