Drawing 101 : Character Design

1. INTRODUCTION to the Future!: My name is Josh Done that. I'm a three D artists based in Los Angeles, California. Today I'm gonna show you how to create and design a character set in the post Apocalypse. This world's gonna be inspired by 19 eighties flavor genre. Think Mad Max meets the 19 eighties design element will be going over how to find the right images in the proper reference for the project. Next, we will create the big shapes and forms, and I'll show you how to make a solid, readable silhouette and how to incorporate your ideas into that illustration. Speaking with design language, different shaves and blending those together to make a crease designed to make it work and make it stylized for a cartoon. So I hope you guys enjoy. Let me know you think of comments below. Thank you so much for taking this glass. It's gonna be great. I can't wait to see you guys come up with. Thank you so much. 2. Finding Reference and Inspiration: a great reference to lie like tea is his Pinterest. This is a great tool to organize all the reference and inspiration you find all in one place. Feel free to use Google as well, or magazines or film. Anything that comes to mind really make a few elements of shoulder pad, a knee pad, a leather jacket. You know, lots of spikes on this project. I tried to mix Mad Max with future eighties look, Amy's fashion red for oh, anything that screams out post Apocalypse. 3. Start Sketching: begin the design phase, withdrawing out very crude and rough figure shapes. Don't get too caught up on anatomy here. These air literally just one or two shapes with Ryan's for legs and arms. Floor height. Six figures, if you will. But with this trying to capture some moved or try to put some motion or feeling into these , think of different archetype characters is here. She good, bad, confident, insecure. The lead character, the dorky sidekick, the bully, The cool kids is here. She happy or sad? These are all things to consider and will be important when you curate our character. Think about these things as you sketch. Don't get too caught up in any particular design yet just try to convey the character and personality. Try to use only two shapes for this. A Circle Square two circles triangle and give them arms and legs and see what works and what doesn't. Once we have a few drawings were happy with for body shape, we can experiment with drawing the heads, - practice a few different versions, try one of each. See what you come up with. Do 5 50 The more you do more options, you have to choose from. This is a great exercise to get you thinking outside of your comfort zone. Pushes here . Once you have a good idea of shape, you can go back with the darker pencil to detail them a bit more again. If you look at these drawings, they're not overly detailed or complex. They're just shapes to get the idea across. Remember, simplicity is key here. Don't waste too much time on one. He may not even decide to use it later. - And once you have a few versions tightened up, feel free to use a Sharpie to push the design and see how it reads. Go draw and make some cool characters. Have fun with this. Keep them loose. 4. Find The Shadow: another good practice. If you still earn feeling any designers working, you can create some silhouette shapes. Thes also are great practice just to see how simple even break down the character. You can do this before or even after you create your character. If it's a great trick to see what's working, - use this trick in animation a lot. Look at your favorite cartoon character. Make them a silhouette, and I guarantee you that you will still be able to tell who that character. 5. Find The Design: Now that you have all your character sketches and thumbnails, go through them, make note of the ones that work best. Hopefully, you guys went all out and created 100 characters. If so, great job, that's a bit too. We need to find the right one, or at least the one that is reading the best for what we need in this case, post apocalyptic future eighties kids. Once you have that narrowing down, we will now redraw it a bit bigger so that we can make a nice looking illustration of your character. We will start off with rough blocking of shapes, very similar to what we just did on the thumbnails. Rough sketches and build upon. We were fine, all the edges and shapes until we have a night's sleep looking character. Spend some time on this to get the field design right. Try to really pull from reference a few pieces and incorporate. And don't be afraid to make steaks. It is only pencil. You can always erase, correct. Just have fun and find the character 6. Explore The Design PT 1: Once you have a character that you like, try a few different variations just to see if maybe we can push them in a different direction. See what sticks and what sometimes doesn't. This will be a valuable tool. Have fun with this. Let your mind go wild. Don't limit yourself to just one sketch. Try to push it further. Maybe go look for more reference and see if you can find something. Something you didn't really think of first. Well, Craig, in these I just took a photo of the final sketch. I really liked. Place him a photo shop, Super created them, made a lighter version and then printed this house. We stay organized along the design process. I did the same process for the body below. We'll do some variation. 7. Explore The Design PT 2: do the same with the body. Create a few variations very quickly just to see what works. Explore your decided. Ask yourself. My character on Lee looked like this, and if the answer is yes, then you'll probably have a pretty strong 8. Last Looks and Final Thoughts: So now we have our final sketch. I went back and cleaned it up a bit more just to make it cleaner and a bit easier to follow from an animation stand point. So here he is. I'm gonna be posting a bunch of different character versions, so be sure to check them out in the project section. I hope everyone had fun with ease. It was really great to walk you through the process. I'm really excited to see what everyone comes up with. So please post your fund characters in the project section as well. Let me know if you guys have any questions or comments. Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the class.