Drawing and Coloring a Character Reference Sheet - Different Poses, Emotions, Actions

1. Introduction: Well it's happening folks and welcome back to another I paint creatures class. And today we're going to explore character development. That is one of my specialties in the entertainment industry. Had the incredible opportunity to work for such powerful entertainment companies is Lucasfilm and broader been an Apple computers and all the high-end digital stuff. And so I still like to work traditionally. And so we're gonna go through the process of how I draw and get all the different poses and different character emotions and how I basically make this compilation character sheet. It's not necessarily a model sheet. It's more of a sheet to show the different personalities of a character. And this is a capa Yochai, and this comes from my epic story called Matsui, and this character's named Tycho. Tycho is a water Goblin. And I'll talk a lot about the different features and how I bring them into form. But we're going to start with the first video, which is drawing exercise. So just going to show you a little bit of the fundamentals and the basics and how I, what I pay attention to in the drawing fundamentals to basically generate all these fun poses of this one character and keep him on model. That's the term for keeping them looking exactly the way he does. But I also like to stretch that out a little bit and do a little bit of exaggeration and the Disney principles of animation. Basically then we will go through a drawing lesson. All the fundamentals, construction, all the things that I think about, and all the things you need to consider to know to basically bring it into the next realm of character creation for your stories. I do mainly for storybooks and preparing them to maybe be digital rigs and animation and used in comic strips and comic books and picture books. Then we will go into inking. Show you how I bring it all in the form and basically create a lot of the containers and outlines. And then we will end with watercolor and conceptually sketching together a lot of the colors laid in and stay pretty true to the model of them. But my characters get really powerful in their magic so they can go change the colors and go beyond that. So I'll talk a little bit about how to keep that in your story characters and keep it all fresh and keep it all flowing. Of course, I will always review all my art supplies and all the techniques I use and why. I use the sequence of ways I lay things down. And I also throw it all out there and get really creative and move kind of spontaneous. So a lot of my courses, this one is no exception, is here to inspire, influence, educate you enough. But most vi, really inspired, motivated to create your own art and find your own style. Apply all the base fundamentals to keep it. To get it in a professional appealing level so you can get into your storytelling or your comics or whatever it is you do with characters and creatures in a fantastical world. So definitely this thing is always focused. A lot of my classes are always focus on painting and drawing from imagination. And if I don't cover some of the things that you feel, you need to get to a level where you can start creating your own characters and have a confidence. You can go back to some of my other courses and they're kinda like prerequisites. I do some basic ones. If you don t think this one really fulfills everything to get you inspired and get you the skills to get up and going and making fantastical creatures and characters in creating original fantastical stories. And even if doing on hobby level sharing with your friends or getting good so you can go out and make a living like I do and have so much fun and brings so much joy to people's lives. So let's get going with Tyco and the character development sheet. And I'll see you over in the next video. In the next video is the drawing exercise. So get out your ballpoint pen. I always like to use ballpoint pens to draw and sketch. And I will definitely go over that. Why use ballpoint pens and not graphite non erasable mediums. So I'll see you over there in the drawing exercises, then we'll move on to inking. Want to thank you all for coming along for the ride. 2. Drawing Exercise: Welcome to the John and exercise on doing this character sheet and character development from your imagination. For storybooks, comics for hobby, just to express yourself and bring your imaginary fantastical creatures and characters into the world. The first thing I always really concentrate on the fundamentals of drawing. So you can start doing your own characters and have them, have that Disney appeal or just make yourself feel good. And like I always say, go on an art adventure in our adventure means to me, is every time you draw or paint or venture into a new skill or new area of creativity and art, basically makes sure you're successful. And so this is where I do the ratio and there's all kinds of different construction methods that are out there. And a lot of them pretty much follow a standard. I break it every once while. And basically to get you to think for yourself and come up with your own methods would work. So the first one is ratio. And usually a lot of cartoon characters are built on the ratio of three heads sizes to make up the whole body, right? And I'm kinda fallen that here. Usually I always like to make up my own. So a lot of what I always usually do is I use one head size for the head shape up there, right? And then I'll make the body a little bit smaller just to make it a little more comical or more fantastical, more stick out, especially if it's an animated character that's gonna talk. So even pay attention to his head more. So you can see how I stay within these ratios and that will basically builds your body so it will look like a little humanoid type creature. And of course, this can be turned into an animal, can be a little bear or CAD, or in this case, I'm making a copy of your cost is going to be a turtle you okay? Right. So you could see how I use just the basic assembly things. I'm using the crosshair at the top right there where you put a little crosshair on the circle so you can determine which way your character is looking and where the groin. And then I use basically stick figure. If I'm confused at the pose I want to get and I don't know exactly the direction or the ratio of the different parts of the arm or anything. So I'll just use the little line and lot of times for the elbow or the joint, I'll just use a little circle and then I'll use circles for the hands. So you can see how I pretty much assembled a generic type character there. And that comes from a lot of Disney and Hannah Barbera and all the Greek company, animation companies that brought us amazing entertainment and amazing characters and creatures and their imagination. And here I'm showing you a little bit assembly stick figure and not really have any poses in mind. And that's kinda like how I like to do my character sheets. I just kinda just gets like I'm in my sketchbook and then I'll kinda just a lot of it. There's a kind of a strange trick I've been using for years where you just feel the pose and the emotion. And then it was very happy to smile a lot where you John it and it just gets you in the flow of putting down the lines and lot of time in two of the, you'll put the lines exactly need. But you see how I use just a little little circle to mark the joint part and you could do it on the top on the shoulder part if you want, on the top of the thigh. But I usually just keep it simple. And more what I'm paying attention more than anything right now is the ratios like how, how much length is the top part of the arm compared to the lower part of the arm. And of course there's the cartoons. So a lot of times you always want to exaggerate and kinda find your happy spot where you exaggerate ****. And you can see that it is totally in its level of doing this and doing this. And she's a level that is incredible of how when you start adding the details, like I said, details right there, then it becomes your character. But just using basic shapes. Once again, parallel lines and basic shapes, the triangle, the square, right? A lot of the point drawing where you can practice just making points and points on the page and then doing your lines to them and do parallel lines. And that's all it is. If you really look at the base, it will always find it parsed in a shift in a way that takes it to a whole nother level of making it easier and they're fun to assemble. And I always like to give my method because I don't really, I tried to really stay loose even though I'm using construction and assembly type methods and but I always try to mix it up like this one right here. I didn't know I was gonna get this kind of pose. I've gotten into kinda fun pose, right? You gotta just go out on a limb. And I'm employing this a little bit. I think I'm going to put it in some upcoming courses and focus on it more. There's a thing that comes from the Disney Camp, which is called the line of action. And it's a great way to put yours to create some poses that you may not think of or, you know, because I think when you use too much reference, so say you pulled up a whole sheet of someone who took a bunch of pictures for poses. I think you can kinda stiff because you will lose a lot of your character's attributes. You know, the kind of the characteristics of your character, you know, like is it a sad character, as excited as like the fall down a lot, like the sleep a lot rest or is it just, you know, is it all over the place this is jumping around and shift that whole nother level of beam and it keeps the energy alive. So you can see a lot of these are really rough sketches I'm kinda doing on purpose to kinda slow down a little bit and be a little mechanical just to kinda show you how you can slow down that level. But a lot of it is just your confidence. So the more you do it, the more you observe after you've done it. Like the greatest place is like a place that were kids are playing or the skating rink or some type of park. Just watch and they get in the most amazing poses because they're not thinking about, they're just having fun. And I think you have to apply that same thing when you're doing character creation and development. Making different poses, different emotions, make him do different things. You'll see on the final sheet of Tycho. I have him doing all kinds of things. And I love to do these character sheets because it also gets me ready to fully start to do a lot of animation and stuff and do a storytelling. So it gets it at a level where I can freely just draw the character and I don't really have to get to cognitive and think about, I got to draw on the limbs gotta be perfect this way. Because a lot of times in comics and fantastical storytelling, a lot of it is just the motion. So you can show characters have said or excited or like that one trying to get over something balanced, something. This one right here, next three, right, the next meet, he's bending over and he's curious. And then this one, I'm taking a risk. And sometimes you got to take a risk and sometimes it might look a little wonky and you might not have it. But the key is to get it out on the page. Like I like to say, get it out there first, don't sit there and think because then you get in the mode of I can't do it or I don't have enough skills or anything. I think a lot of drawing is a least two. People like me is a lot like sculpting more than getting the exact line. That's why I love doing these real sketchy things. And once again, that's why I love using a ballpoint pen and loved the big stick and all the forms that comes in. And it's just a cheap tool and you can get real sketchy and line things up and make things are really good at a level that allows you to play and assemble everything. So you can just endless possibilities, you just keep doing this. And then after you have a whole bunch of these scribbles and little doodles, you kinda know where it's going, nowhere to assemble it. And then you can move over to your other page and do your finalized pencils or inks and just get it all ready. Then after you see, after you get and get the pose and you see where the limbs are, everything's supposed to go. You just start adding the details and then it becomes your character. We're going to move over to the draw and exercise neck. I mean, the inking exercise after the drawing and we're going to lock in the drawing. That's what I meant to say. That's where you really lock in the drawing. And sometimes there might be some flaws, but once again, the goal and storytelling and fantastic co-creation is get your character so they are communicating the mood and the action or what they're doing to tell the story. All right, I'll see you over in the inking portion. 3. Inking: What's happening, folks? And now we're back on the inking part. And you can see I already rendered a lot of it. But that'll allow me to go through all the techniques of inking and give you a little insight on that. So I'm using the Tombow. It's basically a brush pen, but it's more of they call it a synthetic brush pen. And you can just look up Tombow, that's the company from Japan. And they make a synthetic brushes. If you look at the tip, it's not individual little brushes. Synthetic brushes is kinda like clump together. It's a little plastic, little nib, but you can see I flick it and that's part of the one, the number one technique you should learn from these pens is, is it's called flicking. And I kinda get those lines and it goes thick to thin. I can kinda nestled in dark part and then flick out and it kinda gives a gradient of the line right where there's more light and more darkness. And it's a great effect and appending are artist's been using it for a long time. So it's very recognizable. You can see how, if you look kinda transparency in your mind back to the drawing exercise. You can see how I kinda have underneath all of my structure. You can see I was using a lot of those Assembly little points and I've been doing a long time, so a lot of times I don't use it and I got to remind myself to use it because a lot of times it'll bring a little more more exact drawing into it. The anatomy you'll get closer to making it more real. But, but sometimes I kinda like kinda the Genki wacko kinda lines and is not really explains it because it gets a little more emotional. And there's where I'm using that worksheet. And again, you can see it creates a beautiful texture where the light is. I did a lot on this one because a lot of times I'm rendering for story, right? So I basically want to make it clear that what the elements are, and sometimes you need a lot of darkness and shadows behind it and some gradients to really emphasize the form. You can see it adds to the motion and the pose of the character. You can see where I put the darker your eyes kinda go there and then it makes you wander around the rest of the character and you can really tune in to what they're doing or their emotion there. So I have all kinds of motions from just cruising around with his laptop to wearing the 3D shape, the drive in his little snail more mobile to have in a can on his head to being sick with this. Kinda like his sick utilities that have a lot of them playing music and being dreary. And these are really fun and I really liked the closet on the page. So it also makes you do a lot of ink work to separate the elements, right? And so it gets a little crazy. But yeah, that was thinking real quick. And basically, yeah, Just make a lot of containers, apply a lot of pen and ink techniques, but mainly you're outlining making containers. And once again, this is conceptual character story art. So all the shading and deeper, darker lines and shadows you're putting in there to emphasize and communicate the character and the form and what it's doing. So I'll see you over where we're going to add some watercolor piece. 4. Coloring: All right. We're in the coloring section and you just saw me just kinda finishing off a little fine details with a micron, probably a really fine 0.01. And usually what I do there is once again, I'm, that's why I like to crush everything together on the character sheets. So it really forces me to really figure out what the different elements and how I need to separate them, either with shading from pen and ink or using the darker watercolors. But you can see I'm using my classic Pentel aqua brush. And I love these brushes is a lot of brushes out on the market, but this one really will hold up over time if you take care of it. Number one rule with it is definitely when you put the cap back on, make sure no fray hairs are hanging out and because it will ruin it. And then like to use the large because I discovered that it can come to a very fine tip at the very, very thin lines. Plus you also have the breadth and depth of the very thirsty brush to add a lot of water and do a lot of the effects of lifting and removing color and then adding water effects. But you can see I'm basically using one of my go-to pallets, which has a lot of Daniel Smith watercolors in it, and some Winsor Newton and a little bit of core golden watercolors, which are very, very saturated. And I pick them all to work with each other. I spend a lot of time figuring out if they work together and some of the palate is all ready to go so I can get my golds and my greens. Demonstrating my travel brush, watercolor brush kit, which is incredible kit, and don't use it much. But this is reminding me to use again, so it's quite pricey. There's a whole bunch of different ones and that really going to recommend that specific one. But it's pretty cool how the handle comes out and it actually can compact, very, very small, but then you can put the long handle on it and sharp point and I think they're Kolinsky hair, which is that Kaminsky squirrel, a type of animal and their natural hair brushes. Pleasure. I got to maintain these brushes like crazy different game than using the aqua Pentel brush. But you can get classic watercolor techniques and you definitely got to practice with expensive real animal hair brush. But you can see use a lot of the basic watercolor technique, which is always preserving your highlight. And then you can always go back and do what's called glazing. Just glaze it with water down. Pigment of color in watercolor. And you can keep that highlight. And so you start to get dimension, right? Because the shadows and the highlights bring the dimension to the flat drawing. And I do the classic watercolor technique. That's why I also like to mesh them on one sheet like this because I treat it as one whole composition, which is really good for these images because they're headed toward employing for is it story books and comics. And so they may be in complex backgrounds where they have to punch out. And so I'm already doing that prelim work of knowing what what's gonna make them punch out. I do a lot of observation. I stepped back every once in awhile. Once again, the key in rendering all this stuff is getting at a level where you are emphasizing and communicating. What the characters do. You see it gets kinda busy on this sheet because I got a lot going on and I'm just like a detail King because I can work so fast and confidence. But my main goal always, I will remind you as always paying for the imagination, always telling a story. So I give a lot of techniques how to paint and draw, but why I'm majorly different than a lot of our diseases, because I render to tell a story more than render to just have a fantastic school, incredible, beautiful image, which is part of a minute or two. And I think it's a part of, I think one of the highest levels of doing conceptual or imaginative or creative folk or modern folklore, art and comics and movies and stuff is storytelling, right? Because you have to do a lot of sequence of images. You have to somewhat stay on what's called stay on model so you can recognize the character in the scene, right? So the story stays cohesive. But I'm also what I call a radical watercolors. Since I do a lot of fantastical art, can include color combinations that are kinda surreal and not in tune with the real reality of the world. But it also allows me to saturate really quick. And a lot of watercolor paintings don't do that. They work pretty much light to dark. And lot of times I worked saturated, too dark, right? So saturated means is really punching in really strong color. So you see how I jump all around. And also another technique why I'm showing you I put it on like, you know what, it would be a traditional character sheet. But you see, I just kinda ran and put them all over the place and sketch them weird all over the place. But it allows me to experiment with different colors and changing the characters colors, which could work really well in storytelling because it also can subtlety, very subliminal, change the mood of the story or the character. But I stay pretty much in the same. But I experimented a little bit just to kinda give the interests and look a little bit more. And then you'll see I bop around and I'll bring a very dark color in my watercolor palette, which I very suggest that you always find some really, really dark color on first because water cutting get really watery. So definitely get it at that level. Make sure you have a dark color because the dark is at the end to really bring the watercolor hitting home. And I highly suggest it, but it's a lot of fun, but I'm one of those that uses every color and really take a lot of fun and pride and joy my work that I do that. But there's something you said to work with an a monochrome palette and also work more true to the colors and the environment of the character creature to give that movie. But their overall is to stay inspired, have tons of fun, and use all these techniques. And most of all, especially in I paint creatures class, doing art venture, make sure you don't bite off too much and you're super successful with what you do and you love what you do. So thank you for watching the course. Then come back, you all leave feedback, share it with your friends, and let's keep going. Let me know if there's anything I can bring to the table that would be unique and special and be a course or the viewing. Thank you very much. Talk to you. Soon. I pink creatures.