Transcripts
1. Introduction: Creating character illustrations with different paresis is both inspiring and fun today, especially when you manage to capture that movement. And popes named dynamic and rich way. Hey, I'm caress, also known as Crystal draws. And I am an illustrator and designer based in the UK. I'm so glad you decided to take this class and learn how to create dynamic character animal poses. A lot of my illustrations focused on animals and nature. And it is where I get a lot of my inspiration From. Soon as you go out into the outside world, you are immediately inspired by colors, shapes, sounds, and animals that are literally all around you. Creating character animal causes is a fun and creative projects day, but also can be quite tricky. So I will go over in this class all the different stages that you will need state when this, along with an exercise practices along the way to previous skill set. And we'll also go over the post stamps and lines and how to convey movement in your poses. We will also explore the techniques shaped by which to build or your animal characters. Simple but achievable way. I will go through the importance of lighting depth and showing you a few techniques and tricks that I've developed over the years to implement it to your character at most, this will also help make your final piece standout. I'll also be sharing some exercises you can do to build up your confidence and skill levels that can really help in your creative journey as an illustrator. Or finally go through my entire process from start to finish. T can see how to do each stage and in which order. At the end of the class you will have a big competence, increasingly, animal characters and a lot more tricks and techniques in detail. 1900 blood. So this class is aimed at all levels, from beginners to experienced illustrators as receipts and techniques aimed at each level. Really do look illustrating animals and capturing that flow and movement. And I hope by the end of this class, you will say, I will be using an iPad Pro with the Procreate app. But you could easily follow along using a different app or media too. So if you're ready, start learning how to create dynamic character animal poses with me and have fun along the way. Let's get creative and get going in the class project.
2. Class Project: Your project for this class is to create some character animal poses. I will be teaching you how to go through all the different stages and why you should do each one. We will also have some warm-up exercises to get you in the creative field. For the project. I'm going to give you two options. Either launch of one, which would be to create two carrots animal poses, or feeling extra confident, creates four different character poses, which is option two. I will also provide a list of prompts from characteristics you can pick from, ranging from sleeping, jumping, walking, sitting. So feel free to download this from the class resources. If you needed. To complete this class, you will need an iPad Pro and Apple pencil, along with Pinterest and procreate. And we'll be mainly using Procreate app, so you might find it easier to follow along if you use this boats, you could use any other form of media or app if you'd like to, or can't wait to see the character animals that you create and please upload your final projects or over students can see them and we can all be inspired to gather. So let's get started straight away by talking about action lines in our first class.
3. Action Line: Action lines are lines that indicate where the movement is in a particular pose of the character. It shows a visual form of where they should be by giving your action lines first, you will give your carrots and more life and movements before you start blocking out and doing the full character pose. So let's take a closer look at how action lines work. A half here, free character animals sketches. If we first look at the PAM for the action line flows through the whole animal, starting from the head and going into the body and finishing with the tail. And as you can see as a lovely flowing movement to it. So if you now look at where the action line is on the deer, you always want to make sure that we emphasize the flow and the smoothness of that line, which is where it will give the life of the character. So the line will start from the back, hind leg, and free the day's body. And then background in an arc for the head and numbers, which gives the whole pose some really lovely movement. For the final tag oppose, even though it is face on, there is still an action line in the character which goes through the from pour the tiger and arcs round for the body to the top to show the movement is the tiger walks. You can also use secondary action lines to outline any other features in the character animals pose, such as legs. But remember to keep those lines smooth and round. If it turned off the character sketches layer, you will see the action lines left and you will see how they all have a flow and smoothness to them. What we don't want is any stiffness to the lines. So keep away from touring sharp joins like this. So that's action lines which are essential for giving your character that movement of life. In the next class about be going over shape, language.
4. Shape Language: What is shaped my shape language is a way of using basic shapes to create our characters. Once this is in place, we can then build upon that to add more detail and movements. So let's finger some basic shapes. We have circles, ovals, triangles, squares, and rectangles. These are all really simple shapes that are really easy to draw. Now, if you take these basic shapes you can use to easily create familiar objects really quickly. So let's take a tree for instance. We can use a rectangle for the base of the trunk, and then some triangles stacked on each other to create the form of the leaves on top. So a tree is quite a familiar basic nature object. And when we get into creating our character animal poses, it does become slightly more complicated. But if we look at this fox character, I'm building up. I'm still using all the basic shapes, the top of my canvas to create all the pose. So like ovals for the body and head and tail, along with triangles and rectangles for the over body elements of the fox pose. So as you can see, it's just a matter of placing and stacking all the shapes together. So we've shaped language. You can create simple poses really quickly. If we look at this car is essentially made of a circle, a few ovals and some triangles on lines. It can look a bit intimidating when we see all the shapes built up for a character pose like the fox below. But don't worry, we'll be covering how to do more complicated poses in an up and coming class. But it is really important to take away with you this technique of shape language is it really does make it a lot easier to create our character poses. Once you have these basic shapes in place, you can use these as a guide to build up a more detailed, cleaner sketch here of your character animal pose. Now I have explained about shape language. We're going to take what we have lead into the exercise at breaking down our character animal from a reference photo. But in the next class coming up, we will first set up our canvas in Procreate.
5. Setting up Your Canvas in Procreate: Let's create the canvas for this project. We're going to first go to the plus icon. And then within that menu, click the plus icon. Again. We're going to create a width and height to be an Instagram friendly size. That way, once you've completed your course, you can share that fantastic character animal poses on your social media. So the canvas is going to be a square. So we want both the width and height to be the same at 2160 pixels. This is double the size of pixels you actually need for Instagram. By doubling it, you will make it easier if you want to print it out. It's a larger scale. Later stage. For the DPI, which stands for dots per inch, we're going to set that quite high and have a free 100, which makes it suitable for print if we need it to be. Finally, we will name the canvas as Instagram square, put in the dimensions as well as the DPI. That way when you come to use the Canvas template, again, we will know what it is. And then click the Create button. We're now going to import the brushes are provided in the class resources, but if you intend to use your own, please feel free to import the brushes. Go to the brush menu, then click the plus icon, and then click on Import. Locate where you downloaded the brush pack 2 on your iPad and then click on it. We will then have the brushes in the menu ready to for use on the character animal poses. So we're now going to import the color palettes provided in the class resources. So in the column menu, select the plus icon and then choose New File. Locate where you download the color palette to, and then select it to import it. And there we have it. Document is now setup with the brushes and color palettes and all imported. But if you intend to use your own, please feel free. You can still follow along with the class using different ones. So in the next class we're going to do an exercise for breaking down your animal using a photo.
6. Breaking Down Your Animal - Exercise 1: So in this class we're going to do an exercise to break down our character animal using what we have learned with action lines and shapes language in our previous classes. So let's get started by creating a blank canvas in Procreate. I'm going to start off by importing a reference photo, and I'm going to be using the one I have provided in the class resources of a zebra that I took myself. But feel free to use reference photo of your choice. So two important photo, we go up to the spanner icon at the top and then select, insert a file or photo, and then locate where your photo is and tap on it to import it. Let's then scale the photo down in size on the canvas. And then we're going to reduce the opacity of the photo by going into our layers two-finger tap and then we want fingers drag across the screen to reduce the opacity, which we roughly want to be around 35 percent. Then let's create a new layer above the filter, rename that layer sketch and also rename the layer underneath with the photo reference. So pick the brush, HB pencil, and pick the color red, and then creates a new layer and name this layer action line. So in the previous class about action lines are talked about the importance of drawing this line first to get movement here, animal character. So when we look at the zebra photo, we can see a lovely flowing movements are looking around as the Zebra grazes on the grass. So let's draw this in. So now we have the action line. Let's move on to doing our shape language. Select the layer we named sketch, and then change our color to a dark black town. In the previous class, we talked about basic shapes like circles, triangles, squares to name a few to build, or carrots or animals. Now a quick tip Procreate is the use of quick shapes. For example, if you draw a circle and then hold it with the Apple pencil and not take it off the screen. And then with the overhand tap with one finger, you will create a perfect circle. This also works for numerous of the shapes to start using these basic shapes to go over the photo and build up our animal using that technique, you circles and ovals to emphasize the main features like the head, the top of the front lakes and data lakes. But use that photo as a guide to pick out where those shapes and meant to be a Brealey, lock it and concentrate on those areas. So you now have a action line with your basic shapes over your reference photo. Now repeat the same process below, but without using the photo as a reference. Now this may seem counterproductive, but it is a great exercise to do to build up your visual memory. And going forward, we'll give you a lot more confidence in drawing character animals without tracing over a photo. First now two-finger tap the sketch layer and reduce the opacity to around 16 percent. We're now going to name that layer, sketch layer off and create a new layer above that one and call that sketch detail. We're now going to use the photo and rough sketch shape language is again to add more clean lines and detailed features like the stripes of the zebra. The main, the eyes, build up a really nice animal sketch pose. Once you've completed that technique of creating that detailed sketch over the photo, repeat the same process again on the faded sketch without the photo. Like I previously explained, this is a great exercise to do to build up your own visual memory and build up the confidence to not rely on photos for tracing. So you've now completed the exercise, breaking down your animal, which will give you more confidence for creating your character animal poses. So in the next class, we are going to be looking at light and depth.
7. Light & Depth: Following our previous class on the x size of breaking down your character animal, where you ended up with a lovely clean sketch. By the end, I'm now going to go over how light and depth can be added to your character. So my canvas, I have the basic shape language of a squirrel character. We've each character, you want to analyze their body parts of animal into shapes. So the tail will be one shape. The body and head would be an oval shapes of this will be connected. The feet and lake would be another. And if we erase the overlap of the body, so we can see that shape more clearly. And as you can see, we're looking for those basic shapes within the pose of the character and utilizing that shape language technique that we've learned in our previous class. So now we've broken down our body animal pass into different shapes. We can look at them individually on how to light them. Let's look at the squirrels tail to start off with. So when we think about being outside in nature, the warm main light source that is always present is the sun. So the sun's rays would come down from the sky and light up this side of the tail shape. Looking at the shape now the light is not hitting this side, so we want the shadows and darker tones to be added on this side. Now on the oversight of the shape, this is where the sunlight is hitting. So we need to add our lighter tone colors here. If we now add in another body part, shape of the squirrel, like the body in head. This will now orbiter where the light is hitting on the tail and the two shapes combined. So if you look at where the tail and body shape and now connected, we can see that the rays will not hit there, but would create a shadow between the two shapes. So now on the body and head shape, the light would be hitting here at the top and the shadows would be at the bottom of the shape. With this technique of adding lightened DHAP to all the shapes of the animal together. We can use this in our classes coming up when we get to the stage of adding texture and depth to our poses that we create. The key lesson to take away with you is to look at the individual different animal body parts as different shapes. If you do this, it makes it a lot easier to break down the process of lighting or Beulah animals. In the next class, we're going to look at finding inspiration and reference photos.
8. Finding Reference: So in this class we're going to take a look at how we can find reference photos for our character animal poses online. Now the renewed recites that you can use to look for photos, but to that I would recommend is Eunice Bosch and the other one is Pinterest, which is the one I'll be using. And it's definitely my personal favorite, warm. So your class project was evil to select option 1, which was to character animal poses from the prompt list I provided in the class resources. Or option two, which was to pick for carrots, animal poses from the prompt West if you were feeling extra confident. So with those prompt words now picked, we're going to go into Pinterest and search for photos relating to them. So in my case, I've chosen a fox is that animal character, and the first prompt word is jumping. So let's now search for that photo relating to that phrase. When we are looking for these photos, were searching for ones that represent that prompt phrase the best. Now you want to save these photos to a Pinterest board so you can easily find them when we're ready to use them. A number of those prompt words that I chose was sleeping. So let's search for that phrase two. Now let's add this photo to our Pinterest board, which is a lovely representation of that phrase, Fox sleeping. So you want to keep searching for those photos based on the number of prompt options you chose for your class project. Now we have our reference photos chosen. We're going to use these in the next class project, which is sketching out your roof character animal poses.
9. Sketching out Your Rough Poses: So in this class we're going to start by sketching our rough carrots or animal poses. So let's start with a new canvas by selecting the plus icon. And then I'm going to pick the campus template into square, which we created in one of our previous classes. Once we have our new document open, I'm going to create a new layer called action line and then another one called Sketch, and move this layer below the action line one. So in the previous class we collected our reference photos and Pinterest. So I'm going to drag the app outs from a dark and have it floating. My first prompt that I chose was fox jumping. So I'm going to pick this photo to happier, larger. Now let's make sure that we're on the layer that is called action line. And we have the HB pencil CHD one selected and choose the color red sweater. Look at my reference photo. There was a lovely flowing movement to the fox jumping pose. Now we're going to draw an action line to indicate that movement. Now a quick tip for Procreate. If you draw this arc, but don't take your pencil off the iPad screen and keep it held down. You will go into the quick shape tool and create a perfect arc. You can then click on edit and change it with the anchor points. Then click on any other tool to make this arc permanent. Now let's select our sketch layer and choose a dark gray. So let's use the shape language that we've learned in a previous class to build up your pose of your character whilst looking at your reference. Remember to break down the pose into individual parts so the head we can have as a circle. Also the tip of quick shapes in Procreate that I set about when we did our arc also works with numerous shapes and lines. So utilize that when you can. So keep going. We're building the pose up with your shapes until you have them basic shape, language pose complete with your first one. Remember, if you start to struggle at any stage creating your basic shape pose. Refer back to the exercise we did a breaking down our animal using the photo below as a guide. Now with this photo I chose for my second character animal prompt, the fox standing the tail had a lovely flowing movement to it. So I'm going to create my action line to start off with making sure I'm on the right layer and color. The flow of the movement comes down from the head through the body and then utilizes that tail movement to finish off. Now, if you're using the previous class exercise of tracing your photo to find the action lines and shape language. This is fine and a great way to build up your confidence on your illustration journey. But if you can eventually create the shapes with out using the trace technique, you can start to manipulate the pose in your own unique way. So I think this pose, the fox standing character would improve if the tail sweet background under the legs. So I'm going to add this into mine. Don't worry too much about getting to the stage of not being reliant on a reference photo as it really does take time and practice to get this right. And it's more important to build up your confidence. Some effort prompt is a fox sleepin. So I'm going to add my action line in which you can see from the photo is a lovely sweeping arc that goes from the head right around to the tail. Again, using those basic shapes and Sheet language, identify those key body parts of the animal character, and add these in, making sure that we're on the right layer as we do it. And keep referring to that reference. And final prompt is a fox looking backwards and seeing it's sneaky. I chose this photo in particular, as it implies that the fox character at seen something behind them. They're taken a fancy to him. And with that tail at the back of em described a lovely flowing movements. So by the end of this class, you will either have two or four character poses, depending on your class option that you chose in each pose will have its action line and shapes that build up the character. These are now ready for the next class, where we're going to be creating some detailed sketches.
10. Creating the Detailed Sketch: Now we have our Archean lines and basic shape language poses down. We're going to move on to adding a more detailed sketch with features and cleaner lines to the character animal poses. So when our layers, we've merged the action line and sketch layer together. And let's two-finger tap on that layer to drop the opacity by dragging one finger across the screen. And we want this to be around 26 percent. And then it would create a new layer above the sketch one and rename it to be detailed sketch. So if we still make sure that we have selected HB pencil, CHD one brush for in the previous class, as well as the dark black tone from the color panel. Then we're going to bring up our reference filters again that are in our Pinterest app by dragging it up from the iPad dock and having it floating. So if a brink of the fox jumping photo reference and zoom in slightly so I can see the features better. Now I'm going to sketch out this animal character pose using the faded our basic shapes and action line as a guide. And also constantly referring to the photo and adding in detailed features of your animal. Like the nose is, I pay real attention to making the lines as clean as possible and adding any extra details in that you think would really benefit the pose. Also pick out areas where the animal color changes on the body, making those features as well by drawing the lines in the areas where the shadows would appear, indicate those by adding some shading and with your pencil brush. So in my case, these would be the back legs. In the second pose, which was the standing Fox that was looking up. We want to do the same thing with that sketch. But always remember when you're doing those clean lines, you still following those basic shapes underneath and just defining where the individual animal body parts are in your posts of your character. As well as adding in those extra detailed features. The next pose that I had was sleeping fox, select, start adding those cleaner lines into this character pose as well. Now remember light with the previous class of doing the action lines and basic shape language. If you start to struggle, adding in those extra details and cleaner lines, refer back to the exercise of using your photo to trace over those elements and build up an understanding of where they should be and give yourself some confidence. So with the final pose, which was the fox looking behind himself in a sneaky way, the photo is reversed. Once you progress, we've using the technique of shape language and breaking down your animal. Over time, you become less reliant on using those photos so rigidly, which in turn will give you the ability to be more flexible and creative at drawing your poses using your visual memory. So fantastic. You are now got your detailed clean sketch poses. And these are now ready for the next class where we would be blocking out our flats, cause.
11. Adding your Blocked Colours: So in this class we're going to block out the colors of our character. Animals are provided in the class resources, the color palettes I will be using, and a selection of overshoot can pick from. There also a wide range of different websites online where you can get limited color palettes like Adobe Color and coolers. I will also provide these links too. So let's first start out by adding a background color to our Canvas. To do this, go to our layers panel and select the layer called background color. This will bring up your color panel. Choose the light beige color. Then we're going to add a new layer, but making sure it's below the sketch layer, we also want to slightly orange color from the color palette. Then choose the brush studio pen, fill CHD from the brush panel, then go back to our layers panel. And on the sketch layer, tap the N next to the tick mark to bring up our layers blending mode and select overlay and also drop the opacity down to roughly 77 percent. Also that newly created underneath, we want to rename this silhouette. So this will make our sketch lighter and easier to use as a guide when we put these first, cool us down. So with the orange color picked and the studio pen, smooth brush selected, let's start to ink in the animal characters on the silhouettes layer. Also, make sure the opacity of the brush is sad a 100 percent, and play around with the size of the brush until you found what's comfortable for you. Now carefully ink around your animal character sketch to create an outline. Make sure when you finish your outline off that is completely closed and there are no gaps anywhere. To fill this outline. Drag the color over and hold your pencil inside the outline and the fill will be added. Move your pencil from left to right to change the threshold and then take your pencil off the screen when you're done. So that is our first character silhouette created. So let's go ahead and correct the rest of them for all the other posters. So we're now going to move on to adding shadows and animal features using a darker tone color. To do this, we're going to create a new layer above the silhouette 1 and then tap on this layer and select clipping mask window menu. And I'm going to name this layer shadows. We're going to change brush to be studio, pen smooth CHD, and also pick the burnt umber color. Also make sure the brush opacity is a 100 percent. Now, let's start blocking out these features now because this is a clipping mask. And if we draw an it will stay within the pixels of the layer below, which in this case is the Fock silhouette. So you want to identify those parts of the character animal that would use this darker tone color. So the back of the fox is will be one along with the nose, mouth, and eyes. Also under the lakes that will be a shadow created. So let's add that into. So carry on with the rest of the pose is to add this into all of them. So we're going to move on to the highlights and create a new layer and make this a clipping mask, two of that silhouette layer and rename it highlights in the color panel, pick the fox white. So I'm going to bring got my reference photos again from the Pinterest app and drag it out from your doc. Now, I'm going to look through the fox photos and identify where the light color should be on that animal characters. Before that, I'm going to move the highlight layer below the shadow. Then let's start adding this color in. So in my reference photo, I can see that this light color is on the end of the fox tail and also on the inside of the ear and the bottom part of the foxes had. So now go through the rest of your animal character poses and adding this lighter color, all of them. So I'm finally going to create one more layer. And again, this will be a clipping mask on top at the silhouette layer. I'm also going to rename it and call it extra. From the color panel. Let's pick the dark mahogany and start to block out the actual areas. If character animal pose like the pupil of the eye in the ends of the lakes and the fox. And refer to your photo reference to identify those areas. So finally, we're going to blend in some of the edges on these blocked out color areas. Surface like the smudge tool and pick the texture, be CHD and play around with the size of it until he found something that works for you. And we want to look at areas like this and the foxes leg, where it is a very hard line between the dark mahogany red and orange. And we want to blend this in. And again on these upper legs, we're going to blend here to go through the rest of your carrots, animal poses, looking for those hard edges and blending them in if you feel they need to be. Remember to select the highlights there too, and see if any of those areas need to have that blending technique added. Once we're happy with those solid colors, we're going to move on to the next class, which is adding textures and lighting.
12. Adding Textures & Lighting: For the final class, we're going to add some light and depth and texture to these five colors and make our character animal poses come to life. So let's start by creating a new layer and making gets a clipping mask or the silhouette layer, and then rename and get textures. In the color panel. Pick the burnt orange for the brush panel. We want to slack texture be CHD. Now, like I explained in the previous class of light and depth, we want to remind you where that sunlight is coming from. So in my case, I'm going to have a coming from a book, the fox character. So therefore, this darker color tone is going to be at the bottom of each body elements. I'm also just going to quickly move that textured layer below the highlights one. So if you keep in mind that that's sunlight sources of both the fox character and keep adding in this dark color at the bottom of your character animal body parts to build up that DHAP and create that more free dimensional look. Also pay attention to those little details like those bits of fit on the fox is body that are flicking up. And you would need to add the darker color underneath these two by reducing the size of your brush. So keep going adding this darker color in to the rest to be a character animal poses. And if you start to struggle at any stage, refer back to that class where I explained about white and that. So we're now going to add in some extra little details into the characters. So let's create a new layer just below the sketch on and select the color Fox y. And from the brush menu, pick the studio pants, move CHD one, then at a small dot to the pupil of the eye to indicate a highlights. Now I have all my colors on the canvas. I can use the procreate color picker. So to do this, tap and hold your finger on the screen to bring it up and move this over the burnt umber color to pick it and add some whisker dimples to the foxes had as an extra detail. So let's now two-finger tap on the sketch layer to reduce the opacity and drugging one finger across until it's 0%. So that's now select the layer called Textures and make sure we have the texture be CHD one brush selected, and pick the fox white color. Then let's start adding the highlights of our characters. Again, like our previously said, we were imagining the sunlight is coming down from above the fox. So this will be hitting the top of the animal body parts. So if we add this white color into those areas. So now go over all your animal pose is adding in the highlight color and the darker colors for the shadows to really build off that texture and depth. So we're now going to create a new layer and move it just above the background color, rename it, and call it ground shadows. And then pick them how guinea color. And make sure the texture be CHD. One brush is selected and start adding in some shadows under each character to make them look as though they're attached to the ground. And if you have a pose that is like jumping or running, you want to add that shadow with a bit of a gap to it to give that sense of action. So let's now create a new layer and call that whiskers and add these into all the foxes poses. So we're now going to add some textures to the shadow layer. So make sure this is selected and pick dark mahogany from the color panel. Pick the tip should be CHD one brush and alpha lock the shadows layer by two fingers swiping to the right, then start adding that dark mahogany color into the shadows layer. Still imagining where that light source is coming from and making sure the areas where the light source wouldn't be hitting darker and leaving the areas where it would keep going, adding this texture in until we've covered all the poses. Finally, we're going to select the layer called extras and pick the fox white color. And also make sure we have the studio pen smooth CHD one brush selected. And we're going to add some highlight lines to where the light would be hitting the tubs of some at the body shape parts of the animal. Remember to keep in mind where that source lights on is coming from. So there we have it. These fox character animal poses are finished and ready to export and share.
13. Thank You: Thank you for taking the tanks of layer we've made and create some fantastic character animal poses. How you've picked up some new techniques and knowledge along the way that you can use in your own illustration creative journey. It would be great if you could upload your final curations to the class project section for everybody to say, plus a low viewing every single one. If you want to share your carrots, animal poses on Instagram or so show that would be fantastic. Be sure to use the tag at Crystal draws, which is what I use for all my social media accounts. Really. Thank you again for taking this class today. I hope you've had fun learning with me and picked up some tips and techniques along the way. If you'd like to check out my previous Skillshare class during nature illustrations in Adobe Fresco. That will be fantastic over than that. Stay creative and have a great day.
Chris Hall, Artist
