Transcripts
1. Introduction: The secret to a good character
design is in the story. The character tells. Learning to evoke story, turns a drawing into a chance
meeting with a stranger. And you know what? I
think that's kinda cool. Hi, my name is Ira Marcks. I'm a graphic novelists. So what I do is I create little characters that are
able to tell big stories. And my style is
really inspired by a lifelong love for Cartoon Art. I use the elements
and principles of this Art Forum to bring
my drawings to life. So in this class, you're going to learn
to brainstorm, sketch, Ink and color in original
character of your own using the same creative process
that I go through. If you're a total beginner or a creative expert looking
to expand your skill set, I'm going to point you down the path to creating expressive, interesting, and
memorable characters. Now whether this is your first-class with
me or your 15th class, I'm glad we get to draw
it together today. So let's get started.
2. Getting Ready: Alright, thanks for joining me. Now, before the fund begins, Let's talk about what tools you're going to
need to be able to participate in create a
class project here today. In terms of tools, This isn't about
high-tech stuff. All you really need
is some pencils, paper, sharpie for inking, and some way to color colored
pencils, markers, crayons, whatever you have
around the house, you're gonna be able
to participate in this project and get
something out of it. Now of course, you see over
my shoulder I'm working with a fancy drawing tablet. I'm using a program
called Clip Studio Paint, a reference it occasionally, once we get more into the
effects part of the process. But if you've got an
iPad with Procreate, that'll get you there to really, like I said, this is
about a creative process, the tools or secondary, I'm gonna teach you how to think first and foremost like
a character designer, then output some
work along the way. Okay? Now, the structure of my
class is very specific to me. If you've taken any of my
classes before, you know, narrative is first
and foremost what I'm always looking for
in the work I create. So the first half of
my class is really about how to ask yourself
the right questions to Design and get on the path to creating a character that
reverberates with, with a life with
a believability, with a backstory and a
potential for future story. And while I cover all the
material in the class lessons, to help you focus in on
each individual step, I've created a series of seven character
design worksheets. They begin with helping
you find story, build your shape language, develop your
character, visually, pose it, Ink, and add color. All the stuff we
cover in the class, but framed as simple
worksheets to help you get through those steps and create a unique character
of your very own. If you're following along, I'd love for you to share what you create,
whether a piece, some sketches of your
creative process, or some actually fine as final, finished,
polished artwork. Post it to the class
project section, and I guarantee you, I will be stopping in
sooner than later to share some inspirational
thoughts about your work. Criticism if you want some
or some advice on where you can go next in your
process, okay. Make this a conversation, not just a video of
me talking to you. So I think that's all I have
to say about that. Let's go
3. Lesson: Serving A Story: The creative process
I'm going to share with you here today this whole character
design philosophy that I've got as a
graphic novelist, it comes about the
need to serve a Story. And I would say that is the case for every character designer, even if you might not call
them a narrative artist. And the way that I'm
a narrative artists, maybe they don't make
books or work in animation that create
single illustrations. These illustrations still serve a Story and that's the
purpose of a Character there like this vessel
for this story idea that the creator wants to
convey to an audience. Now the story does not
need to be complicated. A story can be as simple
as a drawing that expresses the age of a character or the time
period in which they exist. All right, let's do like a little mixing bowl
metaphor here. Before I draw anything, I'd like to find a
general sense of direction for my
character design. And my inspiration comes
from two main categories. One, personal memory. They always say
write what You know. I think this is true because
writing from what you know, really teaches you about
how point of view work. So let's say you're creating a character that functions as a Scary, creepy old neighbor. That's not the truth
of that person. That's the point of view of you as a young kid who
doesn't understand the history of this adult's
life and what brought them to this place and time to be in front of you to be
judged as a scary neighbor. The other aspect of inspiration is likely
to be aesthetics. Aesthetics are
things that inspire us a set of principles
that concern our taste, our personal values,
aesthetics take the form of our fashion choices and
the creative culture we invest time and money
and energy into. Let's jump away from this
mixing bowl metaphor and get into a construction
site metaphor, right? Let's, let's start
building our character. Here's a cute little
construction guy, some construction equipment,
and let's talk prompts. I love working out ideas
before I drawing anything. Not that I don't love to draw, but just going out into
a white sheet of paper without any sense
of direction in terms of what your
character is going to be, is to me, kind of a waste
of energy and time. And often the results
that come out of this just general experimental
and let's see what happens. Do not really yield
anything that interesting. So I love bringing
up some prompts, asking myself questions that are really chasing this
one central idea, what makes your
character who they are? You have any sense of that. You're gonna be way better
off because you'll be able to focus where you
choices go from there. So here's some prompts. These are just some
examples of prompts. You'll, you'll be looking
at these and some of them are going to strike your
interests more than others. Like maybe something like
when a Character is born, how old they are isn't
necessarily as interesting to you as things that they keep for themselves and their life or
what their parents are like. But as you're answering
prompts from yourself, you wanna be as
specific as possible. Here's an example. Let's say you haven't
really picked an age of your character
that could be 10-years-old, it could be 90 years old. Well, that age
could really decide how you pose them in
your final drawing. A 10-year-old is not going to stand the same as
a nine-year-old. Knowing some internal aspects of your character can also be
evoked through the visuals. Like, let's say just for fine, you knew whether you're
Characters hobby was weightlifting or
collecting spores and fungus is their body
type might vary drastically depending on what their hobbies or interests are. And coming back to the
idea of aesthetics, Let's say they have
particular tastes in music that could
decide what their hair looks like in a very clear,
almost stereotypical way. Once you have some
answers to some prompts, you can mix and match
these things to create something totally
new and unique. Now, to recap, character needs, story prompts help inspire
aspects of that story and that story could be shown
through quick sketches, rambling notes about character
traits, Pinterest boards, collections of images and references that
evoke aesthetics or poses or character
attributes and any shape or form prompts
inspire your imagination. Maybe the first prompt you ask yourself, isn't that inspiring? But three more down
the line might give you the idea you
never would have found. Otherwise. You're
getting a sense of story from your prompts
and you're learning the value of story as it helps you refine the decisions
you make visually. Alright, now, you can play
along with me here and you can start answering
some prompts of your own. But I'm gonna go through
my creative process as I start to begin the design for my Character. So here's Ira's
character building. First, let's talk about age. I'm going to say this character lives in our contemporary times. I don't feel like I wanna do any historical referencing for clothing types and in the past, that is really fine, but it's a little bit more work than I feel like
doing here today. So I've got a contemporary,
let's say teenager. Teenagers. They've got a lot of
emotions going on. So it's always FUN to draw a teenager and I'm going
to draw a daughter, the daughter of
divorced parents. My parents were divorced. And I can say that it's
a great way to introduce some drama into the internal
life of a Character. And like a lot of characters that feel like I'm left
out of a bigger story. Let's say this character mind, this teenage daughter
of divorced parents is disappearing into
fantasy literature. She also attends
a private school. I went to a public school. So there's something
interesting about imagining what private
school life is like. For me growing up, I
always loved rainy days. It meant just a great
excuse to stay inside. Things are a little quieter. On a rainy day, you can
really get a lot of reading and writing
and drawing done. And just for Fun, instead of following this kind of
emotional internal journey, let's say our character
has a quirky little hobby. Let's say she collects
the US ceramic frogs. Is that going to pop up in my final illustration out of now? Worth writing down, if only for the excuse to draw
a small weird frog. Let's see. Through this chain of events, we could say that maybe this teenage daughter of
divorced parents, she lives with their
father and her father's, maybe it Professor at
this private school. That's how she has a tuition. And she wears his old blazers. Why not? I used to wear my
dad's old cool clothes from the '70s when I was a kid. A funny way to connect with your parents at a time when
you didn't really know them. I'm going to use a setting
of rural New England. I'm from upstate New York, rural New England adjacent. So if I end up adding
any kind of like environmental elements,
these things, mood, whether they're all well
baked into my mind, already. Rubber boots that could be
good rainy day, visual trait. And when she's reading her
favorite fantasy books, he takes her shoes off
no matter where she is. Let's say she's
got a secret stash of chocolates and her dorm room. Okay, So there's some
character building. You see how we start
broad and big picture. We start from the idea
of teenager daughter, these big like
archetypical ideas of what it is to be human. And we start to narrow in and find little
points of interest in focus and all the stuff we write down or we
develop in our brains. Take notes, sketch it out, however it gets out of our head, it gives us details that
we can use or not years, but this only took me a couple of minutes to do and it's an exercise I play a lot. That's why I can get to
specifics very quickly. If you can teach
yourself to get to character specifics
through notes or just this general
Story Exercise. The goals of your
drawing are going to arrive a lot faster. Now let's hop over
to the mood board and some of the images I collected based on my
character building notes here. I've got some, I've
got some like fall in New England academic
fashion sense going on. So my tweed duster is and
High-rise twill pants 12. Is that the word I'm
looking for? I don't know. I think that's a thing.
Hi color's warm. Cozy wolves books, old books, old reference books, vast
collections of books. And aside from
clothing and setting, I also, I love thinking
about lighting and the role lighting
plays in narrative. Lighting illuminates
character spaces by either a desk lamp or almost like the books are
shining on their faces. I think that's a cool idea. I feel like I might want to
bring that out in my story. Am I going to use
all of these ideas I've gathered here now? Now. But some of them are going
to come in super handy as we move into the actual
design of our character.
4. Lesson: Using Design Thinking: What does it character
designer think about while they're drawing is actually a big deal because
if you think about it, the process you go through
in your mind based on your past experiences
and your goals. That's the core to
your creativity. The drawing is just the
output of that, right? So if you think of
character design as a series of visual guidelines
that support a Story, you can actually
understand the way the history of
character design works and why it looks like
what it looks like. So historically,
Cartoon characters have often had bigger
heads than humans do. Here. India, the real-world
and a big part of that is faces are the most narrative, expressive part of
the whole body. Therefore, they're the most important to the
character designer. So scaling up ahead is a great design choice to
help you express feelings. So if you get a Character is dropped in ice
cream cone and you want to show they're sad
if they got a giant head, that story is really
coming through. Now maybe you're not
a giant head type of character designer. There's little subtle
ways that you can leave room for a
face to express. I spend a lot of time
personally designing how a character's hair falls
in frames their face. Because a crucial
aspect of human emotion and the narrative part of
the face is the eyebrows. And you got to leave plenty
of room for eyebrows. So let's say you've got a
character who's reading their, their mother's old war
journal from world War II. And you want to show internally
how they're reacting. You need those eyebrows there. And if the hairs in the way, we're not going to
see the eyebrows, CI, you gotta kinda look ahead to
what your story is gonna be like to help you figure out aspects of your
character design. Here's just another example. Let's say if you've got more of a science fiction story that you're developing
and you want to character who has to encounter a future apocalyptic
version of themselves away. You can convey that message is by giving them a subtle
change in their face. So if two characters that
look exactly the same, except for this great
little detail of the scar across the eye that gives away that
they're from the future. All of these are design choices that come about
from Thinking about what your story needs to
get across and then making visual guidelines for yourself of how to get there. There's a lot of
troubleshooting that comes through design process. And biggest thing
you can do with troubleshooting as you can
never eliminate all of it. You're always gonna make
mistakes along the way. That's part of the
front of it truthfully. But troubleshooting is
really about avoiding choices that limit your
ability to tell your story. That's why when I set out
to design a character, I need to know as much about their visual layout as possible so I can understand
the potential of it. So the next couple of steps of my Design Process
aren't going to be based in on Posing or final
illustration elements. They're just going to be
straightforward kind of paper doll style cutouts of characters facing the
camera in a very flat way. And you'll see hopefully, why I do that and
why that can help you in your own character
designing journey. So as we hop into
the design process, know that I'm not yet
creating any sort of finished class Project
or final illustration. I'm merely Sketching and planning and working
towards Story goals. Alright, now that we know how
to think like a designer, Let's get into an
actual design process.
5. Lesson: Shape Language Part 1: Shape, language is very
powerful language. Here's the good news. The human imagination
is so connected to the narrative of a shape that all you gotta do is
put eyes on an object. Like so. You start to tell
yourself a story of who these characters are and
their relationships. That's a big thing here. It's not just about
shapes on their own, It's shapes in relation
to other shapes. Every artist finds
a shape language that suits the project. If you follow certain artists, you may start to
see that some are drawn to more angular medecine, dangerous farms, and some
tend to work in more rounded, abstract, weird,
surrealist forms. I find it helpful to realize
that realistic proportions, human anatomy playing to the, the archetype of the human body. It doesn't really
mean your story or your character is going
to feel more realistic. Realism comes from
the emotional impact of a Character Design and the story it evokes not in any allegiance to human anatomy. All that said, if
you're creating characters that need to feel human like we are in this class, your proportions and your shapes should feel familiar
to the human form. And your characters need
to probably function somewhat like the
real-world human body. They need to look like they can stand without falling over. They need to be
able to sit, walk, travel from place to place,
pickup certain objects. You know, all the
basic things that come about in our daily existence. But what exactly
do they need to be capable of is up to you really, like you could
design a Character, is incapable of scratching
their own head. That might be important
to you or it might not. It depends on the story
you're trying to tell. Maybe they can hold
a cup of coffee. Maybe they can, the specifics of their existence or up to you
and your Storytelling needs. And other cool
thing to realize is that humans, the audience, is so well versed in the vast variety of character
designs from growing up, watching cartoons and
reading comics and wherever else we vial
looked at along the way, subtle changes can make a giant impact on how we
relate to a Character. So this, This lady
here on the left, ginger eyes and mouth, suddenly totally
different character. Now it's time to
start developing my own Shape Language
for my character, my bookish private school, rainy day, New England student. Again, I'm drawing
this character straight forward, straight on. Personally for my style, I play pretty close to
the general rules of human proportion because
the stories I tell with my work day tend to
be fairly grounded. I want to be able to conduct subtle movements that feel very relatable like the
idea of a Character, how they wear their clothes, how they move through
familiar spaces. I kinda do this
intentional because again, I want to speak to
the subtlety of our relationship
with Shape Language. Little changes can say a lot
about our characters story. So if this character
feels too young, it's really because the head is quite large in
proportion to its body. And if you ever look at
a little kid or a baby, you'll notice this is true. So given that this character
is not a little kid, they're more of a teenager
on the verge of adulthood. I'm going to adjust
their proportions. This feels more like a
teenager's shape language. So now that I know
the proportions, I'm going to go
beyond that and play with the scale in form
of some of these shapes. Let's try this again. Maybe we'll give this character a narrower waste and wider hips. I, bringing the shoulders
back out again, play with the scale of the head. Not bad. Let's see how they look with a big codon like I found in one of
my reference images. Alright. Now I'm going to switch
over to a red pencil just to make these lines pop. Alright, kind of interesting shape language I've
developed here. Something I like
to do a lot to see the strength of this
design and how well its basic form stands
out is to scale down the drawing and focus
on the main elements. Alright, I think the coat covers too much of
the character's body. I want to work towards a
silhouette that is recognizable, something character
designers talk about all the time and I'll get into the specifics of that in a bit. But I'm going to take the
coat off and let's give this character a turtleneck. Turtleneck with
big sleeves tucked into some wide legged pants. Because the proportions
of the hair, I'm thinking Tall Boots, alright, hopefully with me
talking you through this, you can see how my shape
language kind of evolved to be representational of aspects
of this actual character. From just a conversation of circles and triangles
and squares to a discussion of the shape and form of the clothing and
the body of this Character. There. Here's the first step
with the shape language. Now let's go into the
next step and try to do a little more work to evoke
the story of this Character
6. Lesson: Shape Language Part 2: Okay, Once we have in
overall sense of story and an overall shape language for
our design that suits us. We're going to begin refining this character to highlight its narrative and
emotional strings. And the best way to assess the quality of the design at this point is you've
probably heard this tip before. Create a silhouette. If you've studied any
Character Design, you've probably come across this little tip
creating a silhouette. A Character looking
at its overall form, separating yourself from some
of the intricacies and like personality traits that you've
already started to evoke, lets you get a sense of
the designs qualities. It's visual clarity and it's possible distinction
from other characters and a cast you're making. When I look at a silhouette, I tried to remove the narrative aspects from
my mind for a moment. And I just think about
the flow of the design. I think about the ARC the character's hair makes
and the way it makes an abrupt cut upward
into the color area. And then the
roundness that comes around the center
part of the figure. It's almost teardrop
shapes of the sleeves, the way the pants kinda bow out. And they've got very
specific length to them that shows off the fitted footwear that flares out at the bottom. I suppose I've got a
knack for creating good silhouettes
and the first try because I've been
doing this so long, but don't expect your silhouette to look great right away. That's the point
of this process, is learning to see
what's working in a design, changing things, avoiding complications
in areas that don't need them by seeing the things
that are working in what I have just in
the overall form. I know that I don't need to add extra accessories
to this character. Like, remember the
way I took the coat off in the previous chapter, I'm not going to really add any more elements that are going to help me tell my story. I think I can do a
lot of that with the face and body language and just this simple pairing of a Big sweater and high
water will pants. I got to look up this word
choices that a real word. Yes. Twill is a real-world. Great. Okay, back on track. As I start to refine the
form of my character, I want to start to evoke a third dimension
here right now my, my Characters,
very paper doll S, Though I'm going to use,
let's say the quality. A sweater, like the way sweaters can often be
ribbed in the fabric, the way they're woven, I can use those lines to evoke a bit of roundness is
pretty easy to do. All you do is
follow the sense of form that comes from that
outer edge at the silhouette. And you bring it
through that design as you come to the
center of an object, you just straighten the
lines out a little bit. You can see how I'm
doing that here in the center, the sweater, your central lines can be
straight and feel flat, but as you move
towards the edges, you want to start evoking
the curve of the form. I'm very happy with the overall form of
body at this point. I feel like the clothes
have come to life. We're getting a sense
of a time of year now. Even I feel like a kind of in a TEM null fall and
New England look, which is a great
time to be reading. So lets hop over to the
face design on skill share. Many teachers have done amazing lessons and how to
design a character's face, whether it'd be in the
more realistic form, dealing with light and shadow
and more realistic ways. But even some of those, those lessons
bridge very well to a more cartoony
illustrative style. So take advantage of the Skillshare's search and find some great face
design classes. I'll go through a
couple of basic steps, but I want to focus on overall design
choices we're making here and not get too into the weeds with nose
and eyes and mouth. So let's start with the
basic shape for the head of circle that defines
the size of the head. Then we start to add
personality right away. And that can come
through in the way we draw a Characters jaw line. I'm again using this photo from my mood board
is a reference, the woman's squarish GI. I, I kinda like it. What kind of add a
rounded chin and, and basic shapes for lips. If you want to make fuller lips, you usually want
that upper Ark of the tuplet to be a little
wider than the bottom. People always ask
me about noses, so I'll do a quick little
look at the nose design. First you establish
the overall form of the nose with a circle. And then to create a sense of depth of the nose because we do need to show the nostrils,
the underside here, it's extremely common to use this a little upside-down
triangle form, if you represent
the shadow is own below and a couple
little arcs for the nostrils and two parentheses on the sides to become the
outer edge of the nostril. Each of these elements
can be adjusted to create a more unique
form for the nose. But that's a really
general debt of steps. Alright, back to base. Eyes. They always start round to
create like an iconic I shape. But just like the nose, there's infinite possibilities
for how you could shape. And I, I find it really
helpful to actually think, especially if you want more of a traditionally FEM
type of eye shape, to think of a trapezoid or like a parallelogram
and let the I kind of come to a bottom
point and then lean out So just start with a
circle to get shape and scale and proportion and then add a little
bit of geometry. You distinguish your type of I, and I evokes some of those angles in the
eyebrows themselves. Can see me Archean
away from the nose. A little funnel shape
that leads into the nose, a nice Arc for the eyebrow, and then it comes a
little bit down on the backside or
right over the eye. And really what you're doing
is tracing the eye socket, the shape in the skull
where the eye sits. I've got a whole
class on base design. You want to check that out
on my Skillshare channel, lots of deeper looks into how to create the form of
a Character space. Let's drop in some ears, they sit directly
across from the eyes. Then I start to use
hair to frame the face. I start with the bangs. Leave plenty of room
for the eyebrows. In terms of visual
storytelling for the face, your key features are
Timmy really the eyebrows? I spent a lot of time adjusting
characters, eyebrows, and in a given scene in a Story, the eyes, of course, can be very expressive and the mouth. So framing the face with hair is a great
opportunity for character, but you don't want
to distract too much from the
features of the face, which is gonna do a lot
of Storytelling for you. We consider this blue sketch, my basic shape language
for the character's head. I'm going to take
the red pencil and try to bring a bit more
personality to them. A popular phrase in the world of Cartoon
artists to push a Pose. And you can think of that
in terms of body language, accenting the emotion, the pose to create
more emotional impact. You can do that
with the face to. If we enlarge the eyes a bit, we get a broader sense of emotion and connection
to the character. Let's are a couple of
details here in freckles. Built the lips down a bit
just to give a sense of mood. Again, form and shape
are focusing on here. I'm not going to
start drawing any individual lines and the hair. I'm going to just try
to capture the curves, arcs of its main segments
being the bangs. The way it sits on the
head and then fills out more Is it comes
down off the head. So often airway pulls down
on hair a little bit. So while hair can feel
flat across the head, it actually fills out more once it comes down
towards the back of the neck. It's harder to do a silhouette analysis with the face. Go ahead,
give it a shot. What I like to do instead is to draw a smaller
version of the face. Because with Illustration,
the way you draw a face blows up in the way you draw a face at a distance is very
different, right? You're not going to add all those little subtle details of capturing the nostrils and shape and form are the
eyes and upper lip. If you're drawing a character in the background or even
it like a mid distance. So I'm going to shrink
down my circles here and redraw this
character's face, seeing what stands out, that little area where her
eyes and freckles meet. That's where my my
islands drawn to. So I'm gonna make sure those standout in
my final illustration. Now let's take a look at
a couple other aspects of this Character Design
that could probably benefit from a little bit
of research in detail. Let's start with the boot. Shoes are funny. You've owned many shoes
in your lifetime, but can you actually sit
down and draw the elements, the materials, and the form of the
different parts of issue, the way the fabric is
stitched together. Maybe you could
draw a pair of like a band slip on's
or like some kids. But choose can be quite
complicated visually. And if you want to
really capture a type of shoe, pull up a reference. I'm doing a tall
leather boots in the third of Victorian
Gothic mode. And the main elements that
I'm noticing in the photo or the way the toe comes back, the material that hovers across the toe is
basically a solid piece. It comes down around the side, ends at the heel. And then I'm going to
distinguish the laces where the little islets
sit on the boot. So let's pair the look in form of my boot with the
actual shape of the foot. You do need to know what a foot looks like really to put
a shoe on top of it. So the main elements
of the foot here, we have this circle
representing the heel, often where the weight
of the foot sits. We've got the leg, of course, and this triangular form, that's the broad bridge of the foot coming
down to the toe. And I often distinguish the
toe with a ball shape as well because that's another
point of impact for the foot. So you have the heel
in-between that, this arch and then
the ball of the foot. And this will come into
play when we start to pose are character
because placing weight on feet as a great
way to add just a little bit of really important believability
to a Character pose. Let's look at these hands. I usually start with a square
to represent the palm. And right away I add that joint where the thumb
connects to the hand. This is a thing people leave
out a lot of the time. They just focus on fingers and
don't give that thumb the, the attention it
really deserves. The thumb, if you'd like it, your own hand is set a little lower than knuckle of the thumb. Really lines up roughly right below where the fingers can act. Sometimes I draw it like
a little chapels type of window to represent
the overall shape and ark of the fingers. Then when you break them up, it's easy to remember the actual sizes in
relation to each other. A little line to represent
the wrinkles and the hand where they bend round
out the tips a little bit. Again, consider the overall
form and ark of the hand. Usually the outer side
curves a little bit. The inner part is straight, the bottoms straight
and then the outer edge of the
thumb sort of curved. Now let's flip things
around here and look at the sleeve the
way they're asleep, bows out a little bit in
a teardrop type of way. I find that very
appealing and charming. I want the cuff of the sleeve to come around the
hand a little bit. I want to show the weight. I'm thinking of it like a drop of water or oil or something dripping like even
wax like heavy and balled up near the bottom and thin and stretched at the top. And then the hand is
kind of like jetting up into it and breaking
through the bubble. So at this point,
what you wanna do, take your shape language
and evolve it to represent actual visual elements of your character that
we're going to see in this final design. And do not be afraid
to zoom in on different aspects if you want
to get to know them better, do a little research and really figure out who this character is
7. Lesson: Adding Depth: I want to show you how
to add a little bit of a third dimension
to a design without getting all caught
up in perspective in all those more complicated
technical things, all of that crucial
and important and, and things that cover
in other classes. Don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole with a
Character Design class. But let's look at the neck
and caller of this character. They feel kinda flat. I talked about using the ribs and the sweater
to bring out a roundness. But a great way to add
just a bit of depth to an object is tilt your
head visual camera, your perspective of that
object up just a bit. So till your camera up. And now it turns a
rectangle into a cylinder. Suddenly the shape has a whole different word
to define it, right? And all the way through that
cylinder is like the echo of that curve that represents
the top outer rim of it. So again, another look at it. It's kinda like we're
moving our camera up the y-axis in revealing new
things about this form. So let's do a quick sketch
of this character here. Let's turn to every
distinguishing edge of the shapes of her
design into a little disk, something that has a front
edge and a back edge. And we connect all
those elements. And suddenly we have a
character that feels round. It feels like she's standing on a physical plane, a surface. We can get a sense of the
way her torso comes in, her legs expand the
curve of her head. Just by understanding that you can shift your camera
up a little bit. It opens up a whole
another world of this other dimension. So I give it a shot if you want, if you want to stay in the two-dimensional
space, totally cool. Everything looks great there. But I wanted to throw
this option out there.
8. Lesson: Adding Appeal: As a lifelong student
of the Cartoon arts, there's a term that
always pops into my head when I get to
this stage of my design, and it's the word Appeal. So I'm gonna make a little
chapter here about Adding Appeal of a whole class on the principles and philosophy of narrative Art and the
world of cartooning. Go check that out if this
sort of thing appeals to you. But in a nutshell, here's what Adding
Appeal basically means. To draw something
symmetrically does not necessarily evoke an
illusion of life. It is a beautiful
structure and design. So if you want to
character to feel vulnerable and real
and relatable, you gotta break that
symmetry visually. So Appeal comes from the
kind of unexpected twists and turns and points of emphasis that make a
Character distinct. So it's almost like
the difference between a graphical design
and something that feels like a little
more organic, influenced by its environment. Alright, now is I was designing the clothing for my
yet named character. I really started to think about the 1860s American animated cartoon feature length
film by Don Bluetooth. The title, an American tale. Anybody's seen it? I love this movie, share, I love the songs, loved the
story, all those things. But the thing that I always
think about when I watched this is the main character
five all the little mouse. The way his closing fits them, the way he wears this like oversized sweater that seems to be like weighing him down. Done, Bluetooth's animated
features have this deep sense of melancholy that I
know a lot of people, if you love these, that's probably a bit of
what you love about them in, I think it's really symbolized
here in 5 v design. Like look at the way as
clothing ebbs and flows it, it adds secondary motion of
the weight of the fabrics, make him feel like he
really exists and is struggling to stay
upright some of the time. And you can see this exists in the other characters in well
the way the clothing flows. So you can tell it's
really important to the animators here to speak to the way aspects of
the character are influenced by their
environment and in more of a superficial way we can
see this adds just like a lovely charm and cartoonish, clear, happy kid
friendly Appeal. Now I'm going to try to bring a little Appeal and charm
here to my character design. So I'm going to draw my
character yet again. Notice she's got a
bit of the round. Notice that third dimension we talked about in
the last chapter. And I'm going to make some of these shapes on her
pop a little more. I really loved the
way the hair has potential to pop from
behind the ears. The swell of the sweater right
above the cuffs can pop in this nice distinct line between the flow of the pants and the
restriction of the boots. And this AAC can be
like kind of cinched in a place like there's
a rubber band around the center
of a balloon here and at the waist
of this character. So just for fine,
I'm going to try a pose for my character. We're gonna get into
Posing here pretty soon. So let's take a prop
for this character. We know she loves books, so here's a book, but the way this character holds the buck is what's
going to speak to her relationship
with the bucket is not a there's different
ways to hold the bug. Maybe you hold it at a
distance because you're simply like delivering
it to somebody. But if you really have a passion for the medium in the story is inside and a resonance that
you want to keep close. You can illustrate that in
the way you pose a Character. So knowing what I know about
this Character Design, I can experiment
and see what it's like when this character
is holding a book. The two important
things I wanna do here is make sure
the prop is clear. Does this thing look
like a book still? And also just as important, does the pose of the arms look
affectionate or the prop? Almost like you're
inventing an actor. Here, you have to
have a sense of how body language evokes
Storytelling. And these two ideas together conclude something
for the viewer. Write. This book is important to Claire player.
That's her name. I did it. We got there. I feel so relieved. Alright. If you have the
energy here and the time, if you want to invest
a little bit of Pose practice and try to figure out how your character's
body language works. Again, maybe give them a
prop, let them experiment. This is all going to add
value to the final pose as we move into the illustration that
becomes our class project
9. Lesson: Posing A Character: If you ever think about some of the iconic characters in the world of Cartoon Art,
like a Mickey Mouse. For example. The design of Mickey is potential
for all kinds of poses. The way that gloves highlight
the motion of the hand, the iconography of the
flatness of the ears, the way they never
bend and move, they stay safe, iconic and flat. And it kind of a
surreal, strange way, the way Mickey's face can point, the scale of his eyes. All these choices, all these
design choices make it so artists can do all kinds
of things with Mickey Mouse. And a model sheet shows off
some of that potential. While we're not going
to make a model sheet, There's some lessons
we can take away from these studies
of character design. Alright, Mickey, why
don't you help us learn about Posing Characters? I don't do a Mickey
Mouse voice, sorry. The best way to get a look at a Character is in a
three-quarter turn. But let's pull out
one of these Mickey's and bring them to
the foreground here. And let's look at how
he exists in a space. This is just a real
rough estimate of placement of
our horizon line. The area has body
occupies on the floor, how that moves up vertically. And you can see that a
three-quarter turn really shows off mostly the front
of a character, but it also shows off
some of the side. That's how we create
a sense of depth, a believability, mostly front, a quick look at the side. You see how that gives
us lots of insight. Now a model sheet is
going to show off poses for different
moments of action. This idea of the action line is what drives the Characters Pose. And by looking at what
the action line might be, the sense of motion and
movement through the character. We can see there's
a real looseness and charm to
Mickey's design that allows them to bend and Pose and all these different styles. These are really pushing Paul of that dynamic curve and pose of the action line
of a Cartoon Character. Lots of PFK-1 to play
with an action line, but you do have to keep, these character is
feeling grounded. Let's look at the
placement of the heads and feet of Mickey in relation
to the action line. For the most part,
he's quite balanced. The head is right above a foot. It is supporting most
of his body weight. But at a couple of them
he's thrown off balance, especially this one
on the bottom left where he's about to land. Usually when we pick
a moment for a pose, the character has its weight firmly established
like on a foot, like if you're in a walk cycle, the if you were
to pick one pose, it would be when a foot as fully supporting the
weight in-between moments usually don't fully represent the motion
we're looking at.
10. Project: Sketching Your Character: Let's set it aside
and start to look at Posing options for
our character, for Claire, our
new friend Claire. We know she loves books. Relating with books works pretty well when you're sitting. So let's try a sitting Pose. I think that could be phon, let's give roses stool as
another prompts there. She's got her book in the stool. Those are the two prompts
for my character pose. This first little sketch
feels kinda rigid. Like it doesn't look. She's reading a book clearly, but she doesn't seem to
be enjoying necessarily. So while the Pose
says something, I don't feel a story here. I don't have like an
emotional connection to this. It's more just
relaying information. And let's pull out
the action line here. Not bad. I like the
angle of the shoulders, I like the placement
of the foot, but I'm going to start
again here and see if I can push this
pose a little further. Again. This could be fine. If you wanna do one sketch and then build off
that, that's fine. The way I think about this
process here is you have to work up your drawing skills to get into marathon level drawing like this could be
a quick sprint for you, and that's totally great. The goal here
really is to finish something and not
necessarily in DLJ, like a marathon of
drawing with yourself. I draw a lot, so I have
a little more energy built up and I'm going to start a second sketch and push
this pose a little further. I'm going to bend
her back a bit. I'm going to try to
pose her legs in a slightly more interesting way. They felt a little rigid and unrealistic in that last pose. I'm going to make her lean over her book a little more and
be looking down at it. So it's not like she's reading, it's more like she's looking
at it like an artifact that she can't let go
of. I kinda like this. This evokes that melancholy
of an American tale. I was talking about this, the sense of like I character
and a sentimental moment. If you really has
feelings about this book, just maybe read
it so many times. It's not even worth
reading again, she knows the story so well. And also just visually, I like the Ark of the back in the way it kinda loops around the head and brings
us right in to look at exactly
what she's holding. So I feel like it it's
pretty decent composition. Now I'm going to come in and
I'm going to think about all that shape language that I developed in these last
couple of chapters, starting with Claire
space, that round nose. I talked about sense of the
placement of her eyebrows. I really want to
get that angle of the face looking
right at the book, a good tip is to point
the nose character at the object you want
them to be focusing on and let the other
features kinda follow. Her hair is kinda hanging down. I want to try to capture
the weight of her clothes, that teardrop feeling of
the sleeves of her shirt, the flared leg of her pants, sharp pointy boot coming
out of the bottom there. And I'm going to
bring a little more context to this drawing. I'm not going to draw
like a full background. This isn't really a class
about background Art, but I'm going to give a
sense of environment. Let's evoke the school setting. Here's a little backpack
leaning against her stool. And how about we show
the stool outside. Why not? You can have a stool
as side. It can happen. What if there's like fall
leaves swirling around? I think that pairs really well with the outfits just got on. And adds like another, almost like a magical
realism to the scene. Like that moment and
the story before character enters into like a fantasy world through a portal or an entrance
or like a secret garden, like the wind always changes. You notice that, let's look
a little bit of that here. Now let's turn down
that blue layer. So these red lines pop. Alright, there's some new things that have come into play here in evolution of the
story I always telling, but I think I'm
still staying pretty true to the main story points. And now we've got
a character named Claire with the
relationship with books. She necessarily evoking
all the details of like her fall back story where their parents
and private school and all these things and
ceramic fraud collection. Not necessarily, but I did
pick some important points. You don't have to say
everything with one drawing, but if it can resonate with
some of your story ideas, we'll, we'll call this
a successful sketch.
11. Project: Inking Your Character: As a comic artist, inking is a super important
skill set when I think a lot of the Art I love, it's usually driven by
the style that's evoked through the artists
inking techniques. Sometimes I think Inking gets lost a little bit
between sketching, planning and color and like rendering a
final illustration, inking is a great
place to generate a sense of style into
Explore new techniques. So style, what does that really? It's a particular technique in way by which
something is done. That's like just
literally the definition, a distinct manner of
expression, equality, form. Inking is a way to reveal style, the quality in form of
a line like think of the line I'm using to write
all the notes in here. It's not a clean line. It's kind of got like a
lobby nib dipped in ink. Look to it that evokes
a type of expression, a type of value
from Art tools and technique and history and
tradition right there. Style can really come
through in Inking. So spend some time
thinking about the role of the
line and Your Art. So let's take a traditional
Line Art inking tool and Ink Claire's face. A really simple, clean way. Let the sketch via
a reference point, not necessarily
something you traits. And with the Inking, you're going to find the
edges and boundaries of the form as it exists
in its own space. And you're gonna make
certain aspects pop, maybe even evoke
texture a little bit. You can see I'm doing
it in a few places. The, the texture of her face can be shown a little
bit with the freckles and the shape of the
flow of her bangs. I represent shadow in the way that I'm not inking
the nose itself, but the space below the nose. Same thing with the lips. I'm evoking a little
bit of shadow, but below the neck here. Let's try another pen tool. This one has a little more
variety in line weight. So that means the amount of
pressure you put on your pen, whether it'd be digital
or traditional, like a calligraphy nib, you're gonna get a different
quality out of the line. And usually that means
like a pointy edge that grows and then shrinks down again as you
let off the paper. And depending how you move
your hand across the page, you can evoke
different qualities of the forms of Claire here
with the weight of the line, there's more of a sense of
motion with this pen tool. The ink itself has a personality that makes you think about it and focus
on it a little more. That could be good or it
could be distracting. It depends on what
you're looking for in your style of inking. Let's try a pen that's a
little bit like the one I'm using to write my notes
are really narrow, messy type of pen here and of a globular anchor with
not a lot of weight, but a lot of character. This pen feels good in the way that it's
allowing me to capture some subtleties of the forums of like Claire's
eyes in her nose. I can really get the
nostrils in here now because this pen is capable
of a level of detail, the two previous ones weren't, but it a sacrifice
of line weight. Let's look at one
more here quickly. This is kind of a
dry brush technique, not a lot of line weight, but you can still see
the pressure at play. And when I push down
a little harder, I get a darker line. And when I light it up, I
must get these shades of gray so I can use this inking
tool if I wanted to, to create them
shadow in gradient. Maybe you as an
artist already have a pen tool that you've learned
to love and customize. If you haven't,
that's great. This is a great time to experiment with brush size, pressure,
texture, stability. Even I have a setting
and Clip Studio Paint, the software I'm using where
I can stabilize the brush. So the computer
compensates for like a wobbly ***** and my line
and it brings out a curve. It tries to capture the overall motion I might
have been going for. That could be great, or it could strip a line of its personality. Charles Schulz who germ peanuts. He didn't have a
stabilizer on his brush. And that was to as benefit, it's good that
Charlie Brown looks kinda wonky and
weird and uneven. There's an emotional quality to an unstabilized line that
can be really special. But all you wanna do really
is find a place to work, get comfortable with it. Explore the range
that it offers. You. Stay loose but
makes sure there's a little bit of control
in there so you're able to say what
you want to say and the tool doesn't dominate you. Now you'll notice when
I start to ink that I have this extra special
thing I can do. And it's, it's only available when you're
working with a vector brush, which a lot of this does not
exist in traditional tools. Vector is a mathematical points on a system that
can be modified. So the line is not pixel Art. It's really like a little
algorithm that can be adjusted. So you can see, I've
got all these nodes On my line that allow me to push and pull almost like
it's a rubber band, like this active, undefined little object that can be
bent and stretched and moved. I will do, I will take advantage of the vector
brush a little bit. But really you do not need it at all to complete
this class project. But I'm going to
show you how it's, how it works just so you see its potential in case you
come across one someday. Given that I have
quite a bit of control over my hand movements and
the pressure of my line. I'm going to choose a kind
of challenging brush. It has quite a wide
variety of line weight. You can see it here just on these first couple of lines that I can make it really narrow or I can make
it nice and thick. If you don't have a
lot of control there, you might want a more
stable brush with a lower range of
line width to it. So I'm gonna go through, and I'm going to find first all the essential
parts of my pose. The angle of her back is
something I've talked about a lot already. So I'm gonna do those
lines earlier you saw I'm gonna get in and
focus on the hands, the pose of the hands. Make sure the book is clear. Then let's get these
legs in place. There's the main
pose of the body. You can see how quickly
it came together for me, this is really the first
time I've drawn Claire, Like I brought her to
life in a railway. But I've learned so much
about over the course of all these little lessons and prompts and choice-making,
I've done that. You can see how while
I love drawing, I want to always know where
I'm going with a project. It brings something
alive so much faster. It means that gamma line I can explore Claire
story more because I know I've signed off on a lot of choices that
I'd otherwise need to make. Like every time I sit
down to draw her, I'm going to get up to the face. I always start with
the nose because that's the hardest
thing for me to draw. I feel like only the last couple of years I've really figured out how to create variety
and nose shapes. You could look back
at my older work and you can see sometimes I avoid noses altogether and
just draw a little triangle, which is cool and it works. But I want to explore
my visual vocabulary in the realm of faces and forms
that exist on the face, the nose pointed at the book, the eyes, eyebrows bent
back a little bit. And I want to make sure
Claire's hair is representative of the rules of her character that I
came up with early on. This kind of weight that
buoys out behind the ears, but also capture the
angle of the pose and how that hair form responds to
the bending of her neck. I'll sketch in some
of these leaves. Notice I've really lightened
up with my line weight. I do not want these
leaves to distract from the emotional resonance of Claire's Pose, enter
facial expression. And last but not least, the backpack turned away
from the camera, you notice, so it doesn't draw
too much attention, a little bit of detail, and I'm going to just show
you a bit of the ground. Just take a look at
the final line Art. Notice there's a quality of line at play that's consistent
throughout the Drawing. There's a smoothness, there's
a variation in the weight. There's an emphasis
on the main curves. Notice how the curve of the leg, it's all done with one motion. If you can capture like a motion of a part of the
body with a single line. There's gonna be like a, a higher level of quality
to your final artwork. Bill free to undo lines as you go if you're
working digitally, but try to capture the Drawing not as
quickly as possible, but with as few
motions as possible. And once you're happy with
your inked character design, we'll move on to coloring
this Illustration
12. Project: Coloring Your Character: I'm going to break the coloring process up into a couple of different steps, flats, details. And in the next chapter
we'll deal with some lighting and
shadow effects. So what do I mean by flats? Flats are the solid
base colors that exist over all portions
of the character design. But we're going to look at
the main elements here. So I'm gonna go through Claire's
pose here in sketch out the main forms that
are going to be like basically solid colors
through this stage. And I'm going to look at them
and shades of gray and see how they can better
carry my story. I imagine Claire's sweater to be a dark color and I'm going
to pair that with her hair. They're going to have
a similar value, the face and book. I want highlighted in a way so they're just
gonna be lighter. It's as simple as that. And you can almost describe these as the background elements,
the foreground elements. And right there in the middle is the interests or the story. Again, notice I've stripped out a lot of the details
and things that down the line are going
to add stress to my process like trying
to get that knows, drawing, just write are all
these little things if you can abstract your design. So you're not thinking about
certain aspects of it. You can really focus
in the power of, let's say, you know, just
basic shape language. The role of value
in these kind of basic principles working
with the elements of Art. Now let's hop back to the Ink and we'll start
with a skin tone. Skin tone can be a little tricky because
it's a place where you're representing a
real aspect of the world. So be sensitive towards that and understand how skin tone
works in a real basic way. It can be described as
like color values with different level of shading and then an undertone that
changes their whew. I put a color wheel over here
on the side so you can see, I'm gonna give clarity
a fair complexion. Remember, I want this area to be kind of a highlight and the
way I established my values. So we'll, we'll use these
photos as a reference. A deep reddish orange is
going to pair well with that dark kind of pioneer green and a lighter
brown for the pants, I try to avoid solid blacks, especially when I get into
shading and lighting. So even for these
boots while they are black by definition, notice I'm picking
kind of a deep blue. It feels blackish. Colors that feel like
shadow or light, or high contrast spaces. It's best to think in color. I think instead of in values, once you start to tell
your story, the stool, I'm going to squeeze in between everything with a reddish brown. I don't want it to blend
with the pants too much, but I don't want
it to stand out, so it's just a nice
warm color there. And I'm going to
let the book feel different than the rest
of this image right, right now I've got
this warm feeling. I'm going to hop over to purple, a color space that
I haven't really explored in this design yet. And that'll make
that book stand out and feel worthy of
your interests. I love getting a bookmark
in and Illustration you, a bookmark just has this great cartoonish
Appeal potential right now by bookmarks
just kinda hanging there. I could imagine it blowing in the wind in a different
version of this drawing. But I'm going to use that as a foreground element in really
create a saturated purple. It almost makes the book look a little dull in comparison. So, in a way, the main emphasis of this drawing has become
this little bookmark. Let's get some color
on the leaves. Now I'm going to
color a little bit of line where this could be a
whole process unto itself. A lot of artists love coloring
line work with comics. Usually you don't afford
yourself the time to do that. Both this single illustration, this Character Design Project. I'm gonna do a little
line work coloring, so I'm going to add color
to Claire's freckles. This is basically a
layer placed over the Ink in the software I'm using called
Clip Studio Paint. It has the feature of Clip
to layer below turned on. So that means when I add
color to this layer, it only shows the color in the spaces that have solid
pixels in the layer below. Now I'm gonna go
through with my kind of chunky pen liner and the hair and fill out
the form of the hair a little bit and add
variety to the color. So I'm just doing a bunch of analogous little shades of
red and orange in there, creating a little
bit of highlight. I'm going to take that concept and bring it to the clothing. So I'm going to choose a
lighter green and I'm going to make the form
of claire sweater stand out by implying the ebbs and flows of the
fabric across their body. I can do the same thing
with their pants. Now, I could have found ways to evoke shape and form
in her clothing, even without the excuse of the types of
fabric She's wearing. But it's just a
happy coincidence. You don't actually
necessarily have to have flattish pants or
a ribbed sweater to evoke shape and form. You could use the cuff of a sleeve that could
be just enough. There could be stripes or
other types of textures, or we can accomplish
these things with light and shadow as well. I tried to keep the face free
of heavy lighting effects and color effects because I just don't want to distract
from the expression. And also again with cartoony. And usually you don't need that much attention to the
face to get your point across. The area where I would
add a little bit of color in warmth would be kind of in this cheek nose area. So I'm just going to
take a really soft brush and bring out the cheeks
just a bit and the tip of the nose just a tiny bit
and ask for some reason I'm not super happy with the way these ellipse look now
that I'm zoomed in. So just going to
redraw that I want the corners of her mouth
turn down just a little bit. That seems to get across the melancholy feeling I was going for and talking
about earlier. And let's just redraw
those eyebrows. Why not? A little tip with eyelids
is darken the upper line, the upper eyelid where the
eyelashes are heaviest, it stand out more
than the lower line. Sometimes I don't even draw that lower line, you'll notice. Alright, so I've got my flats in my details and color
built on top of that. And again, style comes into play here
with the choices you make. Some of you might
have a simpler style, some might have a more
heavy textured style. I'm sitting somewhere
in the middle. This is a good, comfortable space for me in this kind of cartoonish realm, but evoking a little bit of
the real-world in my design. Now let's get into
lighting and shadow
13. Project: Adding Light and Shadow: Because of the way light
plays a role in our lives, It's a big part of narrative and it's a big part of the way the human eye focuses
on aspects of a scene, whether it'd be in real life
or our Light and Shadow. They're not necessarily to
a Character Design project, but they are a big part
of Storytelling in Art. So we're gonna talk about
them and you're welcome to include this stuff
and your class project. Or if you want to just focus on the Color chapter
and end it there, That's totally cool, but let's look at light and
shadow a little bit. The first thing you
need to know to apply light and shadow to a drain is where the source
of light is coming from. And it's always more
interesting if it's some sort of angle instead of
just directly above, covering evenly over everything. Like in these points
of reference, I chose two images. One is a real-world photo where
the light source is clear but not as impactful narratively as it is
on this painting, where the lights come in and through a window in the ceiling. And it's got like almost
this kind of like theatrical spotlight on
this Characters reading. Notice it creates
shadow as well, right? So it draws our attention to where the light is
the brightest and, and focuses our
attention on the book in the face and less so
on these bookshelves. I'm in a place, my light source, surprisingly maybe
behind my character, just like in this painting. I think that's kind of an
interesting approach I don't often get to
take with my projects. Now when applying
light and shadow, you want to evoke the shapes and forms of
your character design. So here's a pear shape. You don't want to
just place Shadow flatly across the bottom
because it flattens out the design you want
to evoke around this and organic feeling
showed the curves of the object or the angles. And I think it's important to shade with color
and not just black. You can create the darkest
of dark shadows with colors. You don't necessarily
have to default to black. I'm leaving the Black
alone as the Line Art. I'm going to select a dark
purple to use as a shadow. I'm going to create a
new layer over my flats. I'm going to set it
at about 50% opacity. And I'm going to turn
its blending mode from normal to overlay. Overlay is my favorite
setting for shadow. I think it's, I think overlays a pretty
common blending mode. It's definitely available in
any digital drawing program, or they're using Clip Studio
or Photoshop or Procreate. Some people use the
multiplies setting. It's up to you. You want to find the blend mode that
works best for you. But I love overlay with my
rough edged inking tool. I'm going to paint on shadow. You can't really just use the fill tool when it comes
to shading and light. You have to really draw
them on the I'm capturing the angles of the pants and I'm leaving what's
called a rim light. That's the highlight
around the edge of the object that
distinguishes its shape and form and also
visually separates it from the surrounding
shapes and forms. Once I get to the face, you gotta be careful
with lighting a face. You don't want to do
things like light. Half of it directly
cast too much shadow, evoke too much texture. It's going to distract
from the expression unless that's your
bigger story goal. But I'm gonna keep most
of the lighting off the face and then
I'm going to come in with a highlighting layer. This is a new layer set
to about 50% again. So instead of overlay, I'm using lightened and
instead of a purple color, I'm using a yellowish color. I've also set this to
Clip the layer below, though it's only painting my highlights on
the flats layer. This is mostly because
the brush I've selected is more of an airbrush. It's less controllable. I just want to create like this soft gradient of highlight, but I don't want it to
radiate off the character. Once I get that soft
glow and try to recreate the effect of the lighting
and this painting. I'm gonna come in here
with a bit of ink to lighting just to make a few
things pop like the sleeve, the bookmark, the
edge of her pants, and the top outer
edge of this stool. Now this is the stage where
I start to just kinda consider my values one last time before I finalize
the SAR form. I think because I
wanted to face in the book to be the
point of emphasis, I'm going to create
a little more shadow on the lower half of
the character using like an airbrush and that dark purple I was
talking about earlier. So back on that overlay layer, I'm gonna come in and create some more
shadow by the feet. I think there's just
too much attention being drawn to their texture. So if I hide them
and shadow a bit, the attention goes
back up to the face. Now I do think the face needs just a little bit of
shadow work on here. I'm going to create a new layer because I want these shadows to affect the Drawing
differently than the share, than the shadows on the
prompts and her body. So I'm going to
select a dark purple, create another overlay,
set it to about 20%, and put a little bit
of shadow below her, the fringe of her hair on
her bangs, on her forehead. In the little bit over year that a little like part, not
sure what it's called. And right under the nose is a great spot to just
pop a small shadow. That's just enough. Alright, and here's my
final class project at character design that
evokes a narrative, a bit of story for a Character, their relationship
with an object or their relationship with
the environment or with her relationship
with themselves. Something that tells us
who This character is an evokes a bit of sense of
why they're like this. Those are really the goals for any good character
design project. I think it's not as much about how well you
draw for project. Click this. It's about the process
you go through. Think of all the stages we
went through that aren't necessarily visually present
in the final presentation. Knowing the journey
of a creative process allows you to pick and choose the steps you think
are important. For me. This is the
process that gets me where I wanna go with
a Character Design. I hope some of these tips
have helped you along the way and you've arrived
at a great character design. Now let's wrap things up.
14. Wrap It Up!: Alright, We did it. The class is over, but not quite yet. First, I want to remind
you that I'd love to see your work if you drew
anything here today, whether it'd be some
notes and doodles of a potential character or you made something
completely finished. Post it to the class
projects section. I will share some
thoughts, some advice. And if you want to
learn more with me, if you're new to my
channel, well, guess what? I've got all kinds
of other classes waiting there for you. A lot of them are based
in narrative arts, cartooning, making comics, graphic novels,
things like that. But I also have some
really basic classes on how to draw faces
and expressions in a cartoonish style and even make little journal comics just
for fun in your diary. I think you'll have
a lot of fun there. There's 16 classes, like I said, you might find
something interesting. Thanks again for
joining me here today. I hope to see some work from you soon and I'll catch you later. Bye
