Illustrating in Procreate: Drawing a Shareable Timelapse

1. Introduction: For me, if there's no magic in it, it's not fun. I can find inspiration anywhere. My name is Vashti Harrison. I'm an author, an illustrator, and filmmaker. So, if you take a look at my work, you'll see that I change my style a lot. The things that I think connects everything is this element of magic that I've tried to incorporate into everything I create. Today, we're going to take a look at how I create my digital illustrations and bring them to life. I'll be using the iPad Pro with the Apple pencil, and an application called "Procreate." It's simple, intuitive, and easy to use. One of my favorite features of Procreate is that, it records all of the strokes you make, so you'll be able to record everything you do, and create a lovely time lapse of your entire creative process at the end. I think anybody who likes to draw, likes to tell stories with images. Anybody who wants to figure out ways to make things come alive, and breathe a little magic into the things that they're making. Hopefully, anyone can take a little something away from this. In this project, we're working on building out our childhood dream world. People often think that creativity is really hard. But for me I'm just constantly thinking about what I liked as a kid. I try to go through the world thinking about things and this kind of magical way. Your final product for this class can take a million different types of forms. If you have access to this digital tools, I would love to see your video time lapses, but if you're working traditionally, definitely upload your sketches. I want to see everything you create. I'm so excited you joined the class. I can't wait to get started. 2. Getting Started with Procreate: So, to get started, I'm going to open Procreate and create a new canvas. When you open up the app, you will notice that you have a gallery here with all of your drawings or all of my drawings. Up in the top right corner, you will see a plus sign. That's where you can create a new canvas. So, if you tap on that, you will see a number of different options based on the aspect ratio and particular frame size that you would like. I'm actually just going to go with a square format, the one that comes pre-loaded here. So, it's 2048 pixels by 2048. You'll notice that once you do that, you tap on it and it opens up a new canvas. At the top of the screen here, you will see this control bar. The wrench here will give you a lot of the settings about your canvas. Here, you can edit and incorporate a perspective guide. Important thing here is under this camera icon, you'll see the video settings. So, I have this selected as on. So, time time lapse recording on. So, I do want to be recording my time lapse the entire time. I could also live broadcast or replay it immediately from inside, but that's an important setting to have. You can also adjust the preferences if your left-handed or if you're right-handed. I'm pretty much happy with a lot of the built in preferences, but you can play around with that if you don't like the way things look. Here's your layers panel. This will become really, really important for your sketch process and your color process. So, you add more layers by adding with this plus sign, and you can renamed them, and you can access your layers styles. I'll show you a little bit more about that later on. So, my goal for this project today is to export a time lapse to make it really fun, beautiful video at the end. So, I'm being a little bit mindful of the steps in which I do things so that it will be really fun for a viewer to watch at the end. To start off, I'm going to work on an initial sketch. So, I'm just going to work out my ideas. Not a lot of this will make it into the final piece. I'm just going to make a lot of mistakes and figure out where things are falling on the canvas. Once I figured out exactly what I want, I'm going to take that and bring it into a new canvas where I'll work on the color, the texture, and the lighting and really bring it to life. So, to get started, I'm going to work on, I already have a layer one, but if you wanted to create a new layer, you'd just add one. So, I'm going to start sketching. Under pencils or under sketching, you will find all these pencil tools. I really like to use the technical pencil, but you will find there are softer ones. The HB and 6B get really loose lines, but I think the technical pencil works really well for me. The canvas is a smart canvas, so I always like to tilt it to the side to get started. 3. Initial Sketching: I already have this idea of a protagonist. So, I'm pretty well-known for drawing mostly girls and I think I'm going to stick to what I know. I'm going to draw a girl today. I love this idea of a small person in a big world. So, I'm thinking Alice in Wonderlandy. So, I'm just going to get started. I always like to start with a loose circle and figure out where this person is. I think I'm going to go with this children's literature, kid-like style with a larger face and a smaller body, but I'm going to make her a little bit older. I think I'm going to go with someone who's about 12 years old. So, those are things I'm thinking about as I'm first going in just to imbue that character, evoke this feeling within it from the very beginning. So, as you can see, I started off really big already. So, I'm going to use that selection tool. I'm just going to tap it. It selects everything that's in the layer immediately. I'm just going to move it and make it a little bit smaller just so I have a little bit more space to play with. So, when I am doing this, I think I just try to work in simple shapes. I'm imagining, think like a girl in these tall reeds and flowers. I think she's walking, so I think she's walking. She's facing this direction, but she's walking that direction. So, when I'm working on the body, I try to use this bean shape. So, when I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time outside. I grew up in this really small town. I didn't have a ton of friends, so I use to just climb trees behind my house and I always wished that the forests were bigger. You could always see the edge of the yard. You could always see the edge of someone else's house. So, this is definitely something that's, I'm totally recalling from childhood of this desire to be in this big, magical endless forest. So, I think that's definitely something that I'm going for. So, on the left here, you will see these two panels. So, ones you have either one of your brush or erasers selected, you will see that these sliders over here can show you. The top one shows you the size and the scale of the point of your brush and the lower one gives you the opacity. So, my pencil is pressure sensitive. So, the harder I press, the darker my line will be. But I like to keep the opacity up all the way. And because I'm using the small pointed pencil, it doesn't need to be very small, because if it was too small, you wouldn't be able to see anything. Now that I have a clear direction of where I'm going to go, I'm just going to work on a clean new layer. So, again, I'm just using simple shapes. I use these cross hairs to figure out where my character is looking. And then, when I'm going in for the body, I use this loose bean-shaped thing like a butternut squash. One trick you can always do to give your character a little bit more age or make them younger is the relationship between the head and neck. If the neck is a little too long or if it's a little too short, your character will look younger. If it's longer, your character will look older. So, if you're looking to make your character look either one of those ways, that's an easy trick to take a look at. So, I think this person is, she's walking in this direction. I'm just using a bunch of short line strokes to figure out this shape. In this stage, I'll probably keep working on this until I get to figuring out where things are. I think I've identified that she's surrounded by objects, but I won't finish anything. I just go in with these big shapes. I'm going to put a bunch of little flowers down here. I think that they're going to be made of light, so they'll be reflecting light up on here on her face. So, at this stage, I won't be thinking about color just yet, but I am thinking about what's going to look best for this story. So, now that I know that there's a light source down here and down here, I think I'm going to put her in a dress. And then, instead of putting her hair up, I'm going to put it down, so you'll see in a lot of those nice reflections and light. Just some nice bits of light down there. Down here, you'll see these two arrows. That will be your undo and your redo. The incredible thing about procreate is that it has unlimited undo. So, I could literally tap this over and over again until I get back to the very beginning of my canvas. So, I'm actually going to stop sketching here. I think I have a clear idea of where I want to go. I'm not going to put a ton of details into anything just yet. I feel like I have a nice evocative loose sketch to take into refinement. Once we get into the final videos where I'll be adding color and texture, You'll really see it come to life. 4. Transitioning Your Sketch: So, I'm actually going to do something kind of crazy here. I'm going to start a new project. Because I know that I'm going to export this video, I want to start from a place where it'll be fun for viewer to watch some of those early steps. No one really needs to see. So, I'm just going to do exactly what I did before, add a plus sign, and create a new canvas that same size, and what I have to do, is go back to my original sketch and export this image, so I can bring it into my new project. Before I do that though, I'm going to lower the opacity of that layer. I'm going to lower it just enough so that I can still see it. But so that's not overwhelmingly messy for someone who doesn't know what they're looking at. The way you do that is by selecting layers panel, go to the layer that it's on, and if you tap on the end there, the first bar you'll see is for opacity. I'm going to bring the opacity down to about 15%. Anything around there, whatever looks good to you, I can still see everything that I drew, but it's not overwhelming the image. Now that the opacity is all the way down to 15%, I'm just going to unselect the background layer, so you can't see it, but it's still there. You'll just see. It's just my image without any background color. If I just toggle it back on you can see it. I'm going to export this as a PNG so that it'll be transparent. I can bring it into my new project. So, you do that by going over to the Wrench under the third icon, is the Share button. You'll see there are a number of different options here. I'm just going to select PNG. That will preserve the transparency, and I'm just going to save it to my camera roll. Okay. Now I'm going to go back to the Gallery, and to my new project. Under the Wrench, I can import my image. So, that first icon under image, you're going to Insert a photo. There is my drawing right there. There it is. It auto populates it, and sizes it exactly as it was in the last canvas. So, there it is on Layer 1. I'm going to rename that to Sketch. So, this file is now, I'm going to think of it as kind of my active file. Everything I do in here is, it's going to be exported to my time-lapse videos. So, I'm just going to be mindful about all of the marks I make, and where I start and where I finish, so that it will be really fun and nice for a viewer to watch. So, the first thing I'm going to do, is kind of refine my sketch, and I could certainly start anywhere I want. But because I know someone's going to watch, I'm going to start with my character first, so that I give them a protagonist to watch in this story that unfolds. 5. Drawing: So, I'm going to start refining my sketch now. I've laid out a lot of the initial ideas in that early rough sketch, so I'm now going to go in and clean up with a lot of fine lines. As I do that though, I'm definitely going to be mindful of the time lapse video that I'm recording. So, I'm going to start with my central figure and move outwards to let the story unfold as I move along. I'm just going to add a new layer above my sketch layer, and again I'm going to still use my technical pencil in black. We'll talk more about color later, but I'm just going to go through and start creating this character. You'll notice that I did a lot of wild loose lines. I try to identify the ones that are evoking the right feeling and the right image. So, if there are 15 to choose from or let's say there are three to choose from, I might choose the middle ground here. So, for her eyebrows if you can see that, I'm just going to go with something in between all the different lines that I had to give her this kind of surprised but wonderful, kind of wondrous expression. Like I said before, I'm always still trying to figure out what my style is. My style tends to change a lot based on the story or the image that I'm trying to create, and that can be clearly shown in the way like I draw faces, for example. In this one, I'm going with this smaller eye without a ton of big whites and the eyes, sort of like a little bit more picture book rather than cartoony, just because I think I want to get something that feels old and classic, like those old books that I really loved as a kid. So, I never quite figured out what her hair is doing. I definitely know that it's out, and I think she's got really curly hair, so that will give us a lot of surface to reflect a lot of light on. So, maybe she's got this headband on, perhaps like Alice in Wonderland. Whenever I went outside and played as a kid, I would never go empty handed. I'm always carrying probably like three bags with me. I feel like she wouldn't be traveling alone were empty handed. So she's got, maybe she's got this bag with her with all of her little knick knacks inside. You'll notice here I drew the length of her leg, even though I'm not going to be incorporating it fully into the sketch, her skirt is going to be covering her upper leg here. It's important for me to show all of these parts of the body to what they call drawing through an animation is figuring out where the forms are and where they are in space, so that you have the right volume above it. So, for example, if she was wearing a more form fitted skirt, you could show with the line of her skirt, that the leg that's on the left is in front of the one that's on the right. So, in this case, the skirt is voluminous over top of that, but these are important things to incorporate in your initial sketch, so that you have the freedom to change things up if you feel like it fits the story. Okay. So, now we have our character. We're not going to go into any of the shading or anything. I'm just going to do a few lines here to identify where the grasses and the background pieces are. I always zoom out with my fingers to get a better sense of how everything's fitting. Like for example, I'm seeing now that the top of her body is a lot bigger than the lower half which actually isn't so bad. It feels really unique to that character, but I do want to know if her proportions are working, so I zoom out to figure that out. I always wear ballerina flats, so I'm going to give her ballerina flats. Definitely, look from moments where you can incorporate some special little details, especially if you're working off a childhood memory. Figure out where you can place those things and because that'll make it the most special for you, and it'll create a unique experience for your audience and for your viewer. So, now that I'm pretty much happy with all of the lines that are on the main character, I'm moving on to parts of the background. I'm not spending a ton of time on the lines of the big pieces of the background, rather than the smaller more important details in the foreground, which I think will help sell the story for sure. I feel like I'm in a good place with my refined sketch. I'm going to untangle my original sketch layer to just see how everything is fitting. It feels good to me, so I'm probably just going to clean up a couple of these little moments here with the eraser, although you don't necessarily have to do any of this. It feels good, so I'm probably going to move on and talk about color now. 6. Coloring: Now that I finished my sketch, I'm going to start laying down some color. First, I'm going to block out the shapes, and then I'm going to add shadows and highlights to add volume. I like to think about adding color as sculpting with it. So, we're going to start in the center and move outward. I'm definitely going to start with the figure and show you how I choose my color palette. At the top right corner, you'll see a circle. Right now it's black because I've been using black. Here is your color panel. You can view it in a number of different ways. I like to view it in this square. On this first slider, you can choose your hue and then the second slider, your saturation, and then your value. But, you can also just move around there. Actually, the very first thing that I'm going to do is create a new layer above my background. The nice thing about Procreate is that it auto-populates a background layer for you, and you can choose the color straight from there. I'm going to put in a medium gray. You don't have to be very specific about this. I just like to choose something that's not too bright but also not too dark, just a medium gray in there and that's on the background layer. So now, I'm going to add a new layer and move it underneath my, I never named this but I'm going to rename it, Line work. I'm going to name it figure because I'm going do all the figure out on this. So, the first thing I like to do is choose a skin tone for my figure. Perhaps you'll hear this term, we'll talk about painting in terms of local color and atmosphere color. Local color refers to the color that something is before it's being hit with light. So, I know that my shirt is a beige color but under a blue light it may look blue. So, I'm going to lay down all of my local colors first and then add lighting later, so that it's a little bit easier to understand how it works. Once you get really good at this, once you practice it, you'll be able to choose colors very quickly and very swiftly. So, I'm going to go with the skin tone that's similar to mine. You'll notice actually, once you start painting a lot of people that skin tones are never very saturated, they're never in that top right corner of the panel. Skin tones are usually towards the gray. So, I'm going to choose something that's a little bit red in the middle here, between red and brown and definitely, with some darks in it. So, there we go. So, there are a number of different ways you can get started. I never followed the same path. I just like to flow with how I'm feeling with a single image. Sometimes I will outline the entire form and then fill it. So actually, that's what I going to do today. I like to do the outlines again in my technical pencil. Some people will prefer to use something like a hard line like that is in your airbrush tool or under inking. But, I think that I'm going to keep my linework but keep it really subtle. So, I'm going to get started and fill in the whole figure in color. So first, I'm going to outline. You can't really see that because I'm underneath my line works. So, I'm just going to bring my line works layered opacity down a little bit just so I can see where I'm. So now, outline this whole figure. Now, another way that I could do this, is with the selection tool. The selection tool is this s under the control panel and with it, you can draw shapes and fill them in. So here, I've just selected a circle, and I could take my color dropper tool on my color. If I hold down, I should be able to fill in that circle. So, I could do that with the head but I prefer to have this loosy line that I've created with my pencil. So, I'm just going to undo that really quickly just so you can see. Now, that these mistakes may not look so great in my time lapse video. They are just like some sweet fun moments that everybody likes to see how you get to your process. So, it's totally fine to make mistakes here and there or just add something in and then erase it because there are no rules. Even though her dress is there, I'm actually just going to outline her whole body, just in case perhaps I'll decide that she should be wearing a sleeveless dress, her arms will be there. Also just helps to make one solid form. So, you can check the silhouette of your drawing. That's actually a nice way to identify if your sketch or your figure is in a strong pose by looking at the silhouette. So, sometimes it helps to look at it in that way. So, I dragged the color tool and with my pencil or with my finger, I'm holding it down so it fills that shape. If you keep holding it down, this bar will come up at the top, and it will show you the threshold with which you're filling your object. If the threshold goes all the way up to 100 percent, it will fill everything. But, I just wanted to fill in the shape, I've created. So, 69 percent is fine. I'm going to do that same thing down here. So, I'm going to toggle my going to layer on and off, you can see my figure is there. I think her color is probably a little bit too light. Now, bring it down a little bit. So, I'm going to use my adjustment tools to do that. So, here's a good time to play with those. So, under the magic wand over here, you'll see a number of different things you can choose from. Hue saturation and brightness will show up just like it did in your color panel. So, if I really wanted to make her green, I could do that very easily. But, I'm going to bring that back to it's zero. I'm going to make her a little bit darker and warmer. So, I'm boosting the saturation and bringing the brightness down. So, there you go. Now, I could have done the same thing with the curves tool. So, I'm actually just undo that and show you how to do it with the curves tool. This one you have a little bit more control about the relationship between the red, blue, and the greens here. I feel like this is probably pretty good. So, I can see that there are still some parts of this where the color is not all the way filled in, and I like the texture that I'm getting. But, I'm just going to go on with my pencil and fill in a few of those. So, you can select any color by holding down your finger or your pencil and holding it down until this color picker comes up. I'm going to select that color. Another way to do that would be to hold this button in the center of your slider tool. Hold that and it will pop up. So now, I blocked out the shapes of the figure. I'm just very quickly going to do the same thing on different layers for the hair. So, I'm going to go behind the body to do the hair that's behind her, and then fill that in. The color I'm going to choose here is within the same family as her skin tone just to keep things on a simple level for you guys. I'm just going to go for a darker version, so I'm just going to bring my slider down. You can just bring the slider down here of brightness down and maybe this saturation up a little bit. So, we have this nice, dark chocolate hair color. Now, I can do the same technique but because the shape is a lot smaller, I feel like it would be fine to just go freeform with this. Actually, I'll just do it with the selection tool since I will play around with this later. Now above that, I'm going to add a new layer for her dress and I should be naming these all as I go. Because after a while there's going to be so many here, it'll be really important to have all the names correct to know exactly which layer you are selecting. So, the next thing I'm going to do is go in and clean up all the lines. I'm going to take my pencil tool, my technical pencil and just go outline everything. Just to give it a nice, soft texture, I make sure everything's fitting in. Realizing now that my blue is just way too bright. So, I'm actually going to use my adjustment tools to bring the brightness down. There you go. Now, the color is a lot deeper and actually fits in more with the family of her skin tone. Then we can actually go back and bring in some of those highlights later. 7. Lighting: Now that I've got all the colors blocked in, I'm going to start adding a little bit of shadow and highlight to kind of give the character more volume. So, again, I like to think of this as sculpting. So, we're kind of sculpting in and out at the same time. An easy way to do this is I'm actually just going to work on my same layer. So, for the figure, so that will be all my skin tone, shapes. I'm going to turn the alpha lock on, so that I can only color on top of what I've already colored. So, the way you do that is by going to your layers, selecting your figure layer. Once you tap on it, another panel will pop up and will give you a couple of options. So, I'm going to tap on alpha lock. So, now, you can see that a checkerboard pattern appeared behind my figure. So, now that the alpha lock is on, I won't be able to draw anywhere. I'm, going to use a bright pencil. You can see I can color here, but not here. So, that actually makes it really great to add in all these lights and shadows. So, the way I choose my colors for lights and shadows are by selecting my main color, so it's right there. A shadow is going to be towards black, but also, towards more saturation. So, with a little dark and a little more saturation. You can see the difference here. Your previously selected color will show up here to your left and your new color to the right. So, that's pretty good. I'm going to take this kind of soft chalky brush just because I don't want any hard lines. I just want a little bit of shadow. I'm thinking about the light sources and about the volume, so I know that her head is going to be above her neck. So, there's always going to be a little bit of a shadow there. So, immediately, that gives it a little bit of depth. We know that this is above and in front of. The same thing with her ears, there kind of back in space. With a lot of this, we're cheating a little bit because she's in an imaginary world, so the lights will work. However, I want them to work and whatever I think will look best to tell a story the best way possible. So, I put a little bit of shading where her eyes and nose are. I'm kind of simplifying her forms. Whereas anatomically, her nose would kind of come out more. I'm giving her a tone of shadow around her eyes and nose to kind of scoop it in. I always give the top lip a little bit of darkness, that same color and a little bit underneath. So, there we go. Now, we're already seeing a lot of depth in her face. I'm just going to go in and do the same thing with her dress, her bag, and her hair. Now, I'm going to go in and out a few of the highlights now that I've done all of the shadows. So, just like the same way that I figured out what my shadow color would be based on my my original base color, I'm going to do the same with my highlight. So, I've selected the main color on her face again. To get a highlight, I'm going to go, it's a little bit easier to see this once you have the disk selected, the disk view of the color wheel. If you go a little bit towards white and a little bit towards yellow, will always give you a highlight. A shadow will always be a little bit towards black and a little bit towards blue or purple. That's just the way color works on the warm and cool spectrum. So, that's a simple trick. I don't get too deep into color theory. I tend to pick what feels and looks good. If you're totally lost on where to begin, I always like to start from some photo reference or something. So, here, I'm going to go in with my highlight using one of the same brushes kind of the soft chalky brush. So, I know that my light sources are going to be from below and a little bit from above. Just in general, I'm going to give her a general kind of highlight on her nose. Your nose tends to be the thing that faces upwards the most, so it tends to pick up the most light. So, typically, it tends to be a brighter spot, same thing with cheeks. So, now, I've added a preliminary amount of highlights. I'm really going to take this to the next level once I've kind of finished out the rest of the background. But one thing I'm going to spend a little bit of time on is the rendering of the hair. This is a part that I really enjoy the most, so I like to spend a lot of time adding details and texture to the hair. My hair is separated into two different layers. One is above her in front of her face and one is behind her face. I'm going to work the most on the hair in the background first. I'm going to deselect the alpha lock because I want to work outside of the shape. This is a simple way that I think adds a lot of a really special elements to hair rendering is building out a form, blocking in that form like I've already done, and then breaking that form with a few flyaway hairs and strands that make it feel just really natural. So, the first thing I'm going to do is go in with some darks and just add some lines to make it feel like it's filled with a bunch of different strands. So, I'm again using that technical pencil, and I'm bringing the point size down kind of small. Just of a very kind of loosely haphazardly, I'm making just curving marks. I want it to feel like I'm creating a shape here. So, again, I'm thinking a lot like I'm sculpting. So, each one of these curves down is a place where her curl goes in, and one of these curves out is where her curl comes out, and it's an opportunity to give depth and volume to the space. So, again, we add shadows with the darks. Here, in the hair, you can get really wild with the colors. You can add in a bunch of different elements from the family of that brown. So, here, I'm breaking the form already just to add a few details to make it feel like it's really filled with a bunch of little hairs instead of one block of hair like a cartoon character. Okay. So, now that I've added in a lot of darks and shadows, I'm going to go in and add some highlights to kind of build out the shapes now to really pop them off the background. So, it's some short kind of curving strokes and adding highlights to the top of each curl. So, it feels like they're really built up in there. Again, it's okay to go kind of later down here because I know that my lighting source will be down here. Then, I use the smudge tool to kind of really take some of these wild lines, and smooth them down a little bit, and that's how it really makes it look like hair. So, from my smudge tool, I choose that same chalk brush. It's actually called Bonobo chalk, kind of small and with the opacity up pretty high. So, I'm just going to go and slightly smudge some of these lines, so that they're blending in together a little bit more. Okay. So, I'm pretty much happy with the way all the shapes are looking, with the way all the color is looking. I think that now, I'm going to move into the background, and then I'll start thinking about bringing the color down and around my figure, and then I'll go back in with all of the highlights, and the details, and the kind of really finalizing the touches magic face. 8. Building Your Background: So to keep everything united and uniform, I'm going to work with my singular teal color as my main source for the background. So once I select that color, and open up my palette, I have all of these ranges to choose from. So, I'm going to choose something that's a little bit darker and a little bit grayer than she is. Because I'm going to go really dark on the edges. So, I'm going to start where she is and work my way out. I'm using one of my soft brushes, this chalky brush. Just make it really big, and I'm going to go a little bit wild here and figure out how I'm liking things. So, I'm going to create a new layer that's behind everything. I'm going to call this Bg for background. So, I'm working soft with this color because I'm not sure if I love it just yet, I'm going to play around with the hues. As I get closer to the edges, I want to get darker. So, it's almost as if she's leaving the light to get into this dark place. So that feels like I have a nice shape here and I'm going to use these shadows to build more forms into it. So above that layer, I'm just going to create a new one and start blocking out those big obife dark forms. I'm not making these specific shapes at all, I'm just thinking about trees and big plants, kind of shadowy things. Then, I know that there's going to need to be some shrubbery near her legs, some, I'm building out that as well. So, I can take this amorphous shape and just add in a few details the same way I did the hair and it'll start to feel like we're in a forest. So, I'm just going to do some leaves and plants back here. I'm keeping it loose and keeping it light trying to make it feel like it's in the far background, so nothing is quite in focus. I'm just going to go in and add a few different hues, maybe a little some light blues in the background. Just because the farther back something gets the farther away from you it is, the bluer it is almost purple. Like they say in purple mountains majesty and that's called atmospheric hazing, so the farther something is the less detail and the less hue you'll see in. Mostly, appear more blue because you're seeing the atmosphere of the sky. So, that actually helps push her forward a little bit. Now, I'm just adding a few shadows right here on the edges because I know that this is going to be where those plants are going to be, and I think they're sticking up towards her, so it'll be a few shadows below them. Now, I'm just going to put in a few of the smaller details like the stems of these flowers and where they're coming from in the shrubbery. So, I'm just using again my small pencil brush and just giving it some depth by some simple lines. Just by breaking that form of that round shrub, you're starting to give it a little bit of specificity. It's starting to feel really good. I'm going to just clean up a few of these last few things and then we're going to go in and add all of the magical elements that will take this to the next level. 9. Adding Magical Elements: I feel like this is a pretty solid finished illustration. I really love where the colors have gone. I really love the character. Now, I really just want to take it to the next level and add some magical elements. So, this whole time, we've been focusing on the figure and moving it outwards. As I've continued that, I've done in all the background. I'm going to add the flowers now because they're going to be the source of the magic, so we'll light those up and then we'll light up our figure and add some swirly bits around that. So, I'm just going to add a new layer above and choose a bright hue. I really like when I'm going for something that feels a little bit magical, I'd go for something that's a little bit kind of a creamy orange and almost the whitest version of that. So, this pale cream like an ice cream. You can use any brush. I think that this time I'm going to use this little gouache brush. It's meant to replicate the texture of gouache and it tends to feel like a more watered down version of gouache. I like the way it works because it has a low opacity built into it. The more you use it, the more you can build up color. So, it ends up having its own luminance, so we'll try that. Definitely in your projects, try out a bunch of different things. Okay. So now, I feel like I have a good amount of flowers in the foreground. I'm just going to use this splatter tool to give the feeling of lots of flowers a little bit farther away. So, it's here under spray paints. I'm going to make it small and play around with it, because I don't know how well it's going to work, they're quite bright. I'm going to bring the opacity down a little bit on them. So, yeah. I'm going to sprinkle that around a little bit. So, I'm just filling out the space here. Okay. So, the reason that I've waited till the end to do this is because I know that it's going to look really good in the time lapse, it's like the story is finally evolving. If you were to think of it as an ark in a story, this is leading up to the climax. We're not quite done yet. So, I was thinking a lot about when I would add this in. It's the funnest part, so it's hard to have the patience to get to it but it'll look really good when we finally put it back. I'm just going to go in and add a few more details to the flowers. Now that we have this bright flower in this dark forest, I'm going to show you a fun way to make them feel like they're really made of light. So, above that layer, I'm going to create a new layer. Where you see the N, you tap that and it opens up this panel. I'm going to make this an adjustment layer. Right now, we're selected on darken. I'm going to go over to highlight and select add. So, you'll see there's an A now on my layer. You'll see an A there instead of an N now. I'm going to call this my highlight. So, everything that I place on this layer now will add value and brightness to anything that's below it. So, I could keep that same color but I'm actually going to go a little bit brighter, closer to white, and we'd think that gouache brush because it has that lower opacity. I'm going to go in and add some brightness to the flowers. So, now that I have a direct lighting source, I'm going to go back into my character and add more highlights and shadows. Something I'm going to do that might make this a little bit easier on me is I'm going to select all of the layers that make up my character. So, when you're under the layers panel you tap on one, that means your layer is selected. If you take your finger or your pencil and drag a lighter color, blue will show you that it is additionally selected. So, I'm grabbing my sketch layer, my dress, the figure, the hair, and above where that plus sign used to be is a symbol with three lines. This will allow me to group my layers into one little folder. So now, my whole character is all grouped together. I'm going to actually duplicate her. Now, she's on her own group and I'm going to flatten that group. So now, she's on her own layer and that's going to be really useful for me when I'm doing this highlight. So, what I'm going to do next is create another highlight layer the same way that I did that add layer above, the same thing. Just to make this simple, I'm going to tap on the girl layer and choose select. So now, she's selected and nothing else is. Now, I'm going to go to that add layer and I'm going to start working on some highlights. So the way I add highlights to a single color is the same way I did it before by selecting that color. So let's start with her skin. I'm going to add a little bit of white and a little bit towards yellow, and now the highlights will really really pop once we're on this add layer. Before, when I added highlights to the character, I was really thinking about the volume, the shape of her face, but now I'm thinking about how the light source is affecting the shapes on her. So, it'll really make a big difference here. So now, it really looks like that light is hitting her. So, like I was saying, there is always going to be a shadow underneath her chin there, but now we know that we have this bright light coming at her and it just makes it really pop a whole lot more. Now, the more white I add to this, the more blown out this highlight will be because she is a little bit farther away. The farther away from the light source, the less intense the light will be. So, the light will be really bright on her dress here, so let's do that next. So, here's exactly why I like that low opacity brushes because I can really see how I can build it up, how it's starting to add volume to everything I draw once I add each layer in. One of the last things I'm going to add up here is, actually, I drew some butterflies, so I'm going to do that in maybe a little bit warmer than that yellow, so probably like a peachy color. I'm just going to do these directly on the highlight layer because I think then they'll look really good. As you can see with my flowers and with my butterflies, I'm not going in and adding a ton of details, I'm really just trying to get the idea of a butterfly out there rather than just an actual one. Okay. So, I'm feeling really good about this. One last thing I'm going to do is add a few overall highlights just to make everything feel really cohesive. 10. Finishing Touches: Add a new layer and I don't know exactly how this will works. I'm just going to play around for a second and see what happens. I think, I feel like I need some blue on the other side or perhaps some moonlight, just to bring up the contrast a little bit behind her. So, let's see how that works, and this may end up needing to be behind her. So, I was starting to feel like I needed a few more hues in the background, just to make sure I've separated my figure from the foreground and the background. What I did was, I added in some smudgy brighter colors. I played with the hue until I figured out a color that I liked and it was very much related to the orange that are in the flowers. I realized it needed to go in the background, but behind the trees. So, all I did was move it down behind my first layer of background, and I just brought the opacity down because I didn't need a ton of it. Then, I added a secondary add layer above my flowers and just added some some dots, some fuzzy kind of brightness. Now, it really feels like it's light. Now, just because I know that I'm making a video here that it's going to be played for viewer, I'm just going to add in some cool magical elements that I may move around or delete that'll just come up and sparkle and then just add this extra fun element for the end of the video. Actually before that, I'm going to add in my white, which I said was my favorite part. So, now, this doesn't need to be on an out layer, it can be a normal layer because white is white, and I don't want any other colors to peek through. So, one way had sparkly bits is you can choose an inking brush, this one called stipple makes little dots, or you can use an airbrushing tool with a hard round shape, and then just see if you can control it yourself. So, I'm just going to add a few. When something is sparkly, it sparkles the most when it's in the dark. At least it reads the most of sparkly when it's in the dark. So, you don't need a ton of bright white lights, but what you do need is one or two in the darkest shadows. So, now it feels like it's really got glitter all over it. I don't know why she has this glittery dress on, but she does, and because light moves and interacts, light moves in a straight line, typically, when light hits something that's full of sequins or glitter, all of the sequins in a single path will be lit up. So, I feel really happy with where this image has landed. I feel very excited to export it and call it finished. But, before I do that, I'm just going to add a few more magical elements, specifically for the time lapse because I think it would be nice to have this really great burst of magic and energy right at the end. So, you may not see it in the final product, but it'll be there in the video. So, that's it. I feel like I'm really happy with where this picture ended up. The next thing I'll do is show you how to either export as a video or as an image for uploading on the Internet or printing. 11. Exporting Your Time-lapse: So, now I'm going to show you how to export your time lapse video. On the control panel under the wrench, your fourth option here will be video. Actually, you can select time lapse replay and take a look at it before you export it. So, let's do that. So, it'll start playing on its own, but you can scrub through and watch it happened really quickly. So, you can see, we started with our sketch and moved forward pretty quickly from there. But once I got into color, you'll see it really starts to take off and I go into the background. Now, we have our figure, but watch how it emanates from the center outward. We're building up the elements and adding more and more magic as we go. So, it hopefully should be drawing the eye in and also raising questions about what's happening and answering questions at the same time. So, the way to export your video is this under the same panel. So, in your control panel, go to the wrench under video, the last option there is export time lapse video. You select it and it's just going to take a little bit of a second to export. I chose the highest rendering setting for my video capture, so it'll just take a minute and it will let me choose where I want to save it. I'm going to save it to my camera, but you have the option of emailing it, or saving it to your files, or uploading it to your file-saving apps. So, I'm going to click save video, and now should be in my camera roll. So here we go. There it is. So, it came out to be about two minutes and 17 seconds long, which is a minute too long for the app that I want to share it on. So, one thing that I might do is either trim it within the editing software right here in photos. You can select edit and cut it down to just a minute long. You can choose probably your favorite parts, or one thing that I might do is take the whole video and import it into I-movie, an app that comes pre-loaded onto the Apple iPad and speed it up by a little bit more than 50 percent, so everything fits within that one minute time frame. So, now we've learned how to export your still images and your video time lapses. I hope to see them in the project gallery. 12. Final Thoughts: So, we're done. We've learned everything from sketching to refining our sketches, blocking out color, adding volume and shape with lighting and shadow, and most importantly adding magical elements to our drawings. Whether you have a still image or a video to upload, I look forward to seeing what you've created in the Project Gallery. I hope throughout this course you've learned that there's no single way to make beautiful images. There's lots of room and opportunity to make mistakes and try out new things and figure out your style. Thank you so much for taking this class. I cannot wait to see what you've created. 13. More Classes on Skillshare: