Part 1: A Character’s Journey: Designing Cute Characters in Procreate

1. Intro: What designing cute characters in Procreate wasn't about drawing perfectly, but about making confident and clear decisions. Hi, I'm Sandra Mea. I'm a top teacher here in Skillshare. I'm an illustrator and pattern designer, and I have taught thousands of students how to use Procreate. Characters are everywhere on children's books, movies, stickers, video games, you name it. And being able to create your own characters is a superpower. And in this class, I'm going to show you how to design characters in procreate step by step and in a very easy way. Together, we'll design this super cutuoa. I'll guide you every step of the way. We'll begin with a back story that shapes every decision. Then build the character slowly through silhouettes, features, linework, color palettes, turnaround, creating a pose, and a polished final illustration. Everything stems from the back story and its personality. So instead of second guessing every decision you have to make, we're going to use that information to design with intention. And this class is extra special. While I was designing this character, I kept wondering, how would it look like in three D? So I decided to take it one step further, and I reached out to my favorite three D designer, the super talented Dave Red. Dave, what do you look for in a character illustration when you're turning it into three D? Hey, Sandra, what's up, guys? So what I look for in a great character design that works for three D is firstly, simple shapes and simple forms. Secondly, you want a strong character design. Thirdly, you want to turn around. So this will help you understand the character from lots of different angles. If a character works as simple shapes, it'll translate beautifully into three D. All right. Back to you. Perfect. That's what we have done in this class. So this is part one of a two part class. We here we build a character in two D using Procreate, and in the second part, they read takes this exact character and teaches you how to bring it to life in three D using know what's called. So once you finish this class, make sure to check out that one. Look how cute. Now grab your iPad, open Procreate, and let's start designing. 2. Class Project: For the class project, you'll design your own character, following the process that we covered in class. You can start by downloading the character back story worksheet from the class resources. You'll also find the paper, text, your brush, and the color palettes are used. You class project is to come up with a character's back story and then design your character in Procreate using simple shapes, following that backstory. You can share anything you want in the project gallery, from your sketches, your back story, your turnarounds, your silhouettes, the finish character, whatever you want. Remember that this project isn't about perfection, it's about having fun and bringing the character that you have in your mind to life. Make sure you have fun with the process and I can't wait to see what you create. 3. Backstory: Before we draw anything, we have to start with the back story. I want to say this clearly. This doesn't have to be anything super complicated. You don't need a full novel here, a full movie. You just need to make some intentional decisions that will guide all your process from now on. So please don't get stuck here. Don't over complicated. Just jot down any idea that comes to mind. The idea is that you start practicing, it will flow easier the more you do this. Just bring your character to life. Don't get stuck here, please. For example, for my character, I just started with one simple mission or purpose. So your character is going to do something. I decided to create a character whose mission is to help others feel more connected and feel less alone. So that's the only idea I had and that's where everything came from. Then you start to relate that mission and purpose of your character to an object, an animal, a fantasy creature, a human being. So what thing, person, human, animal, whatever, can bring to life that purpose. And this doesn't have to be super obvious. It could be a little tiny dog being super brave and fighting a war. It doesn't matter. It just has to be for you, what do you see the character being that will bring that purpose to life? So to me, I got inspired by my super loving chihuahua, so I decided from the get go, it had to be a little chihuahua, and my chihuahua tongue is sticking out all the time, so it had to be a little chihuahua with its tongue sticking out. If your character is on a mission to do something really brave and it's on a quest, then if you choose a little chihuahua, you wouldn't make it all soft and fluffy with super cute eyes and just being soft and gentle. Even if you chose a chihuahua, you'd make it a little fierce chihuahua, those that have strong personalities like my other chihuahua, then that would change the whole thing, even if it's the same animal. And then you can even choose objects, you can send a sword that's going for a quest or a rock or whatever you want. It doesn't have to be a living thing. It can be a plant. Then we're going to choose one special feature or quirk or magical power. In this case, I chose that it has a magical flower that gives him powers to send messages to loved ones. Why did I choose a flower? Because I thought it would be something cute that she could carry around and grab it when she was going to use her magical powers. I made that decision because I thought it would fit in with the story and fulfill the purpose of it being able to send messages. I figured it would need a magical power to send those messages. Find its special power, special feature, and write it down. Then we're going to define a few personality traits. Again, just a handful. Don't go over here writing a treaty of its personality. We just need some basic traits. Unless you're creating a movie or a video game or a whole novel for your character, just four or five will do. For this character, I'm thinking it has to be gentle, very loving, going to be cute and playful and always happy. It'll be bouncy and cute features and stuff. These traits that you have defined will affect everything you design from now on, from the silhouette to the size of the features to the size of the head, the body, the size of the eyes, the colors I choose, the poses I put him in, the way he carries his magical object. Everything is going to be influenced by what we just wrote down. This is why the back story matters, and this is why the back story will make all your decisions super easy to make from now on, because you're not guessing, once you know who your character is, what it's going to do, and what its special feature or superpower is, then you're just filling in the blanks and responding to that story and not making up a bunch of features and things without any guidance. We're going to build this character in a very playful way, no pressure to draw perfectly we don't need any of that. We just need to bring this character to life. You'll see that everything starts with very simple shapes and we'll start refining it as we go along the process. Now that you have this, let's move on to the next lesson where we're going to start bringing our character to life by defining it silhouette. 4. Silhouettes: So now that we know who our character is and what he's here for, we're going to start defining the silhouette. This is where the backstory is going to start influencing the design. You'll see as I go along how it influences the choices that I make. I'll have in mind that my chihuahua is on a mission to comfort and send love. I'll choose very rounded shapes, no sharp points, silhouettes that feel soft and gentle and comforting. We're going to explore a few options, keep it playful, and let's start creating our silhouettes. Just create a new file and I like creating 12 by 12 " files. So I'm going to go here 12 by 12. And then I'm going to name it here 12 by 12. I have the preset s for next time. Here, I know I have 47 layers available, and if I go to color profile, I always work in this profile in Procreate. When I click here, it will create that new file. If you go to your gallery, and you go here to create a new canvas. You will see that that preset is saved here. If you want to create another file like that, you just have to tap there and then it's super easy to create new files. I'm going to delete this one and we're going to work in this one. The first thing I want you to do is, don't worry about colors, don't worry about brushes. Grab a brush that's big and blocky, so you're not drawn to creating too many details at this stage. Let's choose one from I'm in the classic library. If you're not in the classic library, you can go here to pack to libraries, and you can go to Procreate Library and choose whichever I'm in markers. Let's say it is paradise. So let's choose any dark color. I'm choosing a black. Now let's see how that paints. That is perfect. If you don't have that procreate library, everybody should have it. But you can go to the classic library and go to painting and grab the Nicole brush, which is also very cool. It just has a bit more texture. So I'm going to go back to the libraries and in the procreate library, I'm choosing paradise. I'm just going to start drawing. If you don't know how to draw or if you know how to draw, don't overthink it, start thinking of shapes. My character is a chihuahua and it's very cute and it's very soft in personality and very magical. You already know the story. I'm going to be thinking of that while I'm drawing. If it's a very cute character, I don't want pointy shapes like this because that is an aggressive character that in no way will be a cute chia. Having that in mind, I'm going to create very rounded shapes. If your character is aggressive or has to be scary, for example, then think about bold, scary shapes. That's the only thing you have to think here, but not overthinking the drawing. I'll just start making basic shapes. Let's start with a circle for the head. I'm thinking that if it's cute, big heads and tiny bodies are really cute, then maybe it has tiny little ears. And then I'm going to make this a bit smaller so I can draw the limbs easier and see what I'm doing. I am not thinking about drawing anything pretty. I'm just laying down shapes and we're going to do this as fast as you can, so your brain doesn't come in and overthink it and make sure you make your brush bigger or smaller, so this is faster. I'm making this a bit more rounded. Then an oval for a body. Chihuahuas always have those pointy ears that are very big. Maybe I make a smaller head and then a bigger body. I'm making a chubby chihuahua, or like a pug and maybe a more square face. And I like a little body. M Let's try one with a long body, but maybe a round head, totally round because this one is square, let's see. Round head, long body, super skinny chihuahua, then bigger limbs. And then I can even try one because these ones are all standing up. But what if it's a normal real dog shape? Maybe like this and small legs. Then this one maybe you can see the tail because this one, the tails in the back so you can see it from the front. Let's do that same thing, but smaller round head, and longer body. Then the tail. You can do as many as you want. I'm going to stop here for the sake of not making this last super long and because I already found something that I really like. So as you draw this, you'll see things immediately that you say no, this is not my character. Your character will be speaking to you, so just listen to your intuition. It works. For me, these two are my favorite, and I think when I imagine my character, that's what I imagine something really cute. I'm going to save this one for next time because I want my character to be standing up. So I'm going to choose this one and you choose whichever one you feel you like best and you go here to the selection tool and I'm going to select that one. I'm going to swipe down with three fingers and duplicate. You'll see the character is there and if I turn off this layer, it's isolated. Now I have it separate from the other layer. All my characters are still here, but I have this little guy alone, and I'm going to move it up here. If there's something you don't like about it, you can draw on it or you can erase parts of it. I can erase this little corner here maybe. But don't be too picky about it. We just need the basic shape. We have our silhouette of our character ready and in the next lesson, we are going to start defining its features. 5. Features: So with our silhouette chosen, we can now concentrate on the features and proportions. This is where the personality is going to really start coming through because obviously the face of the character is going to be what brings it to life. So every decision here again, connects to the back story because my character is soft and loving and cute. I'm going to have that in mind as I draw the face and the features. And remember again that we're still drawing simple shapes, no need for perfection here. I am very emphatic on this because I know how much we try to make everything perfect from the get go and we want our sketches to be super pretty, and we don't need that. At this point, we just need to bring this character into the real world, into our iPad. We will concentrate on refining those details and making it nicer later. Now that we have the silhouette there, let's go to the layers and I'm going to rename this one just so I have an organized file. We're going to work on this one, and I need six of these. I'm going to duplicate this layer and grab it here and move it and I go to the layers and do that again, duplicate it, and grab it and move it here. Now I can merge those three, so they're in one layer. Now I duplicate that layer and I drag it down here. That way, I have six little bodies that I can work on. I'm going to merge those two also, and if I tap on the end, I can reduce the opacity. And that way, we will have the shape of the body in the background, but we can start drawing our features on top. Because here we're going to do exactly the same thing as we did with the bodies. We're going to draw a lot of options without overthinking it, and then we're going to find the one we love the most. I'm going to create a new layer on top. I'm going to go to the brushes and in the classic library, I love working with a brush that's in the calligraphy section and it's called monoline. It's a very straight brush. And if you tap on it, you can go to stabilization and you can modify the amount of streamline and stabilization. Here, you'll see that I'm drawing that line. If I increase the streamline, it'll make it smoother, but if I have it too high, I will lose the detail. I don't like having that too high. Same thing with the stabilization, see? That doesn't look at all like I drew, don't make it too high. Maybe like that. You keep your shaves, but it's easier for you to draw smooth lines. Tap here and that's your modified monoline brush. The reason why we created that layer is because let's say I draw some es here and then I draw the eyes here, and then I draw the eyes here. If I have that in the same layer as the bodies, that is attached and I cannot move the eyes around. But if I have it in a separate layer, I can go here to the selection tool and I can grab the eyes, for example, and move them around because they're not attached to the layer of the body. This is why I like working in separate layers. Let's undo all these and start by drawing some shapes. Let's start with big eyes because big eyes are so cute. If I create a shape and at the end I hold it you'll see that this comes up. If I tap circle, it will create a totally perfect circle and I can even modify it from this point or an ellipse. And then tap circle and it will create a perfect circle. That's great for making eyes. I'm going to leave it there and just tap here and I'm going to fill it in. Now I want to grab the selection tool, select around it, three fingers down, duplicate it, and now I duplicated my eye really easily, so I don't have to draw it again, and I'm just going to release it there. But if you go to the layers, you will see that it's two different layers. I don't want that, so I'm going to merge them. I'm going to create the nose. Here I think a small nose and let's reduce the size of the brush and I'm going to make a little mouth. I'm going to make this bigger and I'm going to add some little cheeks and eyebrows and then something here for the ears. Again, I am working really fast and not overthinking this. I think I'm going to raise a little light for the eye here. Now I'm going to move on to the next. Let's try something different. Let's try again round eyes and fill them in. Then I'm going to do the same thing, selected, three fingers down, duplicate, move it here, and then release it, and then I'm going to merge those they're in the same layer. Let's try with a tiny little nose. And then bigger cheeks. Then maybe let's give it some tiny eyebrows here and maybe a little rounded triangle here. Let's fill this in. Now let's move on to the next one. Try different shapes. Let's try some eyes that are irregular. If I press continuing feeling here, I can tap here instead of having to drag the color in again. Let's go to the brush. Maybe this one has a little snout and the nose and the mouth, maybe this one has little whiskers and eyebrows like this and just a line here. Let's make the light of the eyes here. And then continue. Let's try a little tiny eyes, separated, and a bigger nose, bigger mouth. Let's add the cheeks. Now big ears here. Then let's go to the next one and try a big nose. Then two small eyes close to the nose and a little mouth. It's looking like a koala. Then some little eyebrows up here. Now let's get a cheeks. Maybe the whiskers are in here. Maybe it has a heart here for the ears. Et's make one with big eyes like this and then make the nose here on long whiskers, then the eyebrows, Then let's erase the lights here. Now I try different things and I'm going to see what I like best and I really like these too. I might save this one for next time, but I'm going to focus on this one. Right now, I'm seeing that I really like the little whiskers, but I'm going to try them like this but smaller here. I'm going to add those there with the brush because the eraser doesn't paint. Now that I know that this is a character I want to work with, I'm going to go to the layers panel and I am going to group these layers, the body and the head. And I can rename that two features just so we're super organized. I want to duplicate that group by swiping to the left and duplicating. I am going to toggle this one and go to this layer which has the features and select my character, swipe down with three fingers and duplicate that and then go to the layer that has the bodies and do the same thing. Selected, swipe down with three fingers, duplicate and now I'm going to move that up and I'm going to delete these two because I don't need them. I'm going to hide the features group. Now we have the character there, but because we duplicated him, the opacity went back up and we don't want him to be that dark, so we're going to touch the N and reduce the opacity again so we can actually see his features. This is great. This is the base of our character, and in the next lesson, we're going to refine some of his features and create our final sketch. 6. Refining + Final Sketch: In this lesson, we're going to refine our character to create our final sketch. We ended up last lesson with our character here, the feature separated from the body. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make this bigger just because I want to create the sketch a bit bigger. It's too small, and I'm going to put him in the middle of the canvas just because that's how I like it. You don't have to. What we're going to do now is use a liquefied tool and a selection tool to move things around until he's perfect. So. If you've never used a liquefy tool before, this is super cool. I'm going to go to the body, and here in the adjustments, you'll find liquefy. There's different effects of the liquefy here. But the one I like to use a lot is the push and here you can change the size. If you make it really big, you're going to push a huge area in or out. I'm going to undo that. If you make it really small, you can push smaller areas in or out. This is really cool. Just play around with all of them, there's, for example, expand where you can make things bigger. See. Or pinch, which is the opposite. If I want to make this year smaller, play around with those. I'm just going to use the push right now. I'm going to make it a bit big and the head is a tiny bit big. I'm going to modify it a bit just a tiny bit, moving things around. Maybe the years if you want to move this around a bit like this to make them pointier here, and then have a little bit more shape, not just a triangle. This doesn't have to be perfect. This is just for you to have an idea for when we do this sketch. Let's say that's good for me, I'm going to go to the features one, and then I can do the same thing. I can use a liquefied tool or I can use a selection tool to move things around. For example, I'm thinking the eyes are a bit too big, like all the features. I'm going to select them and grab them and make them a bit smaller and I think they're a bit tilted. I can rotate them here. I think that works much better. I'm going to release it. Now I'm thinking the body is a bit too big. I'm going to go back to the body and select this, the body. Again, don't be too precious with this. I'm going to make it smaller. And here I have uniform, you'll see that you cannot make it thinner or longer. It just goes up in size or down proportionally. If I press free form, I can actually alter this shape, which I think that's much better. I want it to be more condensed. Now I can make it smaller this way and also smaller this way. And release it and I like that much better. Just play around with it until you find something you like. Because this is inspiring in my chihuahua and her tongue is always sticking out, I'm going to go to the face again and with my monoin brush, I'm going to draw her little tongue. Maybe a smaller line here. The nose is crooked, so I can move it around and place it in the middle of the eyes. I want to play with the head shape again and do the same thing I did with the body and squish it. I I'm doing this in real time so you can see what goes through my mind when I'm designing a character. There's a lot of experimentation. I really like that, but it's a bit too square here, I'm going to select my eraser and delete a tiny bit here and we're going to make that perfect when we make our sketch. But I'm liking that so much better. Now I just have to go to the face and use a selection to move these ears to the middle here, and then the other one and then I need to move the whiskers because now they're floating. Just use the selection to move things around and to change sizes. What I want to do now is go to the layers and now I can tap on that group and flatten it because now I don't need it separated, and I'm going to reduce the opacity. I'm going to create a new layer and in that layer, we're going to create this sketch. For sketches, you can use any pencil, but I love the sketching six B pencil from percrate and use a rotation in the canvas to your advantage because if you're drawing this shape this way, for example, to me, that's really hard on my hand. But if I rotate it, it's more natural for my hand to draw the shape. Rotate the canvas a lot when you're drawing so that you can find something that's easier for you. Here I'm just going to go around the head don't worry. For example, there, my hand moved, so it's not perfect. Don't worry because now we go to the liquefy again and with a small size, we're going to fix these lines, they're exactly where we want them to be. There. That's perfect. Now let's go back to our brush and add the ears. If you want the ear to be exactly the same on both sides, just grab this and then swipe down with three fingers duplicated and then here you can flip horizontal and then move it here. Perfect. Now I use eraser to erase these things. Now you can go to your layers and merge them, so they're one layer. While we're there, I'm going to erase this part that overlaps here because I don't want it to be divided there. I'm going to continue drawing. Then the little arms, I'm going to make them down so it's not like that. Again, don't worry too much about this. This is not the final drawing, so it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. Now I'm going to create the features. Again, for the eye is just go around and don't release at the end and tap here and circle if you want a circle, obviously. I'm thinking I don't want the eye to be so solid. I wanted to have a white area here on the side so that you can see where the character is looking at. I'm going to just fill this in like this because if I fill this in like this because this brush has texture, it looks ugly. I rather color it in like this really fast so that everything looks the same, very sketchy. Don't be scared to make these decisions while you're sketching. At any point of the process, if you don't like something or you get a better idea, just do it because it's your character. I'm going to erase the little light here in the eye, and I'm going to draw the eyebrow and the little cheek. Now I can use the selection tool to select the eye. I've done with three fingers duplicate it, and just move it here. And then release it. Now I can draw the eyebrow and the little cheek. Here I'm going to draw the nose. I think that's a bit big, so I'm going to select them and make it a bit smaller. I know some whiskers and the ears, I'm going to try to follow the shape of the ear and I'm going to make my brush really big so I can color this in really fast. Now I go to the layers and I'm going to merge these two because I painted the eye and the ears in a separate layer. Now I can hide the sketch we were using in the back and I'm going to rename this layer to sketch. And there we have it. Look at it, grab this tool, flip it horizontal, release it there and see if it looks weird. To me, this is looking weird. I'm going to grab my selection tool and make this a bit smaller. I'm going to select free form so I can move it a bit like this. That's better. The mouth, I'm going to draw a bit in here. This is a good tool because your brain is used to looking at it without flipping it. But when you flip it, you see things that are not working. I'm going to go back and flip it again and that's perfect. Now that we have the sketch in the next lesson, we're going to design our color palette. 7. Color Palette: In this lesson, we're going to choose our color palette, and again, this is all influenced by our character's backstory. Think about what colors match your character's personality and backstory. For example, with these characters, which one looks more cute, caring, and playful? See, color is super important in what story your character is telling. I'm going to show you how I chose my palette and how I try different colors within that palette to find the best one for my character. We ended last lesson with this sketch, and now I am going to duplicate that sketch and hide this one. I always like keeping my whole process. I am going to work with this one for the colors. I'm keeping the sketch here just so I have it in case I need it for something else. I'm going to move this one up here. And make it a bit smaller because I'm going to try three color ways for my character. Try as many colorways as you want. I'm going to duplicate this again, move it here, and then this again and move it here. Then if you're like me and this is bothering you and you want to center this, just go to the layers and select them all by swiping to the right and now you can move the three of them at once. Let's place them there and I'm going to merge them. So the t are in one layer. I'm going to create a new layer and drag it underneath so that I can add color in there. Here I'm going to be using the monoline brush again. If you don't know how to generate color palettes, I have a class on creating your signature color palette in procrade, but you also don't need to do anything very complicated here. It's very simple. We don't want to add too many colors to our characters. Think about your story, what your character represents, what his personality is. For example, mine is very cute. And happy and magical and it has a magic flower that I wanted to glow. So I want to be using colors that allow me to tell that story. So I want him to be like bright colors because if I ever put him on a dark background where the flower is glowing, I want him to send out her, I want her to send out. And I'm not making her muted colors, for example, because that doesn't go really with my cute story, at least with my cute style. So if you're making a character that's a villain, he's probably not going to be all cute pink and purple colors. He's going to be something or moody. Think about your character when you're selecting the colors. I have some muted color palettes like these ones, for example, I am going to add this one earthy to the class and the soft botanicals also to the class, so you can download them. This is my favorite colors, so I'm going to use this one. If your palette doesn't have this blue icon here, let's say you want to use this one, you just tap the three dots and you set it as active. That way, when you drag your palette out, that's the one you're going to see. This is really useful because it's really easy to see your colors and choose your colors from here without having to go here every time. I'm going to start experimenting with some of these colors that I think will suit my character. So I'm in that layer underneath the sketch. Again, I'm not going to overthink this. I'm just going to start experimenting with some color markings in the face and different colors for the body. Let's start with this purple. I'm going to make this bigger. Maybe it has a marking like this and I'm just going to go around. It doesn't have to be perfect. I can go outside the line and I'm going to fill that in. Then maybe with this light color, I can feel the rest of the head and the body. Let's lift the limbs out for now. Maybe the limbs can have a bit of that color here and then some of that purple at the end. Just because that's how AI it has little boots. Then maybe start thinking of textures or markings, spots, things that will make your character very unique. Maybe I'm going to add this color and but if it has a heart here, that's cute. You can also paint the ears, for example. If you go here to the sketch and we swipe to the right and we activate alpha log, you'll see that it has a checkerboard there. That means that when I color over that, I'm only covering in the areas that are painted. That makes it way easier to paint. Now let's go back to the colors and I can add some purple underneath the eyebrows too and some pink for the cheeks and the tongue, and some actual white for the white of the eyes. I don't have white there, so I just stop here and select real white. And then here I go back to my palette. Good. I think that's a good first option. Now I'm going to another option. Here I'm going to try this orange and maybe I do something similar to that, but like this, Again, I'm thinking of my character's personality and backstory and I'm trying to make him look very gentle, somebody that would be very loving and would want to send messages to his loved ones. That's why I didn't give him fans or anything scary. I want him to portray my story. I'm having that in mind as I choose the colors and the markings. What if the body has this? Then this could be a light pink. What if the ears have stripes like raccoons tail. Let's see. There's no right or wrong answer here, maybe some dots here. I'm going to go to the sketch and paint these areas with a darker orange. I don't want to add too many colors to it because then it would be too complex and I want to keep him as a simple character. This way, when you add accessories, clothing, props, background, it doesn't look too convoluted, everything. I'm going to paint the eyebrows this color too, and now go back to the colors and maybe I want to add very light cheeks, this pink, and the tongue. Again, I'm going to add the white of the eyes and go back to my palette and that's it. Finally, this last one, let's make this one pink. I'm just going to go ahead and make everything pink. And then add some white markings. Maybe here he has a heart that you can see from the top of the head, it forms a heart and maybe white in the eyebrows and white around the eyes. Maybe here it has something that resembles a little cloud. Then I really like this in the first one. I'm going to do that here. Maybe this one has a snout. That's cute. Now I'm going to do the white of the eyes and I want to add some darker pink details. Maybe the tips of the ears are darker pink. Maybe here it has some markings, and the cheeks and the tongue. Then I'm going to go to the sketch with that light color, fill in the ears, see how that looks. And I'm going to make the eyebrows dark pink on the border with the cheeks also. There you haven't make as many as you want. I am between these two, but I think I'm going to have to go with the pink. It's so cute. I'm going to go with the pink. In the next lesson, we are going to create our character turnaround. 8. Turn around: Now we're creating a turnaround and this is one of the most important steps to understand their character completely. We're going to think about the characters from different angles to make sure that the decisions we make in designing it make sense from every angle. Also, if somebody is designing it in treaty, it'll be very helpful for them. Let's go through this chihuahua from other angles. So because I like keeping all these organized, I am going to swipe to the right, group these two, rename this group, and call this color. And now I'm going to minimize that group and here we're going to work with the sketch, not the colors. We had the sketch here and this is why I like saving my stuff. I'm going to duplicate that layer and turn it on and I'm going to drag it to the top on top of the colors, and I'm going to hide the colors for now. If your iPad doesn't have so many layers, then it's better to create a new canvas. What you can do now is you can go to your gallery and you swipe to the left and you duplicate this canvas, and then you go in here and then you can delete all these. That way, you can work in this canvas. But my iPad still has some layers left, so I'm not going to do that, and I'm going to keep working on this one. See, it has all the layers. For creating a turnaround, I'm going to go to Canvas and turn on my drawing guide. Here in Edit your drawing guide, you can change the grid size. You don't want it to be too big because you want to be able to guide you as to where you're placing every feature. Something like this would work. Tab here and I'm going to move it up here. I want three of them to fit here because I'm going to have her face in front and then to the side and then to the back. I need space for t, so I'm going to make it smaller. I'm going to go to a new layer on top and with a color. I'm going to turn this like this. I'm going to draw some lines. For example, here, sport the ears. I I don't release my pencil at the end, then that line is straight and you will be guided by the guides so that it's straight. Now one for the top of the head and then one here for the neck, basically draw some lines where the major features of your characters are. Top of the head, bottom of the head, top of the ears, if it has ears, then the bottom of the body, and then where it's standing where the hands end. As I was going to put the lines here for the eyes, I realized they're too in the middle of the head. I want them to be a tiny bit lower. You can still make some changes here. I'm going to go to the sketch layer and use a selection tool and just select all the face features and I'm going to lower them a bit. Yes, I think that looks so much cuter. Great. Now I can continue with my lines and add the one for the top of the eyes. And for the bottom. Great. We have the grade in the back, but I like doing this because it's easier for me to use these guides and then the back guides just as a backup. But this way it's more visual for me. Maybe you don't need this. I'm going to tap on the end and reduce the opacity of those guidelines, and I'm going to drag them underneath the sketch. This sketch doesn't have any of the markings that we created when we decided how the character is going to look with color. I want to bring in the colored character here just to have it as a reference and to add those markings so that then I can decide how they're going to look on the side and the back also. So let's go to the layers, and here we have our colors. I'm going to sort to the left and duplicate that and I'm going to turn it on and tap it and flatten it so that the three of them are all in one layer. I'm going to bring them down here and I don't really need these two because I just need this one. If I take them outside the canvas and I drop them there, they disappear. Now I have this little girl here and I will leave her there for my reference. I'm going back to the sketch, and I'm going to choose a six B pencil. And I'm going to leave this pressed so I can grab that same color and I'm going to add the markings to that sketch. Here she has these markings in her head I said it's a little heart and then a little snout. And then the markings here, she has the darker here. I'm just making the big ones. I'm not making these ones here because if I draw that, it looks very weird and I still want my drawing to look cute. I'm just going to draw this cloud here and then these ones. Now we have our sketch ready for the turnaround. What we're going to do here is cheat, so it's easier for us. I'm going to duplicate that sketch layer and move it here to the middle. Now I'm going to grab the selection tool and select rectangle standing here in the middle of my character, I'm going to draw down onto the right, a rectangle, swipe down with three fingers and cut that. Now we're going to use the eraser and erase these markings here and the arm. Now we're going to use a selection and go back to free hand and just grab the face features and move them here. So you think about how big the face of the character is facing to the side, I think that would be enough and you keep it in line. So the eyes are there, they're in line with this pink line. And let's try that. I'm going to release it, and now I'm going to go to my brush and I'm going to finish off the face. See, the face is kind of like square. So I want it to be kind of like a square like that, too, but that's too flat of a head, so I need to make it more rounded. So maybe like that. Maybe here it goes up a bit more and try different shapes of the face until you end up with something you like. I'm just going to fast forward this so you see how many I make just until I find something that's suitable. When do I know it's suitable? It's when I'm happy with it. This is something very personal. You will feel when it looks good. I think I got it. Now we have to move things around. So I'm keeping these together, moving it around together. I'm keeping the same distance between the snout and the eye as I had here. The, now I can erase what's overlapping and I can make it because now it's three D, you're seeing it from the side. Now I can make the nose overlap a bit. Then I can go in here with the liquefied tool and make this line perfect, move things around a bit until I'm happy with it. And the ear is here to the side, it would not be there. It would definitely on top of the eye. I'm going to select that ear and move it. I will probably be there. I want to make this line a bit longer here. Now I want to make another ear here because you would see the other ear from the side. I'm keeping it the same shape. Now I'm going to do the body. Let's say the body is like this and then here's the other leg and now I can draw the hands. The hands end in this line. I can draw it like that and then I can even draw the other hand like that. Now I'm adding the marking. Here is where the grid is useful. The first one goes still here, this part of the heart. Would be like that. Then here in this line, there's dot. You wouldn't see the other one and then you would see half of this one. Then the whiskers, I'm going to erase because they wouldn't be there. They would be here. So Now I can use liquefy again and just finish making all my lines look good. The body is probably moved to the front part. I'm going to bring it back a bit, so I can bear the weight of the head. Now the eye is super round and it wouldn't look so round from the side, so I'm going to select it with free form selected, I'm going to squeeze it a bit and move it forward a bit. And now we have the tail, which we couldn't see before. I think I want to give it a big tail and make it curly and I think I'm happy with that. Now what we're going to do is grab this one and duplicate it and then move it here so that we can make the back facing one. There you raise everything that you wouldn't see from the back. I want to keep that marking there so I know where it's coming from. But it obviously wouldn't be the same in the back, just keep those lines there. Now I'm going to draw what you see from the back. That marking should continue and I want it to be a heart. Here it would have the bottom part and then maybe the spots, it has more on the back. What if they glow when it's using its magic. I don't know. Just keep adding things according to the story of the character. Now here's the tail, the tail basically goes up here. What you would see from the back is something like that because it's curled. Maybe it has some spots here also, and that's it. I want to merge those three into the same layer and rename that and call it turnaround. Now this is your last chance to modify things here. Grab the liquefied tool and I'm doing this in real life, you see all the iterations and changes that it goes through. Because if you see an artist do it and they do it right the first time and that's it, that's probably not how it came together. It was probably a lot of iteration, so that's why in my classes, I like to leave these parts that look like a bit of indecision going back and forth because that's the process. I'm going to use the liquefy here and I'm going to modify the face shape a bit. I'm not super happy with it being such a long square. I want it to be more of a rectangle to the top. I'm making this very big and I'm pulling the whole head up. That looks so much better now. I have to do the same thing here. See now where the ears end. I basically have to pull the whole thing up also so that the ears end up there, but also the top of the head, it's now here, so I can make that a bit smaller and raise the top of the head a bit. Make that smaller and change the size until you're pulling what you want to pull. Here, the eye got a bit smaller. I like that. I'm making these eyes a tiny bit smaller. Again, make that as small as you need to so that you're only moving the areas that you want. I'm trying to make everything line up perfectly. Now I have to fix this one so it matches this one. I have to pull it up I dip this one, so I'm pulling it up till the same place, and then the years now I just want to make the body a bit smaller, so I'm going to select all the bodies. I'm going to push them in like this. That way, the size of them is all changed at the same time, so they all end up the same size. Now I'm just going to position them where they're supposed to go. Use eraser and the pencil to tidy these things up and then the pencil to finish those lines. And then that way, everything looks good. Okay, let's hide these lines and see how this looks like. You can also now go to the canvas and hide the drawing guide, and I am so much happier with the shape, so I'm glad I took the time to fix things at the end, so that now when I go into the final character, I am totally happy with it. So don't be scared of going back and forth, and if you don't like it, you just undo and go back to what you had before. We're done with our character turnaround and now in the next lesson, we're going to create a different pose for the character. Mm hmm. 9. Pose: Now with our character and the structure in place, we can start exploring different poses because having our character turnaround is great, but we want this character to be expressive if you're going to use this character in a children's book or in an animation, or you're going to tell a story with it. You end up doing different activities from different angles. So that's where you start designing a pose. I'm going to show you one pose and how I create that from my character turnaround. For this, I'm just thinking about how this character will exist in the real world. How would it stand? Would it be super rigid or be jumping and playful? Would it have its head down, sad or would it be magical and how will it hold its flower? I'm thinking of all these things and just bringing that post to life. I'm going to go to this color layer and I'm going to move it here to the side. I'm going to move this turnaround up here, so we have some space here to create the sketch for our pose. When you're deciding what pose to create, choose an action that represents your character the most. For example, mine uses a magic flower to send love messages to people so that they don't feel so alone and they feel connected. I want to show her in the moment where she's holding the flower and it's activating all its magical powers and then a message is coming out from. So that's what I'm going to create. I'm going to use the information of this turnaround to create the sketch for that pose and then we'll refine it. So I'll go to the layer and I'll choose the pose that is closer to the pose that I want. Because I want you to see what I have in my head, I am going to put the image here of the future when I already drew it so that you can see what I have in my head. For that pose, the one that more closely resembles it is this one. I'm going to grab this one and I'm going to swipe down and duplicate it, and I'm going to drag it down here. And now I'm going to start modifying it as much as I can so that all the proportions are kept intact. Again, using the selection tool, I am going to move the head because I want the head to be tilted. I'm going to tilt the head like that. Then I'm going to move the whole face features to the side a bit and this is going to get messy. Don't worry, this is just the base of our sketch because I want to make these three quarters Basically, I want to rotate this to match the rotation of the head. The middle of the head is here and then the eyes are here. That's why I put it there. Then obviously, the ear will be also moved. Up here because the ears always go in line with the eyes. That one would be moved there, and then this here is also going to be moved. That one's going to be in the back of the head back there. I'm going to put it here for now. If you don't know where something goes, just move it away. Now I'm going to start fixing the shape of the head because I can't leave it this rectangular basically because you'll see that on the side, it's more rounded, so I need to round it a bit more. Also to include the side that can't be floating. I'm going to round it a bit more and same here, the head won't be as square, it'll be more rounded. Then the body is maybe two moved to the side, so I need to place it in a place where it makes sense. Maybe there, more centered. Now I can move this here and place it here in the back of the head and erase that part because it's in the back of the head so you couldn't see it. This here, maybe I want to rotate it a bit and I'm trying to keep all the proportions so that the character stays consistent. That's why I am modifying this and not just drawing it from scratch again. These whiskers would now go here now I wanted holding the flower, this hand would move here, not here. Again, bear with me for a bit with the ugly sketch face. Then this hand also would be holding the flower. Then I don't want to just standing there. I want this to be more expressive, so I'm going to move this feet rotate it, move it here, and then move this one. It's jumping up in the air. And then make it a bit more rounded, again, the same reason because here it's more square, but here to the side, it's more rounded. I would basically be the middle of the body. Actually, this arm would start closer to here, and then you could see some part of the tail because now it's not totally facing front, you'd see maybe this part of the tail, it would be holding the magic flower it's very messy right now, but it portrays the idea and now it would have some light going here and then and then the magic love message would appear here. Perfect. I'm going to move that down a tiny bit now that we have that, look at it smaller and look at it bigger and see if it works, see if it looks consistent with the character. Here I see that the face is too squished and this one I made it way taller. I'm thinking I might have made the face too thick because here I added to it, so I changed the proportion I make it a bit bigger here, and then you can use the liquefied tool there also. To fix that a tiny bit. Don't overdo it because you will be altering the proportions too much and then it'll be too different from your original character. There. Now we're going to create the final sketch. For the final sketch, I like doing this on its own canvas, just so we have a big in case you want to print it or something. Let's go to the gallery and create a new canvas. It's going to be 12 by 12. And I'm going to go back to that file and grab that layer that we created, hold it and with your other hand, go to the gallery, go to your new canvas, open the layers and drop it there. There it is. I'm going to select it and make it as big as I need to, as big as a canvas and place it there in the middle. Now we're going to use this to create a final sketch and that's what we're going to use to paint our final illustration at the end. I'm going to make this more transparent. I'm going to add a new layer. Now I'm going to use my monoline. In the recent ones, you'll find your recent brushes, and I'm going to use a monoline to ink this. Why? Because I want a super smooth sketch and also because if you're creating a coloring book or a stamp of your character, then you will want these smooth lines. What I'm going to do is just go around it. And if you create some lines like that, don't worry because you can use your liquefied tool very small at the end and kind of smooth them out. See, my hands very shaky, so I have to do this if I want perfect lines, but I also enjoy the kind of hand drawn look. So I'm not too worried about that. So I'm just going to go around everything. I'm leaving this press here so it creates an ellipse. I don't want it to be so round here because it's not facing totally forward. I need to fix that one a bit because they need to match. Here you can also leave this pressed to create arcs. This is very useful here. Let's fill this in and see if they are matching. No. Maybe make this one a bit smaller. See here the marking is going to come like this. Now let's do the body. I'm just following that ugly sketch I made before. The little tail. The flower I'm going to make with a smaller brush. Here it has a marking of the cloud in the belly, that would probably look something like this. And finally, the mouth, I want to make this even thinner. See, I made the tongue a bit curved because now you're looking at it from the side. Now I don't like this overlapping line here, I'm going to erase it, make it small, the eraser. Same here. I'm just perfecting it. Then here I want to use the liquefied tool very small to fix this. Now, it's much smoother. I'm going to erase the little lights in the eyes here and I'm going to draw the message that appears after she uses her magic flower. I'm going to perfect this here. I'm going to hide my sketch. Now I think I'm going to do a new layer and just draw this light. If it goes to the back and then here it goes to the front and then to the message. I'll just close that shape and fill it in and then here fill that in. Now I can make that way more transparent. Then I can go into my sketch instead of erasing these parts that are covered by the light, I want to edit this in a non destructive way. I'm going to add a mask. I tap there, I add a mask and now everything that I paint on that mask with white will be shown, everything shown right now. Whatever I paint with black, you can go here to the classic view and tap here in the black. Whatever you paint with black will be hidden. See, I'm painting this. Because it will be hidden behind that ray of light. Same this. The cool thing about that mask is that if I don't like that in the future, I'm like, no, I don't really want that light to go around her. You can just go and turn off the mask and your drawing is still there. That's non destructive editing and it's really useful. One last thing is that I'm going to fill this with black, the heart. I'm going to turn on my mask. I'm just going to add the final details, which is that when she uses her magic flower, little tiny magic flowers appear where she's been so other people can have the power to send love to their loved ones. I'm going to do that in another layer, and I'm just going to add the indication of little tiny flowers. And maybe little thoughts like sparks of magic. And here. I'm missing some whiskers because I think you can see a tiny bit of whiskers from this side. Perfect. Now we have our illustration and in the next lesson, we're going to color it and finalize it. 10. Final Illustration Part 1: In this lesson, we're going to start our final illustration and this is where our character is going to come to life because now we have it in our pose and now it's going to have its colors and it's going to be rendered beautifully. The whole work here is done. We're not making any decisions. Everything has been decided for now, so now it's just adding color. There's so many ways to add color in Procreate. I usually work a lot in digital watercolor style, but I'm thinking I want this to be a bit more graphical something you find in a video game, for example, that's a style I'm going to follow. Let's start painting. What I like to do is go to the gallery and swipe to the left and duplicate this file just because I like having that one there on its own in case I want to use it, as I said, for black and white, coloring books or for a stamp or something. Here I'm going to color this one. I'm going to go here and make sure that this is my active color palette and drag it out. I'm going to merge all of these. I'm going to reduce the opacity. And I'm going to set it to multiply so that I'll be able to see what's underneath it. Now I'm going to go to this layer and I'm going to start building the shapes that make the character. Again, I'm using my monoline brush because it's a very smooth brush that it's going to let me have very smooth shapes. If you like, you can use brushes with textures. I am going to establish a background for my character first. Here in the background color, I want to choose a dark background. I think I'm going to use that green for now. Tap here. If you want to bring a reference image here for your colors, you can go to the gallery and go look for your colored image and then take a screenshot of this. And then you go to that screenshot and you can modify it and then Preston, save two photos, and then go to the gallery, go back to your file, and here you can go to reference, turn it on, and choose an image. Important image. Choose that one. There you have your reference image and if you want to make it smaller, make the image smaller and then here from the corner, you can reduce the size of this square and then make it a bit bigger. Perfect. Then I have to bring out my palette again because I exited the canvas, so it puts it away. Let's start with the head. The head is pink. I'm going to make this a bit bigger. I'm just going to go around Always use a liquefied tool to your favor and then smooth those lines. Great. That's the head. Now I'm going to create another layer and this time I'm going to create this ear. I will draw the ear and I'm going to make sure that I close that shape so I can fill it in. Because that ear is behind the head, I'm going to drag it underneath. Then I'm going to create another layer and I'm going to make the tail. Close the shape, fill it in. And I can create the legs there too, because the tails and the legs are behind the body. So just continue filling and tap there, and then I can create another layer and make the body. Make sure to close that shape, fill it in. That one you can also use a liquefied tool to make it match. Perfect. And now we have to create some layers on top. The flour goes on top of the body and on top of the head. I will make that layer on top of everything and where did my palette go? I'll bring it out again. I'm going to paint my flower with this green for now. I'm going to start with the petals from the back, which are these two, create another layer. Then I can see what's happening, I'm going to choose a darker color, create this petal in the front, fill it in. And then with another color, create these two petals in the front. And fill those in. Then with the back petals, I can make these leaves in the bottom. I'm going to choose this green. I'm choosing these colors here for now, but I can change them later. Now we have the flour. Now on top of the flower, we need the hands. We're going to go to the last layer up here and create a new layer and I'm going to choose a different color for the hands just so I can see what's happening here. Fill that one in and then this one and fill it in. I'm trying to make things that color they actually are, but because you have to overlay different layers and see what's happening, then it's easier to use different colors, but these places where there's not that problem, then it's easier to just use the actual colors. I'm going to do the snout there and the white part of the eyes. And fill those in. Then I'm going to create another layer and then create the rest of the eyes. I'm going to make that circle and then that circle and then make this here, fill it in, fill it in, and I can erase the light. Now go back to the brush and make the nose and the mouth. And I'm going to draw the tongue in another layer. Here I can draw the whiskers, the eyebrows, basically things that are not touching each other and the cheeks. In the next layer, I can draw the tongue. Perfect. Now we have all the parts that we need for our character. I like grouping it. We are keeping this organized character. Now we're going to create the envelope. And then another layer for the heart. I'm following the sketch closely in the character, the features and everything because I want them to be where they're supposed to be. So we keep the character consistent with the turnaround. But for these things, I can basically just follow the sketch loosely. Let's start coloring. I'm going to turn on Alpha lock for every layer. That way, when I'm painting on the layer, I'm just painting on that layer and I can't go out of the line, so it's really easy to color this way. So now I'm going to choose a brush that lets me add some shading with a bit of texture. You can also create shading with no texture. For example, if you go to air brushing and you get a soft brush. Let's say here in the head, let me show you with a super dark color so you see what's happening. You can create this shading effect from dark to light when you're pressing softly. But if you go to something like drawing and you grab the Oberon brush, I think that's how you pronounce it and you reduce the opacity, you can create the same thing, but with texture, see? I like those textures. I'm going to use this one. I like to start from the back to the front. I am starting from this, which is the year. I'm making the shadows with this darker pink. Phrasing the opacity, I'm going to make it smaller and add that detail. You see, let me turn off the sketch so you can see this. You will see that it has some texture and I really like that. Let's turn on the sketch again and I have to do this white area there. I'm going to choose that and I'm going to do that with this brush also so I get the texture let's turn off this sketch and see how that looks. That looks cute, but it needs to have some shadow there. I'm going to choose the light pink and make it bigger and less Less dark and then add a bit of shadow. Yeah, that looks better. Now let's bring back the sketch and continue moving up. Now with the legs and the tail, the legs also have that white area, so make the opacity higher and let's add that then just go darker here, reduce the opacity and reduce the opacity more and then add the shadows. If it's really hard to see with the sketch, you can go and make the sketch way lighter. I just want you to see what's happening here. Now for the tail, I'm just going to add a bit and then when we can hide the sketch, we can come back in and add some more shading. Then full opacity, the cloud here. Then you can see it, but I'm going to add some more shadow on top of that. Then we have the head. The head has this tip of the ear here that's pink, this white part of the ear, the little heart, make your brush smaller and bigger so you can color in faster. Then it has the darker markings here, this one and it has these white areas behind the eyes. So there and then the eyebrows also, and then the flour, I'm going to leave for last because I want to determine what color to make it in a bit. This is the eyes, the snout. I'm going to add a tiny bit of shading to the snout here. And the hands. The hands need to be pink like light pink, so I'm going to color them all. Then they have this white area here. Well, add some shading later. The eyes, I just want to add the pink eyebrows here, pink. Then just a tiny bit of shading to the eyes. I'm going to make this very transparent and use this green to add some shades here, highlights basically because I want the eyes to appear very glassy. That works. I want to do that to the nose also. I'm going to make this very small, it's shiny and we have the tongue, so we can make it darker, maybe with this red, add a little bit of shading here with this light pink. Then make this a bit less opaque more opaque and just add the little line in the middle. Now I'm going to turn off the sketch and we're going to go back in and shade some stuff. In the body, we need to add some shadows so that we can tell where the arms are. Let's go to the body and select this pink color and add some shadows, make this bigger. It's not too big. Add some shadows here underneath the arms. Then smooth it out here. If we want darker shadows, we can use this red also. Then in the body and now in the legs and tail just so you can differentiate them a bit more. And the tail. I'm going to go to the arms. I can add some light on the top because you cannot shadows and you cannot light. Then we're going to go to the head and grab the red. I can add a tiny bit of shadow here behind this here. Just to give it more depth. I can make this smaller and add a tiny bit of shadow under this note and then make it bigger than a tiny bit of shadow here. This is just making it look a tiny bit more treaty, so it's not so flat. This is just a matter of style, but I like using this yellow and adding some highlights to some of the areas. Let's go back to that ear and do the same here, and then to the legs and tail and do the same. Then the body. I'm just adding some lights so you can tell one part of the body from the other then the arms here. Now, the only thing to do is color the flower and this and add the light. D. 11. Final Illustration Part 2: In this lesson, we're going to continue painting our character. You just keep going back and forth and adding more and more shadows. I'm going to add a tiny bit here just because the heads looking a bit flat. I just want to make this area here darker. I'm just giving it a tiny bit of texture and color. Now, a tiny bit of this light pink here in these areas will give it a lot of life because the white areas are looking too flat right now. I'm going to go to the back petals and paint the petals here purple and the bottom leaves should be a darker green. And then I'm going to do the same thing with all the petals. I'm going to paint them all purple. Now that they're all purple, I'm going to shade them with a lighter purple, make the opacity lower and make this a bit bigger. I'm just making these borders lighter so you can see the petals in the back. Then I'll do that with all the petals. Make the tips slighter. Then I can even go darker with a black light and add some depth here making this color darker here. Then do that with all the petals. I see now they look much more treedy then here for the leaves, I'm going to do the same thing. With this lighter color, I'm going to make it lighter here, make this smaller and with a lighter lighter color, make it way lighter here. Then I can make this brush very thin and raise the opacity and I can add some details. Maybe with this green, I can add a bit of details. Just because I love my art being detailed and these illustrations looking a bit simple for my taste. With this purple, I'm going to do the same thing to the petals. I'm going to add another layer on top. I'm going to set this layer to divide. I'm going to raise the opacity and make it smaller. I'm going to add some little magical stems to my flower. Now, I need to create a shadow underneath that flower because it's looking very flat in the body, so I'm just going to go to the body and take this pink and create a shadow under. We just need to add some shading to this. I'm going to use this yellow because this is going to look like glowy, add some yellow here and I'm going to add the little lines. Let's use this brown here for the lines because I want them to be subtle. Then just a tiny bit of shading to the heart with a lighter pink, just so it's not super flat. Now I need to add the light. I'm going to create a new layer on top of everything and go to the luminance brushes and you can test any of these and see what you like best. I'm using purple, but you won't be able to see it. Make it less opaque. I'm just going to create it like this. I am going to mask that light and using the monoline brush, I'm going to pink with black wherever I want the light to be in the back. If I want to make that light yellow, I can add a mask on top and set it to clipping mask. That way, everything I paint here will be only affecting this layer. So if I choose yellow and I drop it in there, it'll make the light yellow, and then I can go here to the opacity and make it lighter. I want to grab my brush and go back to the layer mask and delete this part here because I want it to be coming from behind this petal. Now, I just want to make the magical flowers. I'm going to go to this light brush again and make a new layer. I'm just going to create these little flowers like the idea of these little flowers that are growing where she used her powers and now there's flowers there, little dots of magic. Finally, I want to create a new layer on top and go to luminance again and use this glimmer brush and make it very small and then just add a tiny bit of glimmer to this. That way, it makes it look like more magical. I can add it here too, and maybe some around the message. And then if I go to this layer with the light and we go here and we choose pin light, it'll make it more shiny, more yellow and maybe reduce the opacity a bit. Then the only thing left to do is to change that background because I don't like it anymore, so I'll go here and change the background, and I'm thinking more of a teal dark color. We're done with our character, and in the next lesson, we're going to give it some finishing touches. 12. Finishing Touches: Finally, we're going to add some final touches to our illustration because it's almost done. These are just little details to make our final illustration a bit stronger. So the character is done, but at the end of my illustrations, I always like adding some sort of texture that's just a personal preference. So I'm going to create a layer on top of my illustration, and I'm going to choose a brownish color. And you can add any texture you want. I love using my paper texture from my watercolor brush set. If you want to grab that whole set for free, I will leave it in the class resources. I give it away to everybody that signs up to my newsletter. But it's not required that it's this texture. You can add any texture you want. I'm just going to fill the whole canvas without lifting my pencil and you will see there that there's a watercolor paper texture. I'm going to do it again so it's more visible. See, I'm going to in so you can see it here. Then I'm going to set that layer to multiple. That way, it's ingrained in the picture. It's very subtle, but I love that effect. And finally, I like unifying all my colors so that they look great together. The way I like to do that is adding another layer on top. If you don't have enough layers in your file, what you can do is you can start merging some layers together, for example, you could merge these two and you could merge the flour, things like that so that you free up some layer space. I'm going to undo that because I still have more layers. So let's go back to unifying all the colors. In the top layer, I am going to choose a green just because greens work really well with my color palette, but you can try different colors and see what you like best. When I touch on that layer on the end, I love this effect. It's called divide and it makes everything bluish, purple pink if you use it with the green. But I'm going to reduce the opacity a lot because that's my original. I just want to add a tiny bit of this just to unify the colors and especially those blacks aren't so black. See now they're a very dark blue. I also want to give it a magical effect, it's floating in space, basically. I'm going to go down here and add a new layer and I'm going to bring it to the bottom. There I am going to find Percrate luminous brushes again, there's one called Nebula and I love it. I'm going to choose a purple for that and see, it creates space effect with light, I really like it. I'm going to touch very softly because I want it to be very subtle and then reduce the size a bit to add a tiny bit here to the bottom. And you can add as much as you want. Maybe I want a tiny bit here. There it is. Personally, I think it looks more magical this way and it's a very easy background to create. With that, our character is complete. Look at it earlier, it has done from me an idea in my head to being something that I can share with you and share with the world, and that to me is magical. It doesn't matter how your character ended up looking, you brought something from your brain, something your mind created and you brought it into the physical world, and that is an amazing thing. Feel very proud of your work. And know that there's always space to grow. So if you did this, if you brought a character to life, feel super proud of it and shared with me in the project gallery, I would love to see it, and I'm sure the other students would love to see it too. Remember to leave a class review and share this with your friends and follow me here on Skillshare so you get notified when I launch new classes. Remember that this is part one of a two part class. Here we built it in Procreate. But in the next class, David is going to bring it into even more real life into the tree dies space by designing it in Nomad Sculpt. If you haven't tried Nomad sculpt, it's a super cool app and they've does a spectacular job of explaining it. Check out the class. If you want to get access to all my freebies, my newsletters, everything, join my newsletter. I'll leave the link in the description of the class. Thanks so much for creating with me and I'll see you soon. Bye.