Transcripts
1. Introduction: As humans, we love
connecting with others. That's why characters
in the illustrations speak to us so much more
than any other subject. Character art is everywhere. On books, forms, and products like stationery, greeting cards, home decor, toys, and more. Being able to draw characters well will open up
avenues for your career. Hello there. I'm Zhi Ling Lee, also known as curiouszhi. I'm a children's
book illustrator and licensing artist in
London, England. I have been obsessed with
character art since childhood, stemming from my love
of animated film. In recent years, my character
illustrations have opened doors for me to work with
companies like Disney, Netflix, Children
book publishers, and see my art on products
sold around the world. If you think drawing
characters requires talent, let me assure you
that that's a myth. Over the years, I've developed an easy method to draw cute
and captivating characters, and I'm excited to
share this with you. In this class, I will
guide you through my step-by-step
process of creating a magical character that
has personality and chow. Step 1, storytelling
and idea generation. Step 2, research
and inspiration. Step 3, expressions and causes. Step 4, dressing your character and step
5 color and texture. I'll also be sharing some tips and tricks using procreate. This class is great
for beginners, as well as intermediate
artists who want to introduce character
illustration into their work. At the end of this class, you will have a fully
illustrated magical character for your portfolio, as well as a process
you can follow to confidently continue creating new characters
with personality. Why magical characters? This is my signature style,
but more importantly, this topic allows for the boost, imagination and fun as you learn and develop
your character. Let's get started.
2. Class Project & Downloads: Today we're going to develop and illustrate a magical
character of your own. If you're a beginner, set yourself up for
success by choosing a simpler idea or drawing along the same
character with me. I will be breaking down my process to the
following steps. One, storytelling
and idea generation. We'll develop a short
character story and concept. Two, be such an inspiration, we'll look at ways to
find references and inspiration to help you
design your character. Three, expressions and poses. We will explore how
expressions and pauses help bring your
character to life. Four dressing your character will bring more personality
to your character, to clothes and accessories. Five, color and
texture, and finally, we'll add color to your
character illustration and enhance with
texture and details. I will be using Procreate on the iPad to demonstrate
the illustration, so I will also be sharing some Procreate tips and
tricks as we go along. However, please
note that this is not a how-to-use
Procreate class, of course, you're welcome to use other drawing software or
just pencil and paper. I'm using default Procreate
brushes and one custom brush, which you get for free
as part of this class. You can download the brushes and other resources for this class on the link showing
on the screen. In the next lesson, we'll jump
right into the first step, by coming up with a
character story idea.
3. Storytelling & Idea Generation: Who doesn't love a good story? Illustration is
visual storytelling. Let's start with the story
behind your character. Before you begin drawing, spend some time getting
to know your character. Ask questions like, what
kind of being are they? As we're doing magical and
fantastical characters, you can be very creative here. Base it off existing creatures, like fairy's, wizards, mermaids, or make up something
completely brand new. What's their name? This isn't necessary, but giving a name is fun and can sometimes spark ideas about
their personality. How are they feeling? What is your character feeling and thinking at this moment? Describing this will
help you determine the expression and body
poses for Step 3 later. What adjectives can you
use to describe them? For example, are they confident,
shy, stylish, spunky? This helps you flesh out your behavior and
personality more. What is the story moment? Think about what activity
your character is trying to do at this moment and what
your current environment is. Again, this will
help you determine the expression and body
language for Step 3. Here's my example. I'm going to be drawing
a little pixie. Her name is Cleo. She's feeling determined
and cheerful. She's a very stylish
and cute character. The story moment I'm going for is that she's
gathering flowers and foliage in the forest to create a decorative arch for her house. Here are two more examples
of my characters. As you can see from mine, the story doesn't have
to be very complicated. But just having a little
backstory for the character, you now have a much more
compelling background to pull from when
you start drawing. Now, it's your turn to
answer these questions. Pause the video and
jot down your answers. When you're done,
we will move on to the next lesson about research
and finding inspiration.
4. Research & Inspiration: Now that you have the story
idea for your character, it's time to do some research
and find inspiration. The first thing you
want to do is expand on your character story by creating
a mind-map or word list. This exercise will give
you more keywords and ideas to search for when you
are looking for references. In my example, my mind-map expanded on the action
that Cleo could be doing. For example, holding flowers
or sitting on a flower. Also her appearance, for example, maybe
she'll have a hat. Next, let's look for
some reference images. My favorite place to do
this is on Pinterest. But you can also look at books, magazines, Google images,
anywhere, really. Before you start doing
research though, let's talk about the two
different references you should look for. Inspiration and information. Let me explain the difference between this using
my reference board. This is the reference
board for my illustration. Let's take a closer look at
the inspiration section. When you're looking at
these references here, you probably notice
that there are very few illustrations
of pixies or fairies, although that's my
character subject. This is intentional. When you're looking
for inspiration, try to avoid looking at too many of the same
subject drawn by another artist as
you may be overly influenced and unintentionally
copy what they did. Inspiration reference should
consist of images that provide you inspiration
of things like art style, color palette, and more
texture rendering techniques. If we take a little
look at mine. These ones at the bottom, these are potential
color options, so you have more warm
color tones here, something a little
bit more green, something very funky
with these neon colors. Then on here. I really liked this
because it gives me the warm summer day
that I really want my illustration to have and
some other things here, just a really interesting
colors and shapes that's being made by these artists
here and on the corner, you can see that I do have two images of
pixies and fairies, but these are
vintage imagery and the style is so different
from mine that I'm not worried about
accidentally copying this style because
it's so different. Sometimes your research for looking for inspiration as well could really spark
for the idea that you may not have gotten
until this point. For example, I really
like this image of this girl in this
ladybug costume. When I saw it, it just
made me think, oh, maybe my character can
have ladybug wings. It will be something different to your average fairy wings. It could be a little
bit more interesting. Now, moving on to the right
side of my reference board, this is where I collect
information reference. These are images that provide specific
information that you may need to draw something
such as an expression, a pose, or an item that it's going to
appear in your illustration. In the next two steps, we'll be talking
more about poses, expressions, and
accessories clothing. Be sure to look for
those references. I know we are working on something magical
and fantastical, so it will be very tempting to just draw from imagination, but having references will help you draw better because
it becomes a way for you to understand how something looks like and you use that as a base before you then use your imagination to
bring it further. With my character story
example, her name is Cleo. She's the stylish little pixie
who is gathering flowers. Looking at my
information part here, I have various images of
girls holding flowers, for example, but in
different positions. This girl is looking back. This girl is also standing
still holding flowers. This girl has a basket, and they all have slightly
different expressions as well. While they're all smiling,
it's all slightly different. It's just a way to
really spark some idea. At the bottom here, these are outfit ideas
that I think are quite interesting and it fits my story of her being
quite fashionable, stylish little
pixie, which I can use as a starting point. Now it's your turn
to do research. When you're done,
we'll move on to the next lesson where
we talk a little bit more about poses and expressions and then we'll start
sketching. See you there.
5. Expressions, Poses & Initial Sketch: Before we start sketching, let's talk about
bringing your character to life through
expressions and poses. Never keep your characters
in a static pose. Even the slightest gesture and expression will breathe
life into them. Let's look at some examples. Go back to your
story idea and let's explore the emotion your
character is feeling. For example, if they're sad, you can show this
in multiple ways. Downcast eyes or a single
tier trailing down. Also, think about body language. What would their pose be like while experiencing this emotion? Let's look at some examples
to illustrate this further. Here are two characters I
drew called Mochi and Mei. On the right-hand side here, they're standing still
and they look fine, just not very interesting. But on the left, they
are just so much more compelling because of the different facial
expressions and poses. Now, taking a closer look
at our illustration here, you can tell that
made the fairly is up to something
because she has a mischievous smile and she's trying to cover up
her smile here. On the other hand, Mochi
is not happy with her. Look at his body language. He has folded arms, he's tapping his foot, and the way his eyebrows
and mouth is set gives you the impression that he's just not
very happy with her. The middle illustration here
gives you an example of how you can use features of the characters to
enhance the emotion. Mochi here has
really large ears. When he's having
a really bad day here and he's not very happy, I've used his ears in
making sure that it flops down here and it just really
reinforces that he is sad. Pauses can be quite subtle or more dynamic like the
one at the bottom here. Mei is laughing
here and she could just be sitting down
and just laughing. But by having her in this
position where she's lying on the floor with her
hand on the stomach, with her mouth wide open, and tears coming
out of her eyes, you can really feel how
hard she's laughing here. Now, let's look at a
different example. This is a Halloween illustration
that I did last year. The poses and expressions
here are a little bit more subtle than the
one on the left, but it still gives you enough of a storytelling element
to the illustration. This witch on the left here, she looks like she's just really confused or
very deep in thought. Because look at the way
her eyebrows are and she's just looking at her book here with her hands on the chin, so she's probably
deep in thought. Here, on the right,
she's concentrating very hard with her
tongue sticking out. I hope these examples help you think about
how to incorporate posing and expressions on your character based on the
story you came up for them. Remember, if you're
not sure how to draw a specific emotion or pose, look for photo references
because they will always be a really great way for you
to learn how to do them. Now, let's do some
drawing finally. See you there. Now, it's time to do some sketches. Before we start on that if you want to be able to see your reference on the side, one way you can do that if you've saved down
your reference as an image is to go to "Settings", under the Canvas, turn your Reference on. Here, you can just import
an image in there. I'm just going to import
my reference board and put it more on the side. For the drawing brush,
my favorite brush is the default 6B Pencil
brush in Procreate, which you can find under
the Sketching section. I use this brush a lot, and if you look
under my favorites, you'll see that I've
actually modified it in different ways that I can use
it for different purposes. If you downloaded
my brush style, you will get it in there, it's just the default brush, and I like to use it
in a smoother line, and that's what the
6B Pencil smooth is. The only difference that you have between
these two is that I've increased the streamline so that the pencil is smoother. If you want to do that yourself, just go into the "Pencil Brush"
and you can just increase this so that you get a
smoother drawing experience. At this point in the process, I encourage you to draw them small and draw
as many as possible. The reason why I say to draw them smallest is that you won't get too precious about what they look like because
at this point, you just want to lay down
a few different ideas. We'll start refining the one that we like
the most later on. I'm going to start drawing. I'm just going to think
about maybe she's just standing here, maybe she's just holding a
little basket of flowers. Maybe she's holding a
bigger flower here as well. As you can see, this is
not a very pretty sketch, but, we're just
coming up with ideas. Or maybe she's trying to pick something like that. Let's look at my
reference there is something here I like. I quite like this.
It'll go here. Let's see. We're going to
do something like this. She has that basket here, she is walking, and she's also carrying this. That's quite nice, but it's a little
bit too static. But what about that one? That's a cute pose. She's looking at the front, she's got a hand just
facing outwards. All right. Maybe she's dragging
this little trolley here that's just filled with all the flowers that
she's already gathered. If you remember
when we looked at my work list earlier on, I had an idea as well
that maybe she could be sitting on a giant flower, so could that be something good? We're going to have like
a really big flower here. She just sitting down. She's reaching up to
another flower, maybe. Now it's your turn, do a lot of sketches. But before that, let
me quickly show you. These was some of
the other sketches I've done before the classes. As you can see from here, it's very rough sketches, just like the one
that I just did. They're all very
rough. There's not a lot of detail in them. Just mainly getting the poses, getting the idea, and trying to see which
one is my favorite. But I look at both of these, this is the one that I
like the most. This one. This is the one that
I'm going to refine. Enlarge this, and refine, and just make it a
more clean sketch. We're going to start
refining the sketch. From all of the
different sketches, I did about 20, this was my favorite one. I've put them here and just
enlarge it on the screen. I'm just going to draw over and add a little
bit more detail. A quick tip if you are wondering how to make your
characters look cuter. If you're going with each hall or
toddler-size character, a good guidance to follow
is to make your character height about two-and-a-half to three times the
size of its head. Using this as an example, consider this is her head, and her body is basically
about two-and-a-half. That already automatically
makes it look quite cute. That's an easy tip if you
want to try it yourself. Let's start drawing. I'm just going to draw it
slightly more refined. I was debating with the hairstyle when I
first came up with this, but I thought she's a pixie, so she's going to have a pixie
hairstyle, really short. Draw her eyes. When it comes to the eyes, you can either
just make them dot eyes like my original
sketch here, or my own personal
favorite is to actually, draw eyes that
have visible white of eyes. This is very much a stylistic choice that you should make. But I would say that
the reason why I prefer the eyes that shows the white is that
it's actually a lot easier to show emotions. For example, if you're
someone who's smiling widely, the way the cheeks will go up, and your eyes is going to
get a little bit smaller. Then you can also
play with the way the eyebrows fall
against your eyes. These are slightly harder
to show on these dot eyes, but really it's a
stylistic decision that you should make. If you've been following
my work for a while, you probably noticed that
I have this thing about characters that are really
tiny carrying giant things, or living among
giant surroundings, is just something that I like. That's the beauty of
doing magical characters. You can be imaginative and
go a little bit more crazy, and fantastic always the ideas that's not going to seem very normal if you're drawing your everyday scene
and character. The other thing I
wanted to mention as well is that you've noticed that my idea, in the end,
wasn't really that dramatic. She doesn't have a very
dramatic or dynamic pause. Really, it's quite subtle. She's just, I suppose, walking with purpose
as she's carrying this giant flower
that she has found. That's fine. You
don't always have to make everything
look very dramatic. It depends on what you
are trying to show. Obviously, if your
character story is they are doing
something like they're fighting a dragon or they're often on a quest or
something like that, then the pose might need to be something a
little bit more dynamic. But mine, she's just walking around and she's
collecting flowers. It's a pretty normal pose. She's not going to be
doing anything too crazy. But you could just
really experiment. I'm going to just keep
repeating this process, and keep redrawing it until I come to a much cleaner sketch. I'll come back and show you the final sketch that I've done. This is the final sketch that
actually I'm going with. You notice that it's not
a super clean sketch. This is just because
that's the way I draw. I tend to clean it up a lot when I'm actually doing
the color in detail. But if you're someone who likes to draw in really clean sketch where you don't have all of these feathery lines
and things overlapping, feel free to do it your way. I've basically just
refined a little bit of how her expression
and her posing is. I've decided to make
the flower bigger. It's just curving here. There's a little bud here
because it made me think, I want it to look quite magical. Maybe this bud seems glowing
or something like that. We'll see when we
start to do the color. But that's where I've got to. I hope you've done your
sketches here as well. We will shortly be moving on to the next lesson when we're
going to be talking about adding more personality to your character by adding
clothing and accessories. See you there.
6. Dressing Your Character: [MUSIC] Think about
your character as an actor in a phone, and get clothing
and accessories as costumes that support the
story you're trying to tell. As this is symmetrical
character, you can be as imaginative as you like for the clothing
and accessories. Think about what your
character is doing that may inform their clothing
and accessory choices. How will their clothes
affect their movement? Get inspiration from
children fashion magazines or just even natural
elements like leaves, flowers, trees, the
sky's the limit here. Now let's start sketching our fit choices
for our character. Now we are at my favorite part of the character illustration
process actually, which is coming out with fashion choices
for our character. I would suggest that you
leave your sketch in its own layer and come up with additional leaves,
like I've done here. I come up with four
because I want to do four different choices and select a color
that's contrasting. The reason why I asked
you to do this is so that you don't draw
on your original layer, and it's going to be
very difficult to keep erasing and redrawing
when you do that. By doing this, you're not
destroying your original layer. That's half of the thing. Let's maybe look at
my wood board again. Let's bring the basket back in. Let's say she is carrying these we call basket and this
is just lots of flowers. If the basket is going to be
covering most of her dress, I might just leave her
dress quite simple and just leave it
there and maybe give her something on her hair instead like a
little flower clown maybe. This is option 1, very simple nothing
too dramatic here. Let's see number 2. I really like these girl's
hairstyle and this thing here. Maybe no pixie. Let's give her this giant, blobby, great thing
that's quite cute. When I look at this image here, I don't know why, but I guess this is
[LAUGHTER] how my mind works. I look at this berret, this head here and I'm
just thinking, oh, it's almost like it's a
little hat she's wearing. There's like a life head if
you have mushrooms, maybe. [LAUGHTER] Mushroom
and little flowers and just little things
growing out of it. Could be, a mushroom
for this three. Something silly like
that. This one. Maybe she has even more
floral leafy elements in this outfit. She's very inspired by
nature. That's an option. Let's try the third one. You see that I'm referencing
my reference board a lot. You don't have to do this, you can be very imaginative and just completely
create what you want. But sometimes it's
quite helpful to have something as a base and then
you can just expand on it. I really love this dress.
How about this one? Maybe it's going to be
like a darker color. We can split out the two things, almost just like
little flowers or just something like that. So far we haven't given
any of the options. She hasn't had any wing. She doesn't have to have
wings, but let's see. Let's give her wings here. Let's give her fairy wings. I'm still thinking about
that little mushroom head. [LAUGHTER] Let's give her
some hair decoration, some hair accessories
that's has mushrooms on it. [LAUGHTER] That's one option. Oh, remember earlier on we were looking at
my reference board, I was talking about
this girl with this Halloween
costume with ladybug, and I really liked that idea. How about we do that here
for our four options. She's going to have
a fairly wing, but it's also like
a ladybug style. Then she's going to
have this little ladybug piece in like that. I think that's quite cute. Maybe the dress is
just going to be, almost just have all
these set of ruffles. Set of ruffles or maybe leafy ruffles, if that makes sense. Yes. Here you can see, I came up with four
different options. You can just do the same. Come up with more options
as many as you like, and then just select the one
[MUSIC] that you like most. I think my favorite
is this one so I'm going to use
this one as a base. Yeah, I think that's the
one I'm going to go with.
7. Colour Thumbnails: We now have a final
character drawing and it's time to finalize
it with color and texture. Before deciding on the final color palette
of my illustration, I like to do a few
quick color thumbnails, which I will show you. I've done some of
them in advance. Color thumbnails are a great
way for you to explore different colorways and
also check the contrast and harmony before deciding
on the final color. Doing this in advance
will save you a lot more time
than trying to work out colors of the
individual elements of illustration as
you're doing it. How I do it is I just pick a few different
colors that I like and I just roughly
color over my sketch and then I just repeat the
process a couple more times. As you can see from here, I tend to come up with
a pellet of 4-8 colors, which includes tints and
shades of the base colors. For example, these
light blues here are basically just lightened
versions of the navy, same thing with these
yellows and the greens here. I would caution that
you try not to use more than 8-10 colors
because it gets really difficult to create
harmonious schemes and the colors may look
a little bit muddy if you have too many of them. The way I come up with color schemes is quite intuitive and it usually is based
on colors that I like or the boot that I'm trying to evoke in my drawing rather than following specific
color theories. If you struggle with developing
your own color palettes, this is where the
research comes in handy. If I just take a look at
my reference board again. For example, these
bits at the bottom, these are examples of color
palettes that you can quite easily find on
Pinterest and online. They can be a very
good starting point if you're not as
good as coming up with your own color schemes. Another way, as well
is to look at how someone else uses colors
in their illustration. You can pick and
choose the colors here and try to use it as a base
and maybe expand on it, or just change the
tints the shades and it may give you
a new combination. Color is an effective way to communicate feelings and mood. Think about why you're
choosing a color and how it can help
your character look and feel a certain way. You may have already heard of the psychological
associations with colors. For example, purple tends to be more magical and mysterious, whereas reds are more
energetic and powerful. Looking at my examples here, the one in the middle
with this blue and pink, probably it gives you a more mystical feeling
than the other two. However, when I look
at all of this three, I am going to go with
the one on the left because it's my favorite
and it also matches the story that I was going for, and how I wanted it to look was it's going to be
something like a sunny, warm day in the middle. The colors here just evokes more of that feeling
that the other two, and that's the one
I'm going to go with.
8. Procreate Brushes to Use: Before we start doing color, let me quickly show
you the brushes I'll be using in this section. Except for one custom brush, all the other brushes
are default brushes. You can download just
that one custom brush or the full set of brushes if you don't want
to look for them yourself in all the
different folders. But let's go through them now. The first one is the 6B pencil, which is in the
sketching section. This is my favorite pencil, and it basically
behaves like a pencil. So you can have these really
lovely color pencil effect. Because it does behave
like a real pencil, when you tilt it in
a different way, you get a different texture, which is really nice. The next brush is my slightly adjusted
version of the 6B pencil. I call 6B pencil smooth. I wouldn't recommend this
for filling in colors. Instead, use it for line work when you just want a
really smooth lines. That's what it's for. The next brush is dry ink, which you can find in
the inking section. Again, this is really
good for line work, but what I like to
use it for mainly is actually to fill in a color. You draw that line and then you just
call a drop in there. Just get this nice little edge. You may notice that
sometimes it's not the cleanest edge on the side and you can just fill it in
with maybe a pencil brush if you just want to
make it really smooth. So this is a stylistic choice. If you are someone
who like really clean and crisp edges
on your illustration, you could use a
different brush or even this selection
tool that for example, using this free hand
here you draw this in and you would just fill that and you can see the
difference here. This is a really clean edge, and this is more textural. So I personally prefer
this way just because I like my work to have a more
handmade, textured look. But again, it's a stylistic
choice that you should make. The next brush is
the shale brush, and this is under calligraphy. Another really good
brush for line work. You can have a lot of effect depending on how
thick the brush is, and when it's really thick, you can just see how you have all of this effect
here is just really lovely. The next one is the custom brush that I created called
the pastel shader. I use this mainly to add
texture and shading. You can also use it to fill
in large areas of color. If you want a little bit more of a textured look rather
than a solid thing. These next two brushes, I'm not entirely sure yet if I will use it in
this illustration, but I do use them very often
for different reasons. I thought I would include them here and tell you about them. So the next one, artist crayon, you can find these in the sketching section. This has a really
lovely texture. It's very grungy. So you can use it
for different areas when you're just shading and you just want this
more heavy grunge texture. I like to use it for things like the tree bark, for example, you just want this rather
than having it so smooth, it's just like a
really nice effect. Finally, the noise brush, which you can find
under Materials. This just gives
you a really nice, little noise effect, can be a circle if
you want bigger. These are the brushes.
9. Adding Colour & Texture: [MUSIC] Let's start adding
color to our illustration. I have my favorite
color thumbnail left on the left side here in a smaller size so
that it's easy for me to refer to and also
pick the colors. Going to my base layer, I'm just going to change
the layer mode to multiply and then reduce
the opacity down. We're still visible
but it's going to interfere too much with
the color selection. Going onto the new layer, I'm going to make sure I have
the right brush selected. In this case is dry
ink, the right color, the skin, and then
I'm just going to start filling in the shapes. This is my least
favorite part of the process just because
it is so mundane. But at this point, that's when I always
have some music on or podcasts or just
something interesting to keep me motivated
when I'm doing this. When I'm erasing my lines, I like to try to keep it with the same brush that
I'm using to draw. In this case, when I'm
drawing using the dry ink, I still make sure that it's
erasing using dry ink. A very quick way to make sure that it's the
same is that when you have dry ink selected here in your painting and you
want to erase something, you just hold the erase
brush and it will select the last brush that you were using
while you're painting. I'm going to go down
to one layer below and start drawing the other
parts of the body. I tend to work in a lot of
the layers just because I find it easier to texture in that way and it's also a lot easier when I have to make corrections and color changes
that clients requests for. But it's up to you if you
want to work in layers, that's up to you. But I definitely recommend it, especially if you are going
to add a lot of texturing and patterns and it's easy
to just make changes. That's the skin tone done
and now let's do the hair. I probably I'm not
going to let you watch this whole thing in
real time because it would just be so really boring. I'll either speed this
up or just jump straight onto the end when I've had all the flat colors
leading and we're going to start doing some
texturing in detail. [MUSIC] You see here, the dress is actually
overlapping the hand. A very quick way to just
erase that part is I go to the layer where the hand moves and I'm just going
to click "Select", then go back to my dress layer. I'm just going to
take a bigger brush, maybe that one and I'm
just going to erase it. As you remember I said
earlier about how I like to do the color thumbnails in advance and this
is what I mean. When it comes to this
coloring process here, it's just so much easier
because you're not now trying to decide does
this color go with this, is the harmony right right then you're going to be
switching it around. It's just a lot of effort
and at this point, you're just picking colors and you're just
filling in shapes. I'm going to keep
doing this and I'll come back with all the flat
colors done and then let's continue to talk more
about how we're going to add more life and texture to it. Now I have all the flat colors already put down on this piece, so it's time to start
adding some details and texture just to
really finish this off. Before I do that, I try to be as
organized as possible. As you can see here, I
have two groups of layers. The bottom group is where the fairy character is and
then the flower on the top. The first thing I want
to do at this point is to add a little bit of the linework detail
onto her features and her limbs just to make it
very clear the separation between things like
for example head and neck or her limbs. Let's do that. I'm going to use the 6P
pencil smooth here. Let's just do that. When I'm doing this,
I usually just think about where things are overlapping each
other that I need some definition and
also where there's probably a darker area where
its light not hitting it. For example, this area below the hairline is
probably a little bit darker. Let's turn off the sketch layer and see what it looks like. We're going to look at the layer where it's just mainly her skin and
this hand in the front. A very easy way to do shading quickly is to
use a clipping mask. If you're not familiar with
how clipping mask works, it's basically
just whatever that you draw in this
layer that's clipped. It will be clipped to
the previous layer, so it will only
appear in that layer. Let me just take a very
different color to show you. Because it's a clipping mask, it only affects the layer
that it's being clipped too. But if I remove
that clipping mask, you'll see they actually
extends beyond that. That's what a
clipping mask does. I'm going to use my
pastel shader for most of all of this
light shading. I'm going to pick the same
color at the skin tone here and a very easy way to
determine the color that will work quite well when
you're shading is to use the same color but change
your layer mode to multiply. We're going to leave it
at 100 percent for now. It's probably a bit too dark, but we can adjust it later on. Having the pastel shader brush, I'm just going to
increase it and I'm just going to add a
little bit of shading here. It's probably too big.
Let me reduce it. I'm just shading below
the hairline because that's where there will be a little bit more
of a shadowing. Let's do that and here
going closer to this leaf. I'm just going to repeat that on the other layers of her skin. [MUSIC] I always like
to add a little bit of blush on my character so
let's just try it here. I'm still using the same brush. A little bit of a blush there.
10. More Textures & Shadows: [MUSIC] Let's now do the
texturing on the hair. So the hair is
quite a large area and I want it to have a
little bit more linebook so that it shows movement. So what I'm going to do
is create another layer. I'm going to sample
this brown color here just because I think if
I keep with the pink, it's going to look a
little bit too red. Using the six piece
smooth pencil. I'll come back to that. I actually think that I should probably
add another layer. This time, I'm going
to use the same pink and I'm going to use
the artist crayon and just make it really small. So let's see now, there's some really nice
texture on the hair. So let's go back to redoing
those definition lines again. This is just the way the
style of my rendering, which you don't have to follow. It's just I'm just
showing you how I do a lot of my
shading and texturing. So obviously, do
it your own style. Or if you're still trying
to discover your style, you can follow mine
just for inspiration, but I always encourage that you do a lot
of experimentation and do lots of different
illustrations, trying out different
ways of rendering and you'll eventually find
a style that works for you. [MUSIC] I'm going to leave
the hair for now. I might come back to it later. Let's do something
with the dress. [MUSIC] Instead of using
multicolor this time, I'm just going to pick
the green color here, and just try and manually go
to a slightly darker color and try to just
add some line work just using the
normal layer mode. [inaudible] the
base sketch again, just to give us a
bit of a reference. I just wanted to have
this almost like leafy. I'm actually going to turn
off the clipping mask because it's very unnatural
if the ruffles stay within the confines
of the dress. So just turn it off so that I
can actually draw beyond it. [MUSIC] The important thing at this
step is to just have fun, try out different techniques
and see what it looks like and you sometimes discover
new ways of working. [MUSIC] Whenever I do all this thing, I do a lot of just
little fun detailing which I think will be
quite cute to look at. So for example, let's say her wing is attached
here with a little ribbon. Because, why not? We decided to go back to
the original dress layer and just slightly
adjust the shape because it seems strange
if it's just a straight, the bottom is just
completely straight when it's supposed to
have this leafy texture, so let's just make it a
little bit more natural. [MUSIC] I am looking at this piece, not just the character itself, and is there anything that
I feel still needs work. What I can tell you is that
the hair just doesn't work, so let's just make a little
bit more changes to that. Also, the areas where the
light is definitely hidden, there should be some
stronger shadows. So for example, these areas where it's right below
the sleeve and the dress. So we'll add a little bit
more shadowing there. But let's work on
the hair first. I'm going to go
back to multiply. [MUSIC] Let's work on the shadows. Usually, when you're
doing shadows, I would recommend that you look at a
bluish or purplish tone. So I'm going to use purple just because it would
probably go better with a lot of these
reddish tones. [MUSIC] You can see this is
a bit too obvious. Let's use the smudge tool and we'll just smudge it to
soften the shadows a bit. We're just going to
reduce the opacity, so it's not so intense. I'm going to repeat that
as well on the other layer with the head and the
hand in the front. [MUSIC] I think we can leave
our fairy for now and we'll come back to it and
let's work on the flower.
11. Experimenting with Details: Now I have the flower group
of layers turned back on, so the first thing
we want to do here is you notice that
the way the hand is hidden behind the
plant, and that's wrong. You could just go
into the flower layer and just start erasing, but I would always prefer
to do it as a mask. The reason for doing that is
so that you're not destroying this original layer
for the stock, because if later down the line, you decided to change the
position of the head, you're going to have to redraw
and fill in those areas that you've erased. What you can do here is go into this stock layer here which is overlapping
with the hand. I would just click on it
and then click ''Mask.'' In Mask, go to Eraser and pick a small brush,
in this case, I'll just take the 6B Pencil and then I'm just going to erase where the hand should
actually come out in front. I'll do that for both hands. This is where the
thumb should come. Let's do some shading. I'm going to use the
artist crayon here because I like having a
little bit more texture when it comes to plants. [MUSIC] As you can see, I'm just pretty much repeating
the same process again from when we were
working on the fairy. It's just multiple different
layers of adjustments always starting with just
the base shading first and then adding some line
work for a bit more detail. Now, if you remember
from earlier on when I first finished
the initial sketch, I was talking about how I might turn this
little flower bud here into some kind of a glowing orb. Let's try and give that a go. A new layer below that. Go back to that yellow. I'm going to use my shader brush and just lightly add that thing. It's almost like this. It's a glow. When you want to have
lighting effects normally, you can just have take a
look and just experiment with all of these
different layer modes. For example, here's a
hard light, pin light. I'm thinking hard light
might be a possible option because it has that
bright glow here, so it's a little bit
more interesting. Then we will go back
to the flower layer. Let's add another layer. Let's try hard light and
see what it looks like. Let's lighten it a bit so that it's a little
bit more intense. It's going to have a little
bit more of a shiny. I think we are
actually almost there. I'm just going to
take a look at this and see is there anything
that's really bugging me that I feel like it
needs improvement. To be honest, I could go on
and redo this all day long, but we do want to actually
finish this illustration, so I'm not going to be
too pedantic about it. I think the plant looks fine. I will probably go back and do a little bit
more adjustment on [inaudible] my fairy instead. I'm just going to do that and then I'll split
this section up and then we'll come back and I will talk about how to
add a little bit of lighting to give you a little bit more of a magical glowing feeling. I'll see you in a bit. [MUSIC]
12. Adding the Magic: [MUSIC] Right now
we're pretty much done with the illustration but
I want to add a little bit of a glow onto the fairy just to show where the light is hitting her from
the going up here. Because Cleo has so many layers, it will just be
quite difficult to have to go into all these different layers
to add that light effects. What we'll do is actually duplicate her as one
single layer itself. How we can do that very
quickly is just hide all the layers that's not her
including the background. You should see this
transparent background. Then use three fingers and swipe it down and you should see that and
just click "Copy All". Then let's go up there and we're going to
do the same thing again, three fingers down and do Paste. Now you can see that she's
coming out as a single layer. Now we can just hide
the group here. You could also just flatten your whole layer but I
rather not do that because I prefer to still have
all of these saved as a backup if I need to make
any more changes later on. Let's just turn back all
the other layers now. I just name this Cleo flattened. Now we can just create
a new layer that we clip against her and we can start doing the lighting effect. I'm going to select that yellow. Let's try using the hard
light layer style again, which we did for
that glowing effect. I'm not going to go
into too much theory about lighting because it's
a very complex subject, but so we're just going to do something that is very basic. We're just seeing here that how this light is hitting her here. There should be a little
bit more of brightness in this part of her face and her hair because it's so
close to the light source. Let's just try and do it
and see what it looks like. I'm just going to
lightly shade it. This step is absolutely
not necessary. I just always like to add a little bit of lighting
because I feel like it gives it a bit more of a glowy, magical feel and
it's quite nice. [MUSIC] If I turn it off and turn it on again, that's just a very
slight lighting. It's going on there. Maybe you want to do the same
with the flowers, where things are in
these areas that they actually hit the leaf. Maybe it should be a
little bit brighter, so we don't need to flatten this because we know
it's just a leaf and this is actually
ready on its own layer. Let's just create a clipping
mask of where the leaf is and I'm going to
go over to overlay. I think we're done. You can just continue and add a little bit more effects to
it if you want but I think, for now, we're done. I'm quite happy with
this and honestly, if I don't stop now, I can just continue doing this
for hours on end. [MUSIC] There you have it, the final illustration is done. Don't forget to upload your
work in the Projects Tab, so keep that for me and
your fellow classmates. Next, join me in the final
video of this class where we do a quick recap and
explain the next steps today.
13. Recap & Final Thoughts: Congratulations on
completing this class and illustrating your
own magical character. If you're not 100 percent
happy with your character yet, just remember that you will
get better with practice. You've taken the hardest
step by finishing this class, so keep
going on illustrating your characters with this
process and I promise you will see improvement
with every new one you draw. Let's do a quick recap about the process we've gone
through together. First, we started
with storytelling by coming up with a
short character story. Then we expanded on our
story and start doing research and finding inspiration for our character design. Next, we start drawing
and incorporate expressions and poses to
bring our character to life. We then move on to add
more personality by dressing and accessorizing
our character and finally, we finished
illustration with color and enhance with
texture and details. I hope you've
enjoyed this class. Please leave a review I would
love to hear your thoughts. If you'd like more advice and tutorials about the
crop and business of illustration please join
my curiouszhi letters list for follow-up emails
and free resources. You'll also be the first to hear when I create new classes. Finally, don't forget
to upload your art in the class project
tab and share them with me and your
fellow classmates. If you're your work on
Instagram or Twitter use the #curiouszhiclass
and tag me. I can't wait to see
your lovely characters. Thank you again for joining
me in this class. Bye.