Telling Stories With Comics 1: Characters & Sequence

1. Intro: So these are some of my really old comics I did when I first started out. I kind of started drawing comics because I was quite a daydreamer, and I think I still am. And drawing comics was a way I could bring those daydreams into the real world. All I needed was pen and paper. I've always felt that my characters became more alive when I put them in comics. It's like they really start to live and breathe more so than when I just draw them in single pictures. I didn't go to art school. In fact, I went to business school, so there wasn't really anyone to properly teach me how to draw comics. I had to learn it on my own. So I just learned how to draw comics from reading and studying comics that I like. On my own, I tried to figure out what made the art look good, what tools they used to draw with, and also what makes a good story. It is now many, many years later, and I just never stopped drawing comics. Over time with more practice, I saw my comics improving. I've drawn comics about other worlds, sci fi stuff, and I've also explored just drawing stories about my own life where I'm the main character. And when my first kid came along, I chronicled the first 2.5 years of being a first time dad. For this comic series, which I did for the National University Hospital in Singapore, I chronicled the COVID pandemic and helped them to deliver sound medical advice to the public. And nowadays when I feel like I just need to slow down, I do diary entries in the form of comics. So I found that using comics, I could tell so many kinds of stories. Drawing comics can be pretty challenging, but also really fun. So I'm happy and eager to share this art form with you. Welcome to my skill share class where I will teach the basics on how to draw comics. Hi, I'm Andrew, and I'm a professional illustrator based in Singapore. I'm also the author of two graphic novels, Monsters Miracles and Monies and the Oli Comics Diary of a First time Dad. I'm breaking this comic class into two parts, and this is class one, which you're watching right now. In class one, we're going to start from the beginning, how to draw characters. Particularly, we're going to draw people, as in humans. But don't worry, I'm just going to keep it really simple and basic. We're going to learn how to draw them from five different views that you'll probably need when you draw comics. We're going to start with the head first and then the full body. And then different poses. And for the final project for class one, we're going to get you to draw your character interacting with an object in such a way that it tells a continuous sequence. That makes sense. In class two, we'll then move on to learning how to draw and complete story all within one page. So if you're ready to learn how to draw comics, let's get started. 2. Tools: Drawing comics, there could be many kinds of tools that you could be using. But for this class, we just want to focus on storytelling and making it clear, simple, and effective. So this is what I propose we use. You can use your sketchbook or just loose paper like this. This is just a four photocopy paper, a pencil, I would recommend a darker pencil like a six B. If you don't have a six B, a four B all the way to a nine B will work as well. So long as it gives you a nice dark line. Also have an eraser ready to make it easy for you to amend anything. For those of you who are more experienced and feeling more confident, you could use a pen. Is a Unibal broad with black ink in it. If you would like to use a tablet to draw on Procreate, feel free to do so, too. So you could use the six B pencil on Procreate or mercury. But if you're using Procreate, avoid creating too many layers, perhaps just one or two layers so you don't stress yourself. 3. Head: Front view: Welcome to the first class, and I'm glad you have joined. Now, if you look at any comics are pretty much filled with pictures of either people or backgrounds or people in backgrounds. And sometimes animals and, okay, some strange creatures, too. But here, we're just going to learn how to draw a basic comic. So we're just going to do people and backgrounds for now. Now, drawing humans can be pretty complicated. So I was thinking, let's just keep it to really simple, basic drawings of people. So to learn how to draw a very simple human head, we're going to use a ping pong ball. Okay, I'm going to use this marker to divide the head into two hemispheres. So this center line will represent the middle half of the head. Okay, so now, let's just add some eyes. The eyes will usually be either in the center of the head or higher up. Let's just let's just put it in the center for now. So it's one, and, of course, eyes are more or less equal distance. Well, mine's not actually equal distance, but never mind, more or less. Even my face is not that perfect. And then we're going to have the mouth or will be here. Let's just give it a smiley face. And as for the nose, I'm just going to use this piece of blue tech here. O. Stick it there. Now, let's just see. Well, okay, a bit crooked, but never mind just representative. And you can see this is the face facing forward, one quarter sideways, and three quarter back. I thought of teaching to do the ears, but let's just do without the ears for this class because we want to just keep it simple. For comics, we're generally drawing really small. So let's just practice drawing a really small head like this. That's a circle. But of course, people's heads aren't exactly always a circle, maybe for a little kid's head, it's kind of like a circle. So let's just draw a few different other shapes that are modifications of a circle, like, for example, an elongated circle more like adult's head. If we want to bring it to a more exaggerated cartoony character look, we can do a more almost like a carrot or potato hit. Alright, all you can do, of course, almost like a trapezium hit. All the different head shapes will help differentiate the characters from each other. Alright. So we're just doing the front view here. And of course, you'll probably be thinking, This is really straightforward, but don't worry, I'll get more complicated. So for now, we can see that the center line is there and just draw the eyes, okay? For example, this one. The nose is kind of complicated, right, because it's right now, it's just pointing straight at you. So that's just represent it by a like that, like a C, but it's angular. So that's kind of like a V tilted on its side, and then we're going to have them out. All right? Let's just try different variations of this. Now for little kids, I noticed that the eyes are usually either the halfway mark here or lower. So for example, if I want to make this a younger kid, I can bring his eyes a bit lower. That looks younger, right? Looks like almost like a little baby or toddler. Now, if we bring the eyes further up like this, you'll notice that he looks a bit more grown up, a bit more mature, the nose can be in any shape that you want. For example, we can give him a nose here and then a little bump there. Okay, so just be creative in however you want to do the nose. That gives the character its distinctive look so that you can tell the characters apart. Okay, now for the mouth, you can also shift it up and down. You can put the mouth really low or really near the nose or just in the middle. So let's just do one that's just really low, okay? Sometimes, the more you exaggerate it, the more interesting the character looks. Okay, let's try these other two. Just fit it in however you like. Okay. We'll put this somewhere here. Yeah. We'll give this guy a really sharp, long nose like that. And I'm gonna put this guy here. Sometimes the mouth can be longer or shorter. Okay, this time we're gonna adjust the eyes here, why not? We'll make the eyes really close together. Some people's eyes are further apart and some are really close. Okay? And this one we'll just give his nose round like that. And then we're just going to put the mouth really small, everything's towards the center of the face, and that gives it its own special look. Let's just do one where it's just a funny shaped head like this. So that can simulate the hair already. And then, okay, let's just give it normal eye lengths, and can even put a nose like that. I mouth like that. Okay? So for the hair of the first one, Oh, man, have we put the hair? You know what? I think we'll need ears. So let's just add the ears, then. Let's just add ears here, and ears can be higher up or lower too. Just put them and they can be big or small. Alright. Here we go. Ears there. At first, I didn't want to include the ears because from different angles, they can look a little complicated. But I was thinking that if we're going to draw kind of almost almost representative of a human head, then ears might come in useful. I've never done this before, but it's kind of fun. Okay, so ears kind of pop out a bit, okay? Pop out a bit at the angle, right? Okay. So they're not completely flat against the head. So therefore, if we look at from the front view, we do we do see a bit of it popping out. Of course, some people's ears are more flat to the side and some ears pop out more. So everyone's different. Okay, now we can add things to the head. Like, for example, this is a little kid and we can add just hair like that. Okay. If you want, you can add eyebrows, that can add a very distinctive look to a character, too, but I'm just going to skip the eyebrows for this class just to keep things simpler. How about for this one, we just give him a little like a little hat, a black hat like this. And this one you can think of your own, but, um let me see what do I do with this one? You can give him a comb hair you like that. This one, we don't have a female yet, so let's just make this a female. Let's give this a shape like this and covers the ear, so like so. And this one, well, this one already has its own hair shape, so this is a bit more special. 4. Head: ¼ view: So the one quarter view looks like this. So again, draw small, and let's just start with the round head here. And if it helps you, let's draw the center line which has shifted from a center position to a curved line like this. Just think of crescent moon. Drawing the crescent moon here. Okay. And that will tell us where to put the eyes. The eyes has shifted here. So this okay, let's just write the one quarter view. One is here. And one is here and as you can see the circle has kind of flattened out. So let's just make this a bit more round and this one is a bit flattened out because now it's tilted at an angle. So it's like this, my hand flattens out like that. So for the nose, from the front view, you can't really see the angle much, but from the one quarter view, the nose jets out more. So if you did a little kind of arrowhead nose, this arrowhead nose can protrude a bit more, and the mouth would be more like this. Alright. And you can see that the ear from going on the side of the head has now moved to inside the circle. So let's just do this. Right. As for the adult guy, the center line would be there. The eye would be here. Oh, sorry. For this guy, the eye is higher, right? Now, the nose will be here and protrudes out just a tiny bit more. And then the mouth will be like this. And the ears somewhere the same level of the eye. So let's just make it the same level of the eye, but remember that it is within the circle now. Try it out with your own characters. I'm just going to draw these other two the eyes are lower here. The nose comes out a bit more. The mouth is somewhere there. The ear is about the same level as the eye. And then we're going to have this lady, which is broader. I guess it still keeps the trapezium look. Okay? Of course, this is exaggerated. Centerline comes here. So this time, the eyes are really close to the centerline. As for the nose, the line usually starts out from the center line comes out and goes back to the center line. The mouth goes across the center line, so her ear will be here, but it will be covered. We're just going to put the ear. Well, here. So long as it's within somewhere towards the back, not too close to the eyes, let's just fill in the hair. Now the character is at a one quarter view. We can actually see more of the side of the head, and therefore we can see, well, let's just color this. But we can see more of the side burn this time. So if we were to draw a hairline on this ping pong ball, it would be something like this. I know everybody's hairline is slightly different, but let's just keep it straight. And then, of course, on the side, sometimes there's this bump here, curve here, and then it goes to the side burn, and then it goes up. Let's just do the other side, side burn, and then it goes around the ear. Towards the back. And, and it goes around the ear. Yeah, we go. So therefore, if we tilt the head, we can see the side burn now. From the front view, you can't see it too well, so you can shade a bit of it. But from the one quarter view, you can see this part a bit more. Alright? Now, for this guy, it's easy. He just has a hat and the heat is kind of rounded all around, so there's not much of a change. For this guy, let's just give him a side, do the side thing. He has a parting here, but because it's from this side, the parting goes all the way to the edge, and we can't see the other side. Just like you can't see the a side burn, you can't see the other parting. Actually, his eyes were lower, wasn't it? Let's just give him eyes that are lure and he's like that. As for this lady, she has a fringe there. And, of course, it covers her ears, and it comes down like that. So there we go. Oh, yes, as for the strange character, I'm now wondering should I have drawn him. But let's just draw him for fun, let's just see what happens. Okay? So that will be the same hair shaped thing there. Let's draw the center line there, and the eyes like this, like this. And this weird nose, angular nose, and then the mouth goes across there and the ears here. So this is what we have so far. Of course, if we want to make it interesting, we can always add things like a beard. For example, who should we give a beard to? Not the kid. Maybe maybe this guy, okay? So if you want to do a beard, it comes down from the side burn here in front of the ear. So let's just do a beard here from the front view. You might see a bit of it here, here, and there. Alright? Oh 5. Head: Side view: Pretty straightforward. The side view looks like this. So for the side view, let's just draw the circle. Remember to draw a small. If we notice in the side view, we only see one eye, and we don't see the center line anymore because the center line has moved from here right to the edge. So let's just draw one I here, and at first, we drew the I really round, really round. Once it tilts to the side, the eye flattens out. So let's just draw kind of a flattened out eye to simulate that is on side and the nose protrudes out. So this is a little boy. Actually, should be drawing his eyes a bit lower because we want him to look more like a little boy. Let's just draw his eye a tiny bit lower, and then he looks cuter and the nose comes out roughly here. So protrudes from the side now, the mouth we only can see half the mouth. We don't want to make the mouth too big, just half, like this. And now how about the ear? The ear has moved into the shape even more. So kind of like near the center of the head. And now let's just do the hair. So he has a fringe there. He has side burns. Let's just color it so we can see the shape immediately. It goes over ear and Mm hmm. Actually, a hair actually comes down a bit further. I think I didn't do it that well. So, okay, hair does come down further. Hair comes down further until here. Okay, but we don't have to make it too realistic. Let's just go to the next guy, the adult guy. Same thing. He's taller, his eyes are higher. His nose is It's because the nose is on the edge, you might want to do it just coming out from his face like that. So it actually becomes part of the outline. And then his mouth is below here. His ear is somewhere in the center, but in the same level of the eye, he has the same hat, which looks the same all around, and now he has a beard. It comes here. Now let's just do the other two quickly. You're in the center. His eyes are a bit lower. Some people do have kind of a straight side part, and some people have more of a bump. Comes here. He just has a big forehead lady. Now, actually, people's face from the side, it may not always be rounded like that. So people's face is more flat. So you could adjust that if you wanted to. But of course, if you want it to be just the same all around to keep it simple, you can, too. I'm just going to make it a bit more flat here. Her eyes are here. He nose is coming out from just below the eye here. And yes, I don't have. I can get rid of that line there, and mouth is here. Everything's really close together. Her ear is here, but it's covered, and her hairs here. There you go. How about the funny shaped guy. So he's more of an abstract character. Um, yeah, I want to make him from the front a bit flatter here. And his nose is kind of like this, I guess. It's kind of like a panel that sticks out, a rectangle panel that sticks out. So that'll be how it looks like from the side. Eyes there, there, and the ear is too hot. Closer to the middle of the head. Alright, we did the side view. 6. Head: ¾ view: Now, let's do the tree quarters view, which is like this. When I was growing up, this was a slightly more complicated view for me, but I found it pretty useful. Like when I need to draw a character looking at something and we're looking over the character's shoulder or when a character is facing another character, but at an angle. Alright, let's just start with the three quarter view of the boy, a simple circle. If you notice, we can't really see the eye here, especially if it's tilted a bit more forward. Sometimes you can see a bit, but oftentimes you can't really see it, but you do see a nose sticking out past the horizon. And if we turn the head a bit more forward, more extreme three quarter view, the nose gets smaller and smaller. So let's just draw the tip of the nose. The boy has a very small nose in itself, not as big as this nose. So let's just draw a very tiny nose here on the lower end because his eyes are quite low. I can't see the mouth either. So this angle, you'll notice that we only see the side view of the ear, kind of like this because the ear is tilted at that angle. Some ears are tilted more, some are less. And the ear is kind of like forward. So it's a bit on this position. It moved more to this part of the circle. How I would draw it is like this, just like a outline of a letter see, kind of like a banana or sausage. If I were to draw it bigger, it'll kind of look like this. Okay. And I don't have to be too fussy on how the shape is Rush roughly, you know, just a rough sausage there, a bit curved. And of course, if you move it more, this is not a real ear, but a real ear would have another component here. If we move the head more forward, we'll see this component here. If you don't want to define the component too much, sometimes I would just do it like this, just to give an impression, I don't have to close the shape. Oh, yeah, one interesting to note is that, although we can't see the eye, sometimes a person might have longer eyelashes. So the longer eyelashes will stick out past the horizon line here. The horizon, not the face, I mean. So it'll be like this. If the eyes are open, it'll open up like that. All right. Well, I row that great. But if the eyes are closed, the eyelashes will tiled downwards, right? And the nos there. So there you go. That can actually simulate whether the eyes are open or closed. Now we're going to do the hair. At this angle, we see a lot of the side part of the hair. So it actually comes down here. You don't even see the front fringe anymore. So it's just a side burn and it goes up. Let's just draw the back part of the ear here, and it goes here, and it goes here. If we look here, there we go. And, of course, we can just shade it. You can always give smaller details like hair sticking out or whatever you like. Okay, let's just see whether we can do it with the other alternate shapes. So his nose comes down there and it comes down there. So when it's around the horizon, it'll probably just be the little thing sticking out there. You don't see the other parts, the other parts will probably be hidden behind the head. And his ear, let's just draw that funny sausage. And this funny sausage thing will be in line with his eyes, which is a bit higher like that. He doesn't have hair. He has the beard which starts in front of the ear. And then we have the head, which looks the same all around. Do you want to give him eyelashes? Maybe not for this guy. The guy with the big forehead, maybe your characters will be more interesting than mine. I mean, this guy is a bit more interesting because of his big forehead, but if you make a character's nose even longer or maybe bigger or smaller, just something more extreme, you'll get a more interesting look for a character. This one, he has a very strong triangular nose. So we don't want to show too much of a noses just a bit. It is disappearing over the horizon of the cheek. Now, the banana shape, think about where the eye is. Usually the ear is on the same level as the eye. And then note his sight thing here. His sight thing is quite pulled back. I guess you can see the edge of it there. It goes over. If you notice how barbers cut their hair, they cut it over the ear and then there's a bit of flesh around the ear. Okay. And then it comes here. And then I'm going to color it. That's it. How about eyelashes? Okay, let's just give a closed eyelashes. See how it looks like. Like here. Yeah, it looks like he's looking down, always pondering, always closing his eyes. Now for the lady here, it's gonna be like this. Okay, just roughly the rough curve trapezium shape. Mm, I've done away with the flat part because that belongs to the front of the face. Oh, remember that for her, everything is kind of squeezed into the center of the face. So with such a big surface area, would we be able to see the nose at all? So, maybe not. So in this case, maybe I won't even draw the nose, and let's just see whether it will look like a three quarter view. So her hair would just be here. And, um, here like that, I guess. Yeah. It might be just like that. I'm so tempted to put the nose there, but I think the nose will be actually here on the front of the face, so it won't be seen. If it won't be seen, it won't be seen. So let's just not draw it. Now, for the abstract guy that I have here, how shall I draw him? We'll just draw it like this. I guess it's more flexibility in how we draw him because he's the least realistic of the batch. I can still give him the sausage ear, but his nose is so thin. His nose is so small, so we might not be able to see his nose. We just give him a small detail there since he doesn't have any other detail. Okay. Yeah. Alright, I guess we'll just draw it like this. If we do try to draw a nose, which I think shouldn't be seen, it'll be super small, but it may not be necessary. 7. Head: Back view: So we've done the three quarter view, and now we're just going with the back view, which is super simple because it has the least amount of details. Same as the front view, and we can see the two ears sticking out for the kid. And of course, we have to take note of where the headline comes down here. Then we color. That's it for this guy with the elongated head, his ears, higher up, his head. We don't see his beard, nothing. So that's it. Now for the pointy head guy. I guess if you want to study where the hair flows, can shade it. Well, okay, you can't really see anything. So supposing if he was a blonde haired man, you might want to do like this. You can just see the lines, and he will look like a blonde haired man or a light colored hair man. And now for the lady, this is super simple, right? The ears covers the ears again. Now, if every now and then, during the comic, she pulls her hair back and then ear may stick out, okay? So, of course, hopefully that does not get mistaken for the nose, which does look like the nose right now. So let's just get rid of it. That's it. There's nothing more to add for this lady. Now for funny head man, he's just a funny shape and two ears. That's it. So these are all the views I have done, the front view, one quarter view, side view, three quarters view, and the back view. So at this point, if you have yet to try it out, create at least two different character heads and draw them out from all five views. Feel free to base them on yourself, your family members, your siblings, or your friends. 8. Full body: All 5 views: So right now, I'm going to see if I can mix something that would represent the body. This will be our model for drawing a simple human. Why does it make it simple? It's because it gets rid of the neck part. The head sinks into the body like this. We're going to do the five views for the whole body. We've already done the hid. Now let's do the head together with the body. Okay, so the front view, we'll do the head like this. It's a ball, but the bottom part is going to be covered by the body. See? We did away with the neck here. For the body, we'll use a mid tone color pencil, something that is not too light and not too dark, either. Just a middle darkness. I'm going to use this Darwin intense pencil that I have, but it doesn't matter so long as it's mid tone. This is a cylinder, but from the front, it looks like a rectangle. So let's just draw rectangle. And then we will draw the hands. We don't want to draw the hands too short because people's hands end up around the groin area. So let's just draw it a bit longer. Let's just do two lines instead of one line because we want to advance beyond drawing stick figures. And for the hands, three bumps like that. All right? Just three bumps. It doesn't matter, something like number three, but has three parts. The other one, one, two, three, and then the legs. Like this. And the feet, they go, Let's not draw them like this because people don't really stand like this. But if you're looking at eye level and you're looking at somebody's feet, they will kind of angle out something like this. So more like this. Okay. And for the front, just the hair. I'm using my character here. So roughly the nose. Oops, I mean the nose too high. If a mine, more or less and the ears. Okay, so that will be our simple character. So the one quarter view looks like this. You know how the had works already. But for the body, you'll notice that this arm is in front, followed by the body, and then this arm is partially blocked. It's behind the body. And then there's going to be a lick in the front and a leg behind, and the feet point out this way. Well, this feet is not exactly, but more or less, you know, as you can see, I did a center line here. It goes to the side. Okay, so the one quarter view going to draw the head, which is sunk into the body, so don't draw the base of the circle. It's still a rectangle because the cylinder is the same all round. And then we'll have the hand in front like this. The squiggles. And the other hand, well, if he's pushing his hand out like that, like that. Okay? And remember to draw the hands long enough. And then the leg in front and a leg behind. And the angle would be somewhere pointing out like this, kind of moving out in a direction like this, but just a slight different angle. As before, you know how to a quarter view hit. There we go. So take note that I drew this leg slightly shorter than the other leg. So it's like this and slightly shorter. That's just because of the angle that we're looking at. Of course, in different angles, the position, the height of the legs will change. But let's just keep it like this for now. I think it does the job. For the side view, let's turn it, and it's going to look like this. We can see this arm and the body, and the other hand, it's pretty much blocked by the body unless it's sticking out, and then you can see it. The back leg, we can see it if it sticks out. If not, we can't see it or unless it's from an angle, if we're looking at the angle, and then we can see the other foot. But if we're looking at eye level, that means we're looking at another person from this angle, and we're looking down at their legs, we'll probably see a bit of the other foot there. But of course, if we want to do a simple view, just completely side view, we won't see the other foot or the other leg. So this is how we're going to draw the side view, hid, coloring the body, keeping it simple. We're going to draw the hand in front. No, maybe I need to sharpen my pencil. Okay, let's draw the hand. Three squiggles. And then, okay, let's just make the hand come out and three squiggles and maybe he's holding a cup of coffee just to show you what hands can do. One leg here. If you want to just keep it really simple, that's it. Doing at an angle, you can do a slide just slightly like that. And that's seeing it from a slightly different angle, you're looking down at the legs. Alright, the hid. Side, the eyes. You can draw them in any order you like. But you'll find that as you draw smaller, the smaller details don't really matter. It's more about the overall shape that makes the character recognizable. One of the fun thing to note is that when you're drawing characters in a comic world where you're not doing a comic that's really realistic, you can also make the arm more like a stuffed toy arm where instead of it bending at the elbow, you can actually give him bendy arms and bandy legs. Of course, if you give them bendy arms, then you have to make sure that it's consistent throughout all your characters because then in the universe, all your characters will be bandy arm people. And this is what I did in this series that I illustrate for. Everybody has bendy arms. As you can see here, no elbows. Alright, now we're going to do the three quarter view. Remember the nose, we hardly see it. For the body, it's kind of similar to the one quarter view. This hand is in front and the back hand unless oops. And for the other hand, unless it goes behind, we can't see it. And we're going to have one leg in front and one leg behind. And of course, we can tilt it at an angle. This leg is going to look longer, and this leg is going to look shorter. Let's draw the head, the body, the one arm in front. Let's just make the arm move up like this. Maybe it's waving and one arm behind it just sticks out and we're going to have the front leg, the leg that's closer to us, pointing like this, I guess because it's pointing this direction. And this leg bit shorter pointing in that direction like that. Okay, let's just draw the shape there. There we go. Alright. If he does look like he's missing pants, you can always just add some pants to all of them, alright? He does look like he needs some pants. That's fine. Just give him some black shorts. And now we have the back view. Pretty straightforward. It's kind of like the front view. We have the head, the ears, the body will make him tiny bit fatter, the legs. And this is the part where it's a bit strange, right? We kind of see the legs jutting out sometimes, but there's some foreshortening going on. So, for example, if it's really close up, we just see the tips if he's slanting his legs. So in a way, it jets out just a little bit. Definitely not like that because his legs not sticking out from the side. Just stick it out just very little bit. Now, the hands again, bring it down to the crotch area or slightly below is fine. The back of the head, just understand that the hairline is kind of like this, and there we go. 9. Full body: Design variations: Let's explore some variations. We can maybe give it a trapezium shape. Just a really big trapezium shape. We could also give it a very long shape, maybe a tall body. Or we could give it a, some other weird shape, like something like a pair. Or this could be just because the outfit the person is wearing looks like this, or it could be something like this, something like some strange dress. And then the head just sticks out. We don't draw the bottom because it's sinking into the body. Supposing we're doing a one quarter view, you can draw the mark there. She was waving there. Just gonna draw the rest. Giving bigger legs here. There's lots of permutations you can try out, so go ahead and try them out. Make your character one of a kind. 10. Full body: Different poses: Now let's practice drawing our characters in a few different poses. Better yet, let's make them useful poses, poses that you'll probably use in a comic story. For example, if he's standing still and then suddenly he notices somebody to his side and he looks to the side. So let's just draw that. I kind of accidentally drew one leg longer than the other, even though the body is facing the front. And when I did that, it looks like she has placed one leg in front and one leg is behind. So, in a way, that's how I would simulate somebody walking toward me, make one leg bigger and one leg behind. What about somebody running? That could be a useful pulse. Okay, if somebody running, they're kind of leaning forward. So let's just lean this rectangle there. And one leg can be at this angle here, and the other leg can be at this angle here. Now they think which leg is actually in front. Okay, let's just say this leg is in front. Okay? We can give him black pants. Okay, maybe this legs in front this leg looks a bit bigger. Okay, if this legs in front, when people run, that means this hand goes forward. Right? So, there we go. They clench their fists, so maybe you can just do shorter, shorter bumps. The back leg is in front. The back hand will swing behind. And, of course, if he's tilting his head, well, see. Let's see if he can tilt his head one quarter view this way. So that he's kind of looking behind as he's running and he's shouting or something. Give him some funny hair. There we go. Does he look like he's running? If you want, you can give him a bit of shadow just like this. Now, when a person is walking, um, well, it just comes with observation from looking at people walk. I think that is really helpful in itself. But, if I were to put it in a nutshell here, let's see, supposing if I give this body a kind of a tropezium, perhaps it's a longer one because maybe it's a longer dress. How do I draw a person walking? Okay, so maybe this this foot will be slightly like this. Maybe I shouldn't have drawn a dress because then you can't see it. Oh, well, now it's a true dress. Like this. A sea trow dress. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so it could be a raincoat. Now decide which legs in front. I guess this legs in front. This licks in front. Actually, she could be twisting her body, or he could be twisting his body straight center line here, and this one is actually one quarter views. So yeah, he could be doing that. So yeah, so maybe this is a raincoat. Yeah, we can do this as a raincoat, see? With some pockets on the side. Well, it can be a female or a male. So up to you. So sometimes the back leg is under shadow, and I'll color it dark because it's under the body as well as on the back and then I'll put a shadow. That's optional. Now, for somebody sitting down, I think that would be really useful. Okay? So supposing if we drew a chair, and I think for now, a sideways chair would be most manageable. Okay? However simple, you want to draw a chair, you can draw a bean bag if you want to make it even more simple. Okay, so just draw the hid. The body will be like this, and then the legs will stick out from here and bend around the chair. We're just doing a complete side view thing just to keep things simple and uncomplicated. Okay, and maybe there's a table there. And he's having coffee. Coffee, some smoke. And if you want, maybe he is looking at the camera icking the third wall. Or is it the fourth wall? Okay. Anyway, he's looking at the camera and he's talking. Um, go to make it a female or male. Let's see. Let's just give him a hat like this. 11. A character interacting with an object: So what we're going to do is get our characters interacting with one object. First of all, we want to draw comic panels. So this is how I do it. I do it without a ruler. Just do your best to keep the lines straight and neat. Not trying to aim for perfection, just trying to make it neat. A simple box, and then leave a tiny gap in between the boxes. So this is two panels, and this is the third panel. So we're just going to do a three panel comic. Don't worry if the panels are not perfectly equal. There are many kinds of objects that we can make our characters interact with. And this one, let's just have our character interact with a maybe a cup cup like this cup like this. I'll draw my character walking This will be a side view pose. One legs in front of the other, give him some pants. I guess if this legs in front, this hand, I'll decide which legs in front. This legs in front, this hand will be moving back. That's how humans walk. I'll just give him a head so he looks a bit more like me. He's walking towards a let's say, a table. On top of the table, I'll just put my little cup. I can put a shadow below him like this. Now I'm going to get him to grab the cup and drink it. That will be a tree picture sequence. The table is always going to be in the same position, so I'm just going to put the table there and there. It doesn't need to be exactly the same. Sometimes when there are little flaws in it like this or like this, I try not to see it as a mistake. I just see it as charming instead. All right. So he's getting closer. And I think that thinking a sequence. Oh, I forgot his ear here, and he's looking down. So when he's looking down, the nose will point down. And his body and his legs will probably be together. Maybe I just see one leg because the other leg is behind. I'm just going to get him to grab the cup with his right hand here. Shadow. I guess he's going to drink. So if he's drinking, he's going to tilt his head a bit up. So it's kind of like doing an animation. Maybe he's closing his eyes. I'm going to draw the cup first. Okay. And then the water goes this way. Now that I know that the cup is there, I know where to place the hand, and the right hand will go the side of the cup. And there we have it, I have done the character into three different poses, and just with these three poses, I've told a very simple sequence or a very short story. Let me do another example with a tree just to give you some extra ideas on what is possible. So again, three panels without using a ruler. Keep the space really close to each other. Let's have a tree with some fruits. And our character. Let's have a boy this time, or maybe a girl. Okay, let's have a girl. And this time, she is let's have her running. When you run, one hands behind, one hand is forward. And if this hand is forward, this legs behind. Okay, maybe she has long hands. Just keep it to an object and a person. We'll do backgrounds later. Now, what can we do? So tree will still be more or less in that same position. More or less the same shape. I know it's a bit off, but it's fine. Let's have her jump up and grab this froit with this hand. Her jump up like that? Just putting the shadow away from her feet makes her look like she's jumping higher. And maybe I make the feet too long. And when I'm growing smaller, I need a sharper pencil. Let me go. So she got this fruit. And then let's make something happening. Let's just say she got the fruit. So there's always a passing of time every time we go to a next panel. Sometimes more time could have passed and sometimes less time. So this one, perhaps a bit more time has passed. She's looking down. And she is holding the fruit. And perhaps all the other foods have dropped. So those She's holding one, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So perhaps all the other foods have dropped, and she has got one. So this is another short story sequence with just a character and object. 12. Which part of the action to show: When we see a character perform an action in real life or in an animation, we're actually seeing the character in many different poses as they are performing the action. This is a boy kicking a ball, and these are just sum of actions in the whole sequence. I'm sure there are actually more in between each action. However, when we translate this into the comics medium, we have a limited amount of space to communicate an action. Sometimes we might have one panel, sometimes we might have two panels or sometimes we have the luxury of six panels to communicate somebody running. Oftentimes we have to work within the limitations. So here's a question for you. If we only had one panel to show this boy kicking a ball, which part of the action would you choose to draw 1-7? Here we see him looking at the ball, about to kick the ball, almost about to touch the ball, making contact, making contact, and the ball is having some impact and the ball flying off his foot, and then him watching the ball that has flown off. Which one would you choose? Have an answer in your head? Mm. So I would choose this one. So this is toward the end part of the action of kicking a ball, if you notice. And I think it's the clearest part of the action that communicates a boy kicking a ball. When I was around 10-years-old, my dad bought me this drawing book, and one of the pages stood out for me, even till today. It covers which pose would be more effective in communicating a punch. And here you can see that the best pose is the one before and the one after. And therefore, when I look at a lot of Marvel comic punches, I do agree that the punch looks the most powerful and effective in the final pose of the punch. So keeping that in mind, supposing if we had two panels to communicate a boy kicking the ball, which two poses would you choose? 1-7? Make a guess, and then I'll show you what I would choose. Taking the advice from how to draw comics to Marvel way, the first parts and the last parts tend to communicate the action most clearly or most effectively. So I could choose one of these two, and then I think this one doesn't show the ball anymore. So I think I prefer this one. Sometimes you do have to think a bit and see what works best for your story. This one looks a bit more passive, so maybe I'll go with this. Some pans. What do you think? Does this work? Here, you'll notice that I added this line here and I would call this a little symbol. This is also a symbol. If I want it, I could actually put something like this. Symbols don't actually appear in real life, but somehow they communicate little meanings to us. This line would communicate the journey of the ball and these little things could communicate an impact or it could be a jagged thing too. Now let's look at a fresh one. Let's do the same exercise. This is a girl seeing a cat and then deciding to pick up the cat. Here you can see I used a little symbol here too. These are not sweat drops. If these were sweat drops, which would be more like this, it would look like she's in a panic, but these are just lines, and for me, I tend to use this a lot when I want to make it seem like the person is suddenly paying attention to something or being surprised. If we only had two panels to play with, let me draw the box a little neater this time. Which two poses would you choose to communicate a girl seeing the cat and then picking up the cat. I noticed that when I spoke the action, I actually said two actions, seeing the cat and picking up the cat and sometimes that would determine which pose I would choose. If it's seeing the cat and then picking up the cat, I would choose this because this is seeing the cat and picking up the cat. If I told myself that I just wanted to show the girl picking up the cat, I would disregard the seeing the cat part and perhaps I would choose this because this is the start of the action of picking up the cat and this is the end part of picking up the cat. In your mind, being clear in what you want to communicate can help you decide which pose to show. This is seeing the cat and picking up the cat. You'll notice that between this and this, there is a length of time that we have skipped. One thing to note is that this space between two panels is actually a length of time. And that time can span between 1 second to 5 minutes or even longer. You can think of it as before and after. But of course, the sequence next to each other should make enough sense for the reader. Because supposing if I had to do another sequence that happened 1 hour later, for example, she is sleeping in bed. Sorry for the untidy drawing. Just a demonstration. It might be good to add back at home, just so that the reader understands that a lot of time has passed and a lot of events have passed, and in this case, the location has changed, too. We want to make sure that the reader isn't confused. So that's it for choosing which part of the action to show. 13. Class Project: So this will be a class project. Use just one character that you have designed so far, and I want you to put your character in a simple sequence like this where your character is interacting with one other object. So pick an object, a cup, a cat, a dog, a plant, or even a tree. Start by drawing three panels. If you want to draw a few more panels, it's up to you, you can, but three panels at least. And remember, there's no need to use a ruler. Want to keep this really casual, and not using a ruler will help you to kind of tell your brain that this is just a very casual thing, nothing serious. Place a tiny spacing about two MM between each panel. As for the sequence of events, you could break it down with this rough guide. For the first panel, the character encounters an object, the second panel, the character interacts with it, and for the last panel, you can just show what happens next. For this project, there is no need to draw any backgrounds, just the character and the object. It does not need to be funny or some genius idea. It can be totally mundane. And if you want to make it funny, just make it funny enough to amuse yourself. Whatever your character does, double check that when you read through it again, it is clear visually what the character is doing without any explanation because when people read your comics, you're not going to be there to explain what's happening. The pictures need to communicate everything to the reader on its own. When you're done, simply take a picture or scan it, make sure the comic is upright so that when we read it, it will be the right way up and post it onto the Skillshare website so that we all can take a look and learn from each other, and I'll give my comments. So I look forward to seeing your mini comics, and after that, I hope to see you in part two of the course.