Using Shapes To Hack Your Character Design

1. Using shapes to hack your character design: Hi there, I'm Ben, an illustrator and a production artists. In this lesson, we're going to explore how to shape language to better communicate your ideas and your characters. These are deep psychological secrets that those simple are incredibly effective and leveling up your character and production design. If that sounds like fun to you, then I'll see you in the next video. 2. Shape languade 01: In this video, we're going to learn how to best use shapes and shape language to better communicate what you want to your audience. So all shapes are made of three elements. You have curve's lines and then you have angles. Or you can think of it more easily with triangles, rectangles, ovals, or circles. Since she even the most complex design is made up of these three elements. And each one of them psychologically will affect your audience in different ways. So this may seem a bit strange, but let me explain how shapes can affect your psychologically. So here to abstract shapes. Now these shapes are characters. So one of these characters, it's called Bobo, and the other one is called Kiki, without their names written down. Which one do you think is which? So if you guessed that this one is bulbar and this one it's Kiki, then you're correct. Like 1990, 9% of the people make that choice regardless of culture, of the upbringing of their age, it is a universal thing. We associate a key, key sharp shape, sounding shape with this and the Bobo, a round shape with this. So knowing that shapes have a psychological impact on your audience, let's go over what the basic ones mean. So let's go back to basic shapes. Circle is very soft, gentle shapes. There are no hard edges for you to cut yourself on. It's an inflating it very pleasant shape. Triangle is its exact opposite. It's sharp. It's a cutting shape. It's very uninvited, but it's a lot stronger than the circle. And then lastly, we have the rectangle. The rectangle represents stability. It's the foundation block. Lots of complex shapes. The more square, blocky design, whether it'd be a character vehicle or basically any physical object, the closer to a rectangle or block, the more solid it is, or at least the more solid it appears to be. So let's have a look at an example. So these are both cars. Both of them have doors, front window, four wheels, engine block upfront. But you can tell just by looking at them, which one is the more sturdy, even though this car you can see does have a block in there because it has all these gentle curves. It feels a lot faster and a lot less hardy and substantial. Say this one, which is made up of these huge, very blunt blocky shapes and naughty, knowing much or anything really about engineering. You can instantly tell just by looking at them which one you would want to take off road. Which one is going to fair better in a crash? Which one is the tougher, but also which one is the faster just from the placement of the blocks on the design. So next we're going to have a look at some existing character designs and see how they're shaped. Language informs the audience of their character just by looking at them. 3. Shape dynamics simple 2: So starting with some things simple here, the characters from the film, The Emperor's New Groove. Now these designs are brilliant because they're just so simple. Just by looking at them, you know exactly what kind of character they are, even if you've never actually seen the film. They can also be very easily broken down to their most simple shapes and still be recognizable. So let's quickly go over each one. So first of all, we have Pancho, who is the hero of the story. As you can see, he's made of a ferry, find rectangle. But he has these quite soft edges to him. You can tell that he's very strong and reliable, but also that he's very caring and questioning fighting character from the soft curves that makes the outer parts of the body. He basically has no real sharp edges to him, as opposed to the villain who's pretty much entirely made of sharp edges. She almost looks like you would cut yourself on these hard, spiky just to her. And also she has a very thin but very stiff frame. You get the idea that she's somebody who likes to be in control. Sorry. She's very upright, She's very stiff. Then you have Emperor Cusco, who's kind of a mix of the two. He's known, lying near, as sharp as you smell, like, his chin. She's quite pointed. It comes to a little bit of a curve at the bottom, but he's a lot more fluid. That change color to blue, super Morrison, see, he's gone. I'm much more fluid shape, which shows that he's quite a relaxed, carefree character. He's not quite as stiff as he's map, but he's also not as sturdy and reliable as puncher. For these kind of loose curves, you get very much the impression of a character who is quite carefree but also quite unreliable. And then finally, we have good old crank who is ease my right-hand man. He's probably my favorite character. Now. He starts off working as a henchmen. Soon he's a bad guy. He has this kind of core here which tapers downwards in a much more triangular shape than the block that makes up pantry. And he has a few sharp edges because he starts off as a bit of a bad guy that kinda make him a little more threatening, or at least a lot more capable, forceful than a character like Pangea. But as you can see, he has some of these more soft curved elements around here that kind of soften up his character to show that even though he's meant at first, blush, at first look at him to be a bit of a brute. He's actually not that bad of a guy. So now that we've seen how these simple shapes make these quite simple characters, let's show off this technique with a simple cartoon character. Starts off with, we're going to work with quite a basic brief. Use the different shape languages to change how characterised, perceived by the audience. So what I've got here is a chef, just a simple shift character. You can copy this one. We'll do one more or less near and style doesn't really matter. If you are following along just very middle of the road. Honestly, kind of a bit boring. He's has a solid core here, but it doesn't really say much, not a lot is said with this character. So it would sink. Proof designs kind of boring as I said, tell me much, but we can change his proportions. So that's changed his proportions to make a new character out of this brief be a little bit more interesting. So let's start off with taking this shape, but let's make it a little rounder. And same with his nose, this brand often nose and even the mustache. Like the mustache is quite square in the initial one. But we can round it off to make it a little, a little softer, a little less than the chef hat. And same with the shoulders. We can round off the shoulders and the arms. And not making huge, but we can make them quite pigeon chested. Make his chest hair a bit more well rounded, curve lines there with the material with pull the legs, we can make them a little buggy. Yeah. So yeah, we have pretty much the same character, but see how just changing a few decisions here and they're picking him predominantly out of rounded shapes. It changes how you perceive them. Changes. His character might seem light. And let's try again. Same character, but like let's take all of these shapes and make them a lot sharper. Biggest head entirely out of sharp points. Shop mustache. We could even extend the beard, poked out. Shoulders. That bike, bareback. Much things start to look like an evil is a very sharp elbows. Let's give him a very thin, very straight chest. And now you see we have the same character done with three different priorities as to shape. And you can see even with a very simple character, that we have drastically changed your perception of each one psychologically. So just by looking at them, you know, more or less what they're going to be like, what you can expect from them as a character. Now, although these characters are very simple, the same lessons apply to characters that are much more complicated and subtle, but their shape language, which I'm going to go over next. 4. Complex shape language: Now the characters from the game Overwatch, another great example of shape language being used to tell a story for each character. Now, I'm not going to go over every characters that would take forever, but I'm going to go over a choice selection. So I'm good to go over the three main types of characters in the game. Salt tank in Halo, and how different the shapes can be while still conveying information to the audience needs to understand the character. So let's start out with reaper, who is assault character. Now this design may look a bit complicated. There are lots of details and smaller shapes that make up the sign. But if you look for the big shapes, you see he's made out of the triangular shapes. There's these substantial block, however, here in the torso. It gives him a very sturdy look. But then all the way through his design, or hard triangular shapes and very hard, blocky, very brutal shapes. That could be a very aggressive, but also very sturdy type of character. And these triangles repeat over and over and over and over and over throughout the character. A very forceful and they're very aggressive and sharp design that you instantly see when you look at. And the opposite, I would say, is this character may, whereas prefers made of entirely hard and sharp shapes. Maze entirely, almost completely made out of soft curves shapes that then sit on a pretty sturdy coal. And because she's a little shorter, she's quite stocky in her overall shape. You can tell she is a lot more defensive than rephrase. It has also forward motion in his design is very pointed quite literally. And forward focusing. Hers is much more stocky, a lot more defensive looking. So you can see that elements are supposed to go towards her and then she's supposed to block them. And that's just from a gameplay perspective. But if you look how she's a very sweet round face. Her clothes of very bulky but also very soft looking. You can tell that she's a lot softer, nicer than say, this character. So next we're going to go on to the tax. So let's start off with Zara. Zara is a little bit like me in that she has this very solid, stocky core and this very stocky, very rectangular overall shape. And she has a lot of soft, rounded elements to the design. However, if you look ahead proportions, she's clearly a lot bigger than me. Also, what's interesting is that even though she has a lot of ground elements on her design, there are also, I'll also these kind of, I wouldn't say sharp but definitely harsher elements that kind of permeate the design that are a little more, a little more aggressive, but not quite as aggressive as they say an a tag character. So the effect is a no nonsense and the aggressive, but ultimately quite a protective character so on who gets across this attitude of someone who is very kind but also very protective. Whereas if you look at the other tank, road hog, we get a very different sense for the character. So obviously Here's design is dominated by this big circle. Here. Overall shape is Lakes area, that big block. It's very sturdy, but as I'm sure you've noticed, in his design, it's covered all over these very, very sharp shapes that just kind of peppered throughout that fiery much delineate him as a much more aggressive and possibly more vicious character than say Zara or may see, you can tell that even though he's a big block, he's there to be defending or at least taking damage. He's not a defender like Zara. He's a lot more aggressive, a lot more vicious. And it's by including these very, very sharp angles like these intensely sharp edges and shapes that get across his character so that they're very different from each other, even though they serve the same role. And now lastly, for the healers who are by and large the smallest, lightest characters, as I need to be quick and hopefully not get shot. So first of all, we have mercy who is kinda archetypical healer. And you can see a large part of her design. This is very stiff shape here. She's very upfront. And this gives her a very sturdy, but also quite delicate fields for the character. And then it's softened by these more curved parts of the design that show that she's quite a caring character. But that is dominated by this very no-nonsense, very straight rectangle here in the center. Caring but sensible vine from this very upright and very confident pose. Then contrast that with another healer, Moira, who again is the same but opposite. This very upright pose. It's very straight. But you can see that her body is a lot more fluid. And that shows that she's a little less dependable than Mercy is. This shape gives the impression that she is a little, possibly it was more self-centered, maybe a little quicker on her feet. And much like road hog, even though she's a healer for character, is once again kinda covered in these very sharp little pinprick shapes that delineate that she is possibly a little more duplicitous than mercy here, even though they are more or less filling in the same character roles in the game. The effect of the small sharp shapes also delineate a more aggressive character trait. And so by mixing these shapes together, you can tell just by looking at that, She's an attack healer. So now we have a better grasp on shape language. Let's design a character using these more complicated shape relations. 5. Knight shape exorsize final: Okay, so now we've got a better handle on Shape Dynamics and shape language. Let's design a character that's a little bit more complicated than the chef we were drawing earlier. So I'm going to start off with a night. Now, normally I would insist on drawing from reference for this type of thing. However, because of my job doing a lot of historical videos and projects, I can more or less draw night in my sleep. Now, we're going to start off with a knight That's quite middle of the road. As I said earlier with the chef, We want this guy to be kind of dull. Not saying anything particular with the design, but it's something that we can then use as a jumping off point for our other two designs. Where one of them is going to be a lot rounder, defensive looking and one that's going to look a lot sharper and it's going to work up a lot more aggressive looking. But they're all going to share more or less the same structure as I'm going to define here. Starting night. And you can either follow along with me or you can design your own nights. But the most important thing is that you do a design which is quiet middle of the road, like this is a good mix of shapes but nothing that's two distinctive. So what I'm going to do now, done with more shading here, just to give it a bit more definition, is I'm going to take this layer and I'm going to duplicate it. Once again. Duplicate it again. Now we have our three identical nights. And then that means I can start messing around with this guy. It's gonna be a bit more definition with salt though it looks a little floaty. Start out, just rounding off a lot of the main areas of the chest. The Coltrane here, just to give them a little bit more of a rounded steadiness. Same thing with the face mask here. I think I'm going to have it a little bit square, a little less sharp. The fight up. The eraser tool. Again, just going over the main parts of the design and making them a little softer, a little rounder. And also putting small elements in the design that are circles that this is all on those, but this is a less than, so it's supposed to be on the lows. So you can have repeating patterns are repeating elements within design. And I think I'm just making it a little wider. So lots stocky than the base one. Just defining this circle shape a bit more now. And I'm just going to repeat it on the shoulders here. Stretching mouth makes him a look blockier, makes him look a lot more defensive. And then they do the same here with the leg armor here, just making it a lot thicker and not making it taper as much towards the feet and also making the feet a bit bigger to show that he's a big, heavy dude. And he'd need a solid foundation here for him to walk on and not look like he's about to stumble over. Now, I'm thinking I can make him look a little bit more sturdy by adding a source of cloth skirt type thing like a banner or something like that over one side. And that will further, given a more blocky shape as well as rounding out the chest here. And then we can just fill in the back here to make it look darker to show that it kind of goes around the back and around the, his left side. Definition here. Already just with a few quite subtle changes, we've already drastically changed the overall shape and the kind of attitude that you have with this quite basic night character. And we didn't need to drastically redesigned him from the ground up. We just needed to take what was already there and then just move it around. And I'm just going to take tickets transform and just to make the shoulders and little bigger here. Because that further accentuate that fridge cockiness that he has to make him even broader at the shoulders. Here really is. Very defensive looking, heavy looking dude, rather than a more agile, aggressive attacking type character. And something else you can do, just go through this here with his belt buckle. This is a little more subtle than say the shapes on his shoulders. I'm on the chest. But just little touches like that can actually quite drastically in form, the message that you're sending with the character design is the same as what I said with the, with the Overwatch characters. Sometimes it's small. Eating patterns and shapes can really help overall with how your character comes across. Here on the helmet. I'm just taking the angles that are already there and just extend your editing them. So just really pushing the visor forward and on the shoulders doing the complete opposite as what I did with the the more rounds night by making all of the angles much sharper and actually taking away some of these round shapes and replacing them with more angular ones, giving him more spikes and things like that. Nicole duster look for the gauntlets here and then shuffling up the elbow protection. This overall gives him a much less friendly, a lot more aggressive outline and shape language. So again, here, hold runs, just getting rid of those, those round edges. And the same here with the sword that just taking the areas here and making them a lot sharper. And the same here with the Greeks. Shove the leg protections. I'm just going to go into just completely erase the round edges and replace them with these much sharper ones. Already. He's looking a lot more aggressive than the other. Now I'm going to do is I'm just going to go walk the walk the entire thing. I want him to be a little bit more broad shouldered by one to be tapered a little bit more. So he looks a little lighter, a little less stocky than the other night. And you can totally do this with sketches like It's often, you think, Oh, if I use the warp tool, we'll just look really weird. But oftentimes you can get away with a lot, a lot more than you think. And again, with repeating patterns have got the triangle facing downwards across the chest. Just a little engraving essentially. But again, that repeating pattern, repeating shapes, the sharp edges, the triangles, really helps get across this much more aggressive, a lot less defensive looking design. It's going to need this up here. And again with the circles on the defensive round night and put some triangles here. Always kinda looks like the nose of a skull, which again makes him look a little bit more aggressive. Less of a goody, goody two shoes, like I'll rams night. Small curves and some more sharp edges to the edge of the Coltrane's here. Then with the gold cut, which is the part of the armor which protects the neck. Just going to sharpen that up a bit as well and safe. The shield can just make these little sharper, less organic as well. So a mix of round organic shapes, but also these very hard, more industrial shapes definitely helps him feel more brutalist. Smoke definition. We put metal spike that now they think I'm eating. I think even with his feet, I think that looks a little less defined. So on the days, get rid of them and put in some more to find more sharper edged ones here. Again, a bit like with the belt buckle, that the smallest things can actually do quite a lot to change your audience's psychology when looking at your character design. It doesn't always need to be the big sweeping shapes like with the Emperor's New Groove characters. That can be lots of small details. I'm just going to make him a little thinner as well, just to really hammer home how different hears from our round night, especially Guys sharp. Put them all together so you can easily see them. Bring them together. And yeah, there you go. We have our three nights taken from a quite basic one on the left. And then applying shape language to round night. Now sharp night, we have two very different takes on the same brief, which convey very, very different emotions and very different characters traits and also much more distinct character traits than the wood from say, the original there on the left. If you've enjoyed this video, nice comment like in a review would be absolutely appreciated. If you'd like to see more of these videos, please subscribe to me. And if you really want to help me out, then if you can reference me, is the reason why you wanted to subscribe to Skillshare. That will be absolutely brilliant. Also, when you've completed this course and you have some rocks or show off, please put them in the comments. I love seeing people's work. Also, if you have some questions on illustration or digital arts, or you'd like me to review your book, please don't hesitate to send me a message. I'll be sure to get back to you as soon as you can, but until next time, I'll see you in the next one.