Last week at work, they asked me to do a talk about character design and how I go about creating characters. This is the second time that they’ve asked me to do this presentation, the first time was for ‘bring your child to work’ day, and the older kids, about 12 year olds, seemed to really enjoy it. This most resent time was for a group of “at risk youths” or that’s what they told me. They too were really engaged while I was talking and had lots of questions to throw at me. For both presentations I made a packet of materials for the kids to work on and fill out while I walk them through it. The materials I handed out consisted of this 8 page packet, the first part of the packet was a 6 step process for drawing a human head, as well as a sheet of facial expressions that I drew for examples, and the final part was a character creation worksheet. Below are 2 PDF packets. One is a full color 11 x 17 set up for duplexing and the other is a 8.5 x 11 black and white version for home printers. I hope you enjoy these packets as much as the kids did.
You may follow these steps. If you are already comfortable enough with drawing you can move on, but it is always a good idea to review the basics. Once you know the basics, you’ll be able to start making your own changes and tweaks, which start to shape your style as an artist.
When sitting down to do a drawing of any character, one of the first things to think about is what emotion you want your character to express. A great way to show emotion in your drawings is through the face. Here are a handful of different emotions and reactions you can use when creating your characters.
When we first started our gang of 4 at Once Upon A Sketch we set the goal of sending out a promo mailer every quarter. We decided that our first was going to be mythological creatures. I can’t remember how I settled on my creature, mermaids, but I’m sure one of my friends here at OUAS can help me remember. I wish I had known that we would be doing these write-ups about our process from the start, because I would have saved more of the images it took to make this illustration. Here is my step by step process sans a few sketches.
1. Format – In this case the format was established by the group early on, so that part was easy. I always do my work larger than the final size just in case. My final size ended up being one quarter larger then needed.
2. Character design – When I first started sketching my mermaid, everything was looking very disneyesque. You know, long flowing hair that’s fun to draw under water, sea shells placed just right as to keep the parents happy, stuff like that. All that is good, but it wasn’t what I wanted this piece to look like. To get away from this I made her features longer and skinnier (bonier) in attempt to get away from the perceived perfect female shape. I enlarged her eyes, fin shaped ears, added webbed fingers and more fins and braided her hair. Man its hard to get away from something that disney has all ready established.
3. Sketches – After 3 or 4 pages of quick thumbnail sketches (boy, I wish I had saved those) I settled on having a fishing boat on the surface of the water and the mermaid and her fish friends just looking at the fisherman’s hook. Of course the mermaid needed to be in a playful pose, is she going to take the bate or won’t she.
4. Flats and background – The next thing I did was go out to the internet to find some reference images to help me set the tone and make sure that I got the under water feel right. Using the reference images I laid down flat color and played with the Hue/Saturation in Photoshop making sure that I was happy with the background color before I start because to me this will set the feel of the whole piece.
5. Texture and lighting – Next, I stared playing with the light sources and defining my shadows and forms, which is hard with an under water piece. In this image the primary light source was coming from the top, but in an underwater illustration there would be a lot of reflective light.
6. Finishing touches – Then I added the shining light from the surface of the water and highlights on the mermaid’s scales. Once I had the image the way I liked it I started playing with photo textures. It just gives the image a bit more, well texture. It’s just a quick way to give the image a little more life. One last time I messed with the Hue/Saturation layer and played with the colors. Then finally, I flatten the whole image while still keeping the layers intact. Then I took the flattened image layer and applied a blur to it. This is where I add an image mask and paint in the areas that I want to keep in focus. This keeps the viewers eye on the areas I want them to focus on.
Wow, that last part was a little technical even for me. Once I had the final illustration completed I passed it on to Edrian who put together all our images in the final layout. Thanks Edrian! If you have any question about my process leave them in the comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Click the image below to see a larger image of the final illustration.
Well here is my week 1 assignment for the Zero2Illo’s 12 Week Challenge. I’m posting it a little late but it was done on time… Really. What is the 12 Week Challenge you say. Well its a website created by Jonathan Woodward to help aspiring illustrators get their careers started and well I’m not entirely in that boat I need to get out of my comfort zone and expand my career. I started following Zero2Illo’s blog after hearing an interview with Jonathan Woodward on a podcast call Escape From Illustration Island (by the way check out this Podcast. Great information.) Anyway the the week one challenge was to focus your goals to one area of illustration and here is what I settled on.
Sorry for the crazy layout its the graphic designer in me.
I was cleaning off my computer yesterday and found one of my first pieces I tried to do digitally. It’s a bad illustration of Disney’s Tinkerbell. I can’t remember why I drew this in the first place but my girlfriend now is a big fan of the character, so I thought I might update it a bit for her.
Wow, I think almost ten years makes a pretty good difference in my illustration skills. It’s crazy to look back at old works and see how far you have come.
I was cleaning off my computer yesterday and found one of my first pieces I tried to do digitally. It’s a bad illustration of Disney’s Tinkerbell. I can’t remember why I drew this in the first place but my girlfriend now is a big fan of the character, so I thought I might update it a bit for her.