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In this lecture we're gonna be talking about contrast in how to treat it and your character designs.

Now contrast is really important and I know that we'll just kind of been talking along and doing a lot

of drawing for the past few lectures but just bear with me because this stuff is really important.

These are concepts that I want you to start thinking about and looking for in real life.

Looking for it in other people's character designs that you like and these are just concepts that are

just going to be so important to character design.

I can't stress it enough.

So really push through these next few lectures and learn as much as you can and take notes taking notes

is a really good way to remember things.

All right so contrast contrast is just basically when you have two things that are next to each other

that are opposite.

So for example black and white or complementary colors such as orange and purple or it could be texture

so let's talk about these.

So the first one we're gonna look at is texture so we can have contrast in our texture.

And anytime we create contrast in our images it can create more of an appealing look to your character

design.

So what kind of contrasting textures can we create.

Well let's say for example we have something that's glossy like this will contrasting with that would

be something that's Matte.

And if you have those two things right next to each other so a glossy surface next or matte surface

that's going to create contrast and it's going to look a little bit nicer than if you just had everything

looking glossy in your character design or whatever it is that you're drawing.

Another example would be for texture would be skin.

So rough skin such as an elephant's skin or human skin which is a little bit smoother and softer.

These are contrasting rough and smooth.

So you should be getting the idea that contrast isn't just in things like value so black and white can

be in things like texture.

It can also be in things like values like we talked about so right here we have character from a Pixar

movie and she has dark hair so we don't have any color in this.

We just have her dark valued hair and then her skin tone is a little bit lighter.

Her eyes are a lot lighter than her skin tone.

And then when we get down here her dress is a little bit darker than her skin tone.

But especially when we get down here into these pants or whatever these are called they're a lot darker.

So it's creating that contrast.

It just makes it look a little bit nicer and your character designs when every other thing is contrasting.

So the hair contrast with the skin skin contrasts with their clothes and their clothes contrast with

other parts of their clothes and then those clothes also can contrast with their skin down on their

legs or wherever.

So you should be getting the idea that basically you want to be putting contrasting things next to each

other.

That's going to create the most dynamic and appealing look for your character designs.

All right.

Another thing we can do is we can use contrasting colors.

So right here you can see that I have orange and I have a blue and they're right next to each other

her skin tone is even a little bit orange as well and it's creating that nice contrast because Orange

and Blue are complementary colors.

Now we'll talk more about complementary colors later in the course and we'll actually cover a lot more

about contrast.

But for now I just want you to start to get the idea of what contrasting elements are.

All right next.

Let's go ahead and let's talk about contrasting shapes so looking again at this character I went ahead

and I took her and I broke her down into her basic shapes and as you can see we have contrasting shapes

here for two reasons.

So the first one is because first we start off with kind of a boxy shape for her hair and then we get

kind of a round shape for her head and then it goes back to boxy shape and then it turns into kind of

a triangle or trapezoid type shape and then it flips upside down into these little triangles so it's

kind of going especially appear in our head it goes from a rough shape or a jagged shape to a rounder

shape to a more jagged shape to a little bit of I guess not a soft shape but a triangle which is a little

bit different than in a rectangular shape.

So we're getting those contrasting shapes.

So it's not just all a bunch of squares and it's not all just a bunch of triangles.

We get different shapes next to each other.

Another thing about these shapes is the proportions.

So we are also getting these proportions that are contrasting so first we have our heads so you could

think of it as one big shape or both these shapes.

But either way it's one big shape and then her body is a tiny torso area or Chester is one little tiny

rectangle and then it goes into the dress which is part of her costume so it's not really part of her

body but the costume is still part of the character design and her dress goes into a bigger trapezoid

shape and then her feet or legs go into these small little triangles.

So we're getting that contrast.

We're getting a big shape then a little shape than a big shape and then a little shape.

So by applying contrast anywhere you can your characters and it's just going to make your drawings look

much more appealing.

So it's something to really take note of.

Now while you're watching a movie or looking at a comic book or whatever I want you to really pay attention

to these character designs and ones that you really like see where you can find all the different contrasting

elements of that character design.

Now this isn't to say that you'd have to use all of these all the time on all your characters sometimes

you don't want contrasting textures on your character sometimes they won't even have texture.

It'll just be flat 2D colors so you don't have to use all these all the time but it is good to at least

apply one of these to your characters line whether it's texture contrast or its value contrast or color

contrast whatever it is.

It's really good to make sure that you apply one of these contrasts.

If you don't your character designs just aren't going to come out looking as good as they could.

All right.

Thanks for watching this lecture.

If you have any questions about contrast in character design please post them to the Q and A section

of the course and I will answer them or my teacher assistant will.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next lecture.