All language subtitles for 030 Using Reference In Character Design.en

In this lecture we're going to be talking about how to use a reference in your character design.

So there's two basic ways that you can use reference.

The first way is to copy reference.

And the second way is to observe reference.

So sometimes you want to use reference so that we can copy it and do art studies.

And this allows us to build up our visual library like we talked about before.

But sometimes you also want to copy because we just want to copy part of a reference directly into our

art.

Now I know there's a lot of controversy when it comes to copying and tracing and I'm not talking about

plagiarizing somebody else's artwork or photography but I am talking about barring specific parts of

it.

So opposed for example or the form or something like that.

Now you'll probably end up adjusting it anyways but there's nothing wrong with copying from another

photograph.

So for example right here we have this man standing there let's say that we wanted to copy his pose.

Well we could go ahead and we could just start drawing his same pose.

So when I start by drawing his head

then it can go ahead and draw his neck and just observing what's going on here.

Now this pose that I'm going to copy from this guy could possibly just be for an art reference I might

not actually use it in my final drawing or I could just use this for my final drawing and you'll probably

end up making adjustments along the way like I said and in the end it's not even going to look the same

but it's a good starting point

right.

So I could just continue and go ahead and copy this and it's basically the same exact pose that he has

there.

I can go ahead and exaggerate.

I could make the changes that I want but I'm basically copying this.

I'm not really changing that much about it.

And another thing you can do is you can trace now and there's a lot of controversy around tracing as

well but I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as you're not plagiarizing somebody else's

work if you're changing something enough that people can't even tell it's from a specific photograph.

I think it's completely fine.

One of my favorite artists drew Suzanne who you're probably all familiar with.

He does a lot of the famous movie posters for things like Indiana Jones and stuff like that.

He always talks about how it's OK to trace.

There's no problem with it.

He traces all the time.

So if you need a trace something or an aspect of a reference photo maybe a hand pose or something like

that.

Go for it.

There aren't really that many roles in art.

Just don't steal other people's work and don't like make your work look exactly like theirs and say

that it's yours that's bad.

OK so we could also trace so I could for example just come right up on him like this and just basically

trace out his basic pose.

I don't have to get in there and get all the detail or anything because all I want from this is his

pose.

Most times when you're using a reference you're looking for one specific thing.

So in this case we're looking for the pose and we'll go over the different type of things that you might

be looking for when you're using a reference

snack 200.

Grab that move overseas see it so you can see I can just trace that.

So both of those are forms of copying.

So and let's say that for example you already have a character and you already have their pose for the

most part but maybe you want their arm up like this.

Well maybe I'll just go ahead and you'll just trace out this arm right here and that's all you're gonna

use from the reference.

So there's a first version of reference using a reference.

So then the second way we can use reference is we can observe it.

So if we're drawing an art study it's gonna be the same as copying we're going to be observing it and

we're gonna be drawing as exactly as possible so we could draw this girl and observe her and put her

into our visual library.

Now another way that we can use it with observation is we can observe things and then change things

quite a bit.

So for example let's say that I was drawing some sort of a character so a female character and I wanted

to look similar to her maybe she's wearing a hat or something like that but I don't want it to just

look like a copy of this photograph.

Maybe I want her face look different maybe your hair will be a little bit different but let's say I

want to have a hat and a sweater.

I want her looking in a different direction so I can go ahead start by drawing

then we'll go ahead and give her

chin

and then looking at this hat and just observing it and I want to kind of capture that same look in mind.

So maybe I'll kind of have this hat come around like this kind of flopped on the front

maybe I'll kind of take some of her hair do the same thing put across her face like that

right.

And this is obviously my first rough.

I would go in there a second time and detail this out more change things make things look really good.

And then I'd go back in there and do my final drawing.

But I just want to show you the example of how I could take this and kind of change it.

So I changed the position of her head I obviously made it so it doesn't look like her.

It's more of an animation styled character.

Give her a sweater similar to the one she's wearing in the photograph.

But I use this reference to kind of inspire me and also just to kind of help me understand what this

hat would look like honor.

And then I just kind of changed the position of it kind of change things so this kind of Devitt thing

right there.

I didn't think that looked very clean or very good with this character so I went ahead and I just got

rid of that.

You can see how we can look at reference and we can just kind of apply that to the idea of our character

design but we don't necessarily have to copy it.

So those are two forms of using a reference.

So let's have a look at just a few examples of things that we might want to use for reference because

like I said we're gonna usually use a piece of reference for one specific thing.

So in this case we kind of used this reference just as an inspiration for what our character might look

like what they might be wearing but some other examples of things would be lighting.

So we might use a piece of reference just to observe the lighting.

So in this case this girl has a light from the side of her face while the front of her face.

But we're senior from the side so we're kind of seeing what that looks like when her form is lit from

the side.

Another thing we might want to look at is form.

So right here you can see that I traced out the form of this man's head.

We might want to understand the form if someone's head.

And as you can see this man right here he has very square head his four head is a little bit more square

his chin is a little bit more square and that's the type of stuff we can learn from when we study from

reference next.

We could study opposed so let's say that we wanted to take this person's pose.

We could exaggerated a little bit make it our own character but we could kind of look at this and either

copy it or we could just use it as an observational to unobserved kind of his line of action through

his leg or whatever and try to copy that into our own characters pose next.

Sometimes we might want to use reference for historical accuracy.

So for example here I have some old drawings from medieval times Renaissance times I'm not sure but

we could use this as a reference so if you're doing a character from this time period or maybe even

just a character that's inspired from this time period we could look at some reference of their costumes

to make sure things that things look.

Time period correct.

We could also use fashion photos so that we could use these for costumes and styles and stuff like that

as well as hairstyles.

We can also use reference for hairstyles.

Then lastly we can also use reference for things like facial expressions so if you don't know what a

certain facial expression looks like you can look at some reference so we can see here that this girl

is making kind of a nervous face and we might not really know how to draw it but if we look at some

reference of it we could break it down and simplify it.

So even if we don't make it look just like or we can see that we kind of get some distressed eyebrows

so the eyebrows are kind of arched up a little bit and down

right

her eyes are pretty much normal but they're looking over to the side

and then her mouth as you can see is kind of turned down

and put some teeth through their

AND WE COULD PROBABLY KEEP WORKING ON THIS UNTIL WE GET IT REALLY LOOKING does her distress the way

we want or to.

But you can see that by looking at some reference of some facial expressions we can go ahead and apply

that to our own designs.

All right.

That brings us to the end of this lecture.

Now if you have any questions about how to use reference.

Go ahead and ask them in the CUNY section of the course and I'll make sure that they get answered.

Thanks for watching this lecture and I will see you guys in the next one.