All language subtitles for 078 Character Design Layout.en

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about how to come up with ideas for your characters and how to

brainstorm.

So the first thing when it comes to character design that you want to think about is story.

We've already talked about story and I really emphasize how important it is.

And it really is.

It's the beginning part.

So it kind of goes hand-in-hand with your silhouettes.

If you don't really know what your character's story is and you don't really know what kind of silhouettes

to be drawn if you don't know if it's an animal if you don't know if it's human stuff like that.

So there's kind of some questions you need to answer to yourself before you can start designing a character.

You might already have an idea in mind and maybe need to develop that a little further and we'll talk

about that in this lecture.

So I usually like to start off with.

Where are they from.

Where's my character from.

Are they from the ocean.

Are they from China.

Are they from another planet or are they from a fantasy world.

You know we need to figure out where they're from and that's another thing is distinguishing are they

from our real world.

Are they just going to be where normal everyday clothes or time period clothes.

Are they going to be from a completely different world that's a fantasy world that you're making up.

And so the clothing and the hairstyles and and the color of the skin can be whatever you want to be

stuff like that.

You know these are gonna be parameters that you're gonna want to use as a way to help you actually be

more creative even though they're kind of feel like they could be blocks in your way having parameters

will actually help you be creative because you kind of have some guidelines to follow along so that

way your choices aren't unlimited.

All right.

The next thing that I like to look as I like to figure out whether they're a creature or they're part

creature or maybe they're human animal or somewhere in between we need to figure that out.

Then I'd like to also think about do they have powers you know are they magical or are they a magician

can they blow fire like a dragon.

You know what can they do if they can do stuff that's probably also going to go into the character design

and what they're wearing and where they're from stuff like that.

And then I also like to think about things like Are they more refined.

Are they maybe from a wealthier family or something like that.

Do they dress nicer or are they more rough.

Are they more like a mountain man or maybe somebody that kind of travels the world like a world explorer

nice and gruff and stuff like that.

You know these are things that are going to really play into your character design.

All right.

So once I kind of answer some of these questions we need to figure out what our characters key signature

trait is gonna be.

Your character needs a thing basically it needs they need something whether it's their hairstyle or

their clothing or maybe some sort of weapon they hold that is their one thing their thing that just

makes you know exactly who that character is.

Right.

So we need to figure that out.

And then once we have kind of figured that out we can play around with that we'll talk about that here

in a minute.

It's a good time to start doing some research.

So if your characters from a certain part of the world or maybe the fantasy world that they're from

is kind of inspired by a certain part of the world then you'd want to start researching that area of

the world that culture and figuring out what it is in that culture that makes it look like that culture

what are the shape languages what are the colors.

Stuff like that you know and start getting inspired by it and start looking for reference.

So not only are we looking for reference from whatever they're from but we're looking for reference

of just character designs that we like and looking for reference of poses that we really like you know

so we're just gathering all this reference image so that we can start accumulating it and putting it

into our character design.

Another thing that's really important is what is your character's goal.

So what are they trying to do.

This is gonna kind of help the character design as well.

How did they do their hair.

How.

What are they wearing.

All that's going to kind of play into like their main life goal.

So even if they're not constantly working on that life goal a good character will have a goal in mind

that they're trying to do.

And so everything about them is going to kind of play into that goal.

And another question I'd like to ask myself is where have they been.

So we kind of talked about Jack Sparrow a long time ago in this course where we talked about how his

costume and everything about him tells a story about where he's been you know like all the beads in

his hair and the shinbone of a deer and his hair on the all the things tied onto his bell and stuff

like that.

They all tell a story you may not know exactly where they're from but you know that he's collected these

things throughout his life he didn't just one day just put all that on and say I'm a pirate.

He's collected over time.

And so by understanding where your character has been in the past that can also help tell your character's

story and maybe they're a young character maybe they haven't been very many places.

And so that might show through in their costume design they might just wear something incredibly simple.

And so you don't have to worry about that but that still is understanding where they bend so you understand

that they might not have anything about them that really tells you about where they've been.

All right.

So what we have going on here is we have three character forms that I've drawn out now.

These forms would probably be looking something more like the silhouette that you've chosen for your

character design or your little thumbnail or whatever.

But if you want to practice along with me you can go ahead and download these characters body forms

in the resources of this lecture so you can kind of create your own character designs on top of them.

Now I know that these are really stiff and static poses and that's exactly what we want.

Right now we're not trying to focus on the dynamic poses or anything like that.

We're just trying to figure out a lot of stuff with the costume the colors the hair stuff like that

the shapes.

You know like we're just trying to kind of tell a story without getting into the dynamic poses facial

expressions.

We can go a little bit into facial expressions but we're not gonna get super detailed with it we're

also not going to go into face design yet or anything like that.

So what do I mean by this.

Well let's go ahead and let's just start sketching.

So on this character form right here let's just say our character is happy so just kind of make them

look happy

right.

And we can try all kinds of different things we can try different hairstyles.

All right.

And if you want if you're gonna be using color you could start using color at this point.

So let's say for example we want this character to have let's say some purple like hair right.

And this doesn't have to be the final color of purple.

It can just kind of give the idea across that the hair is going to be purple.

So don't think that what you're drawing here is really going to be the final character design.

We're just trying out a bunch of different things a bunch of different looks.

That's what this is all about.

We're just having fun basically

and we'll try giving this character some bangs.

It's also good idea if you're doing this digitally to do this on a separate layer.

If you're doing this on paper and pencil that's fine you can use colored pencils markers whatever you

want or if you don't want to do any color with your character design that's totally fine as well you

can just sketch this out with just black and white colors

all right.

You can see there are just kind of tried something different I just kind of had the hair flow out like

that

all right.

And we can just try different things for the costumes so right now I'm not really designing a real character.

But when you do it I would like you to kind of think a little bit more about the character that you're

designing because I want you to be a little bit more thoughtful with what you're doing with right now.

I'm just kind of having a little bit of fun

with my characters kind of in some big sort of boots

and this can be as sketchy or as refined as you want it to be.

I recommend that it actually stays a little bit on the sketch your side so you don't get too uptight

about your design looking perfect.

This is just about testing out and trying out different ideas

let's go and add some color to her dress

grab something lighter so kind of contrast with her hair even a little bit lighter than that

maybe I'll just know actually paint this behind on a different layer

so I can just kind of paint that behind my actual drawing that just kind of a nice part of digitally

painting.

But if you can't do that because you're doing on paper in pencil that's totally fine don't worry about

it this is all about plane.

So the way I want you to think about character design is starting from the very beginning is gonna be

the most playful time.

The time to make the most mistakes.

And it's also the time when you want to spend the most time so you're not afraid of making mistakes

you're just kind of like letting it flow out of you and you're getting a bunch of bad drawings out and

good drawings out good silhouettes bad silhouettes.

And as you start moving through the process of character design and start getting on to drawing things

like the pose and you want to get a little bit more refined but you can still stay a little loose and

rough and then once you get to drawing your first version of your final character design then you can

start doing things like

a little bit more refined a little bit more nicer looking and you're just going to continually refine

until you get towards the end and your final character design drawing.

It should take a little bit less time than everything else took but it should be the most refined and

everything needs to look really good.

And I would dare to say almost perfect.

That's where you really want to make sure that things are looking really good but in a phase like this

everything can just stay really messy and you can just play around and not be afraid of messing things

up or anything like that.

Let's try something interesting.

I know a lot of you might not be doing color and that's ok but since I'm doing this digitally I'll just

go ahead and just do a little bit of color on my character's feel make that a little bit more orange

color maybe red

is going to make her body a little bit more of a reddish pink color and it kind of will fade into this

white color of the skin on her face.

Right.

Maybe her hands are more like that color same with her legs

grab like a brown or something like that let's play around let's see maybe a green yellow

looking at that I'm actually almost thinking let's just leave those boots white

and Kevin white boots looks kind of cool.

Maybe I'll just add a little bit of a little bit of shading on them.

Maybe a little bit of blue shading just to kind of make them not look so plain

All right.

So let's go ahead and let's do another one.

And so that's kind of one version of doing it if you want.

If you're just doing color for example you can just just get crazy messy.

So let's try.

Let's go for something like some red hair.

Make it completely saturated so for the hair we could like to start painting things and seeing what

we like.

So

right we can just start doing some crazy stuff.

And if you don't like it just move on to the next body form or erase it whatever you want.

Nothing here has to be perfect.

All right.

So I think you get the concept.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna timelapse these last two and I'll just kind

of finish them up and give you the differences and you want to really kind of try really drastically

different ideas with these.

So if you're doing even the same character for all these you still don't want to look the same.

So I don't want to do another one over here with a dress that looks slightly different.

So has purple hair.

I want to do another version that looks just completely different trying different ideas out and stuff

trying different skin colors whatever it is that you want to change about it but you want each concept

to be completely different.

And then if there's certain things you like about them then we can go ahead.

And later we can kind of combine those together and redraw a final one on one of these character forms

and that will have our kind of final character concept.

And then from there we can start actually doing our character illustration.

All right I'm gonna go ahead timelapse this and I'll see you when I'm done.

All right.

So there we go.

So I've done three of these now and they're all different characters so it's not like I was doing these

for the same character when you do them you're gonna be doing these for the same character and just

trying out different looks different shapes hairstyles trying to figure out what their thing is their

thing that makes them unique and it should usually just be about one thing.

This first one kind of has her own thing it's just kind of I would say kind of that thing right there

in the shape of her hair you know like if you saw her.

It's pretty iconic looking I would say.

I mean it could be worked on but this character has a look and she has her thing that would let you

know it's that character.

This one right here is pretty generic so not the greatest example but it's a good example for you to

see what kind of not to do.

So like that it's not that this is a bad design or a bad costume design or anything like that.

It's that there's not much about her that really makes her stand out maybe her hairstyle a little bit

kind of the shape we have going on like that and then this girl over here you can see that she has her

thing she's kind of like on fire and each one of these characters kind of tell a story you know they

have their vibe.

This one right here she kind of almost seems like a hippie almost.

She has like a hippie type of vibe and hippie type of clothing in a way but she clearly isn't from our

world.

She's almost from another planet.

On this one right here kind of has almost like a G.I. Joe vibe and this girl over here she tells a story

word.

I mean we don't know where she's from or what her exact story is maybe she's just completely like a

character in somebody's imagination or something like that you know.

But she's a girl and her head's on fire and she has red hair and she looks a little angry so maybe she's

kind of an angry character and that kind of goes into being a character that has fire coming out of

your head I guess.

But her clothes kind of tell you that she like cares about fashion she's not just some like crazy savage

fire god or something like that.

She she's kind of a little bit more refined and she where she likes her fashion I guess.

So it's just these kind of decisions that kind of tell you about the character.

If we were to have taken her character this one right here and made her in something a little bit more

scary looking as far as her clothing goes you know like making it all look ripped up and tattered and

stuff and old her character might be a little bit more rough looking but right here she looks a little

bit more refined.

And so these are things that you're trying to make decisions on right now on this point.

That's what this is all about is coming up with ideas and making decisions trying things out.

And so you want to do a lot of these for each character design.

You don't just want to do one or two you want to do as many as you can as many as you have time for

until you find what you want your character to look like.

All right.

That brings us to the end of this lecture.

So remember that you can download these body forms and the resources of this lecture and once you've

done a few of these what I want you to do is I want you to post them to the Cuban a section of the course

so I can see them because I would really love to see the character designs that you're coming up with

because this is really the beginning process of the character design where in this course you're actually

getting to design your own characters.

And I really want to see that.

So go ahead post that and I will see you in the next course.