Transcripts

1. Character Outfit Design Intro: Hello. My name is Martha, and I'm a fantasy illustrator focusing on character design. This is a class on how to create character outfits I will take you through. Creating your own character will start with a mini bio, followed by a mood board. Then we're going to set up our character. And then we're going to create fun concept sketches of different character outfit ideas. This is not a class where I teach you how to draw. This is a class where I teach you how to come up with concepts and ideas for your own character designs. I have created a cost project that breaks down the process of creating a character outfit into smaller, more accomplished herbal tests that you can feel proud of. So be sure to fall along with the class project. Being able to create your own customized character outfits can really help personalize your illustration or comic book projects. Not to mention that it's a lot of fun. So if you're ready to give it a try, then sign up for the class. I'll see you there 2. Character Bio: The first thing we're going to do is create a basic character bio. So something really short, we're just gonna figure out a few words that really describe the character so that we can make sure the outfit reflects their personality. It's a good thing to think about, you know, positive traits as well as maybe not so positive traits because, and it gives you really interesting personality quirks. And that can be fun to work with when creating a character, especially if it shows through in their outfits. So if you're really stuck in this section, you can think about people you know in real life, and that can give you some inspiration to start with. This is a slide of a basic character bio that I created, and it's sort of a cheat cheat to quickly come up with a character. So the idea is you true. Three words that describe a character's appearance, three words that describe characters, trades and three words that describe the characters flaws. The flaws are really an important part because that's how you get a character that's a little bit quirky, a little bit unique, and it's a little bit more relatable a swell cause. If you have a character that's just has really good traits, then it might not be as relatable if you get stuck in the section. There's a website called a big long list of personality traits. I will add The link in the resource is off this cost. So the three words I chose from my character's appearance are short, cute and big hair. So I want this character to just be fun and bubbly. And, uh, yeah, I really want the cute part to come out The next part I chose three words that describe my character's traits, which are smart, resourceful and cheerful Again, I wanted to have a positive, happy tone. And then for three words that describe my characters. Flaws. I chose barbaric. Forget fel in flamboyant just because I thought it would be hilarious toe have a cheerful, barbaric character. Now it sounds like a complete contrast, and it's not going to be easy to achieve. But that's part of the fun part of it, and that insurance that I get a character that's definitely, um, Kirky and definitely different in the section go ahead and come up with three words for your character's appearance. Three words for your characters, trades and three words for your characters. Flaws. And remember, if you get stuck, you can google different personality traits. Or you can go to the resource list that I have available for you. When you're done with your character Bio, please share it on the class project. I'd like to see what you come up with. 3. Moodboard: now that you have a basic character bio and have cool fund words to describe the character , The next question is, where do you find your inspiration? I normally address use Pinterest just because it's an extremely extremely massive visual library and you can find all sorts of inspiration on there for this cost. I recorded part of my inspiration search, and I've only recorded part of it because if I recorded, all of it will be here Old day. But anyway, let's just jump into my search process. Here are my words again for my character's personality. Short, cute, big hair, smart, resourceful, cheerful, barbaric, forgetful and flamboyant. Now I'm going to start searching barbaric first just because I have a pretty good idea of what, especially the physical aspects of the character will look like short, cute and big hair. I have a good idea in my head what that looks like, but I'm not sure how to bring in the barbaric aspect of it. So here's where it helps to go look for inspiration. So I'm gonna open up interest and start searching. So first I start really basic barbaric. I'm not seeing anything, so we want to barbaric warriors on there. Quite a few images here, but this is not exactly what I want. So I'm going to refine my search a little bit, Uh, maybe barbaric man to see, because I'm looking at a fantasy character and these images kind of look very similar to what already sold with the previous search. So I'm not really seeing anything that want here. This looks interesting. So keep in mind, I'm not looking at the image itself. I'm looking at elements in It's not cool to steal people's designs. So remember that I'm not looking at full design. I'm looking at aspects of it. So I really liked her armor. That's what I was looking at. And when you look for inspiration, remember to kind of break down what it is, what that you like about that the image and not just take the whole image as it is, because that would be considered a waitress. So with this image, I really like his weapon. It's looking quite cool, and so I save that image just for future reference. But it's not exactly what I'm looking for, and you'll notice when I click into an image on Pinterest. I look at all the images underneath it because that's where you find images that are similar to the one that you picked. And really, that's how you go deep diving into Pinterest is when you find an image that you like, you scroll underneath it for images that are similar to it. So now I thought, OK, maybe barbaric isn't the right word because I'm getting a lot of Viking stuff and I don't necessarily think like you weapons of our very so I tried every weapons and that didn't get me anywhere. So sometimes you really need to change your words in order to get the right phrase that you're looking for. So here I noticed this little Gremlin guy with a, um, this massive club and I really dig that called. I really think that's something that I can use. So this gave me an idea about looking for club with its. So I found a club that looks like it's been upgraded. It looks post apocalyptic, and I really like that idea, especially because one of the words for my character is resourceful. So I think that this fits in really well with my character's personality, so I'm going to save that. So that's basically how I find inspiration images for my characters. But let's just do one more. Let's do big hair. So I'm just going to type in big hair and see what comes up. So I'm getting a lot of big eighties style hair, which is cool, but I was thinking more of an Afro, so this is a really cool Afro, but I'm also now looking at interesting after shapes, so that one is very round. But this this other one I just found is it's got a little bit of an interesting shape to it . So I think that could look cool. And now I'm looking at this Afro, and this Afro just gives it a little bit more volume. So I really like that. And I think I think I'm gonna stick to this. Okay, so now I have about eight images that describe this character visually, and you don't have to have an image for every single word that you had in the character bio . As long as you have enough images that you feel comfortable with having a good idea of what this character looks like, I would recommend having between 6 to 10 images. I think that gives you a really good amount of visual information to draw upon for your character. That's the end of the section. Go ahead and upload your mood board with about 6 to 10 images off your character inspiration. 4. Character Set Up: Now you have your inspiration. But before you dive right into sketching concepts, there's one more thing we need to do. It's a good idea to set up a character base. The idea behind a character bases that you get the basic shape of your character before you start drawing codes on top of them. That way, you can draw a lot of different options of clothes quickly, without having to redraw the character each time. If you're comfortable with drawing anatomy, you can go ahead and draw the character base in the post that you want. Otherwise, you can always find character bases online, either on deviant art or in Pinterest. There so many artists out there that offer their character basis for other people to use and design costumes and outfits on top of If you look in the class, resource is, you should be able to find some links to where you can find some character basis to get your started off of. Otherwise, if you've drawn your own, you can move on to the next listen 5. Character Sketches: here is where the character based comes in handy. Basically, I lower the character basis, opacity on the image, and then I draw on top of it. And this helps me save time and not have to worry about the characters and that to me being correct as I draw. Basically, you have the character based on a layer on its own, and the new lowers a rapacity off the layer that that character bases on you create a new layer on top of that, and that's where you draw your character design on. For this first concept, I wanted to create a cute urban character, and I wanted it to lean more towards the cute side than the barbaric side of the character . I would actually recommend that you pick a few words that you want to really highlight, and everything else can be a little bit more subtle in the character. With this first character, I'm highlighting big hair, cute, a little bit of smartest coming through. It's a little bit on the nose through the glasses, and I'm going to show barbaric by the club next to her and then a little touch of flamboyant with the for around her neck. Keep in mind that the point of this section is not to have a perfect skitch, but to explore as many ideas as possible so you can keep your sketches loose and just focus on the shapes and focus on the items that you really like from your inspiration and bring them into your drawing rather than trying to get the perfect drawing in the first try, you can see my first images are quite rough, and then I go back in and refine them a second time. With the second character, I decided to start the look around this jacket just because I thought it was very cute and very modern, and then built the look around that you'll notice that she has a sock missing because she's forgetful and one of her sock has hole in it. Because, of course, is barbaric. She is not going to be well kept. She has big hair. I decided to try a different type of big hair. I thought these red locks look really cool on her, and I changed the mosque a little bit, and her glasses her a little bit more modern. It's the small details in your character that really makes it your own. So don't be afraid to add little things like patterns and textures and small details. The backpack was another thing that was randomly added later, and I just thought that this character in particular this design of the character, needed a backpack. So I just went ahead and added that with the third character I started with the mask and with the tusks coming out of her mosque, and the whole look was built around that I wanted this character to be a little bit more barbaric than the others. So, as you can see, I start with this big Nick piece coming out of her outfit with all these claws around it to look a little bit more vicious. Andi, flamboyant in a way, because it's quite showy, I decided to have a little bit more fun with this one and give her a gigantic pair of scissors as her weapon. Because what's more devious than running around with a pair of scissors? That was not a serious question, but my point is you can do whatever you want with your character. Don't be afraid to go crazy. I did think about adding glasses to this character version as well. But I wasn't really working. And I decided that maybe I should leave the smart part out of this particular character design and focus on other things instead. One thing I did notice was this design was leaning a little too heavily to the center sir side. So I decided to add some cute leggings with some story patterns on it and flowers in her hair to kind of soften the look a little bit. So that's the end of the section. Go ahead and post your characters concept sketches into your projects, and then we can move on to the next section. 6. Final Thoughts: Okay, we've reached the home stretch. This section is all about refining your characters. And that's all about the decisions that you make right now. How do you know that? The decisions you make for your character of the right ones go back to your character bio that you created in the beginning of this class. Look at the words and see if they match up to your character. Also decide what the main word is that you want to highlight. So, for example, first and foremost, my characters need to be cute. So I will always go back and see if they actually look cute. And that will tell me whether the decisions I've made a right or not. You can pick three words and number them 123 the highest priority, being one in the loess being three and out of those three words, you can decide what's most important. So for me, the first thing is cute and the second thing is barbaric, and the third thing would probably big hair, so those of things that need to come through all my characters the biggest tip I can give you for the section is to keep in mind that a person is not flat and they have volume. So remember when you're drawing things to make sure they go around the character. So if, um drawing sweater, it goes around the character so you can see a little bit of the back part of the sweater. Same thing with the hair. It goes a little bit over the shoulder or a little bit behind the shoulder. And if you play with layers like that, then you will have a character that looks more convincing. So one thing we haven't talked about up until now was color and color can be a really powerful way to enhance your character. Because the word cute was very important to this character design. I decided that I wanted the color palette to reflect that. So when I was searching for inspiration, I looked at Hawaii colors. Kawai is a Japanese word that means cute, and they have the most adorable things, but you can find. And so I went searching for really soft pastel color palettes, and I came up with a scheme that I thought really would make the characters look cute. I didn't bring up color until now. because while it is important to think about color in the beginning, it's probably a good idea to hold off the color until you have a solid design. Just because sometimes color can be distracting. And you won't notice if your design is working or not, because you're busy looking at the colors, so I would recommend to hold off the color until lost when you're refining your character and that's it. We made it to the end. By now, you should have one or three, depending on how ambitious you are. Character designs that you have created from scratch from scratch. So you've created your character bio. You have made a mood board of your character. You created a character based to make things easier on yourself. You probably did a few sketches and then decided on one or three and refined those sketches and added color. And now you're ready to share the project. I would love to see your character, so please post them in the cause project. If you want to know more about any particular part of my process, feel free to ask me questions or you can make a request for a future class on the topic. You guys have been great. And this has been a really fun cost to teach. I hope you like it.