Posts Tagged ‘character’

This week I just want to brush over how to get your proportions correct just by knowing how tall your character should be.

In my case my average character is 6 heads high. Male or female. Males can be 7 if you like and females can be around 5 if you prefer. 6 is just average. Take a look at the drawing for this week.

I have sketched a character, paying attention to where all the important joints should be. All together it measure 6 heads in total. Usually the crotch area is 2 and a half heads down from the chin. And the last 2 and a half heads are the legs.

My character is almost perfectly split. 3 head bottom and 3 heads top. Experiment with height and let me know how it turns out.

This week we look at how eyebrows and eyes can affect expressions and how they can depict different character personalities.

Picture 1 & 2

Sharp angles on eyebrows are usually used to depict bad guys, but the can also be used for neutral characters. I had a bit of fun with the top two and it’s pretty easy to tell what they are thinking.

Picture 3

In the third picture the eyebrows were placed to show fear. This is pretty universal and easy to grasp. When working with eyebrows it’s important to not forget the rest of the forehead, note how each emotion adds furrows or wrinkles to the face.

Picture 4

In the next illustration I’ve drawn your typical calculating, bad guy. To get this effect use black, heavy eyebrows to draw attention to the character’s personality.

Picture 5 – 8

With the last four I just had fun. The old Chinese shop owner, the goofy fat guy, the narcissistic hero, and a dark haired guy flashing a goofy smile – Note how the cheeks go up and the eyes squint.

Examine each of these and just have fun! Create a few characters of your own using what you see here!

In part 2 of how to create the look for your character, we look at colours.

I’ll create a short Photoshop colouring tutorial soon, but for now let’s assume you know some method of colouring (even if its crayons or markers the same rules apply). Firstly we choose our colours and we colour his skin, hair and clothes with a base colour.

Chose your colour wisely. Colour often gives your character more of a personality.

Dark colours for a bad guy, light colours for good guys and neutral colours for guys like our gnome here. He could be good or bad. But with these colours he’s not completely unapproachable.

Now you need to figure out where you want the light source to come from. This can be the sun a candle, a light a torch, a fire, pretty much anything that gives off light.

Coloured in goblin

I decided that the light would be coming from the top right side.

Next you pick a darker version of the base colour and shade him where the shadows would fall. This creates much more depth and dimension to the character.

Next week we will look at how to put him into some scenes and show movement and body language.