Character Key Poses: 5 Ways to More Iconic Designs

so i'm not done painting this yet but i couldn't pass up the opportunity and i'm so sorry in making a video about key poses but to pose with a key if you want a character to express themselves to sum them up in one image you'll want to create a key pose of the character and by the end of this video you'll have the pieces you need to craft a great key pose a key pose can mean a couple of different things the word key comes from key frames in animation those are the main positions that you're animating towards and if you look at me go from one side of the screen to the other the key poses are where i start the middle and when i stop the blurry movements in between are called in betweens yes a key pose can be a key frame of animation but it can also refer to key art which is usually the single image that a production will use to sum up or market their project so like an iconic movie poster or image and when you've created a character design you might make a turnaround like we did in this video which i'll link below but it's just as important to show the character in action breaking away from that static pose expressing themselves or showing off their personality you might want the perfect image to sum them up for the cover of a comic or a piece of merch like a card or pin so here are five elements of an iconic key pose we went a little bit more in depth than usual in this video but please bear with it because i think there's a lot of value here [Music] to start things off i want to use an example that i think works really well for what we're talking about for several reasons it's stitch from lilo and stitch just a really solid character design one of the best how many else of you are suffering the looks like stitch comments just because of how heavy this guy hits so it's not just a good design but a character that plays well in their story and also if you haven't noticed really well in disney's advertising and merchandising pins and shirts etc so a key pose doesn't mean that there can only be one image of a character that sums them up you have multiple key poses especially in something like an animated film like this and because stitch changes so much as a character over the course of the film that's doubly so so first up we have the uh flawed product of a deranged mind right that's what the uh the grand councilwoman calls him at the beginning that's this one here then we get a glimpse of him as he's still in sort of attack mode when he arrives on earth uh but we get the sense and his expression of just how lost he is this is a his appeal to being a dog it's a little bit of an odd one which kind of makes it somewhat important it's when he first meets lilo this is also a pose you'll see that these screen grabs that i'm i have at the top are all directly from the film which is a little bit significant the ones that i have at the bottom here are pulled from disney's merchandising so whether it's their pins or their promotional images or things like that so this is an image that's that they use pretty prominently with stitch um but even in the film it's only part of him that's that's visible there next up here is a notable moment because he's at least making an attempt at not being a monster and just the elvis impersonation is a popular moment uh the same as being used in this pin here here he is as he's surfing he's got this genuine sense of discovery he's starting to find his place with a new family and then next stitch lost he's at his lowest point he knows what he has to do but he doesn't have the strength to do it or you know he just feels like an ugly duckling and then similar to that stitch by the end is pensive remorseful no longer lacking a conscience he's he's found belonging and then the scenes after this show him happy and content in his new situation it's not like this is his new disposition right but he's gone through a huge character arc so each of these poses tells us a different story about a person you know or a character in a very different place our next few elements will get into the technical and specifics of building key poses but use story as a motivational factor think about the place that your character is in or what aspect of the character you want to showcase to your audience our second element is gesture and this one is really important like we've talked about before gesture is essentially the imbued motion in a drawing usually represented by curves an easy way to understand gesture is with a line from one part of the character to another emphasizing the most dominant motion this is usually called a line of action when a character is unified in this force it makes for a better pose whether their body is following that line whether they're being affected by another force or gravity it shows where the weight in their character or their body is going it makes the pose much more dynamic you're probably also familiar with silhouette what the flat outline of your character looks like without any interior details so a silhouette that's easy to read means a strong and iconic key pose and here's another concept of gesture for you to consider that you may or may not be familiar with this is of pinched versus stretched say we have a straight line and now we curve that line so that means that one side of this line has now contracted in on itself and the other is stretching out in making this line dynamic instead of static we've pinched one side and stretched the other now let's take that line and build it out into a form this could be cloth or muscle or skin now in making this one side stretched out we've simplified our stretched side but now the pinched side is bunching up everything is contracting toward the center we're creating a little bit more detail on the edges we're also creating contrast so it's visually appealing to carry this principle into our poses if we treat our key poses in the same way not just pinched and stretched but with one side contrasting with the other simple verse complex bumpy versus smooth pinched versus stretched you'll have strength and dynamic energy okay bouncing off of the last element is one that i especially see coming up in more novice artists work and this has to do with the construction and perspective of their poses before that scares you away we're going to present this in really simple terms so let's say that we have this silhouette and just the dark outline of our character everything looks great but now we bring in some difficult things right there's some things that are definitely wrong with our drawing all of a sudden the arms are actually really confusing is the arm closest to us moving toward the camera is it behind the body there are lines on our drawing that are contradicting the construction so we'll do this we'll find the object or segment of the character that is furthest back from the viewer or the camera and we'll make a new layer fill it in as a solid with a color we won't necessarily care about where it ends we just need it to cover up say our hand in this situation then we'll make a new layer and go over top of that with the segment that's next closest to the camera or the viewer and so on we're basically creating what's called a depth map a very simple one where we just are building up objects the the hierarchy of the objects in the scene now it makes a ton of sense what overlaps with what in your character's pose this should help you understand the hierarchy of objects in your character and should help with the relative size of things you should be able to go back now and see where those colors are overlapping and find the right way for those constructed either cylinders or cubes whatever simple shapes your character is made up of and find the way that they overlap in visual hierarchy much easier it's always a good idea to start with the gesture to get the vague motions in and then course correct with construction afterwards just make sure that things make sense number four calling back to story our fourth element is acting and this has to do with the character's body language and expression so i have my character biko here because i have several key poses all saying something a little bit different this one here is saying something about how strained biko is in his role as a support in a really demanding team this one says something about how resilient he can be despite difficult circumstances this one says a lot about society the motion and emotion are pretty drastically different between each of these and none of them are simply stiff expressions pulled from the character turnaround a great way to break away from stiff poses is to really sketch and iterate incessantly with a view to breaking the character or doing something all the way the wrong way our eye is actually incredibly forgiving of new elastic shapes so you can create a shape and then fill your character into it afterwards if you go too far in a certain direction you can always course correct but iterating with intentionally wrong drawings or drawings pushed beyond what you normally expect for your character is a great way to discover new things and if you feel like your idea for your character is strong in your head but not translating onto the page literally acting out as the character either in the mirror or with a camera or asking someone to act it out for you so that you can get photo reference isn't cheating or cringe it's what professionals do and it's just smart our fifth element is a minor one it's not love not necessarily applicable in every circumstance but you can use light and color in the same way that we do pinching versus stretching to call attention to certain areas of our pose and to allow for visual rest or contrast in others in this illustration of biko instead of allowing his whole backpack to call for attention on par with his face and hand which are the important parts of the pose we add contrast and emphasis to the important parts of the image by pushing those areas out of the focus of our value range one quick way to check if we're succeeding in this is to just check what your image looks like in black and white you can create a gray layer and set it to color over top the rest of your file in any art program or you can take a picture of your colored painting and then use a filter on your phone what you're looking for is the values of your colors being too close together or causing confusion find your character's story imbue them with gesture constantly check their silhouette and their construction and of course iterate incessantly on these poses until you find something that's just right most of the pico art from this video is from this month's biko's biko backpack an all biko because backpack that's a bit of a mouthful you can get that over on patreon.com bagel denizen at the beaco's backpack tier which is now easier to find and this video is a little bit closer in structure to one of the videos from the learn character design course it's over 18 hours of comprehensive character design instruction if you've never even learned to draw before we get you to a place where you're confident in your skills you can get that over on learncharacterdesign.com thanks so much for watching and have fun creating

Channel: Brookes Eggleston - Character Design Forge

Views: 22,811

Keywords: character design, brookes eggleston, character design forge, key pose, lilo and stitch, disney character, disney animation, disney poses

Id: PNZMxt_xuB0

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020