How to DESIGN a GREAT CHARACTER - Step-by-step drawing tutorial!

for as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with character design it's what got me into Arden animation in the first place is the subject of the first book that I ever wrote and it's the reason I made the arty games app aside from generating colors and other stuff the character creation randomization is something I really wanted to make out of everything I do in art Nana mayshen it brings me the most joy and satisfaction and in today's video we're going to break down the four steps of the design process that you can use to get a best result that you can have the most fun and get the most satisfaction with your character designs time after time give allies and gentleman welcome to draw with Jazza I'm Java and today only be going through what's called a design process and this isn't exclusive to character design it is a process that people use and go through to get the best results possible so for example here you can see that even a product you might see on the shelf and in fact pretty much any product that you purchase from a smartphone to something seemingly mundane like a computer mouse goes through this process so in this video we're going to go through those four steps of the design process as applied to character design and they are namely discovery or the research and referencing process design where we begin to brainstorm and throw all of our ideas out there and see what works develop where we take the best of those ideas further refine them and create the best combinations and narrow down our selection and then finally deliver when we present and create the final product or in our case the finished character design or concept piece I honestly feel like throwing yourself in the deep water and into the unknown is the best way to come up with creative ideas and challenge yourself and to have fun and that's again the reason why I came up with the early games app and I'm going to use this today to generate a random character that I'm going to use to create a design out of so I'm going to select character challenge and in the settings you can change from generating a character design or a character scenario meaning a character who is engaged in an activity I'm going to select design because I want to create a character design concept and I like to personally set myself a little rule of one side get the go button what you get is what you make so I'm going to hit go and today we're going to be designing a cool ferret that guards a dangerous criminal that has a mallet now this is why I love throwing myself in the deep end because I don't naturally think to myself I'm going to draw a cool ferret character who's some sort of officer or guard who's wielding a mallet but it does invoke cool imagery and get your brain thinking so let's look up some references and move into the first stage of the design process which is discover in the first stage of the design process Google Images is your best friend and as shown here I look up some pictures of ferrets so I can familiarize myself with the species then I move on to a few other things looking up other depictions of cartoon ferrets just to see how other people have created stylistic depictions of the creature and then moving on to things like cartoon animals to show how anthropomorphize creatures have been stylized with an official officer's outfit and then of course looking up a few images of mallets to see what would work with the cartoon style I'm going for I think it helps before you get into the process of actually drawing to put together a bit of an inspiration board with just some visuals that you think could get your ideas flowing one of the most important visuals of course is the raw reference which in this case is an actual ferret both for how the body is proportioned and also where different color markings are and what the general aesthetic is beyond that as you can see I've got a few visuals here of just cartoon characters and police uniforms in particular animal cartoons with a cartoony look two of which are from Zootopia which I thought was a good reference an example of how to apply clear visuals of someone in a police uniform without having too much detail or intricacy and clearly communicating what they're doing or what their job is I also have a bunch of different cartoon ferret examples sometimes just ahead and sometimes with the full body now there are lots of other different examples of cartoon ferrets but these were the ones I found most useful in particular the full-body ones had the rough proportions I think would be fitting for the cartoon character I want to create not anything I want to copy directly or exactly but just to uses inspiration to use ideas for posture and how they piece the limbs together and then of course we have a mallet over here because that's the kind of mallet I want a career there were different kinds of visuals of mallets but I thought this was a cute cartoony to me style mallet that fits the character style that I want to go for now let me reiterate having all of these visual reference has nothing to do with copying or stealing it's about gathering aesthetics for inspiration and for reference the second stage of the design process is self-named it's the design part of the design process where you start playing around with different design aspects and attributes that you can use the number one most important thing to remember about this stage in the design process is that it's really important to keep loose and relaxed and to keep your mind open to new ideas and things that you wouldn't perhaps normally think of so for example here I'm starting off with some thumbnail sketches of potential silhouettes and postures and different proportions for the build and body of the cartoon ferret I didn't know whether I'd go with a sort of slumped posture or something with a bigger bottom end or an hourglass shape in the end I went with something with a much more go-get-'em sort of attitude a passed up chest with a thin waistline and very low legs almost as if is wearing very baggy pants and I felt this had a very sprightly youthful look I find one of the most fun things to play with when it comes to character design is contrast and I really wanted to create a contrast with this ferret character with the idea that he has a job where he guards dangerous criminals and yet he's a very small sort of character so by creating an overconfidence in this character by having a very strong posture and really energetic pose and proportions we can create the sense that even this very small and cute sort of character can stand up to some tough dudes as you can see after I settled on a body type I also go a forward playing with different facial constructions and levels of detail starting off with a little bit more realism and then edging towards the more cartoony and then I slowly sort of came back until I settle somewhere in the middle I wanted to keep his features a little bit more subtle and focused less on extruding the face out front ways and having a bit more spiking this out on the sides to give the character a bit more edge and attitude with the Tufts of hair and the spiky ears I also started playing with the idea of having him wear a hat which could help with giving him a bit of attitude and a bit more of a humanized design you can see that wherever I'm quite happy with how something is turned out I draw a bit of a shape or a box and shaded in behind that sketch or character or figure I do this to highlight to myself and perhaps anyone else you might look at it if this were for a client what stood out to me and what I might come back to will use as a reference later on which I carry forward with me in the next stage of the design process which is stage 3 development where I take those things that I highlight and like and want to keep and use and play with them a little bit more refined them mix and match them until I'm happy with them and we have something that feels a little more final so for the development stage of this ferret character I drew three rough silhouettes of the proportions and pose and basic facial features that I thought would be the foundation I was definitely happy with and I used these to play around with some different costumes and a few extra details for example in the design phase I knew I liked the idea of him having a hat but in the development phase I played around with what hat I would use and ended up really liking the idea of having a police cap this is higher made him feel a little more young and perhaps lower in the ranks than he would look wearing a sergeants cap I played around with the different clothes and outfits that the character would wear from a full officers uniform including a tire to an infield Kevlar vest both of which with the sleeves rolled up and with pants and boots but it was when I played with the idea of having the shirt and belt without any parent in classic cartoon animal style that I thought I was onto something that was feeling a little more final so after further developing these three figures here I had a much clearer idea as to what I wanted to use into my final character design suicide to piece together a bit of a rough character concept of the pieces I wanted to use together just to check and make sure that they did work together in the way that I wanted the baseball cap for the youthful and infield sort of look I kept the tie because I did want him to look a little bit more like a button-up do-gooder sort of character even though he has a bit of an attitude and as a real go-getter I still wanted him to look like he follows the rule I think having a tie and a neat sort of dress code helps create that feel and character and the decision to not have any parents helps with the fact that he is a tail poking out and doesn't feel like a conflict because most cartoon animals don't don't have pants but I felt would also work better in the end because it would look more natural and if this character were perhaps animated or in a comic-book series it would look a lot clearer and more natural in more expressive and ambitious poses once I've decided well my final character design would look like I move on to beginning the final presentation of the character design in stage 4 which is delivery or creating the final depiction of the character sometimes the delivery stage entails specific things like creating character pose sheets or expression sheets turnaround so on and so forth but in this case I'm just going to create a simple character concept pieced with a pose and expression that clearly represents the character however realistically the character design isn't finished until color has been added so I'm not technically well and truly into the delivery stage until I played around with a color scheme and refined that so it's sort of I guess a weird limbo between the last two stages of the design process because I go back to play an experiment with colors to do so basically once I finish the line work of the character in his finished form I scanned him into the computer duplicated him several times and printed him out again so that I had four line work pieces to work with and in a really rough sort of way I splat on a bunch of different colors to see what combinations work best trying things like bright saturated blues for the tops or perhaps using lighter or darker blues mixing a bit of red trying some dark grays and with things like the fur of the character how much saturation or brown tones do I use as opposed to having more gray tones what level of saturation is the wood of the mallet who's carrying and basically very loosely applying color to these thumbnail príncipe character to see what combinations work best and come to a clear decision in the end I felt that the dark blue tie and the mid blue shirt color of the top left character mixed with the charcoal cap of the top right character mixed with the saturated wood of the mallet and the bottom left character and then finally mixed with the fur colors of a sort of warm but still desaturated fur color on the bottom right character I believe would mix to be the best combination and that's what I decided to use moving forward [Music] [Music] [Music] once I've gone through and out of the color to my final line work of the piece to finish it off by adding a solid black outline around the character so I'm going to use a Copic brush marker which allows me to create some line weight variation around different areas of the character and creates a really fun edgy stylistic look I also find that having a slightly thicker silhouette and outline around the character even if really subtle helps to add that final finishing touch that makes a piece feel really complete and helps the solidity of the character concept to speak for itself oh and hindsight's 20/20 I forgot the whiskers so I'm adding there's no didn't post production to say I'm an idiot but just unknown pretending as whisk uses the process of creating a new and unique character from start to finish is a fun and organic process and if you follow those four steps you will find that especially as you continue to apply the process and develop your drawing skills you will be met with results you're satisfied with more and more definitely much more so than if you just go into drawing a finished character design without any refinement or iteration because we don't naturally create the best thing at the beginning we usually learn what works well through going through these four steps beginning with this referencing step in the discovery phase using images that inspire us and help us develop and clarify our ideas then further as we put those ideas into practice with the design phase playing with things and as you can see here the different silhouettes and seeing what sort of posture and attitude I wanted to invoke what level of cartoonists I wanted to work with them finding the features and props that would help bring out the character's attitude and then later on through the development phases we take the aspects that work well and then just nip and tuck and find the right balance that helps convey the character both in the visuals and then also as I demonstrated in the colors finding the right combination of colors as well as the features proportions and props so there you go ladies and gentlemen we have my fine character design of a cool ferret who guards a dangerous criminal who has malice one of the things I love most about this process is that as a result not only am I satisfied with the outcome but I find myself coming up with stories and other characters to fit into a world I'm creating so there you go ladies and Joanne I hope you found this video fun and hopefully helpful and I want to finish off by mentioning the Druids as a creating characters book is one I wrote that goes through these four steps mainly the discovery process where I talk about Wells building and character breakdowns styles and other forms of preparation and the design process going through the brainstorm sketching phase and also the basics of drawing men and women and other ways of constructing your characters and how to use character traits and physical attributes to help bring out interesting aspects of your characters this is one of my favorite pages this is the repulsive page where I go into creating uncanny and unsettling characters and the book goes on through the brainstorming sketching process with a whole bunch of examples the development process and a whole bunch of different genres and settings and character archetypes and then after the delivery phase where I go through different ways you can present your final delivery I also go through in Chapter five pulling it all together where I have four very specific examples of designs that I assign myself for almost as if I'm working for a client and I go through the four stages of the design process with different characters and come to a final result with each of them so check that out if you're interested is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble both in physical form and eBook form so the links to that are in the description and of course if you're interested you can check out the RT games app available on iOS Android and PC where you can generate a huge array of interesting character designs that you can see me just pressing this button and magically getting an unending amount of character designs they can come up with it if you want to get started and get creative today these are some ways that I've put together to help you and to help your process and creative inspiration as you create your own characters and I hope that this video has been a part in helping your creative juices get flowing so thank you so much for watching ladies and gentlemen and until next time I'll see you later make sure to subscribe my channel to see more of my videos and while you're at it check out my shop where I sell ebooks brushes photo references video courses and more there's another video you might enjoy from my channel over there you can also check out my behind-the-scenes daily vlog channel daily Jazza that's it for now and until next time I'll see you later

Channel: Jazza

Views: 1,029,681

Rating: 4.9635568 out of 5

Keywords: josiah, brooks, jazza, jazzastudios, animation, game design, media, newgrounds, armor games, flash, humor, drawing, how to draw, adobe, photoshop, cintiq, 24hd, Adobe Flash (Software), tutorial, Artist, Painting, Educational, Software Tutorial, CS6

Id: XxNUIRVOmMw

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2017