How to Develop and Improve your OC's

hey guys today we're back with a video topic that's just a little bit different instead of talking about obscure character designs from popular culture we're going to be discussing a subject that I think most of you will be able to relate to that's right today we're talking about your characters well kind of generally speaking will be discussing the concept of original characters the role they play for developing artists and how you can use your OCS as a gauge to measure your progress as an artist over the years now even for those of us who don't consider ourselves artists or character designers I'm sure that we all have that one special character or a group of characters that is lingered in our minds for years whether it's a fan created insert into one of your favorite animes a tabletop RPG character a particular fallout 4 playthrough that you got really attached to or something entirely new of your own creation there really are endless options for what could be considered a know see the term itself carries some connotations conjuring up images of Sonic characters repainted in ms paint or warrior cat sona's but let's put judgments aside for this video after all these examples too are critical parts of an artist development and just like any character will evolve over the years if the person who created them is willing to learn and improve what starts off as a narrow self insert may eventually transform into a completely unique character with its own world and story in fact I bet then most artists my age went through a phase of fandom obsession and that if you picked one of your favorite artists off of Instagram Twitter or wherever they'd certainly have some sort of embarrassing OC that came up with back when they were 12 I'm certainly no exception though I never got into Naruto or My Little Pony or any of the big names of the original character do not steal genre I had quite a few o C's back in the day that are um hard to look at as an adult but therein lies the beauty of an art form like an original character as much as we may want to separate ourselves from our cringy outdated work these ideas have always been and will always be part of who we are as creators and while our technical skills and storytelling abilities improve over time these core elements of our personalities persist through everything we create whether we're eight or thirty two let's talk a little bit about the benefits of creating a fan OC or in other words a character we could create with the purpose of inserting it into a pre-existing story as easy as it may be to make fun of a young artist posting their Steven universe gemsona it's actually a vital step in the development of all character designers and should not be discouraged as young minds our ideas are molded by the media we consume and the more we can learn about these principles of character design from successful TV shows video games comic books and so on the more we improve our technical skills on our own terms I've said this before but you don't need to go to art school to become a successful artist you can learn a lot about color shaped composition and lighting from observing and studying the application of these skills and forms of media that you enjoy consuming and then using what you learn in your own artwork and yes most commonly this process is carried out by creating o'seas that exist in the universes and stories that we're learning from let's go back to Steven universe this show does an amazing job with color and light it has a very Shon refining feel to it that has been influencing artists for years any young artist interested in this show will learn a lot by copying the palettes used by their characters and in the backgrounds and if those artists are able to retain what they've learned from watching the show and apply it to work outside of fan art their designs will be that much stronger because of this now of course there are drawbacks to drawing exclusively fan art for one if all you ever create is artwork based off of or directly inspired by your favorite media your range as an artist will become significantly limited this isn't a bad thing you could find a niche for a very specific group of consumers where all they want to see is the same thing over and over again but repetitive strikes down the blade to improve beyond the scope of things that you find cool and break out into your own identity as an artist you need to be aware of how much you're learning from your OCS and how much you're just copying let's talk specifics and I'm willing to put my own reputation as an artist on the line to help solidify this point in your mind these are the freelancers a group of quippy comic-book heroes that I came up with back in high school this particular masterpiece was created by me about six years ago when I was 17 years old at the time I was reading a lot of Marvel comics particularly deadpool and spiderman i was really into the whole idea of this subversive and II hero that bucked the stereotypes of traditional superheroes the freelancers were pretty much a manifestation of everything I thought was cool crocodiles visors girls with short hair gas masks robot suits and Magikarp yeah that middle guy was based off of the Pokemon Magikarp and in a lot of ways he was as much of a projection of myself as he was a low-budget knockoff of the comic book characters that I thought were cool I learned pretty quickly by listening to the feedback of other people my age and older that these designs all looked much like characters that already existed but of course I was 17 and didn't care much about what other people thought so I kind of kept a lot of what was unappealing about these characters for a really long time but every time I changed them I brought in inspirations from other things that I was interested with at the time as well as integrated technical skills I learned from classes and other students this iteration of the freelancers was drawn in 2014 my first year at mass art at this point I had decided to unify the designs with similar color palettes I changed lockjaw the crocodile into a gorilla as I had become convinced that a crocodile was too difficult to illustrate and moding properly and that gorillas just had more widespread appeal mr. magic man the orange jumpsuit guy and four-eyes the visor girl got equipped with some matching leather jackets pretty heavily inspired by Borderlands 2 a game I was playing a lot of my freshman year of college because the characters are brother and sister I had the idea that their outfits and color scheme should match a little bit more I gave the big robot guy gallant a coat of gold paint and Sasha shrapnel the character in the gas mask more or less stayed the same this was one of the first times I drew the freelancers using digital media circuit 2015 by access to the free app fire alpaca made it easier for me to convey things like texture so I went pretty hard in what I thought was a realistic direction of course my sense of light and value was completely off so everything looks really muddy and gross it was at this point that I decided to change the rainbow theme from just multicolored eyes into a full compositional color scheme each character would be a different color so that when they stood together they would make a rainbow why they need to be a rainbow I don't know it was one of the design choices I made back when I was applying attributes to my designs that I just thought were cool rather than actually considering the significance of the traits and whether it was me being stubborn or just not thinking about it enough I forced myself to limit the designs to this rainbow code at this point I was also visualizing some of the villains that would occupy the world and a lot of them were also derivative of other popular character designs now by 2016 I'm starting to get a better grasp on things like color value shape and line work this was mostly due to my classes I was taking at mass art and the teachers that forced me to work outside of my comfort zone but more than just my technical skills were improving I got a pretty harsh wake-up call when during one of my end of semester critiques a professor told me straight up that the crew looked like an overwatch ripoff and as frustrated as I was to hear that he was right I mean I had the idea for a hyper-intelligent gorilla before overwatch came out but that didn't mean that it was an original idea and eventually I was forced to admit that the idea needed to change completely this was the first time I imagined the freelancers with concepts of my own imagination rather than copying visual themes from things that I found cool lockjaw reverted back into his crocodilian form and Sasha and gallant got pretty dramatic overhauls as well I considered more about the characters that I had written for them which at this point were far more fleshed out than when I had first conceived the idea and used their designs to better convey their unique personalities and roles in the story from this point forward my development of the freelancers was far more conceptual than it was visual I had a great professor who taught me how to think about character design from its core purpose out the role the character plays in the story takes precedence over its visual design and as long as those themes are exemplified in the way it looks it can really be anything you need it to be I became less attached to little details and experimented with deviations in color silhouette shape and outfits even if I didn't like an idea and learned something from every new conception of the freelancers and it helped shape all of my other character designs even outside of this world for my senior illustration thesis I did a series of shots from what I would imagine a freelancers movie could look like full painted scenes with dynamic posing lighting and action even though these were from less than two years ago I still feel like I've improved a whole lot since then and the evidence is in the freelancers illustrations I've done since then independent exploration of each characters design over the past two years has helped me realize which part of which look works the best both standalone and as a group and while I continue to take inspiration from other artists games and movies that I enjoy I've developed a sense of self-awareness over the years that allowed me to reflect on my artwork and my characters in a constructive way without just copying ideas I think are cool this is the most recent freelancers group shot I did over the summer of 2019 it was one of my favorite things I did all year and I'm still happy with it today it was a sort of culmination of everything I've learned working with the freelancers over the past seven years starting with an understanding of anatomy to a point where I could stylize it then to a grasp of the technology I was using to render the piece allowing me to create dynamic line work that added energy and depth then on to color using what I'd learned about unifying color schemes that could apply to the whole composition rather than forcing myself to stick to that rainbow motif I had invented when I was in high school and finally a solid understanding of light and value that gave shape to the characters without desaturating or muddying their color schemes it's a lot of fun looking back over the years and watching my skills as an artist develop along with my group of BOCES what started as essentially deadpool fan art has turned into a very unique and exciting cast of characters that I'm very proud of and while it can be hard for me to force myself to look at some of these older pieces I would never get rid of any of them putting them together as a timeline of my life and skills as an artist gives me such a sense of accomplishment it's a nice feeling for any artist to be able to look back at old work and watch themselves reflect and improve I'm still making changes to these characters even to this day and I can't wait to look back on what I've made a year from now and see how much I've learned I hope everyone watching this who has original characters of their own can learn from my experiences make the same mistakes I made take some harsh critiques and learn from them the worst thing you can do is think you already know everything because in all honesty no one does we can't know everything but we can always learn so if you have an OC be it a persona a Homestuck troll a Pokemon trainers self-insert or a Batman Ezio hybrid hold on to them they're an important part of who you are as an artist and a reflection of your experiences as a person treasure the spark that ignited your interest in their original conception but don't be afraid to break them apart and completely rebuild them like everything we do our character should be a representation of how much we are willing to grow and change sometimes it takes a month sometimes it takes 10 years but it all starts with that strange wonderful sometimes cringy first idea thank you all so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video if you did be sure to throw us a like and subscribe for more character design content keep on drawing guys I'll see you all in the next video

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 144,424

Rating: 4.9831166 out of 5

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Id: t57x-7jRZy8

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020