How to Trace a Character in Affinity Designer

hey what's up guys Alex here thank you for checking this video and welcome to another episode about affinity design [Music] so in this episode I'm going to show you how I approach a character design and I'm going to start by showing you my technique of applying a character design and doing a little bit of standard shapes or like basic shapes before starting to add all the colors and all the stuff to make the character looks cool this video comes from a lot of request that I add below my previous video that I uploaded a while ago and when I showed with the speed painting a sort of like speed up technique I just recorded my screen and then increase the speed of the video how I created a character design like a cute ghost weed affinity designer so I started from a simple drawing that I did by hand and then I just traced it I created some colors I created some reflections some special effects and then I completed the design of the character a lot of you asked me to record these process at regular speed like not full speed or like not increasing the speed of the video I thought it was going to be kind of boring just like watch me painful he's lonely tracing a character and adding colors and stuff because I don't use like some hidden techniques or like some specific tips or tricks it's just like regular stand Award but I that the majority of the videos that you find online about character design are at like higher speed so they don't really show how much time it takes to do a character from scratch so that's the purpose of this video this is going to be the first part I guess for like to show you how to create this character and we'll see how it goes when we move along but let's start by importing our character inside affinity designer so let's open a new file that I have on my desktop there are you loaded or downloaded from my Instagram account this is an old sketch that I did during the inktober completion of last year 2015 and I call this the turn Nate man it's I think it's pretty cute and will be interesting to turn these into sort of like render character with vector shape so let's do it let's import this beautiful painting or this beautiful drawing and by default when you import a file or an image inside of you need a designer automatically the software creates a layer that it's locked a pixel layer lock code background it's like the default settings of affinity designer what we have to do here we have to edit a little bit because first you can see these is slightly tilted like it's not perfectly straight then we have the pencil here or like the pan and it's not really good to start tracing something with these resolution this type of contrast like this is really black and then we have this type of yellow background so what we should do we should edit a little bit this image to make it easier for us to trace it so let's do it first of all let's unlock the layer let's switch to pixel persona and let's use the freehand selection tool or you can select a width L key I just trace what I care about my design so all my character and I simply trace it this doesn't have to be perfect doesn't have to be super accurate just trace the character everything that you only want to keep and I usually do just I command X and command V or control X and control V to cut the element and paste it on the same position so now if we hide the layer underneath the background layer we don't have anymore the background with everything else that we don't care so we can delete this thing we can delete this layer and we just have the simple layer by default I'm going to create we going back with it to the draw persona I'm going to create a default element full rectangle that it's going to be 100% of the span of these drawing and I'm going to put it underneath I'm going to call these BG and I want this background to be completely white and I'm going to lock this background so I cannot select it by accident then the other thing that I want to do now I have the background that is a vector rectangle by default it's lock and then I F these image the turnip man let's rename the layer that is a pixel layer with the image that I want that's perfect so let's resize it a little bit let's rotate it to make it straight awesome now because we are in a pixel layer we can cancel these extra part if we want going inside the pixel persona and using the eraser and cancelling these extra stuff that are around our image but this is not really important I usually skip this part because I don't care mostly first of all what we have to do before continuing is saving always save and save of course not flattened but as an affinity designer type of file so turnip man it's going to be saved and that's prefer always remember every time you do something you save it it's a really stable software is a really like secure safe piece of software it doesn't crash as much as you used to do Illustrator or Photoshop as well but always say like control as command as like learn this and save constantly don't trust yourself or try to trust yourself whatever so the other thing that I do on the image layer I use a brightness and contrast type of adjustment layer that if you select the layer you go down inside these adjustments type of micro menu you click and you select the brightness and contrast automatically a new layer is going to be added attached like dependent 2d layer that you selected so if we open the turn it man layer that I have my background image the pixel layer you notice that we have these adjustment layer attached or dependent on the 2d turn event the main layer so all the editing I'm gonna do two-digit these adjustment layer are going to affect only this pixel layer that it's inside so if we double click we can reopen the panel and what I do I just like increase a lot the contrast and I increase a lot the brightness so I basically remove completely deep background that it was kind of yellowish and also I remove all those extra details that right now I don't care because they could be kind of distracting if I go back here or I simply just deactivate the adjustment layer you can see here we have a lot of details or like all these lines that in drawing are kind of cool because they create a little bit of extra dimension they create a movement they emphasize the shape of this drawing but when we are at the first stages when we have to trace this character all these extra details are kind of distracting and they could draw us outside our initial purpose that is just tracing the basic shape of this character so let's remove those and as you notice this is not a disruptive type of adjustment we can always be activated and go back to the original so that's perfect as a starting point now we have our standard basic type of shape and the last thing that I do before start tracing I select the layer and I decrease the opacity a little bit usually around 50% and just to have a better separation between the background image and the tracing the vector tracing that I have on top that's perfect this is a perfect starting point if you want to be safe you want to avoid you trays on the wrong layer or accidentally move the layer just like you can select the pixel area and lock it as well it's pretty simple another thing that I suggest you do instead of just simply immediately start and tracing so if we go back to the draw persona and we select the pen tool if we start tracing and we see here what happens like automatically a fini design creates a curve layer if we dislike this and we select again the the pen tool and we start tracing again you see automatically a fini design creates another layer because we interrupted the previous curve of the previous vector element and we created a new one so automatically a fini design creates a new layer every time we add a new element I don't really want to do that because especially during the tracing part we're gonna create a lot of different separated elements of different pieces and this could be kind of like overwhelming having all these different layers that keeps getting added to our layer panel we don't want that so in order to avoid this what I suggest you to do is create a new vector layer or create a new regularly nor not a pixel layer you can go into layer panel below here right at bottom and click Add layer by adding the layer you're gonna have these has a sort of like group container so every time you trace something to create a new element ultimately the element will be added to the layer so let's rename this layer weed tracing and then we can edit the properties of this layer and the cool thing we can have nice color so it's going to be like more obvious what type of layer we are working with and you can see like this nice highlighted color in this layer panel and it's easier to recognize it's like more obvious so it's it's kind of cool now if we create a new line and then we interrupt it and then we create a new one and then we interrupted that's perfect you see affinity didn't create all separate layers but added all the layers inside our tracing type of layer group or like regular layer then we created before and this is perfect that's exactly what we wanted and you know this by changing the color of this layer we are affecting also the selection tool highlighting color of these elements that are inside and also in this case like this like bright purple could be kind of disruptive but because we are tracing something I was black and white I always suggest do not use just black or like a really dissipated color just use a punchy saturated and really obvious color so it's easier to find your trace or find your line and you're not gonna get confused with the background color so I guess after 10 minutes of talking and bobbing about nonsense now it's time to start tracing these amazing characters so first of all let's start with the regular Mouse and musing if you can see here I'm using just like the simple Magic Mouse but it's not the best of course it's just one of the worst mice ever created but let's start with a regular Mouse and then we're going to move to something else if you have something else otherwise we can continue the starting point it's pretty much whatever you want I start by tracing the most obvious section so let's start weed is arm the right arm so I started by adding a point and let's click drag and drop and let's follow the curvature here what I do I usually hit option key and I click to avoid to continue the curve better because if I click again for example now I have this little bump of the elbow if I click again of course the handle of the the previous curvature is too long so it's forcing this curve to do this like we're shape in order to avoid a have to and generate a hard cut to DS handle you press you hold Alt key and then you click on the vertex that you just turn it is so the second handle the handle that goes outside the line that we trace is not going to interfere we our our next click that in my case is going to be this one that's perfect let's create a little bit of curvature by drag-and-drop in and another curvature here and then here there you go and we keep going and doing these are of course during this video I'm gonna speed up some sections if I don't do anything new if I repeat the same action over and over it again I'm gonna speed up those small portions just to complete what I'm doing and then going on the next explanation so at this point we trace the entire arm and sometimes the see other designer other like illustrator that have a technique of closing the shape I don't really care you can keep this shape open because what we're doing right now with this tracing is just like simply praising the external part of our character we're not defining any colors we're not defining any like elements or 3d elements or like any details we're doing just the regular shape so then in the future we can merge all the shapes that we have and we can have the base fully-clothed shape to have a starting point for our colors so you can totally leave your open and of course these trays if we compare what we did with the design or the drawing it's completely different and you can see it's kind of like worse you know what I mean like this is more detailed because we have like some small parts and then some like bigger parts and we have some like pressure change and all these kind of like small details that make these drawing better but you should totally ignore this at the beginning right now we're just simply tracing we're not doing details we're not generating the same result we don't wanna this is the final trace that is going to be on top of the finished design or the finished character so these type of details are coming or will be added on the at the end done get confused on don't get overwhelmed by the pressure of making the vector version identical to the drawing version since the beginning that's the wrong technique like you're going to get so overwhelmed by details and you're going to lose the the content we'd like the reality of the drawing reality of the process so that can be really frustrating let's keep doing it by tracing the rest of the character with the same technique and leaving the shapes open [Music] so a couple of things here if you notice my shape is not identical in like a matter of curvature or matter of details from the shape of the drawing and that's totally fine and that's like what you should do you shouldn't follow strictly discovered or like we have a bump here and then a little bump and then something like you shouldn't follow bump around because it creates a couple of problems first it's like similar to what I told you before you get distracted by too many details and you lose like the perspective of doing the entire design or like following the step by step approach and also your is to create too many vertex right now also this shape has a lot of vertex so if in the future I want to change or at the end I see that the drawing could be improve or the illustration could be improved by changing a bunch of layers I will be forced to like move one by one layer I already here it's kind of complicated to maintain a kind of like good look in a consistent shape because we have a lot of vertex imagine this shape with the double of this vertex that will be pretty much impossible to maintain and manage and update so don't bother by following too many details we're going to do these at the end as well with all the final touches and final details another thing here we are in this situation where our the shape the layout of the body goes underneath the arm sometimes I see designer that they interrupt the shape here and they start a new one going here this is kind of weird because this part what I usually do I continue to shape by completely ignoring the geometry underneath like these it's kind of like the back of the tournament so should have maybe something like this but it is totally like useless type of Vet revert X because we're never going to show these the arm is on top so we can save all these extra work that we don't really need by just doing all I can hard cut just like one vertex at the beginning and with one vertex at the end of the area that is not visible and it's fine this line will never be shown because as I said we are tracing just these area of the drawing that then we're gonna feel will color so it's fine what's underneath we don't care so just keep going [Music] you perfect we traced this so as you notice here something like the trace is not properly following the shape but it's totally fine because while doing this curve order I pull the handles a lot and then I created these extra curvature because I didn't want to edit the handle while I was tracing and these is another suggestion that I liked you to give if you're tracing something and this something is going outside the reference of the drawing that you have underneath just don't bother keep tracing and at the end of your trays you can edit the shape and you can make it feed as much as you want you don't have to interrupt the flow of tracing just to make it look perfectly you can always come back later you can add a vertex if you want and make it like kind of different and create different curvature so you are free to do whatever you want even after you finish tracing your character you don't have to interrupt your tracing technique just to make it look perfect at the first shot it's it's totally fine to make mistakes and then fix them later so now we have the final body look at the entire main body shape and as you know this year I created like a hard cut just like a long street because here we're gonna have the leg on top so what we have to do right now let's keep doing these left arm and the two legs [Music] [Music] so here there's an interesting situation because we have this left arm that is banded so we have this type of shape that is kind of weird we could potentially like completing closing the shape in this way and then reaching this point but then when we feel the shape we could have an overlap here in between these initial point and the final point these area like could be kind of empty and it could be kind of weird we don't really want this so my suggestion my solution would be to just create another separated shape so let's keep these arm at this point and then let's create the other part of the arm as a separator shape and in this way we can control the color of this thing by not affecting the shape or like not worrying about how to shape closes and how the vertex interacts between each other so we're going to have these two shapes that kind of overlap at this point here but we don't care as I said this is gonna be just our base silhouette to handle filling colors so now we are at the point that we did pretty much everything and if we want we can increase a little bit the opacity of this thing to make it more visible there you go we have the opacity at 30% now our tracing it's really hot views and we noticed that we have everything except for the head so the head it's kind of complicated because we have a lot of elements we have a lot of layers these are the leaves of the turnip and we have the roots here that are attached to the head then we have one two three four leaves that is kind of interact with each other and these shapes are really complicated so if we would do this we depan it will take us a lot to do a lot of vertex and especially this is kind of random like we don't need to do these in a really detailed way like we did with the body because these is our random shape that we don't really care if it's not accurate not sighs we're not going to add it by detail for every detail so what I suggest you to do instead of using the pen tool as we just did you use the pencil tool so the pencil tool is just like the pen tool but it's freehand so you can just draw trays and keep going and do all the shape that you want at the end when you release a dramatically oops automatic F in a designer will create the trays with all the vertex that are necessary to create the type of shape if you have the opportunity and you can just use um tablet so in my case I'm using a really old I think it's like three years old it's an in twos Wacom tablet it's really small it's a regular surface the cool thing about this has touched functionalities you see like I'm moving the arrow here I'm moving the pointer and these pencil like did the Wacom pencil will allow us to like kind of simulating the drawing technique that we were doing before on drawing but instead of using the mouse we're gonna use the pen so it's gonna be kind of more natural and probably we're gonna have a more natural shape is gonna be easier to manage so let's select the pencil tool and then let's trace these wonderful leaves and as I say like we don't have to follow strictly the silhouette of this thing like just go free and just follow your instinct if you want to also change a little bit the drawing underneath it's totally fine I think that I suggest you to do is just like be confident or what you do because after tracing it because of the way the system generates all different vertex inside is shape it's our to add it you can see how many vertex the software generated so now if you want to edit the shape and make it look slightly different it's really hard to match all these different vertex so just completely like be confident what you're doing all the details are going to come later just ignore whatever you do so here to continue we have now the route the base of the leaf that attaches to the head in order to do it in order to continue the shape you can select the pencil tool or clicking P on your keyboard and then select the last vertex or the open vertex a final initial vertex of your shape selected and then click automatically the system will continue the shape or continue the curve the uf from before that's interrupted here let's create a little bit of base and let's merge it with the other one and that's perfect so with the same technique let's continue let's build all these other leaves [Music] another quick tip about tracing this part especially weed the pencil tool could happen that while you're tracing probably I don't know for whatever reason like your hand gets tired or you hit something wrong or you reach the end of your canvas you're forced to interrupt this drawing and if you want to start again of course the software cannot merge your curve with the previous one and it doesn't work like the pencil tool so you cannot select the previous vertex and just keep doing your next curve and expecting that the software automatically merges that continues your previous curve so if this happens my suggestion is to just keep going no worries we can merge you later so let's continue what we were doing here let's finish the second part and let's be as crappy as we want it's totally fine okay at this point what we can do we can simply with the no tool we can select both vertex and let's select the first and the second vertex D to detach virtues that are closer to each one and then in the node to panel just click on this button on top join curves automatically the system will detect these two vertex that we selected or the two closest vertex from to open curves or to open shapes and it's going to merge them it's going to bridge them so now we have one single curve that it's just one single managable and it's pretty pretty easy perfect and we're done basically let's hide the image before the need image underneath and as you notice here this looks awful it looks really bad is like looks like two years old try to trace something and it was really like something not from an artists or whatever but it's totally fine as I said it's a really long process and this is just the beginning of all the steps necessary to trace a proper in the straighter vector character and the technique is completely different from the technique used to draw a pixel character so this is fine now we have everything we need to start and do our real work like to make it look good to make it look real but this starting point is perfect because we trace all the layout the entire silhouette of our character we have all these separate shapes that we can use to interact with each other and tap all the different parts and we have the perfect starting point no distraction from details and everything is linear everything is clear and we have a good layer separation that we can easily manage so it's pretty much it for today's lesson I hope you enjoy if you did please give it a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel and if you want you can spend a couple of minutes to check the support me page on my website where you can find all different ways and methods to support me support my channel and help me to do better videos and better tutorials for you thank you again guys and I tuck you in the next lesson

Channel: Alessandro Castellani

Views: 250,894

Keywords: tutorial, affinity designer, vector, character, design, help

Id: _3wS0POoEhA

Length: 29min 14sec (1754 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017