FREE

This course includes:

2 hrs 26 mins of video courses
Full lifetime access
Go at your own pace
Certificate of completion

Stay up to date:

What you'll learn

You will learn the process of character illustration and a professional approach for creative projects to take inspirations from natural creatures, create a background story with the help of a mind map, come up with your own characters, use shape languages, create a powerful silhouette, express the character through eye-catching features, create harmonious color palettes, compose a scene applying the rule of thirds, build an easy environment with background and foreground element, and create moods with light and shadow.

Requirements

- Have an iPad with Procreate installed on it - Basic understanding of Procreate.

instructor

Best seller

Digital Character Design Procreate Course

Jun 04 2021 - Video Course (2 hrs 26 mins)

Welcome to Character designs for beginners. Throughout this class, I will carefully guide you through a 15 step process that will take you from an empty page to a full illustration like the one you can see on the course image. The skills you will learn in this course will open so many doors for you, not just by leveling up your technical skills but by changing your mindset about approaching a project. So, hopefully, after this course, there will be no stress and unnecessary procrastination about an artwork you need to create for somebody or any of your personal projects. This course is for beginner illustrators who would love to learn digital illustration, those who are curious about character design, hobbyists looking for a new project, and more.

Created by Alexandra Gábor

Character Design

FREE

This course includes:

2 hrs 26 mins of video courses
Full lifetime access
Go at your own pace
Certificate of completion

Stay up to date:

What you'll learn

You will learn the process of character illustration and a professional approach for creative projects to take inspirations from natural creatures, create a background story with the help of a mind map, come up with your own characters, use shape languages, create a powerful silhouette, express the character through eye-catching features, create harmonious color palettes, compose a scene applying the rule of thirds, build an easy environment with background and foreground element, and create moods with light and shadow.

Requirements

- Have an iPad with Procreate installed on it - Basic understanding of Procreate.

Course Content

3 Units - 21 video lessons

Introduction 3 lectures - 20 mins

Intro to Character Design

I have researched and came up with a 15 step process that will take you from an empty page to a full illustration like the one you can see on the course image. You will learn strategies and skills that you will be able to apply to your future artworks and illustration practice. You will be able to come up with your own characters, create powerful silhouettes, add eye-catching features, use harmonious colors, create balanced designs and great compositions, set moods with light and shadow, and most importantly, you will be able to tell a story.

02:54

Course Overview

In this video, I will walk you through how the class works. I have divided the 15 steps into 3 sections. The first section is about inspiration, ideas, and experiments. The second section is about design and decisions. The third section is about painting and illustration. I divided the whole process into those sections so that you can take breaks. You definitely don’t want to do the whole class in one sitting and rush through it. Give yourself time.

08:45

In this video, you will learn how to find inspiration for your first character. The hardest part of the whole process is to start. If you follow this process that I will guide you through, in the end, you will have a wonderful character and the whole process start with finding inspiration. You can find some fantastic inspiration from many things in nature like plants, mushrooms, butterflies, bugs, fish, and birds. You can search for images on google.

09:00

Design 7 lectures - 46 mins

Create a MindMap

I hope you like the inspiration that you already inspired with. In this video, we are going to make a mind map. Character design is more about expressing characteristics rather than what has these characteristics. Male and female characters will have different features, but if you don’t want to express the gender of your character, you are free to do so.

05:34

In this video, we will talk about shape languages. Shape language is part of the visual communication that communicates your idea and the character of your character to your audience. Round shapes or curved lines represent softness or kindness, rectangle shapes represent stability or strength, and triangle shapes represent danger or fear.

04:24

Choosing a Shape

When thinking about the shape you will use for your character, evoke your memories and ideas about the creature that you have in your mind first. Don’t research before you lay down your own ideas. You can apply the 1-minute character design technique where you use scribbles as a base.

08:21

In this video, we are going to play with the silhouettes. It is all about adding more features that improve the silhouettes like legs, arms, wings, etc. We will come to the end of the first stage. In the second stage, we will add more features, play with color variation, compose the scene, have a sketch, and create the illustration.

05:50

In this video, we are going to choose a form which means that we will select a silhouette from the silhouette that we have done in the previous video. It would be best to revisit the mind map to see which silhouette expresses your character the best.

03:01

In this video, we are going to define the main features. We are going to add more detailed features like eyes, nose, or mouth. We are going to decide on the size, shape, and placement. You can resize with freeform selected, play with sizes and shapes, and play with the placement as well. Highlight the versions of features that you liked the most.

10:23

Creativity in Features

In this explore features video, we are going to finalize our character design. I will make the wings, eyes. There are so many many other features that one can include. You can always revisit the mind map if needed. You can add objects and accessories to fit the character.

08:30

Illustration 11 lectures - 1 hr 20 mins

In this video, we are going to play with the colors. First stop, we need to go back to the drawing, select the main character, draw around it, three-finger slide up copy and paste, hold down the layer checkbox, turn off the background, and export as a png. We will go back to the find inspiration part and colorize the character with the one color of one element. Watch this video till the end to see the step-by-step processes to colorize.

09:57

In this video, We are going to compose our scene. Revisit your mind map again and choose the best version of the colorized character accordingly. We are going to create composition thumbnails. Composition thumbnails help you to visualize the scene. Decide on the orientation and ratio of the canvas and follow the step-by-step process till the end.

09:46

Intro to Illustration

We have arrived at the point where we are going to start the illustration itself. We have gone through the first 10 steps, you have made all the decisions, you have the idea of the illustration in your head, but to ensure your success, you will need to follow a basic outline for the illustration that I am going to show you in this video. You have artistic freedom from now on. Watch the video till the end and apply your “takeaway”. Only progress to the next video if you are done with this step.

03:24

We are now at the final stage where we are going to create an illustration. Create a screen-size canvas and create a reference layer with the character, composition, and color thumbnail. Follow the step-by-step process in this video till the end. Our artworks interact with the viewer. In the next video, we will start painting and blocking the main colors.

09:22

Painting: Setup and Body

In this video, we are going to paint the main elements- the body. We will decide the colors, add darker and lighter versions of color, decide on the background colors roughly, and lower the opacity of the sketch and set it to multiply. Always make your shapes are right before approaching the next steps. Add shading to give dimension, but keep in mind the light source.

11:17

Painting: Bodyparts and Detail

In this video, we will continue from where we stopped in the last video. Hold down for the quick shape function when you are drawing any line or shape. It corrects your shapes when you cannot draw a proper one. Decide the colors the features will be. Watch this video and follow step-by-step till the end.

09:53

Painting: Grass

In this video, we will continue from where we stopped in the last video. We will color the grass. Organize the layers before moving to the next step.

05:28

Blurred Background

In this video, we will deal with the background. Use the smudge tool to mix the colors together, keep the smudging in one direction, and apply Gaussian blur. If the colors don’t work, try different color combinations. Make the background work with the main illustration and also the other way.

05:51

In this video, we are going to set the light. You can add sharp highlights where the light is hitting the subject the most. Watch this video and follow the step-by-step process in this video. In the next video, we will do the foreground.

05:49

Welcome to the last painting video. In this video, you will learn how to make the foreground by taking a thumbnail look on the canvas, adding the silhouettes, and applying Gaussian blur. Check the values to see if the silhouettes work with the image. You can still adjust the brightness and darkness of the background and sign it.

07:27

Congrats! You have gone through the whole course and finished it. You have learned to take inspirations from natural creatures, create a background story with the help of a mind map, use shape languages, create a powerful silhouette, express the character through features, create harmonious color palettes, compose a scene applying the rule of thirds, build an easy environment with background and foreground element, and create mood with light and shadow. You now have skills that you can use in the future. Thank you for taking this course.

01:53

About Instructor

instructor

Alexandra Gábor

Artist

Alexandra Gábor is a passionate artist, a happy mother and an enthusiastic teacher - in short The Artmother. She has a Masters Degree in Art Education with years of experience in teaching in person and online. As an artist, she is creating in all different kinds of mediums from acrylics, watercolors, graphite and digital. She also has years of experience in graphic design and photography. Her passion is to help very beginners to explore their artistic abilities and to build their confidence in creating art.

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