All language subtitles for 014 Telling Story In Your Character Design.en

In this lecture we're going to be talking about story and how it plays into your character design.

Now before we start talking about this I just want to stress how incredibly important story is to your

character designs.

I would say it's actually the number one most important part of character design is story.

Nothing is more important than it.

So even though we talked about our drawing fundamental pyramid and line shape and form is really important

but even more important than that is your story.

If your character design doesn't tell a story none of that matters.

So on the technical side of drawing and painting Yeah lines shape and form are definitely the most important

thing.

But as far as the actual entire character design goes this story and concept of your character is gonna

be the most important part.

So this lecture is really important and I really want you to pay attention.

So story is just basically talking about or telling things visually.

When it comes to character design about that character we want to know things like Who is this person.

Where are they from.

We want to also know things about their personality what are they feeling.

And we can do all this by the way we draw our character and the type of clothing they're wearing and

stuff like that.

We want to know what is the mood of this character.

Are they always in this mood or is it just the mood that they're in at that specific time.

Facial expressions that's one of the best ways to create emotion on your character is with their facial

expressions and sometimes you can do that with their body pose as well but facial expressions are going

to evoke those emotions more than anything.

Also what is our character doing.

What is like what is it that they're doing in life.

What is their motivation.

Why are they doing what they're doing.

Where are they going.

You know like are they on a journey if they're on a journey.

Do they have a backpack.

Do they have a satchel do they.

Do they have a horse.

They have all their equipment on you know all these are questions that you need to answer with your

character design.

These things are what's going to set your character design apart from an amateur character design.

The more information you can have about your character through the visuals the better character design

it will be.

And the more somebody can actually emotionally relate to that character.

Another thing you can ask about your character is where have they been so a good example of this would

be Jack Sparrow.

A lot of you are probably familiar with him.

He's a pirate from Pirates of the Caribbean and he has all kinds of trinkets in his hair all kinds of

little things tied to his belts here and there and they basically come from his past.

So he's picked these up along the way as he's gone and ransacked different towns and ended up on island

stranded.

He's he's gathered all this stuff and it tells you a lot about where he's been and so stuff like that

can be really useful to your character design is by adding stuff like that usually it's going to be

adding it to their costumes so maybe your character has a tattoo maybe they have some sort of a bracelet

that's from a specific part of the world maybe they have a weapon or something a sword a torn something

that you tells you where they got that from what part of the world it came from.

So probably two of the biggest ways that you can tell stories with your characters is through their

facial expressions and through their costumes costumes.

I would say kind of go into the hairstyle as well.

So those two things are gonna be your biggest tools in telling a story with your character.

Now once you put that character into an environment that will also help you tell more of the story of

your character by showing where they're at where they're going and stuff like that through an environment

drawing or painting.

So when you're designing characters I want you to remember this.

This is a quote I'm not sure who it's by but I've heard it many times and its story is king.

That means that story trumps everything else and is the most important part you want to spend a lot

of time developing your concept and storyline for your character even if you don't show it in a comic

book or in your in your drawing that you're gonna do of your character even if you don't show their

entire story.

You want it to show through in their actual character design and costume.

So remember this every single line every decision you make on your character needs to be important.

It needs to have a purpose.

Everything all the way down to things like their earrings whether they're Harris cut whether it's combed

all of it every single part of your character needs to be done with purpose to help tell the story.

That doesn't mean everything has to be crazy and extravagant but things like are their hands dirty are

they clean.

Stuff like that.

All of those are decisions that need to be made with a purpose.

Now let's look at some examples.

All right so let's have a look at some examples of character designs that tell a story.

So first we can have a look at a character design that's just simply the character.

They're not in an environment or anything like that.

So right here I have this drawing that I did this while ago and her name is Blue hair it's summer.

I just don't know I just thought that'd be a good name for.

Let's look at how she's telling a story.

So first let's just start observing her.

So first of all obviously there is a toad on her head so that already tells us a lot about this character.

She doesn't look squeamish she doesn't look scared or anything like that.

So clearly she doesn't mind this toad being on her head.

This toad is probably her pet or friend or something like that.

And so we already get that information which then kind of tells us that she's a little bit more I guess

you could say outdoorsy or like just likes to get dirty because you can also see not only does she have

a toad on her head but she also has her sleeves rolled up so maybe she's kind of a little adventurous.

She doesn't mind getting her hands dirty stuff like that.

You can also see that her hair.

It's it's not super messy or anything like that but it's also not perfect it's not perfect hair there's

kind of these scraggly hairs flying out everywhere.

So she it just starts to give the vibe that she's like a little adventurous or something like that.

But at the same time she's still wearing makeup.

She's wearing a dress so you could say that that's kind of feminine.

She also has some sort of satchel on and you can see if you look at it it's a little bit bigger than

a purse so it's not just a purse it's a satchel.

So that just kind of helps tell the story even more that she's a little adventurous.

Yeah.

She doesn't just sit at home and do nothing.

She's out and about maybe out in the wilderness out in the woods searching for something.

Who knows.

But yet just looking at those things it already tells you a lot about this character.

Now let's have a look at another example where our character is in an environment now you can't see

a ton of stuff about this character but we're going to talk more about environments and putting your

characters into him later in the course.

But I just wanted to talk about just kind of the motivation of your character especially when they're

in an environment.

So right here you can see that we have a character he or she I'm not sure if it's a boy or girl.

Let's just say it's a boy.

He's standing right there and he's holding some sort of a hat.

It kind of looks like a cowboy hat or maybe a fedora or something like that but kind of seems like an

adventure especially because he's just kind of out in the middle of the jungle looks like he's on a

journey.

And the reason why it looks like he's on a journey is because we have three things going on in this

image.

The first part of our story is telling us where our character is or where he came from so right now

he's in the foreground and it's darker in this foreground which makes it look a little bit more mysterious

but he's in this foreground meaning he's closest to the viewer or the camera and he's standing there

so we know that he came from this area out here in the woods he walked out to there and now he's looking

out towards this mountain with this building on top of it.

And so we know that he's here and the next part of our story is we know where he needs to go.

It's very obvious that this bridge is how you get out to this mountain.

So he's he's right here.

Let me go ahead and switch over to a brush.

I can just kind of draw this for you guys.

So he's right there and he needs to go out to this bridge to get up to this building.

And so we see where he is we see where he's going to go and then we see where he's going to end up.

Now this is kind of in a way like telling a story a long story but in an image.

So rather than just being in the jungle or wherever this is and then having another picture of him up

here at the actual building we have all in one image we can tell the entire story we can tell them where

they came from where they're going and where they're going to end up which is up there at the top of

the mountain in this building.

So those are just a few examples of how we tell stories in our character designs and especially when

we put them into environments.

So just remember everything absolutely everything about your character is going to tell a story.

Everything from the color of their clothes to their hair color to the length of their fingernails do

they clip their fingernails stuff like that every single thing needs to be a purposeful decision that

you make that tells about the character story that doesn't mean that you have to give them long fingernails

for example most your characters probably will have short fingernails but that tells you something about

that character tells you that they clip their fingernails and they are keep themselves well groomed.

So just remember that and always remember this story is more important than anything else.

Story is always going to be out any other aspect of your drawing.

If the story is in there and the good concept isn't there then none of the rest of it really matters.

Thanks for watching this lecture and I'll see you guys in the next 1.