Original subtitles

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about how to check your fundamentals so when you're doing character

design through every step you want to make sure that you're checking to see if your character design

is working with the fundamentals of drawing and the fundamentals of character design.

So we would go through it the way we look at the pyramid so if you remember at the base of our drawing

fundamental pyramid we have a line.

So for example I have this painting right here this digital painting I did of a character.

We're gonna go through it and check it for the fundamentals and see if there's anything that could be

better or if it looks good or everything can always look better.

But you know what I mean.

So the first thing we want to check is we want to check for line.

So looking at our character right here we know that she has a line of action and it looks pretty good.

It's not just a straight line it has a curve to it like that so there's a line of action.

Next is going to be shape so we can check for shapes so we can kind of draw these out in simple forms

like that or simple shapes and then we get kind of a triangle shape there off that circle.

We kind of get these boxy shapes up here

all right.

We kind of get circle shapes from the shoulders

kind of trapezoid shape for her pelvis area but her shapes also look pretty good.

And that has a good amount of contrast and they're pretty dynamic looking.

For example her waist is kind of a little bit more curved.

Her hair shapes are actually a little bit more dynamic than that like right here for example we have

a nice curve in her hair.

Same with over here so we have these dynamic shapes and these dynamic lines have a nice line of action.

Next let's have a look at the forms.

Go ahead turn out these layers you can see this a little bit better.

The Form looks pretty good as well so you can see here I can draw a circle right there and you don't

have to draw on top of your final character drawings you just want to check it in your head.

I'm just doing this show as an example.

So we have the form of a head like that her ears over here her neck her neck actually is looking a little

bit flat so I could probably actually make that look a little bit more like a cylinder the shoulders

are kind of like spheres

over upper chest

each breast

cylinder for the waist is sort of this tapered cylinder for the pelvis area.

See that her arms are just basic cylinders right.

So she's looking pretty good as far as form goes.

Next you want to look for dynamic.

So you kind of want to be looking for dynamic shapes lines and forms throughout this entire thing.

But we definitely have some dynamic things going on so we want to look for dynamics in our character

designs.

So first off we know that there's dynamics in the line of action because it curves like that.

That's a dynamic line it's not just a born straight line.

It's an actual curving dynamic line.

And then in our shape we have dynamic shapes.

So for example we have kind of curved tapered shapes like that.

The hair is a dynamic shape it's kind of.

You could think of it as a curved sort of rectangle shape like that and all the edges have a curve to

it.

Let's see the this area right here that's dynamic looking.

So we have dynamic shapes going on for sure in dynamic form so these are all can be kind of turned into

form.

So for example we can kind of turn the waste into its own cylinder.

That's a very dynamic shape because we have it tapering and it's curving so it's just has that constant

change through it.

And we also get dynamic shapes in our lines so we go and turn that off.

You can see that we get dynamic lines we change to read so you can just see this a little bit better

on this edge.

So we get a dynamic line right there because it changes bounces that way and then it kind of bounces

back that way and then it even bounces down like that over here you can see we get a dynamic line it's

kind of a slightly curved line like that and then it's curves back the other way like that this curves

down like that.

So we have these constantly changing lines creating these dynamic looks

all right.

So we look pretty good for all these.

The last thing we want to check is contrast so dynamics and contrast kind of go hand in hand but we

want to check for things like color values stuff like that.

So do we have contrast in our character.

Well you can see if I go ahead and I change this to black and white so I'm just going to go ahead and

bring up my controls and I can go ahead and take all the color out of this.

Now we have it in black and white.

So we'd have to worry about the color but you can see that it goes from dark hair up here to a light

skin tone to dark around the eyes.

And that's not to say that all skin tone has to be light but you usually want there to be a difference

between the skin tone and the hair at least a good level of contrast.

It doesn't have to be as contrasting as this.

We want to make some level of contrast and the skin tone goes in the shirt which is a little bit darker

than the skin tone but not too much darker.

And that was because I wanted her shirt to contrast with her hair behind her.

So that's OK.

And then her shirt contrasts with her pants and her gun that she's holding her ray gun or whatever you

want to call it is contrasting with her skin tone.

So we have a good amount of contrast going on in here.

We also contrast in textures so you can see that the hair texture is slightly different from the skin

texture.

There's not that much more texture in this but we have a good amount of contrast going on in this image

and that's good.

So you want to make sure that you do this while you're drawing your characters.

Now I know that this might be a little bit overwhelming and it might be a kind of a step ahead of where

we are checking your character designs for fundamentals but it's really important to keep in mind.

So I'm going to keep reminding you about this throughout the course and when we start drawing more characters

I'll show you how we check for those a little bit more so that you make sure that you make a habit of

checking your drawings for fundamentals.

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