All language subtitles for 063 Adjusting Character Proportions.en

In this lecture let's talk about how to exaggerate your proportions and exaggerate your shapes.

So let's go ahead and let's just kind of start off by roughing out a stick figure sort of form for a

character.

So if you remember we want the top in the bottom marked out on top of the head bottom of the feet.

Mark that and half that's going to be the bottom of the crotch.

Mark this part and half that's gonna be the bottom of the kneecaps or I guess the pivot point of the

knees.

Then we can go ahead and kind of based off of that sketch about how big our head would be.

We can go ahead to sketch out a rib cage some like that can also go ahead and draw out a pelvis.

All right let's go ahead and kind of sketch out to the lines like this to represent our collarbone and

we'll we'll build our arms off of that and let's make the pelvis a little bit more of a triangle just

so we can build our legs off of this a little bit easier.

So then we'll have our legs come off

we can just draw some arms coming off like this just a super simple stick figure arms does have to be

anything crazy spring those hands down just a little bit further

all right.

So there we go.

So there's just kind of like a stick figure that is using just kind of more realistic human proportions

we just darken end so you can see it a little bit better.

The reason why we're not drawing a very detailed personal very accurate person is we just want to focus

on the proportions and the shapes for the most part.

All right.

So following the kind of basic proportions it's what we can do now is we can let's redraw this but let's

try to change something.

So we'll go ahead and we'll mark out the same exact height but we're gonna change some things up so

I'll keep the head the same size.

I just want all I want to change basically is the torso area and the leg area.

I'm going to bring the legs up quite a bit higher so I'm gonna mark my crotch to be about that high.

I can go ahead and draw on that triangle to represent the crotch.

And that means I'm gonna have to basically squish my rib cage into more of a side oval like that draw

my collar bones like that.

Right.

And then I can go ahead and draw in my legs.

So I still want to feel the proportions where the kneecap is about in the center between the legs and

the crotch

increases in super simple shapes are the feet

let's leave the arms really long so they're gonna go past the crotch back down to like just a normal

arm length.

So really the only thing that's changed with this is we're just shifting that pelvis up and kind of

squishing the the torso area and stretching the legs

but you can see that even though we're still kind of using the same basic structure as a real human

by changing those proportions we're starting to make it look a little bit more characterize more interesting.

We'd want to work some dynamics into here and a pose and there's a lot of other stuff that goes into

character design but this is really where character design begins is where you start editing what you

know about the human form and structure so you're editing it to simplify your edit meant to exaggerate

it and you're just changing it up so it's not just the everyday form that you see.

Let's have a look at one more example of this.

Let's say that we're drawing somebody will do the same thing we'll make them the same height and we'll

keep the head up here.

But this time let's go ahead and we're going to move.

Let's leave the crotch at the same height over here so we'll just kind of draw a line straight across

like that.

That's going to be a crutch but we're going to move our shoulders down so rather than putting the shoulders

crossed right here.

Let's go ahead and let some moving down so that our character has a really long neck like that.

And then we'll go ahead and so that's basically the collarbone.

Go ahead and sketch in the rib cage like that.

The pelvis is just kind of an upside down triangle.

And we'll sketch sketching those legs

which have arms come off

just haven't come down to a kind of normal proportions just right below the crotch.

And then from the neck we can just kind of bring it right up into here like that up into the head having

kind of smooth transition like that looks a little bit better rather than just drawing us kind of a

cylinder going up.

There you go.

And so not only can we change the proportions but we can also simplify the shapes.

So we've already these are basically simplified so we can change and exaggerate the shape.

So up to this point we just kind of been exaggerating the measurements but let's go ahead and exaggerate

the shapes of the size what the shape is.

So for example let's just kind of get rid of the pelvis and what we're going to do is we're gonna draw

character or just a big round oval like this for the main part of the body and then let's go ahead and

we can do a circle for the head

and then for the legs we'll just kind of draw a stick figure legs like we've been drawing so a curve

out and then back and kind of seen a side view of this leg

and this one it'll be almost a straight line because we're kind of seen a straight on view of it

and we can have the shoulders come off so actual go and kind of sketch out another neck kind of like

this one like that.

More of that kind of bend out like this.

So just building off of these very simple shapes we can go and just kind of search sketching out the

stick sort of structure for our character

maybe on this character we can kind of square up the top of his head and we can even kind of put like

a cowboy hat on him like cowboy.

So I know this that I draw cowboy before.

Maybe that was just when I was prepping but I like cowboy so we'll make this guy cowboy

all right.

And you can see that right there we have the beginnings for kind of an interesting looking cowboy character

that's really exaggerated and you don't have to make your characters is exaggerated if you want you

can keep all a lot of the information.

So for example like the neck and the shoulder structures and all that and some styles will be like this

where you really exaggerate it you really simplify things so you kind of take out all the structure.

So for example this guy doesn't really have any color bones it's just kind of one big smooth structure

but maybe you want him to look more realistic so maybe you should just give him the same broad shoulders

have these same kind of proportions but maybe you would actually draw the rib cage in there and all

the muscles and stuff like that because maybe you want it to have a little bit more of a realistic muscle

structure.

So all this is up to you how much you simplify it or not but no matter how you do character design you're

almost always going to simplify to some extent even if it's supposed to look kind of real.

That's part of illustration is being able to simplify things and make it look appealing to the viewer.

All right.

Lastly let's go ahead and let's talk about the face.

So what we're drawing the human face let's go ahead just draw kind of a generic one real quick so we

can play with the shapes and the proportions of the human face as well.

So it just kind of in general the human face if you're drawing it correctly you can have your years

right here between the eyebrow line and the nose line

all right.

Keep your jaw down here when you have your neck coming off

your shoulders.

And so from here we can go ahead and kind of sketch out the eyebrows so we'll make this a male.

We'll kind of give it them thicker eyebrows like that

just go out.

Go ahead and sketch at the center of the face so we can ensure that as we go ahead and sketch out the

eyes

it's kind of sketch out the nose right there with the nose should be on the nose line then the lips

that crease in the lips and probably some are right there.

So it's kind of sketch an outline like that kind of shading top lip.

Bottom line there's a male's we're have to get a lot of detail into the lips but something like that

will look good.

All right.

So there's kind of a more realistic male character design so there's still kind of falls into the category

of character design it's not really hyper realistic looking or anything like that but it's definitely

following correct human proportions for the most part.

But we can extremely exaggerate this or we can exaggerate it just a little bit.

It's really up to you.

But let's have a look at an example of how we exaggerate that so we kind of looked at this a little

bit before but let's say for example let's just completely change the shape of the heads.

Let's kind of make more of a rectangle shape.

So it's gonna be based off of more and it can maybe be a little bit more of a trapezoid shape that maybe

it's built off of a circle like this and then rather than using these proportions where we divide the

circle and have to find where the eyebrows will be and then the hairline and the nose line and the lips

kind of like drawing the Loomis head what we can do is we can just kind of change all of that up.

So for example I can go ahead let's say that let's put the eyes right here on a line like that not even

the eyebrows but that will be our eye line our nose would go let's say let's put the nose right about

there and then let's put the mouth way down here at the bottom.

So this is much different than the proportions of this right here.

We can go ahead and still follow some correct proportion so for example maybe that years will still

be between the eyes and the nose because if we don't do that it probably actually going to look a little

bit weird and then we can kind of play with the shape a little bit more now.

So maybe I can angle it back in down here but then kind of add more of a square chin like that we kind

of go ahead and sketch out where the nose is going to be and maybe we'll make that kind of almost like

a diamond shape

and maybe this person will be kind of scaling

it

go ahead and put it mouth down here.

So I want to make this guy making kind of a funny face so we'll make his mouth look something like that

give him kind of a pointy nose like that.

Drawn his eyebrows so make him nice and thick.

You draw eyes in

maybe we can actually make these eyes kind of looking in a different direction

so we're gonna make them look like they're looking after the sign.

Then we get his jaw bones in there.

So this is kind of we're drawing the Loomis head like this.

We have these lines kind of going up like that from the chin.

That's kind of representing what we're drawing here.

These kind of the edge of the jaw and the cheekbones and so we're kind of taking what we do here we're

just applying it to the face just to kind of really exaggerate its form and then we can kind of get

the jaw popping out right there.

So we're doing the same thing on our character here

then maybe this is like a cave man type character here he's got some hair kind of coming off like all

of us had or some who knows.

Play around with it forever.

But I just want to give you the idea of how we can really play with these proportions and exaggerate

the shapes can make them bigger smaller we can just completely change the shape if we want so we want

to follow the actual shapes of the human body we can try fun things like like we did here where we did

a trapezoid for the shape of the head rather than using a circle and then building a jaw off that I

guess we kind of did that.

But overall this is just kind of a trapezoid shape it's pretty square.

We can do the same thing.

So for example we can bring his neck off like this.

So it's just incredibly thick and we can just go ahead and just make his shoulders just absolutely massive

and maybe that's too big for you and that's fine.

But you can see that we can just try all kinds of different things when it comes to exaggerating these

forms and figuring out the style of our characters.

I really hate that hair but that's okay.

All right.

So that brings us to the end of this lecture.

So just remember that basically character design all you're doing is you're just taking the actual human

form and you're simplifying exaggerating and and that's exaggerate the shape and exaggerating the proportions.

And you're also just kind of changing things so rather than doing a circle for the head would you kind

of trapezoid square shape for the head.

So play around with this stuff and I'll see you guys in the next lecture.