Female Character Design for Comics

Gone are the days when women in comics were portrayed only as sidekicks or love interests. Nowadays, a new breed of female characters and superheroes are taking the comic book world by storm with powerful storytelling and stunning visuals.

In this course, Marcio Takara—comic book artist with experience drawing comics for Marvel and DC—will teach you how to draw female characters from scratch. Starting from action lines and composition, this course will show you how to add volume, movement, balance, and expression to your creations.

Marcio Takara introduces himself and talks about the projects he has worked on over the years for Marvel, DC Comics, and others. Before showing you how he creates his drawings, he talks about his favorite materials.

The idea is to show how you can mix the figure's movement, with volume and anatomy. Marcio shows you how he comes up with the composition while placing the figure on the page, the use of negative space, as well as black and white areas.

Start using pencils for the basic shapes and layout, and then introduce ink and brushes. Marcio explains the idea behind his style of using brushes for different line weights and texture, while also talking about light and shadow.

Then it's time to talk about how to pick and use different clothes and costumes, as well as face and hand expressions. And how Marcio draws thinking ahead about different hairstyles.

Finally, learn how to introduce some grey tones using ink wash.

You will create a finished piece with a female character from scratch, starting with layouts, showing the pencil stage, and finishing it with inks.

Illustrators, comic book artists, and people who wish to expand their skills in character creation.

You'll need basic drawing skills and, as for materials, you'll only need a pencil, eraser, ink, brush, and paper.