Character Design Sketchbook: Storytelling with Pencil

Character Design Sketchbook: Storytelling with Pencil

“Now that we are at the end of the course, I hope you have enjoyed the journey. I want to thank you for getting this far and for spending your time with me. It's time to share your creations and show your project's progress. Comment on how you made it, discuss the challenges and difficulties you faced, and how you overcame them. In short, share your experience. I want your project to be different from mine. Repeat what I do to learn, but when making your project to publish, create something unique. This enriches our creative community. Gather your images and share your project by clicking the button "Create your project" . Your publication will become part of your portfolio on Domestika. Your portfolio is your showcase to the world to display your talent. Remember, explaining the project is crucial, not just showing photos. Here are some links to help you organize it: Support link 1 Support link 2 These are my recommendations: First, choose the sketchbook and materials you'd like to use. Feel free to play around with your tools so that you get used to them. Make marks, scribble, or try out some of the sketching techniques, such as hatching and cross-hatching. Once you'refamiliar with your materials, consider your chosen animal subject. Select one animal you'd like to study and find photos in books or on copyright-free image sites like Unsplash. Look for reference images showing the animal in multiple positions and environments. Then, create your animal image mood board. Next, move on to sketching! As you sketch, be sure to consider the layout of your sketchbook pages to make them more interesting and personal to you. Consider thumbnailing small sketches, sketching one image on an entire page, or overlapping your sketches. Using your mood board, sketch your animal from observation. Draw the basic shapes, then define them, and begin to add more realism by shading or drawing fur textures. You can make these sketches as straightforward or as detailed as you like. You want to familiarize yourself with your animal subject and its key features. Next, it's time to create your stylized animal character by anthropomorphizing it (giving it human-like features). You can explore poses and expressions by looking for reference images of humans. Look for various poses such as standing, sitting, walking, or climbing, and look for a range of expressions like happiness, sadness, excitement, and tiredness. You can lightly sketch a skeleton-based model of the pose before drawing your animal around it. For your final project, you'll want to think about the personality and narrative behind your animal character. Does your animal have a job or hobby? Does it have a favorite object, food, or personal possession? You can brainstorm ideas in a list or by sketching objects, outfits, and items related to your animal's personality. And finally, bring it all together. Draw your animal character in various "human" poses, compositions, possessions, or outfits. Have fun with different materials and page layouts, too. When you're done, you might want to use the photographing techniques from Unit 4 to share your final creation. It's always helpful to practice, so when you're done with one animal, you can try and turn another animal into a character with a different narrative behind it. I hope you've enjoyed this course, and I look forward to seeing your sketchbook pages and animal characters! Remember to upload your work to the forum to showcase your creations and participate with your fellow students! I invite you to participate in the forum and interact by commenting on the community's work. After all, we will help each other, so take advantage of this opportunity! See you in the forum!”

Partial transcription of the video

“Now you've reached the end of this Domestika course. I hope you've enjoyed it, and thank you so much for taking part. Now it's time for you to create your own animal character with its own unique narrative behind it. I hope you've learned some new techniques and ways of working in your sketchbook, and that you have fun looking out for reference images of animals to draw. But before we say goodbye, let's take a look at the steps we took to create your final project. Make sure you get familiar with your tools and your sketchbook so you're comfortable with the materials that you're using. Play...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Character Design Sketchbook: Storytelling with Pencil

• Level: Beginner
• 100% positive reviews (25)
• 1606 students
• 4 units
• 14 lessons (1h 44m)
• 10 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Areas

  Character Design, Children's Illustration, Colored Pencil Drawing, Drawing, Pencil Drawing