Characters

Lesson 2 in Creative Illustration

Lesson Information

In this lesson, you'll come up with the characters in your story. After doing some rough sketching, you'll create a full color portrait of your hero. Amin will cover several important concepts about color and lighting in this lesson, along with some useful tips for speeding up your art creation. At the end of this lesson, you'll have a finished piece of character art.

Homework

Finding the Right Hero

Make some rough character sketches. You can start with general shapes and work your way up from there. Try to capture their general attributes without worrying too much about the specifics. You'll refine one of these characters further in the next chapter.

Solid Lines

Choose one of your character sketches and refine the line art, then ink the outlines. You can use any digital or analog medium for this stage, from Photoshop to pen and paper.

Getting in Shape

Now you will take your inked character art, close any outlines, and begin filling each space with differently shaded shapes. It's not necessarily about value or lighting at this stage, but simply filling things in. You'll use these shapes later when it's time to lay in the colors.

Splash of Color

Now that you have your outlines and shapes in place, you can begin coloring your character art. Use everything you've learned about color and lighting throughout this chapter to help you create the most compelling image possible.