How to Color your Character in Procreate

Alright, so with that I'm going to do some of the line work. Actually I'm going to fix some of the line work because this looks a bit wonky. So what I'm going to do to make my life easier is I'm going to select the line layer and then I'm going to use liquify. I'm going to sort of make his head, use the push option. I'm just going to make his head a little less lumpy. It's totally cheating but you've got to use the tools that you have. If there's tools that will make it easier, use them. That looks a little better. Yeah, that looks better. Alright, so pretty much I have, so this palette is the palette that I pretty much use to color this character. So all my colors are here. It's good to like, you can always take your colors and just keep them on the screen as well. It's another good option. That way you can just select them when you need them. Or you can just make a palette like I have here. So the first thing I usually do when I want to color it is I just use, he's actually gray but since the gray is kind of light and my background is beige, I'm just going to use this orange color just to fill him in. So pretty simple, oops, important step. You want to do it underneath the line layers. Obviously. I don't color the eyes in. I leave the eyes because I'm going to color another layer behind them. I also don't color in the nose. That way I can do another color for the nose behind it. Also doing it this way when it comes to making the markings on the skin, they're easier because it's not crossing over into the area where the eye is or into the area where the nose is. I'm going to probably speed this up. Alright, so I've got the outline and I'm going to use basically color. Alright, so the next thing that I do is I change it to whatever color I want him to be. And he is gray. So he's gray. And the next thing I'm going to do, let's see, how do I want to do this? I'll do it here. Alright, so the next thing I'll do is I go to the linework layer and I'm going to change it to a darker gray. So I'm just going to change all the lines to a darker gray. So I'm going to alpha lock the line layer. And then I'm going to take my paintbrush and I'm going to make all the lines gray. That way it just doesn't have that harsh black. I used to always make the lines, always keep the lines black, but I don't really like them. I don't really like them black. It kind of, it's a bit jarring. Unless I'm doing something and I really want that style, it's kind of jarring. So I usually try to, nowadays I try to color all the lines or just get rid of the lines altogether. Match the color with the skin. The only problem you come up with that is you can't do it with like fingers and things like that. Because you need to have the separation or obviously it will just blend into the background. So if you make it darker it's fine. And then later on if you need to you can just go back and erase some of the line work. I'm not sure if I'll need to do that, but if I do then you'll see when I do it and why I do it. Coloring his toesies. I guess I can do this a little quicker with a bigger brush. Should I keep them out? Sometimes I like to keep this black. Just so it has the same separation. We'll see if I need to. Okay so for the tongue, I'll deal with that in a little bit. Okay so now I'm going to make another layer underneath the painted layer. So essentially you have the layer with the lines and under that I have the painted gray layer. So under that I'm going to make a new layer. I'm going to choose a bit of an off-white color. I'll choose it a little more off-white. And I'm going to color this in where his eyes are. Hopefully it's all colored in. This is why I would usually use an orange color, but that's fine. It doesn't really matter, but I don't want it to peak in the nose because eventually I'm going to make a layer. I'll just do it now. So I'm going to make a layer above that. I'm going to take pink, which is what the color of his nose is. And I'm going to color in his nose. Let me check my phone. Alright. And then I'm going to take the color that is the back part of his mouth, the inside of his mouth. I'm going to color. The reason why I'm kind of doing it messy is because on that same layer I'm also going to do the color for his tongue. So it's the same layer, but it goes on top. And this I'll follow the line. I'll color in the lines. Alright, so that's his mouth and that's his tongue. Simple enough. And he also has the same pink from his nose, but I'll change it to like 50% opacity. And I'll color that right on his ear. Let me try that. Yeah, so I do that right on the painted layer. I'll just color it right on his ear. Okay. Now for his markings. Alright, so his markings. He has dark red around the eyes and kind of a dark red here. And I forgot to alpha lock that. Okay, so I'll follow this line. And I also forgot to raise the opacity back on that paintbrush. Alright, both of the two. Let's see if we can get it now. There it is. Alright, so that's how he is. He kind of has a loop right here on his forehead. So sometimes I have to work that out and make sure that it looks good. Because his head is sort of at an angle. It goes off into the back. And sometimes it will take you a while to figure out what markings you want on your character. But when I designed his markings, I really just looked at a slow loris. And an actual slow loris has these markings. Not as prominent and obviously not as concise as these. But that's the fun part of doing character design. Which is sort of, you know, you follow the actual... If you're basing it off an animal, then you can follow that animal. But then you can take liberties to make it cute. But it's nice to base it in reality. If you can. And as long as it works. Alright, so that's a decent loop. Okay, I'm going to take it off the Alpha Lock. So I can color in these little bits. Alright, I'm going to Alpha Lock again. And this is a little wonky. It's just not perfect. And I kind of like it when it's perfect. Alright, that's a little better. Sorry, I've got a little itch in my nose. I'm not supposed to be touching my face. COVID quarantine. Alright, so that looks pretty good. I'm going to make it come out a little bit more on his eye. Yeah, I think that looks better. Give him a little space between where the bridge goes up and where his markings start. Okay, so now you see I have black lines in this red. I'm going to go back to my line layer. I'm going to make this a little darker just so you can see it. And then I'm going to do this one too. Alright, I am going to leave this line black, like the little eyelash sort of. I'm going to leave that black. Because it just looks pretty good. Because you want to focus on the eyes and that really makes the eyes pop. Alright, and I'm coloring in that back line too because this is all where this red is being colored. Alright, now I also have a darker color red. And I'm going to go back to the paint layer. And this darker red just goes kind of like where his eye is. So I'm going to do the same thing over here. Coloring that darker layer. Ah, something looks kind of off. Or darker. I'm going to leave some light coming out of here. No, I'm just going to leave it for now. Okay, so it's looking pretty good so far. And the other markings, he has little brown patches. Let me check my phone. Okay, he has brown circles on his knees. Alright, so my phone shut off so I'm going to have to go back a little bit. And I'll show you what I did. Alright, so I think I was just finishing this. So I did the same thing, I just made another brown spot there. His leg is kind of turned. So that's why there's only about half of this marking showing. And then I did a little one for his arm. For his elbows, there's a little one there, just a slight coloration. And then what I did, is I went in and I colored this line the same color as this. So I went to the alpha lock of all the lines, just the line layer. Which is this layer. And I colored that in. And then, uh oh. Yeah, so then I think we're all caught up. Okay, so. Should I do his eyes first or should I do... I'll do his eyes really quick. Alright, so what I'm going to do for... Let me make sure I'm still recording here. Okay, I am. So what I'm going to do for his eyes, is I'm going to erase that bit. I'm going to bring up the sketch again. I'll make the sketch a little bit lighter. I guess it doesn't matter. Alright, so right above the layer where the eyeballs are, the white paint. I'm just going to make another layer. And his eyes are yellow. So I'm going to... I'll do it over here. So basically, let's make it a little big. Make it a little small. Alright, so I'm going to do that. Make a yellow ball. I'm going to duplicate that. And I'm going to make that black. And I'm going to shrink this one. So it's pretty much going to be his eye. So now I'm going to join these just so I can move them around. And I'm going to do free transform. You know what, I'm going to put this underneath. I'm going to bring the sketch up. So all I did was I bring the sketch up so I could see my color. So I could see my color underneath it. My colored little eyeball here. You know what, I'm going to change the background color. Because I can't really see. Alright, that's good. So I basically just need to manipulate this. Do I have free transform? Yeah. So I'm just using my sketch as a template. I'm just going to manipulate this until it's pretty much where the sketch is. Pretty simple. Alright, that looks pretty good. Alright, now I'm going to bring up that black. And I'm going to manipulate that the same way. Alright, that looks pretty good for now. So I'm going to duplicate that whole thing. And I'm going to bring it over here. Now the eyes are not, they're not going to be exactly the same. But it's just easier to just bring over that. What I was working on over there. It just saves me from making all those circles and spheres and stuff again. And for this one, wait until that happens. Since that eye is a little... So that eye is facing us a little more. So it can be a little wider. And you can't really see, but I'm sort of squinting my eyes a little bit. To kind of make sure that it works. Alright, I'm going to take the whole thing now. And he's sort of, this eye sort of looks like he's looking over it. So I'm going to try to... Let's see. Maybe, no, maybe distort. Let's see what distort does. I just want to get it so he's looking down. I'm going to try it with this one too. Alright, so now I'm going to get rid of the sketch layer. I'm going to bring the sketch layer back down. I'm going to get rid of it. And then I'm just going to see how everything looks. I can bring back that white, that eyeball layer. Alright, this looks... Hmm. Okay, do I want to put it there? That kind of looks good there. I feel like that's not... It kind of looks nice there. Normally I would put it back here. And kind of get that... Kind of get that look that I'm sort of seeing over the side of this cone. The way that this... The reason why it's so narrow is because it's turned. But it doesn't really look right. This one... Yeah, that just looks wonky. I kind of like that eye, so... What that tells me is... I'm just going to have to... I'm just going to have to bring this one forward. Because it looks right. I think. Let's see here. Oh, see, I'm torn because I kind of like... I kind of like that though. Maybe I need to... Maybe I need to take this whole group... And just skinny it up some. Hmm, that looks kind of good. They're still not quite matching up though. So... First of all, I feel like they need to be a bit bigger. So I'm going to make that eye bigger. I'm going to make this eye bigger. Because they kind of have to match. See how this eye is kind of touching this part of his... The eyes have to be about the same size. It's not bad. It's looking a little better. So sometimes I have to just keep working on it until it looks right. You can kind of get... That looks better. That looks a little better. I kind of like that. I kind of feel like this wants to be... The front of the eye. That looks about right. Okay, still recording. Okay. Alright. It's kind of looking... Oops. It's kind of looking better. Although I still... I feel like I want to skinny this up some. I really want to give it the impression... Give this up a little bit maybe. Maybe it needs to be... Maybe I need to skinny it up some more. Let's see what happens. It actually looks kind of nice. That kind of works. I'm happy with that. Do I want to make it a little bigger or is it fine? Yeah, we'll make it a little bigger. I'm just going to make this... A lot of problem solving. It's pretty much like all it is. It's just like problem solving. Just like figuring out what doesn't look right. Figuring out ways to fix it. Alright. I'm very happy with that. If we add this sketch back... Yeah. It looks like he's... It looks like he's looking at him. His eyes are sort of curved in. So let me make sure that my... Great. Still recording. Good. Alright. So let me check my phone again. So now that we have that... I'm going to go ahead and sort of like I talked about in other videos... Or in my last video with the eye. So I'm just going to... I'm going to get rid of everything except for... Alright. So these are going to be the eyes. So essentially I'm going to be coloring just this white bit. And I'm going to take the same color as that. I'm going to bring it down a little lower here. And I'm going to alpha lock this layer. And I'm going to take a soft airbrush. And I'm going to airbrush like that. So that's essentially what I'm going to be doing. Kind of like it's a ball. But I'm just going to bring back all the other layers. Just so I can kind of see... The contours of like where I have to... Oops. Put a little bit more or a little bit less. So you just kind of want to do it just like it's a ball. Spherical movements. Big loose movements. Now it's sort of messy. I just want the edges right under a little dark. I'm going to make them a little darker. Now that's obviously too dark. But what I'm going to do... Is I'm going to go back to the original color. And I'm just going to lighten everything back up from the middle outwards. I have a very light... I'm not touching... I'm not putting a lot of pressure. Just very light. Just bring it back. So to a normal looking gradient for a ball. There you go, that's pretty good. You can even keep a little bit of the shading down here. Just so you can kind of make out that outline. Alright, so that looks pretty good. I'm also going to... I'm going to take a bright white. And I'm just going to put a little bit of that... Here. Can you see what that does? It just kind of like... Just gives it that spot. Just kind of brings it... Brings it out a little bit. Okay. So for these yellow bits... Which one is this? I think that's that one. That's that one. I'm going to... I know I have these separate, but I'm just going to bring them together. Because they don't really need to be separate anymore. Okay, so I'm going to join both the black iris bits. And I'm going to join both the yellow color. Okay, so now I'm going to alpha lock just the yellow. And we'll go back to the yellow. I'm going to bring it all the way down here. To a dark color. And I'm going to take... I think it's the marker brush. I renamed it. When I edit brushes, I just rename them so I can remember what they are. But I'm pretty sure that's the marker brush. About... Let's try 35% opacity. That's pretty good. Maybe a little lower. 30% opacity. So essentially I'm just going to... Let me check my phone. So this is kind of cool. So the light... So if the light is coming this way... And... So this is going to be... So I kind of make that curve there. So it sort of looks like... That's a little too much. It's a little dark. Let me make it a little lower. So what I do there is I kind of color in... So it's almost like the light hits. But then it's a shadow because this is like a depression where his eyeballs are. Because it would be a depression here. And then the gloss would come out more. I'm not really explaining that the best way possible. But... Hopefully it will make sense the further I go along. Alright. So we have that. Alright. So now I'm going to go above... I'm going to go above the black. And... Actually I'm going to go right on the black. And I'm going to do this. I'm going to take... A regular... A regular fat paintbrush. I'm going to bring it down to 30. 30 is like the magic number. It usually works. I'm going to bring it down to 30. And I'm going to do a nice little arc. Right above. And that kind of acts like a shadow from all of this above his eye. There we go. That kind of acts like a nice... See it looks like a nice shadow. And it just kind of makes it pop. And that all goes hand in hand with why I put the white soft brush there. And then this makes it pop. So... I'm going to make another layer above all this. And I'm going to go bright white. Same brush as I did that with. Let's see. Oh that's pretty good. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to... Actually I can probably go a little... Go 35 maybe. I want to go a little bit more. Let's try a little bit more. Alright. There you go. So you just do a little mark. You see how that kind of gives it a nice gloss. And then I'm going to do another layer on top of that. I'm going to change that layer blend to add. And I'm going to go... I'm going to use my eye glare texture brush. And check my phone. Great still recording. Alright so we're on the add layer. Right above that. I'm going to do a nice little... I'm going to do a nice little glare. They're kind of big actually. So I do a nice little glare that comes in. It actually might not have to be that far back. Let's see. Oh I have it on the wrong layer. How do I do that? New layer. Add. Okay. So yeah this brush is eye glare texture. But I think it's just brushes this. I might have to try different brushes. You can do any. You can do like different brushes. You can do any. You can do like ink bleed. It's actually kind of cool. But try out different brushes for different glares. But when you do the different brushes. If you look really close. They each have like a texture. So if you do a very high... If you do a reflection or a highlight in that texture. It will make it look like the surface of whatever you're... Whatever the highlight is on. I don't think they need to be that big. I think they can be smaller. Okay so something like that. Yeah they don't really need to be that far. That far forward. I'm going to take the gel pen. Actually I'm going to stay on that layer. And I'm going to do just a regular hard airbrush. And I'm going to do some little pops of light. Do some back here as well. Just to kind of give it a little bit of life. And also another fun thing that I like to do. Is I like to take an airbrush. And right now I'm on that back eyeball layer. And I'm just going to brush in a little bit of like red. Just like for no reason. Just to kind of give it a little bit of something. Alright so that's the eye. Alright so now we're going to move on to shadows. Let me stop my recording. I'm trying to use a recorder. I know I'm very soft spoken. So I'm going to try to use this recorder. Hopefully this will work. We'll see.