How to Sketch a Character Design in Procreate

Hey, so today I'm going to do, I think I'm going to do a five part, four or five part video about character design. I'm going to design my character Horace, who is in my children's book that's available on Amazon. So I'm going to do about four videos on how I start from scratch and design him. The sketch work, the line work, coloring, how I shadow him, and you know highlights and details and things like that. So this is going to be video number one and yeah I think in some other videos I'm going to do some of the other characters from the book. Like this little guy and this little guy, a gal I should say. I got these stickers from Sticker Mule and they're great. I love them. Actually this one is Vinyl, this one is Vinyl Disorder and this one is Sticker Mule but they both came out pretty good. This one, the edges are a little, the Vinyl Disorder, the edges are a little, why am I talking about this? All right, let's get to the drawing. All right. I'm just going to use my regular brush that I've been using since Sketch Master. About 100% opacity and streamline a little bit but regular brush. Yeah, let's make him like kind of dancing. Yeah, let's make him dancing. This little body here. All right, so I just do a circle, center line, and I usually just do the nose kind of muzzle area like that. So that kind of gives me a sense of where he's going to be. And it's really important to do the bridge of like the nose, like make the, because this goes up and then has the bone here. So it's good to do that. Then you just kind of shape out the rest of the head. He's got a, he's got a nice round head. So he's got nice chubby cheeks. So I started here, so I just give him a little triangle for a nose, which I'll probably have to move the nose up later, but I always adjust it like kind of as I go when I need to, because he has a much smaller nose than that, but we'll deal with that when we deal with that. I like these square-y shapes for eyes. They kind of help me line everything up. That way the eyes aren't too wonky. I give his little head here. You know, when I sketch, I like to do kind of loopy, like I don't really go in and like do a lot of like lines like that. Like you just do like loopy lines to kind of work themselves out. I find that it kind of, it kind of looks better. It looks less, it looks more organic if you kind of use your motion rather than trying to work every single detail. Then I make one arm. I'm just kind of winging it here. I don't really know what I want him to be doing. So like I said before, this nose is, let me work on the face a little bit more. Let me check my video. Sometimes I kind of like when their eyes are like kind of, their eyelids, the eye is kind of high up here, but the lid is closed. Let me see. And it's important here to match up the eyes, like keep them on the same plane. You know, like make sure that when you're doing the eyes, that one is not up higher, one is not lower, because that really makes the characters look strange when the eyes aren't matched up. So the bridge of this, you use these squares to kind of set where your eyes are, where your character's eyes are. Your eyes should be in your own head. And like I was saying before, this nose is a little, this is all a little too big. So get this smaller. And I'll just actually, since it looks a little wonky. And sometimes you just have to like just erase and just work it out until it looks good. You can even erase these lines if they kind of get in the way. Give yourself some space to work with. All right, so we have the eyes. This eye looks maybe a little bit too small. So another trick, you might've seen other artists do this, where they take the character, and they flip it like that. They take the character and flip it, and you can kind of see why this eye is very small. And I really want it to line up with this one, so kind of have to make this eye a little bigger. And it's a little, that matches up a little better. You know, this brow is a little, comes out a little too much. So I don't want it to be too prominent. I don't want it to be like a Neanderthal, so it'll be cute. Not that Neanderthals can't be cute, I guess. Not my taste, but what the hell, we're quarantined. All right, so the eyes are looking all right. So I'm going to flip them back. And when you flip things back and forth in Procreate, make sure that the character doesn't go off the page. Like he's pretty small here, but just make sure he doesn't flip off the page, because if you do some actions, and if he was off the page, then that part would be cut off. So just make sure you don't accidentally cut off any of your artwork. So let me finish these eyes off. So I kind of wanted him, let me give him a little bit of an attitude. Let me do them here. So think of the upper part of this as like a dome. So like it kind of comes off sort of like half of a bowl, and the bowl always has like a lip on the bottom. So that's kind of how the eyes are. That's how our eyes are, you know. So it kind of has that sort of thing, which I kind of like. It looks pretty nice. So we'd have to make sure the other eyes matched up. And this is, I just like this little thing. I just always, I don't know where I first saw that, but I like it, so I just put it on my characters. I think it looks cute. Little eyelash type thing. So, I mean, looks all right. It's a little, it's a little heavy-handed. I'm going to loosen it up a little bit. I'm going to open his eyes a little more. Just keep it a little looser. His eyes a kind of like comes out, so it can sort of, it can come out and sort of even be a little over the eye, the color that we see in his face. Hopefully you're not picking up too much of the background noise. All right, I'm sort of, sometimes I get carried away with like cleaning it out and doing this stuff, but I don't really need to do that. eyes kind of match. Like there should be the same amount of space here. There should be the same amount of space above each eye. Or else it'll start looking funny. Give him these little teethies, and his little lip, and his chubby cheek. All right, so you make the brows, and since his eyes I just try to, I just do general shape, kind of like an eggplant. It's crazy, right? I said eggplant. Okay, all right, so you do the shape here. So I make kind of like a plane like that, and I just, okay, so this is the palm, and this part would be flat. So the digits like this, and that's his, that's his left hand. So he'll be here. So make those loops, and he comes there. Oh, what about his ears? So his ears kind of, cute little stubby ears, kind of like so. I like to have his eyes, his ears a little far back on his head. All right, so I'm going to give him some grounding, so I can kind of do the same shape with his legs. I want to make sure I make the brow, erase this. So I'm just going to clean this up, so I have to change the size, but the body can do that fairly easily. I guess it's not that big, but that's a little better. Too much junk in the trunk, that's a little better. All right, so when I do his leg, I just try to keep the front of the leg, his little knee is right, so the front of the leg is here, the knee comes down. I'm going to make it so his heel is back here, and his little toes. We'll see how that looks, that might look funny, but we'll see. And I can do this a couple times here, that looks wonky. And I have to, sometimes I have to do this a lot, because I want it to look right. And usually the more simple, the better. That was way more simple, just like that simple shape. Simple shapes. Okay, so he looks fairly grounded there, so that's pretty good. All right, so this is a little bit fuller, so we're going to select this in the back a little bit. There we go, that looks where we got it. Let's clean this up a little bit, that looks pretty good so far. Although he's not really dancing, he's kind of like waiting, looks like he's waiting for something. Also this line is a little funny looking. Actually, I'm going to change this all up. Okay, so his shoulder would be here, so his other one is behind, this would be his shoulder. A lot of times I'm afraid, sometimes like when I used to draw, I would be afraid to put some of the lines in front of other lines, like almost like you don't want to put like a hand in front of his face and things like that. But sometimes it's more realistic, like his arm is not going to be all the way out back there, it's going to be, some of it might be in front of him, so I'll make a circle for where his hand is. I'll do his other little digits, little thumb. Okay, so I'll do his other little digits and his thumb, and the arm is behind that, and his other shoulder comes in. Everything's pretty good so far, we have his hands, and his little thumb, oops, and we can clean up this sketch a little bit, doesn't have to be too nicely, it'll kind of help you out when you're doing the line work. All right, so do his little tongue, like so, and I kind of want to make, this is a flat plane at the front of his nose, and when this is curved back, it looks a little too flat, so I'm just going to change it so it's not so flat back, so it kind of shows that, so it kind of shows that it comes out like this and goes down, and it's all still kind of big, so I'm going to make it a little smaller, that looks a little more like him, so I had to change it so that line is going a little straighter, down a little straighter, and it looks a little more like him. All right, that looks good, I wonder if we can catch him and hold him. I'll deal with that later, let me finish up his little feeties, so I'll make his big toe here, I like to use the toenail to really shape the toe, there we go, that's fine, his foot would be about here, which means big toe would be about here, big toe, I do like drawing toes, but these toes I kind of do a shortcut, and just do some little circles, those cute little toes, little toenails, all right, there we go, all right, so that's a pretty good sketch so far, so we'll make, it looks like something's being thrown at him, so we'll make it a, let me close my window, all right, what can this be, we'll make it a, let's make it a little, just drew them, let's see if I can remember how, I think so, I think geckos have like a wide, a little wide mouth, let's really do the same, same kind of thing that I did with the horse, in the end I'll probably make him a little smaller, kind of like that, but for now, for now I'm going to leave him bigger, that way it'll be easy for me to do the line work and color him, and then at the very end I can shrink it to the size that I want, so that's pretty good for now, and it's kind of good to get the eyes where you want them, it's kind of good to get the eyes perfect, so I feel like, I guess this isn't too bad, I just want to make sure that they look like they're pointed, so this one is a little, so they're both spheres, but this one is a little in, pushed in, this one is at the very tip, and not a regular circle, because he's not looking straight on, if he's looking this way, then there's the depression, and the eye is going to be sort of at the front, so they're sort of like, so they're sort of facing, so that's how you want to do the eyes, you want to, you want to make the eyes so that their angle can be looking at, looking at a common thing, you know, because if you do this, and you had, you had the eye here, then one eye would be looking this way, and one eye would be looking that way, so that's why, that's why sometimes drawings can look funny. All right, so I think this is a pretty good, it's a pretty good sketch, so I'm going to repeat, and maybe we'll straighten this out a little bit, making a little more aerodynamic. All right, so I think that's pretty good for a sketch, and I think we'll end it there for now, and yeah, it's a pretty good sketch for now, so we will call that one Sketching Out a Character Design, and this is Horace and his little new buddy. All right, thanks so much for watching, I appreciate all the support, please like the video if you liked the video, subscribe if you want to see more, that way I can kind of move up in the YouTube algorithms, so I can get some traction, so I can just make more videos, and more videos, and more videos, and we can just grow together, so thanks again for your support, I appreciate it, and catch on the next video.