In this tutorial we’ll be designing a character for an upcoming comic book title by Rob Arnold – the creator of REPLICATOR: https://igg.me/at/Replicator1/x#/

The brief for this concept was to design a female, scifi commander. So she needed to look important, in charge and confident. I also wanted her to look drop dead gorgeous, which luckily was also at the request of Rob.

Having not drawn a woman in quite a while, designing this character would provide the perfect opportunity to re-familiarize myself with the female form. Funnily enough, I derive a lot of pleasure from drawing women, their shape promoting streamlined, soft contours that introduce natural gestures throughout the figure.

During this demonstration we’ll be creating a full character sheet, that presents the character from a range of different angles and viewpoints, give us a wholesome understanding of everything their design entails. This is extremely useful when designing characters for video games, comics or movies, since it’s very likely the character will be viewed in any number of contexts and perspectives.

We’ll start the process out with a basic, loosely drawn mannequin model that captures the proportions and placement of the character. Her shape is also vaguely defined here, depicting an obvious female body type. Every artist determines their own ideal as far as proportions are concerned, and they might also stray from that ideal depending on the unique measurements of the specific character they’re designing.

Once the basic structure is down it’s time to implement some of the main design elements. In this example, her design is fairly straight forward and simple. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all. A simple design is often times more memorable, since it’s usually easier to understand, and recollect later on. Some of the most iconic characters in movies, comics and videogames are those with a simple design.

After the design is roughed out I define the final line art with carefully placed line weights. The aim here is to indicate light direction and emphasize key areas of the design by varying the thickness of the character’s outline. This immediately adds visual interest to what would otherwise be a flat line drawing. Line weights introduce additional depth and make the design pop with clarity.

Finally we’ll add in the rendering. On a female character with a simple design such as this, not a whole lot of rendering is required, so a few hatches and dots of detail here and there will suffice.

I hope you enjoy this tutorial and get a ton of value out of it. Watching the process will show you what goes into creating a comic book character design – but to truly integrate what you’ve learned you’ll need to put some of this stuff into action. So put pencil to paper and try out some of the tips, tricks and techniques you’ve learned throughout this demonstration.

PLEASE NOTE: This video may not always be available for free. There’s a good chance it’ll be taken down, re-edited and packaged up as a premium product later on. So if you find this lesson valuable, please make the most of it while it’s available for free, by taking notes and putting as much of it as you can into practice. Save the video onto your hard drive as well if you’d like, so that you can refer back to it later on.

Thanks so much for watching, until next time – keep on drawing!
-Clayton

Software Used: Clip Studio Paint/Manga Studio

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