This is going to be a really long post about my recent studies with character design, proportions, and improving other skills.
These are some drawings from my studies that I discuss below
It started when I picked Dragon/Olivia's story back up. To give some context about this character, she's a character I made along with 11 others that matched with the Chinese zodiacs (as we all have at some point I'm sure). I initially gifted her and the rest of the characters to my friend, so she had some character to write for. I've since asked if I could work on her story again and we work together with the setting for story congruency.
This kinda takes me to my current studies which is that I want to make interesting characters with appeal. I came into Dragon's redesign with some new tips from youtube about art appeal, specifically: Appeal - The MAGIC Tool to Improve Your Characters
After watching that, I'd come faced with a long problem I've had in my art which is proportions, the bane of all artist. I remembered a rule that I've always chosen not to listen to for god knows what reason, the rule of heads (9 heads is like the proportion of a persons body blah blah yall know this one). I'm more of a "just get good" kinda person and prefer not to measure things as I get lost in them later in the piece.
I tested it out here as like a side by side to see how I normally draw, from imagination, just raw dogging it, and then did another drawing trying to incorporate the measurements and I realized how much I sucked at drawing then.
I looped back around to a character that I've had for a long time, oldies are the goodies, Brook, who I always seemed to draw with a head slightly to big for his body. I think this was a crutch at some point, I think the design may have gave him an innocent look that I've always visualized. So I was having fun making him actually look like a 20 something year old then a teenager.
Eventually I circled back to Olivia and began working on her design with a little more confidence. When I initially made Dragon and all of the other zodiacs, I had big ideas of making their silhouettes easy to read and to show off their character.
My old crutch, as many share with me, was having different hair styles. You can see that between Jace and Brook who look very similar, but rock different hairstyles.
This was a bit ago trying to work on that problem, trying to distinguish them with their body types because the story kinda supports them looking the same. I decided to work with shape language to accomplish that.
At the same time as those drawings, I was making characters for my animatic called Unicorn Hunters (you can watch that there). Taking a break from that project, I drew those characters in an alternate universe where they're just alt kids.
Anyways, art is hard and I wanted to post this mainly for myself because I always forget the little steps like this that keeps my art in line.
Hey! I love your art. I mean your RWBY is soo freaking good. I’m trying to get into drawing but I always struggle with drawing heads, faces, and hair- would you ever consider doing a tutorial of how you do it?
Oh my gosh my inbox is loaded!
Yeah, next week I’m posting another art journal sharing my process. It’s a bit wordy, but I have lots of playlists on my YouTube of the tutorials I watch and rewatch all the time. This is my newest playlist, but I have a much older one that I made when I was just picking up art that you can also check out. I highly recommend watching modern day James for most of your basic art needs.
Recently I've been diving back into the basics. I wanted to share my process here because I want to help provide insight to older and younger artist that art is indeed a process. This may look like a page of sketches but it didn't start like that.
This was the process that followed that rest of the drawing featuring my OC's Jace (with the insane cow lick) and Brook (with the to die for muscles). As you can see it started off... not good with my little notation there. I decided to change Brook's positioning, thinking about appeal and shape and generally just trying to make the drawing look more satisfying. Came back the next day to color and added all the rest.
I'm going to post what would essentially be my art journal because I'm having feelings about gatekeeping knowledge, idk. But hope this helps other artist feel a bit better about going through the process when we make art.
Long ago, I used to upload pictures of my dnd characters. No different now. This is my character angel and his twin brother rainbow, played by a friend.
Rainbow, a bard, loses his brother is a cataclysmic event wiping his whole city out of existence. He will later make an unlikely friend out of a greedy spirit attached to an ocarina that would take him to his brother.
Angel is ranger teleported to a different realm after being sacrificed to his king’s gods. He searches for a way to return home and reunite with his brother.
I wanna start posting here again. This is my OC Olivia aka Dragon aka my muscle mommy. Idk how nudity works here, it's why I left in the first place. We'll see how this goes, but I'm in y'all hands
These are some concepting drawing I made while I was redesigning Olivia because I recently started reworking her story.
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