HELP-ME-DRAW

notzilon:

Okay! Finally answering this, because I wanted to talk in-depth and needed some time to get my thoughts together! Hold on to your butts, because this is gonna stretch your dash worse than a traffic cone up a porn star’s vagina. PRESENTING:

Doctored, Strange Colors

or

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Be The Bomb

This isn’t meant to be a coloring tutorial. This isn’t going to teach you color theory. This is simply meant to be an explanation of my techniques and an attempt to explain how I think about things, and it’s probably going to be really, really long. Also, I’d like to add in a disclaimer: my old habits aren’t bad things on their own. Everything I used has a place! The issue is that I stopped using the materials at my disposal as tools, and started using them as crutches and excuses. Style is something that should go over your knowledge and skill of form, not something to disguise or excuse construction mistakes. Think of it like the icing on top of a cake - if the cake was poorly baked, no amount of icing will really save it. In terms of color, instead of actually THINKING, I relied on my icing for far too long.

To start with anon, let me explain how I used to do my coloring, with the aid of my beautiful assistant, Ms. Feferi Peixes With Short Fluffy Hair:

What a cutie! I’m going to be using this sketch to explain most everything here. So, my old technique:

1: Set the sketch to multiply, color in the entire area with a single color. I went ahead and colored in the horns because for whatever reason I make horns these dayglo fluorescent things that never really have shadows.

2: Toss down where your light is on the same layer. Use a soft brush at around ~60-70 opacity. I never use multiple layers in this, it’s just blending and shaping on the same one - think of it like sculpting a three-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional plane.

3. Using the eyedropper tool, use the small gradients of color between your lightsource and base shadow to figure out what your midtones will be. I create my lines this way, by simply leaving the shadow color behind and sculpting around until I get the shapes I want.

4. Slap down some hilights and detail and call it a day. Pop a brewski or something.

And hey, it looks pretty good! It’s pretty passable as long as you keep it on a white background, because using the technique only in this method will cause some problems, mainly:

A. It leaves no room for color depth, midtones, reflected light, or anything else and

B. When using this technique for an entire scene (in which you simply bucketfill an area with your shadow color then go to town) the end results are REALLY DULL.

So, this served as a quandary for me. The following is some ideas and methods that I used to change how I see and use color.

LIMIT YOURSELF.

You’re not going to break out of using nothing but dull colors if you don’t use brighter tones. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with neutral colors, or that you can never use darks! Lord, no. This is simply for the purpose of changing how you think and what colors you consider in your mental palette. It’s an exercise, not a rule. Simply put, the more often you work with colors outside of your comfort range, the more likely it is that your comfort range with grow.

Use the tools available to you.

There are a LOT of websites out there about color, and color design. Two of my favorites are Color Scheme Designer and Kuler. Again, these are not crutches, and they are not go-to places to generate palettes. What they are, are ways to gather ideas and inspiration. CSD is a good place to look for what colors might go well with a shade you’re already using, while Kuler has beautiful palettes already made up for you to study.

Do color studies, but don’t copy.

Go grab the work of an artist, photographer, or whatever that you really love in terms of color. For this, I’m going to use one of my favorites, Mary Blair:

Grab your eyedropper tool, but wait! We’re not going to be using these colors. We’re going to be looking at the colors used to understand the relationship between them, so we can learn and understand. Let’s look at the purple/blue bird, the orange/black bird, and the white tree.

Look at that! The white and black aren’t white and black at all. The white’s actually a very pale yellow, while the black is a very dark brown. Even in the blue bird, the hue shifts between the body and the tail. When you do this, you’re not looking for simple shades. You’re looking to understand relationships. Generally speaking, pure black/white/grey doesn’t look too good, but can work in the right environment. Shifting the hue of a color when picking a darker shade will often add interest, rather than simply picking a darker shade of the same hue. Which brings me to—

Vary your hues.

I picked four random colors. The top row is using the same hue and saturation, with varying only the shade to create different tones. On the bottom row, I allow myself to change the hue and saturation to get a much different palette - either going in a warmer or cooler direction, depending on what I’m interested in making my palette. I also picked a hilight color in the opposite direction. This is a fine way to pick colors in a vacuum and is a good starting point to start picking your colors, but again, doesn’t allow for picking reflected light/color and the like. That depends on what colors you’re using together.

Use your colors to express form.

More to do with shading than anything, but color is a part of shading as well. Here, let’s use Fef as a model again, but this time something from my private low-effort doodle folder where everyone is apparently a pinup model (coming to an AU near younot really):

On the left, the sketch set to multiply, or where the lines would probably go otherwise. On the right, the coloring on its own. You can still make out what’s going on, as well as the volume of her shapes looking at the colors. That’s a good thing. Even without lines, or without digital painting - you should still give an illusion of depth and presence.

Don’t be afraid.

Go ahead. Say fuck it. Boldness doesn’t come on its own. Mess around with your colors. Throw down everything until something sticks. Play around until something looks good. Give a cyclops chick with dark grey hair a lime green shine.

TL;DR:

Seek to understand. If there’s anything I preach on this blog, I think it’s to attempt to understand before anything else. Don’t simply look at colors, look at how they work. Look at how they relate to one another. Whether you’re using neutrals, darks, brights, or pastels, understanding and studying will help you more than you know.

You’ve made it to the end!! Good luck in your future endeavors, and I hope that I was able to properly convey the methods I used while improving myself.

chirart:

So many people have asked me for character design tips over the past couple of years. Here’s a whole list of rules I keep in mind with my own character designs.

In no specific order:

1. Simple is good. Streamline your design to its essence. The more shit you add on your character the more you make it about what they are wearing, and not who they are.
   
   
2. Popular ideas of beauty are limiting. There are only so many ways to make a character conventionally beautiful before you start noticing they all have the same face (i.e. “Six Faces Syndrome”). What most people consider “ugly” or undesirable is actually features that make your character unqiue. Who would you likely remember more: A perfect-faced model or that model’s twin with buckteeth?
   
   
3. Understand typical archetype designs and visual stereotypes to use them effectively. What are characteristics found in a “hero” character? In a “villain” character? In a “child” character? What can you do to mix them around, or play it straight?
   
   
4. Don’t draw the lines of the character, rather: draw the character in the lines. In other words: if someone told you to draw a horse, don’t just draw a plain old horse—draw the personality in the horse. A Royal Noble Horse has a much different character from an Old Sickly Stubborn Horse, for example. There’s a difference between Hark! A Vagrant!’s Fat Pony and Tangled’s Maximus, for another example.
   
   
5. Make your characters relatable. Making a character as wildly unique as possible (a pink-purple-blue haired goth wearing nothing but Hot Topic gear, for instance) actually is one of the most alienating thing you can do for your audience. It’s trying too hard to make your character a special snowflake. Limit this extreme to very specific characters and roles, be calculating and precise about going crazy. It will be more effective.
   
   
6. In addition, find what makes a person special through the boring features. Not everyone has crazy tri-colored hair, but there are a lot of people who have short brown hair. Can you draw five different characters with short brown hair and make them all unique? Try it out.
   
   
7. Silhouettes are important. Are you varying body mass? Are you utilizing basic shapes? We are able to recognize people and objects just from their shadow, and we do it so often we don’t even notice we do it! If all your characters have the same “shadow,” challenge yourself to mix it up more.
   
   
8. If you drew your characters naked and bald, could you tell them apart?
   
   
9. Be consistent in the ‘tone’ of your design style.
   
   
10. All these rules can be broken according to how calculated your irony is for your story. But you need to know what to do right before intentionally doing it wrong.