Skillshare Class! Line Quality in Character Design

I have a brand new class on Skillshare! This is the fourth entry in an ongoing series about art style and character design.

This course in particular explores the different ways that lines are used when designing characters. We'll take a look at the lines of well-known characters from various media, and we'll even consider lines that exist in the real world to gain an understanding of why they work the way they do. You might use a line to scribble a smile onto a character -- or you might use it to give them a leaping motion in a still drawing. You can even use lines to give flat drawings the illusion of 3 dimensions! The class is designed for anyone of any skill level, so no prior experience is required to get into the lessons. All you really need is a simple drawing instrument to follow along with the key concepts. The class assignment will allow you to design a set of twin characters who look alike -- except for the fact that one of them has no outlines!

It's a free class until June 13th, so please check it out.

Junk ET: Kradle

A new enemy for our roguelike, Junk ET. Up until this point, all of the game's enemies (which are beautifully designed) were created by the other artist on the team, Sergei, but I had a chance to come up with a creature this week.

We use a program called Spine for enemies' 2D animation. Think of it as a sort of puppet-style animation tool, where different sprites are pieced together at joints (or "bones") and animated independently. I'm used to the old fashioned frame-by-frame way of animating, so this process is still a bit new to me, but it turns out you can do some really cool, inspiring stuff with this method.

Basically, you break the whole creature into separate pieces where joints should go. You can see in the illustration above that the main body is its own sprite, the legs are broken into 4 parts, and each tentacle is separated into thirds. I box them up and send them to the programmers to animate in Spine so that they can bring it to life in the game itself.

I tried a couple of experiments with this joint-based animation style to see what I could do. (I made these with Flash since I'm more comfortable with the tool at the moment, but Spine is basically the same concept, but more robust as far as I could tell).

The rest of the team's much more experienced with it, and fortunately, most of the game's Spine animations will be left in their capable hands. But these were fun experiments, and I want to try a few more if I get the chance.

If Junk ET sounds like a game you want to play, you can do just that right now. Check out the dropdown list (the 3 horizontal lines) at the top of our homepage and choose Register. Create an account and you can download the latest build onto your Mac or PC and give it a whirl!

If you like what you've played, give it a vote on Steam Greenlight. Every vote means we're one step closer to being able to release the full game on Steam, which is a pretty darn popular platform among gamers. Being on Steam would allow us to reach a wide range of players like yourself when the game is ready for release.

Skillshare Class! Proportion in Character Design

I've got a new class up on Skillshare! This is the third entry in an ongoing series on art style and character design.

Learn how proportion is used to build characters. We take a look at how and why body and facial features are emphasized and downplayed on existing fantasy characters in various media. By examining body types and facial proportions in real life, I'll guide you to understanding why certain space relationships resonate in certain ways when we see them on a character. There's a reason artists place huge eyes or small bodies on characters, and not just because it's funny. It's designed for anyone of any skill level, so no prior experience is required to get into the lessons. The tools I use for demonstrations and exercises are Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but all you really need is a simple drawing instrument to follow along with the key concepts. The class assignment will allow you to take your favorite character and learn how to recreate them with weird, wacky proportions.

The class is free of charge until December 14th, so give it a try!

Inktober 2015

Took the Inktober challenge for the first time this year! It was a lot of fun. I tried to stick to a theme of 'ghosts' from various media. If you want to go through them one by one, go here. You can use the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom to navigate through all 31 entries.

Skillshare Class! Color in Character Design

I have a new class up on Skillshare! This is the second installment in an ongoing series on art style.

Learn how to use colors intelligently in your characters. The course begins by exploring a basic understanding of what color actually is, and progressively covers how it has been used purposefully in various fantasy characters across a variety of media. We will also take a look at our cultural relationships with colors, some that we learn from a very early age and use very well into adulthood. Like the previous course, it's designed for anyone at any skill level. Most of my coloring will be digital, and demonstrations will be performed predominantly in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but we'll go over concepts that apply in almost any medium -- so follow along with your favorite tools. The class assignment will allow you to color in line art of a character in whatever way you want!

The class is free of charge until August 10th. Give it a try!

Fire With Fire: Creep Horde Animation

Here's a thing I'm working on this week for Fire With Fire. It's, uh... incomplete right now, but what I'm going for should be pretty cool! Basically it will be a fully animated version of this image:

So I'm getting the basic timing down before doing all of the colors and smoothing out everything. Looking forward to showing off the finished version. I hope it'll look nice in the actual game too.

Skillshare Class! Shape Language in Character Design

I've got a class on Skillshare!

Learn how to design fantasy characters by using basic shapes as building blocks. I'll teach you to look for shapes in a character's features, and we'll explore what different shapes mean to us at first glance. The class is a series of video lessons designed with beginners in mind, so no prior skills are really required -- just a love for unique, quirky, and weird characters, and a willingness to draw. I'll be demonstrating in Photoshop CS4, so you can follow along with digital drawing software or a pencil and paper. Eventually, we'll walk through the class assignment together and make our own character with the concepts we've learned! There's no passing or failure -- it's purely an exercise to flex those creative muscles, and I'll help you through each step.

The class is completely free until April 13th, so go on and give it a try!

Refurbishing Old Characters

So this is something a little different than Fire With Fire. We still have some cool things on the way, but it'll take some time before they're released to the player base.

Anyway I started this series a few months ago after I stumbled upon some really really old drawings and stories I wrote as a child, back in 2001. I thought it might be fun to take those characters and draw them again today; not just to poke fun at how bad I used to be, mind you. More to examine how I designed characters back then as opposed to now.

If you have any old drawings laying around I'd highly recommend this exercise. The older the better.

Old

New

The story was basically your average mecha with pilots controlling oversized robots (you can see the toe of one in the upper left corner of the old drawing) to fight evil, or something along those lines. This guy was the leader even though he was the youngest person on the team. A goofy American kid in a jean jacket.

Old

New

She was something of the team mom, being among the oldest of the pilots. She wore red and her robot had a fire motif, so naturally she was a hotheaded character in the story. ...Cliches were still new to me back then. 

At first she was the lead pilot's "servant", but after (justified) complaints from a reader I rewrote her to be his "assistant", then finally decided it would make more sense for her to be his chaperone instead. I was (am?) not great at writing female characters, clearly.

Old

New

A member of some kind of secret desert police or something. I think he wore a disguise in the old drawing, but if you didn't know that it just looks like a weird robe. 

Note how the old version of all of the characters have the same haircut so far...

Old

New

She was a tomboyish police officer and a sort-of-but-not-really love interest for the lead pilot. 

Back then, everyone wore plain V-necks and bell bottoms for some reason. I had trouble with clothes. I feel like if I had designed this character today, she'd wear something like work boots and army cargo pants.

Old

New

Mo' money, mo' problems, mo' V-necks. He wasn't much more than a reticent, slightly less mature version of the lead character.

The biggest takeaway I can see from the old drawings is that there just wasn't a lot of variety in my characters back then. There wasn't a single person of color on the team (actually there was one, but since their appearance was based on a real person I've excluded them from this series). And, there was no real variation in weight or body type -- all of the pilots were who you could probably consider thin and moderately okay looking (Generically Cute). Same Face Syndrome ran rampant back then too. Not knowing their personalities they all kind of look like the same person at a glance.

Anyway, it was fun to do these and I'd like to do similar studies of other characters if I can dig them up. It's a good way for anyone to examine their old patterns and thought processes.