Model Sheet Trouble
polycounter lvl 18
>
I'm attempting to draw a model sheet for one of my characters, and so
far, it's not going so well. Here's what it currently looks
like...
>
At this point, I don't like the way the character is turning out. The
shoulders may be too far apart, and I was considering pulling them
closer together. However, this would make the shoulders narrower than
the hips, which would make it impossible for the character to put his
arms straight down with out them clipping through his body.
> The character, Mathew, is meant to be a heavy set twelve year old boy, and I used these characters as my sources...
> Any advice would be appreciated.
Replies
My suggestion, if you're drawing cartoon characters, it's important not to think of every character in "pieces" but think of the entire character as a whole.
What I mean by this is silhouette. Silhouette forms the cornerstone of cartoons because it creates visual cues that the eyes instantly pick up on and can separate them from other actors and props in a scene.
All 3 references are going for the "stocky" "fat" "popeye arms" and "bully--esque" archetypes. I would focus on building shapes that convey a sense of bulkiness.
I did a quick sketch of that bully-like character and you can see that he's mostly just rectangles and cylinders put together but more important, his overall shape cue is that of a triangle. I hope this helps.
@lotet
"Well you should probably design the character before you do the model sheet."
> That was actually my original plan. After drawing Mathew's head, I was going to make additional sketches which would have featured the rest of his body, but I couldn't figure out how to draw a character who had no neck (Mathew's planned design at the time), so I decided to skip ahead to the model sheet so that I would have a better idea of what the individual body parts would look like.
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@JordanN
> Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I think I now have a better idea of how to draw Mathew. There's a lot of more experimenting I need to do before I'm ready to show any kind of presentable result. I may post a finished version of Mathew's model sheet if I ever get that that far.
If you cant even figure out the design of a character, then how on earth are you gonna be able to make a model sheet? xD
@lotet
"I hope you are aware how crazy that plan sound right? its like saying your trying to design a car and you cant really make the engine fit, so you decide to skip ahead and just build the car, you know, to get a better idea on how it would work.
If you cant even figure out the design of a character, then how on earth are you gonna be able to make a model sheet? xD"
> I'm not even going to dignify that with a proper response, so I'll just do this instead...
> Moving on...
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@JordanN
> Thanks in part to your response, I was able to make great progress with Mathew's model sheet. Upon taking another look at it, I felt that the character was to wide, even for someone who is supposed to have such a large build, so I narrowed the entire body to 90% of it's original width. I also shaved off the pointy sides of the top of the torso, giving the character a more streamlined look. It may not be obvious looking at the character unguided, but Mathew's body from the front view is loosely based on an inverted "U" shape. The curved top area of the shape traces the top half of the character's head, and the shape also passes through the shoulder blades and outer edges of the hips. The "U" shape is made obvious in this image of the undersketch...
> After initially finishing the undersketch, I created a new layer where I drew the cleanup image of the character...
> Finally, I created a separate image, showing Mathew fully cleaned up and colored in. I haven't yet designed his backpack or his boxing gloves, so I've omitted them from the image...
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> Well that's about all for now. Now that this project is decisively back on track, I see no further need to keep it in a thread entitled with a name that suggests that I still need help with it, so I will post any future progress in a new thread.
OK then, If thats how you wanna do this, I hope you find your future interactions with other polycounters more informative and better and Im sorry I offended you so badly you felt that insulted by my statement.
@lotet
"OK then, If thats how you wanna do this, I hope you find your future interactions with other polycounters more informative and better and Im sorry I offended you so badly you felt that insulted by my statement."
> Offended? As someone who used to get into constant YouTube flame wars back in the day with the likes of Holocaust deniers, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, and trolls of every stripe, it takes more than what you said to offend me. Your statement that I responded to was a bad analogy that made no sense, and I felt that it would have been a waste of time giving a long and well thought out response to it, so I just posted a forum weapon instead. Just to be clear, I have no beef with you, and I don't want to start making enemies again, as it usually takes a toll on my well being. I'm too old and worn out for that shit, and I'd like it to stay in the past where it belongs.
Ok.
hi, although you've stated that you dont need anymore help with the model sheet problems you had, i still want to share some of my opinions on this whole thread, i hope you dont mind!
Looking at the very first post, it seems to me that you were attempting to design a character directly onto a model sheet, with a few ideas, directions and references in mind - and i have to say, that is a very bad way to start creating/designing a character (or any other subject for that matter). The way that i (and many other artists that i've learned from ) usually tackle this is:
-gather information about the character(subject) you want to design, choose an artstyle direction, answer some key starting questions that define your character (body shape language/look, characteristic, backstory,... and so on), and look for reference images.
-flesh out the character using the information/directions above, preferably in poses/ actions that best define the character's characteristics/ features, this i think is a crucial step for exploring/ finding a good character design.
This is also what i think @lotet was trying to say, that you need to have a solid character design first before starting to build a model sheet, not designing into one, because to me, a model sheet is purely for displaying information about the character for you or another artist if you're not building the character yourself. Model sheet is probably not the tool for designing.
https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-3/up
check out the many variations of a character that were done for exploring/ finding that final design before putting everything on a model sheet and push it to 3d department/production.
Another example would be the works of Pior on this thread:
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2075436/#Comment_2075436
i took the liberty of uploading said pictures for discussion to another image host, notice how the model sheet is just a polished and colored version of the combination of his many ideas/ sketches:
That said, i personally dont think you have the right mindset/ attitude responding to feedbacks/ criticism so you might wanna work on that too. I (and i think i speak for many here) dont have enough free time shooting down your ideas/points of view or 'making enemy', just trying to give out comments/ feedback and help the community grow, and tbh i dont understand why you have to point this out, since i really dont give a damn about your 'youtube internet warrior' past, just your arts, nothing else.
Just because only you dont understand it, doesnt mean it 'was a bad analogy that made no sense', i can understand what @lotet were trying to say perfectly fine.
@quockhanhlk
> First off, thank you very much for your help. One thing you need to understand about my character is that I didn't just start designing him the second I started drawing the model sheet. I've been writing his story since late 2011, and since then, I've made countless revisions to all aspects of it, including Mathew's personality, family, backstory, etc., so by the time I got to drawing him, I already had a general idea of what he was going to look like. To tell you the truth, I already understood the basic concept of character design you explained in your thread, it's just that my lack of drawing skills stunted my ability to put my visual idea of Mathew onto paper. Specifically, I was unfamiliar with how to draw a neckless character at the time (Mathew's design had changed since then), and I just needed to create a source to follow. However, I've been working some more on the character sheet since my last post, and I think I'm ready to start drawing some rough sketches of him. Finally if I came across as a bit of a dick to lotet in any of my posts, I apologize to him for that. After reading through your post, I think I now get the gist of the analogy he brought up, and I no longer think that what he was trying to convey was all that nonsensical.