Liliana.
Azmi-Galoczi
Production
ILO: 10/12/19
For this production, I will create character designs of my original character, Red, then create a full art work, then gather all the pieces to be assembled into a professional portfolio. These pieces will be processed under Ross Tran's tutorials and art style - at least try.
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As I produce the major art work, I will learn by exploring the brushes and that is to require me to face my mini fear of observing through countless brushes on Procreate (Savage Interactive, 2011). This also includes learning some techniques and methods from Ross Tran.
After I watched a video of Ross’ beginning stage of character design, I immediately became pumped and buzzing to really start learning and developing further my existing character. To watch the video, without doing anything practical yet, was a great warm-up to familiarise myself around the aspects Ross teaches and reveals.
After watching it, I immediately whipped out my iPad and restarted the video with the pencil at the ready, diving into Procreate.
Ross starts with a design with short, red, “feratic” hair which made the character “grungy” and “edgy”. After loosely colouring in the features of the character, he explains how his character, so far, has a “symmetrical” shape. And in the industry that may seem “boring”, so he added an “asymmetry”, by adding a belt or bracelet round one of the thighs to add an appeal to the eye.
However, I realised that Ross’ character’s style of clothing and their world was a magical, fantastical environment - so was Red’s, my character, except she travels across two worlds of Earth and another dimension of fantasy matter. Nevertheless, Red was more into Earthy clothes with a tomboy style.
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He then proceeds to the next design with a highly contrasting look as a way of brainstorming ideas and then confirming whatever suits his liking. With this design, Ross starts off with blue hair, but with a rounder shape. He explains how shapes are important as “they play a major role in how an audience perceives the character. For example if she had like a more spiky hair, the viewer would relate to that as a more aggressive design, so maybe she’s a little more or villainistic. If we went with something a little rounder, this character looks more approachable, look more friendly and then also we have the blue, which means trust.”. After completing the design, he continues to the third design, to which, he draws along with the initial design he created for the character as a reference and guideline of main ideas. After finalising by making sure every essential idea was drawn out, and Ross’ third design appealed to him so he decided to design it further with two more designs of clothing ideas.
Pre-production - Character design (18/12/19):
As I started with my designs, it was rather difficult trying to think of a creative design for Red, but within the clothes of simplicity from Earth and Red’s constant battles against fantasy enemies and sense of freedom. So I came up with an orange hoodie, blue jeans, white shirt and short brown hair. The colours appeared more or less earthy but also highly simple - which did not appeal to me as a design as a whole - but it was a start and it gave me a variety to choose from at the end. However, since Red is also quite an “edgy” type, I gave her boots with a sneaker design to it to add to her tomboy personality and style.
Then I proceeded to the next design which I felt closer to as I designed her. Firstly, I gave Red a deep red, thin tartan jacket with rolled up sleeves and a white crop shirt underneath. I also gave her darker blue jeans, and longer flowing hair with a touch of sharpness to her fringe and ends. Even though Ross explained in the video that giving the character longer, flowing hair, makes her appear friendly and approachable, however, with Red’s dark clothing, small rips on her jeans, and tomboy communication with her sneaker-like boots, it makes her appear “edgy”. And with her crop shirt showing a small area of her abdominal conveys to the viewers that Red is fearless and has a sense of free will. Despite Red’s communication of her traits of strength and physical stability through the semiotic colours of her clothes, we can add that Red’s flow of the hair from Ross’ semiotic information of shapes through hair, it can mean that Red also has an amiable and serene side to her rough personality.
Despite how Red can extremely fear her enemies when extremely messed with, this also makes her exceedingly dangerous, but the red colours of her jacket would appear a brighter red as a way of communicating of boiling anger, but instead, with a deeper colour of red, it can convey a trait of deeper wrath and physical stability of furious strength.
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After feeling confident with my second design, I had to proceed to the third design to ensure I have a choice and variety to Red’s design. This time, I gave her blonde hair in the same design as the second concept. Because I wanted to maintain within the red clothing to reflect Red’s personality, I gave her a light red shirt and her orange jumper from the first concept tied around her waist to also maintain within her tomboy side. In addition to this, I also added some rips in her jeans. And in terms of shoes, all three designs consist of the same shoe idea, since I particularly liked them.
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After finishing with the final design, I still felt confident with the second design and decided to confirm with it and proceed to the next step from Ross’ video, which was to create two or three more designs from the basic design and advance further with different ideas of clothing. In this stage, Ross uses this second set as a method of a second opinion to choose from again. However, I used this stage as a set of clothes that Red wears within the process of the story, such as a sweet knitwear with her belt still on to portray that she remains cautious about the dangers around by having the belt make the overall outfit design appear slightly more adventurous.
In the video, Ross was showing a section about further revealing the character to viewers by creating another set of three poses to confirm one of them with. Ross preferred his third design and developed further and rendered it to be added to the portfolio.
However, after this section, Ross presented a series of poses of more than three to also be added to the portfolio. And for this, I decided to skip the three poses and, instead, ran on ahead with creating the series of poses, since I wanted this portfolio to be finished as soon as possible for university and this project.
Ross informed that he had his portfolio template available on his online store for free, so I downloaded the portfolio and used it as a reference. There I noticed that he had three poses from his series on his portfolio, so I decided to create a series of four to further define Red with her abilities and an outline of her personality through her actions and positions.
Pre-production - Poses (29/12/19):
It was rather daunting at first - trying to think of a position without plummeting my creativity by whizzing through Pinterest (Pinterest, Inc., 2010) to find a pose. Until I realised that I already sketched out some poses on my everyday sketchbook, so I flicked through the pages and found a pose that definitely suited Red’s capture in battle. A face of tempered determination with eyes looking up at the opponent as she skids backwards across the ground from being attacked.
Excited, I quickly sketched out the position and realising that the colouration was a basic step with a use of one brush, I refined the position of the limbs and started colouring with Red’s main colours. Since the drawing was large and appeared imperfect, I minimised the size for it to not only fit for the portfolio canvas, but also enable me to draw more poses - and it looked better… as some things are better in a distance…
After feeling confident and reassured with myself, I felt further pride as I managed to imagine an image for Red: a position looking of her stumbling backwards from a forceful attack and defending herself. Despite my major difficulty and weakness of getting the basic anatomy correct from imagination, I somehow got every position correct! And felt a rush of happiness and pride. It took a few adjustments, but everything were executed perfectly, even though it had to appear basic.
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The third position, after the excellent design of the second pose from imagination, I’d thought I could try another one but with Red running in action whilst throwing her magic of green flames. It was not entirely awful, but I was highly not satisfied - nor pleased with it. So I decided to select a pose from Ross’ collection. One of which, caught my attention, and used it as reference, except I switched the left hand into an upcoming punch attack - which is one of Red’s physical attitude, whilst flaming her lower enemies with her right hand. I thought it was a great capture of Red in battle: in the air from a large leap with confidence.
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The final position, I wanted a happier side of Red, to reveal the amiable side to the viewers, instead of a person who’s always in battle. So I tried - out of imagination - capture Red running but looking back at her friends running with her, but she appeared quite stiff and simply stiff… but also rather odd so I, yet again, grew unsatisfied and tried again but with a composed position, since I needed a pose where both of her feet were on the ground because two out of the four, she’s in the air, so I needed a balance. I thought I could try a calm, rested pose with a hand in the pocket and looking back. I completed the sketch, but I realised how abrupt the position in comparison to the other poses with three-quarters of them were dynamic, whereas the other one was clearly the odd-one-out it’s an abrupt end of the flow of movement with a static position.
Again, I felt unsatisfied, even though it was a good sketch, I sketched another from imagination. However, as I drew further and adjusted the limb positions, I felt confident and reassured to colour, as well as adding Red’s green flames in a whirl around her from her extended arms and hands.
After its completion, it became my favourite pose from the collection, and still is. Even though it doesn’t show the amiable side of Red, it fully reveals her abilities than the one with her in the air with a punch at the ready.
Despite how Ross’ videos did not include teaching about further features of the portfolio, such as creating the three mini portraits and a basic, initial, rough sketch of the character to show development, either way, without him teaching those steps I decided to create them in his style and then apply them into the portfolio with his free template.
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As I began to create the basic, initial sketch of Red I went through another struggle of thinking of a portrait position. But in the end, I decided to use another image as reference from Ross’ portfolio template. Even though I couldn’t think of anything for the sketch, the image gave a similar physical sense in comparison to Red’s traits so I felt I was able to use the image as a reference.
Even though I usually sketch the jaw line and head shape incorrectly, making the image appear misshapen and cringey, as I solidly observed the image while I sketched, the head still appeared rather horizontally squashed and small, I managed to adjust with warp as a method of liquifying the jaw position, as well as freeform.
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I tired to maintain myself to keep the drawing as basic and looking as sketched as possible, instead to getting carried away with the refining and keeping the colours in their outlines. And for that method, I roughly rewards some outlines to maintain the sketch and initial appearance.
Overall, reviewing the work, the head is still rather small in comparison to her neck and shoulders. But nevertheless, it is a rough sketch and it presents development of the character Red.
Pre-production - Portfolio extras (30/12/19 - 3/1/20):
Proceeding to the mini portraits, the first mini portrait I started with was the angry expression. Red looking at the viewer angrily with her glowing green eyes. Otherwise if she was calm, her eyes would be gold on the right, and human brown on the left. I decided to create an angry portrait because it’s one of Red’s main and important characteristic throughout her story.
It was quite hard getting the positions of the face, and eyes right to make sure it doesn’t appear cringey and low-class artwork, so it took quite a lot of adjustments for the eyes and face shape, despite how the angle is looking down over the forehead and eyes looking up as she’s coming forwards at the viewer. In terms of the positions with the shoulders, it implies to the viewers that with that expression of Red and coming towards them, it implies to them that Red appears dangerous and will fight for the good, ensuring that she will rid every evil by her rival.
When sketching, I tried to ensure myself I drew in Ross’ style, as well as mine to represent my work of art and my own original creativity. Which became fully portrayed when colouring. As I outlined with the inking brush and coloured in, I realised how I did think within Ross’ style and coloured in my own instead. When I noticed, I felt quite irritated by how I got carried away in the flow of drawing, however, I did also notice about how Ross used his brush to colour the hair. He tends to use, merely, one brush for his art - simply the round brush - which fascinates me because even though you can use ten or fifty brushes to create professional art, you can still use just one to create a precise, colourful and beautiful art like Ross’. So I picked out the round brush, and coloured under Ross’ style, except I stayed within the outline. I used the light brown for the highlights, and then dark brown for shading, then the base brown to tidy and clean out the colours of her hair. As I coloured it looked rather messy and rushed, until I tidied it a bit and added some light, individual hairs in some places, like how Ross does, and zoomed out and realised that it was complete and ready to be applied for the portfolio and I finally became satisfied, yet knowing that I’m still learning to draw professionally.
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However, I noticed a minor change in comparison to the basic sketch of Red. I realised that I made her left fringe connect along her roots and fall over her eyes in a slight curl like her initial design of having gently wavy hair. Nevertheless, I thought that with that change, I decided to keep that hair style as it looked improved and appealing.
For the second mini portrait, I finally managed to plan to create a face of happiness and show to the viewers that Red can also be a happy person and not always wrathful. However, this portrait was also important, because this trait can be shown when Red fully and deeply trusts the other.
Mapping out the face and head position was difficult, as I took time trying to figure where Red is facing, diagonally looking up or looking back with the side of her face? So I quickly switched to Pinterest and typed down ‘happy portraits’. As I scrolled through, it was hard trying match Red’s appearance with the photos. In the end, I found a young child with a broad smile with his head tilted. Finally, I felt more for that image and used it as a reference, except without the hand on the chin and a closed smile to make Red appear gentle.
Sketching out the rest of the face and head was easier and smoother than the first portrait, so supposedly it implies that I have improved, except I had difficulty with the eyes again. I began with my style but it looked misshapen and output the place with the head, so I drew it under Ross’ style, which looked good, but I realised that I needed the eyes like the first portrait, otherwise Red would be a different person and the odd one out from the portfolio. So I tried again with my style of eyes, adjusted the shape, and finally, they looked appealing and matching with the first portrait.
Until I stumbled upon the drawing of the smile - which I tend to have trouble with because each attempt, does not suit the face. I tried a one line stroke of a flat U, but made Red appear creepy, so I tried a smooth W, but made her look as if she’s watching someone having a smooch, so instead, I tried a subtle approach to the W, as shown on the image, finally felt satisfied and complete with the smile task, but it finally suited Red.
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I then continued to sketch out the hair, neck and shoulders, outlined and then started colouring. After the practise of the first portrait, I managed to colour the skin and hair easily and confidently, along with the hair in Ross’ style, except, it’s more tidy and outlined than Ross’.
After I applied the image on the portfolio, next the first portrait, I realised that the eyes appeared quite small, so I had to return to the portrait, and expand the eyes and colour in the gaps with the skin colour.
However, after I applied the image again, the eyes looked small - again. So I repeated the process and finally, the eyes were the right size for the face.
Pinterest (2010) 27 Ideas Photography People Laughing Portraits [Online]. Available from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/465630048973949467/ [Accessed 3 January 2020].
Finally, for the third portrait, time went smoothly since I already planned the face direction and position to draw - which was referenced from one of Ross’ mini portraits of his portfolio, but despite that, I figured that the portrait also matched with Red’s physical characteristic.
Since the practising from the other two portraits, the sketching and outlining were much efficiently smoother in time and physical drawing. And even though the eyes usually take time because of my attempts to adjust the size, position, and shape in the right adjustment, they also took less time and modifying. However, when I completed the piece, they still needed to be returned, expanded and shifted to the correct and acceptable place.
As I drew, I noticed that Red appeared physically quite mature than what she already is. The tweaks were rather minor: the adjustment of her right jaw, the eyes and the overall face. Despite the small changes, obviously Red still appeared like a mature romanticism - which isn’t Red’s style of communicating and expressing.
But then supposedly, it’s her expression of listening and gazing at whatever or whoever caught her attention.
This piece completed into an artwork that became important to me because it represents the challenges I faced for the project, which was facing the fear of digital drawing and being brave to explore the tools and brushes in the program to create an effective, detailed work. When I recently bought this iPad Pro and Procreate, the best digital drawing I managed was a drawing from a referenced image from Pinterest with the use of merely one brush and one colour. Even with this simple, beginner’s level of art and effort, I was still scared during the piece. Hence the personal importance of the piece Red’s Wrath, because it includes a rapid increase of the use of brushes, colours and tools, in comparison to the black dragon.
Reference image
In that day of making Red's Wrath, I unreasonably had an easily irritable and tempered day, so I felt angry and wanted to draw an image of composed anger, but couldn’t sketch it out from imagination, so I scrolled through my saved image from Pinterest, and found this picture which I emotionally felt for with its own quiet anger.
Paranoid that I’d get the body proportions wrong - even though I can always modify them with warp or liquify, unlike traditional drawing, I managed to sketch out the positions correctly and adjust some features into the right places.
After completing the sketch, fear overcame again as I struggled with what to do next. I knew that I wanted to stay away from outlining and make the art look as free as possible. So I tried Ross’ style of merely using the round brush, and coloured the parts of her skin, then thinned the brush for the hair in its base colour, then darkened it for the darker parts, and transitioned to the smudge tool with ‘turpentine’ brush to create an effect of strands of hair. It still appeared basic so I darkened the colour again, brushed over tha main dark parts, and smudged over - but still didn't meet my satisfaction, so I decided to come back to it after colouring Red’s other features.
I chose to proceed with the tail, which I enjoy colouring, because Red’s fur colour is what makes me enjoy the drawing of Red, because of her russet-red fur colour that makes her iconic from other beings by naturally representing what she is and how she is through her colours of, not only the fur, but also her other physical aspects.
So I picked up Red’s iconic base colour of her Wolphren fur, and stroked over the sketch, then darkened the colour and again with a lighter version, and repeated the process. Finally, I smudged over the fluorescent colours of russet-reds with ‘turpentine’ and other oily brushes to create the satisfying effect of hair and fur.
Rather delighted and becoming confident than scared of the large world of brushes, tools and settings, I proceeded to Red’s iconic, deep red, tartan jacket. But I developed more pride over the work as I corrected positions of the outlining of the pattern to match the perspective, and then accidentally colouring the pattern wrong, but I figured the error would be hidden by the shading and advanced details further in time of additional brushes, colours and other effects.
After finishing the jacket with a 6B smudge for a fabric effect on the material, I coloured the ears, further shaded the hair and the skin, then started to colour the jeans - which decreased my confidence again as I was unsure how I could fill the colour in a particular way to make it seem like jeans in an artistic way. But I decided to just ‘wing it’ and decide the effects after it’s colouring. I painted over some highlights and shades and smudged them in particular places in the same method I did for the jacket and ended up satisfyingly acceptable.
However, when I finished filling the ears, I noticed that the fur colour from the ears and tail were too bright against the overall dark colours - plus they needed to be in the right shade in the particular environment: dark, cold and stony. So I adjusted the saturation and colour curves. I thought I could try to make the fur slightly more redder or browner, and actually resulted brilliantly, since it suited Red more in accordance to the environment and Red’s natural fur colour.
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Considering how I wanted to make my art appear as free as possible from outlines like Ross’ style, I realised that it needed some outlining because without it, it looked oddly misshapen and needed closure. Disappointed but happy with the brush I chose for the outlining, yet realising that the tail size suddenly caught my attention: it was bigger than it should. Therefore I had to manually and carefully manoeuvre around the tail without selecting the outlines from the jeans so that it doesn’t shrink in size and lose its original place with the other outlines of the jeans. Which did occur, but I managed to correct it.
For the jacket, I thought I could add additional lines with the outlining, which were the fold lines and random thin lines for extra texture and detail, which brought the colours and perspective to life on the canvas.
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But what came vividly through the screen was colouring the eye. Since it was a piece of Red’s Wrath, the eyes had to be green, because of Red’s quirks when she becomes highly angry or feared, her eyes turn green. But colouring it really represented Red through the entire canvas and made the art feel complete. But of course it wasn’t, even though it did.
So for that matter, as a side completion, I decided to add Red’s flames in a whirl around her as a sense of her anger being further awakened from within her. But I never drew flames digitally - but did traditionally but never looked like flames… so I rushed to Pinterest and searched for digital flame tutorials. There were many that didn’t meet the certain flames I imagined. Supposedly one did, but I did need a beginner’s guide to drawing flames digitally, so this image suited my needs.
I followed its steps, until I noticed that my flames did not look like flames… until the tutorial’s next step was to use the eraser to erase lines of the flares for narrower, sharper ends to make them appear like the whips of the flames' flares.
After completing the tutorial - it still didn’t look like flames - but became better when I continued to use the eraser. So instead, I wanted to use Ross’ most exciting tool, the colour dodge. I switched to the colour dodge but with a flame brush that Procreate made, and glowed the lower part of the flames. It looked better - but didn’t meet my satisfaction. I switched to the smudge tool with the flame brush again, and smudged over the lower and over the flares. This got me excited as the fire finally started to look like fire of Red’s.
Increasing with confidence, I selected the layer with the fire, duplicated it, and blurred the new layer as an effect of the flames glowing the environment and emitting it’s glow. I duplicated the fire again and changed the colour to black, flipped it upside down and blurred it to further define the dungeon like environment and the remaining darkness that the flames haven’t managed to set alight.
Because this dark duplication covered over the overall layers, I erased it over Red’s eye for another glow effect and vividly bringing Red’s Wrath.
After that exciting moment, I further shaded the top of Red’s head and other upper parts of her features to define the upper darkness. Then switched to the lime green colour dodge with the soft round brush, like Ross, and swished over the lower parts to define the lower glow of the fire, which are perfectly shown through Red’s fingers, jaw and the folds of her jacket. But the hair was difficult to make the ends reflect the green light.
Overall, despite how this piece is special to me, there are still some improvements needed which I might consider further in time by redrawing this piece once I’ve learnt more skills and knowledge that I will use. However, from the discoveries I have explored through this artwork, I learnt so much about Procreate’s brushes, tools and features that I now use to this day whilst still learning new things about digital drawing.
But also, after learning with Ross’ semiotics and style, I personally think that my art has improved because I worked his style of working and making art.
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Pinterest (2010) Fadly Romdhani on Instagram: “'Queen of the ashes' if you wanna buy some GOT print related : https://www.deviantart.com/drawslave/prints/ just click the image and then…” [Online]. Available from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/818388563517757323/ [Accessed 4 November 2019].
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Pinterest (2010) Unknown title
[Online]. Available from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/818388563516995766/ [Accessed 5 January 2020].
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Pinterest (2010) Flame Tutorial For Paint Tool SAI by RaikaiRan on DeviantArt [Online]. Available from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/604889793684121376/ [Accessed 5 January 2020].
As I assembled the pre-production and production onto the canvas, it was exciting and amazing how every piece of development gathered together in a professional layout to present to the viewers how I created Red. However, as I watched Ross’ video about creating a portfolio in this format, he mentioned about making the eyes flow smoothly through the page with and understanding of the character through their story and personality. It flows by reading from left to right, depending how we naturally like to read, the eyes see the larger piece that’s the most rendered and detailed, then flowing to the title, and down to the dynamic poses and across to the pre-production pieces at the end.
However, I noticed that Ross’ section of dynamic poses are together in a shape of an upside down triangle, assisting the flow of the view across the portfolio, and I personally feel that way. Whereas with my layout, I created four poses, and I couldn’t lay them out in a way that helps the way flow through the page. So to improve, I should supposedly create three poses, but choose and imagine carefully what pose to create to ensure they show enough personality and story through the character’s dynamics.
Production - Red's Wrath (5/1/20):
Production - Portfolio (8/1/20):
Overall, this journey of art was metaphorically a worthy adventure. From these pieces of work, I learned a lot about the main features and basics of digital drawing. Despite my fears, it was great exploring the brushes and tools.
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Even though the majority of the art pieces are in my style, Ross' style is also implemented and I did try to apply as much of his style as possible.
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However, it was a great experience and the skills I developed will benefit for the extended project.
Reference:
Ross Draws (2019) ‘Illustration Master Course - Ep. 2: CHARACTER DESIGN’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5QgC5UVYlU&t=642s [Accessed 18 December 2019].
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Ross Draws (2019) ‘Illustration Master Course - Ep. 5: STORYTELLING & PRESENTATION’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK91woAn8TI&t=1108s [Accessed 8 January 2020].
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RossDraws (2019) Pose Template - [From Master Course Episode] [Online]. Available from: https://www.rossdraws.com/tutorials/pose-template [Accessed 5 January 2020].
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RossDraws (2019) Layout Template - [From Master Course Episode] [Online]. Available from: https://www.rossdraws.com/tutorials/layout-template [Accessed 5 January 2020].
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Savage Interactive Pty Ltd (2011) Procreate, version 4.3.9 [Mobile app]. Available from: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498 [Downloaded 1 November 2019].