BREAK THINGS DOWN INTO 3 VISUAL STORY CUES

Visual cue is the most important storytelling elements of the

hierarchy
How you show your character through visual cues
Location is very important to embody the story and sell the
character
Don’t worry about composition harmony or ananomy, just
dumbing out information as fast and as much as you can, keep
it small so we can focus on the essential parts

Imagine the final look ( mood board)

Things that are public domain, refs you took by yourself, refs
that you can buy license
Best advices everyone can give about learning anatomy is learn
a few very basic fundament and try to do as much study as you
can
By remembering skeleton landmark proportion , it become
much easier for us to draw muscle groups on top
TAKE YOUR TIME TO STUDY EACH MUSCLE GROUP, REMEMBER
HOW THEY LOOK, HOW THEY FUNCTION, HOW THEY CONNECT
Observe abstract shape created by light & shadows
Try to makes ref as easy to reach as possible, keep the
thumbnail not too small not too big
Be more thoughtful when it come to elaborate the thumbnail
into a more refined constructed figure, make sure the
maesurement is correct
Break clavicle and shoulder bone into different parts
If we need the final painting to be more anatomically accurate,
we will look for specific feet references later
As we remember the landmark, we can do slight adjustment to
improve the figure a little bit

Karla apply this process for any kind of character design, illustration or
concept

After refining the manequin, elaborate the drawing to match what you
want to keep from the thumbnail by using more references

When working in the stage of building manequin, don’t draw with solid
opaque line, it will stop you from being willing to fix the drawing
Duplicate the manequin layers make it an overlay layer and reduce
opacity so when we paint color onto the drawing, we don’t lose it

Sometimes Karla start with base color, sometimes she start with light
and shadow shape. It depend on what’s appopriate for the work.
Treat the doodle thumbnail like your composition note
Shadow of the costume should change corresponding to the figure
underneath
Always look back at the thumbnail to find a way to bring back elements
that you really like in the thumbnail
You can use photo filter adjusment layer to bring more harmony to the
overall color

Now we have color, storytelling, acting, light, presentation, anatomy

established
Q&A
Should we submit references to client?
Karla let the image speak for itself because she took the references
herself
If we do a photobash for our big clients like Marvel, they will require the
reference
What lens Karla used for taking photo ?
35 lens for taking photo of human, it’s the closest lens to human sight
18.28
31.37
33.25
35.18
When back to anatomy and other basic class whenever you feed the
need to
Use the half way point of the sphere to start if you struggle
The landmark can change subtlely from person to person, like the angle
of the jaws, the proportion
After that, construct the ‘’mask’’ of the face starting off from the ears
and the hairline
Getting the back of cranium from three quarters view

From there we can start to draw the shape of the jaw

The 1.5 point of the cranium landmark is very useful to indicate the
with of the cranium in ¾ view and side view

We can find the back end of the jaw by connecting a line from end of
the skull to end of bottom of the jaw
When we looking down, the eyeline gets very close to the bottom of
the sphere and the hair line move a lot closer to the half point of the
cranium
How do these construction method transition into actual drawing

Trust your instinct if it tell you that something about the drawing is off
Just copy the drawing exactly alone and you will learn a lot only by
doing that
comparing angles and look for cartoonie shape of light and dark
This block in method is another method we can use on top of the
manqeuin
Sunrise more play of temperature difference, more diffused
Daytime is the most contrasting light of the day, the light temperature is
more neutral
Light right infront of the character, not very exciting, used for
lighthearted subject, or glamour shot

Light goes up above the subject, classic used a lot in fashion, classic old
school lightning
give you apperance of higher cheek bone

used a lot in drama movies

Used a lot for athlete promotion, exaggerate muscular body features

Suitable for sunset lightning situations

Fill light is the light that fill in the shadow cast by key light, the more fill
light you have the less contrast in light and shadow have

high intense fill light

Keep the lind drawing close so you can always look back to it
Repositioning the head with the manequin you already established
Be as accurate as possible with anatomy
Q&A
How Karla paint a keyframe including an actors but she can not take
photo of them posing
Take a lot of study of that actor’s portrait, for example like taking 20
studies from different photos of Tom Hiddleston
By overcome and working through your mistake you learn a lot more
than just leave it there and start from beginning again
ART IS FINDING HOW TO FIX YOUR MISTAKE

If something appear to be off, fix it with your knowledge, if you can not
fix it with your knowledge, you have to practice more

Fixing anatomy and deisng how her hair could fit her characteristic
Building blocks of any visual information you see
hue, value, saturation
2d, 3d , weight, abstract

composition, complexity, simplicity, how to make it easy on the eyes,

make sure you have enough variety of shape
Form is basically the opposite of shape, which tell information about
height, width and depth, organic, geometric, achieved through contrast
of light and dark

achieved throughed overlapping, size and placement, space can affect

saturation and value
Feeling you have when you touch something, on rough surface like
concrete, intensify the contrast of boundary between light shape and
dark shape would be suitable
Hierachy of focal points ( where you want the viewers to look at) for
expamples: The eyes, the claws, the egg pieces

contrast of value, shape, texture, color

this will require study
any thing in the design can have a visual weight and affect the balance
of overall design

Size relationship of an elemement compared to other elements, very

important to stylized work, it need to be consistant and make sense
Elements that used to move viewers eyes, it can be obvious or very
subtle

Repetition and variation, repetition of elements to create movements

5 types
alternating rhytm, repetition of a sequence/patern
flowing rhythm, how water moves
progressive rhythm, how pattern change in size
random rhythm

Uniform repetition of elements in design

Pattern sound like rhythm but there is a specific difference between
them
rhytm is repetition of elements to create movement
When elements come togethey in unifying manner
haromny is balance between things that are monotonous and things
that are chaostic

Variety is the use of different visual elements to add diversity to the

design, provide contrast, help to create visual interest
but too much can make the design become messy and unengaging
Focal point and arrangement of opposite elements
the face, hands, necklace
Back and neck of Killmonger

Now it’s the opposite, dark foreground, light background, shape is

designed to emphasize the background more
Face and chest is area Karla whan to emphasize so she put more active
shape design and information, more refined structure

If contrast and emphasis don’t go hand in hand they can make the
design incohesive
There is variety here but not enough
Same shape with different rotation and size create rhythm and variety

You can make a design by adding rhythm to random shapes

what can we do to make exciting clever repetition
boring, but stability and holy and somewhat unnatural
asymmetrical balance

In secondary area, right shape, right value, right edge can be enough
already
Put concept of balance into consideration while arranging focal points

balance can be achieved through movement

Same principle applied to composition can be applied to character
design as well
Because of proximity to the face, the chest is designed to have color
contrast and direction contrast more active than other areas

Rule of thumb
Research about the time the costume was made and how it function
specifically

You have to research how the costume was made at that time, the
fabric cut, the lac
Construction can help to tell story and story can give you idea to
elaborate construction

irisdescent costume trying to tell you characters that are from different
planet
Considering how actors make their move in the costume that is
covenient for them
Karla usually spends 2-3 hours for a complete sketch

v
again, keep the anatomy layer close to the one you are working on
This is part of design process, building up from elements so they fit the
character design and characteristics
Find ways to repeat the elements interestingly
Listen to your insctinct if it tells you that something is off
Make sure things are consistent to lightsource and perspective, your
instinct will tell you when there is something wrong

Pay attention to how physics work on cloth, very important

Try to be specific about what you like in the design and make sure it
does not overwhelm the design

the final stage of refining the design is to play with variation of

elements and balance them
ask yourself how to arrange the elements nicely, what can be made to
make it look interesting
What is keyframe? Keyframe is illustrations of a key scene of a movies,
tv series or game to inspire what emotion, acting and lighting would be
that mean we apply the basic of illustration for keyframe
Find the arrangement of major visual elements base on simplilfied
geometric shape, but don’t be afraid to break outside the composition
shape
It's not a rule to follow strictly, use it as a guide to group the elements in
an interesting ways

Remember good composition usually has balance

camera lens and angle also have huge impact on storytelling
long shot is effective for introducing environment to viewers

Long shot is basicly a shot including environment with whole figure of

the character within it
great for dialouge usually show from the waist of characters or below
the heel

focus on the subjectn so we can see emotion

intensify the drama and raise the tension

camera angle, looking from below the audienes themselves feel less
powerful
We don’t have to put focal point follow exactly rule of third
Don’t forget you can use mixture of shape to bring the most out of your
composition. We have a whole range of tools to get the most out of our
composition
before breaking the rule, we must understand them
Don’t render anything, just use it to visualize the final
Consider visual element carefully at this step
Do the sketch to the point that what: when you squint your eyes, what
you see will look like what the final painting will be
Doing this way allows you to free from rendering
The more flexibility you have the more fun the progress can be
Do several solid sketches with variations, 3-4 or 5 would be appropriate
ask yourself if the arrangement looks good, the shape design is
interesting, is the value structure work the way you want,
trust your innate sense of aethestic, what does not look right

ask yourself if the arrangement looks good, the shape design is

interesting, is the value structure work the way you want

Don’t get overattached to the extent that you afraid to make change
Karla sent an illustration to Magic the gathering’s art director for a job
application, Karla got late for 10 days since the due date but she’s still
got hired by the art director.
If the work you submit is much later than the dealine, it got to be very
high in quality to compensate
If something you paint seems to difficult try to draw undereath the
painting and repaint over. Shape and construction drawing are 2 majors
method you can bounce back and forth to solve your problems
Details drawing emerging from the sketch of mass of shapes and value
usually look more dynamic than working from solid drawing
Building big mass of shapes and value and slowly rendering out from it,
think about light, texture. Make sure you stay accurate as you can. Look
for references to find if there is something you like and you can change