Creating Character Design Lineart in Photoshop and Illustrator

My company, Educo webdesign (http://www.educowebdesign.com) was commissioned to make a superhero character for our clients Mz. Tisa, a Las Vegas musician.

I wanted to take this opportunity to slow things down a little bit and try to put together a few of my techniques for creating lineart in real time (mostly, it's sped up in a few places)

I was rapidly approaching and overstepping my deadline, so I had to stop recording on the coloring section because it slows down my computer, but I did manage to grab some video of me laying down flat colors and painting an eye, so I'll be putting together a short video with that stuff.

The brush sets I use in this video are:
Photoshop Brush Set: http://www.adonihs.deviantart.com
Illustrator Brush Set: http://www.jimro.deviantart.com

http://www.c-marie.deviantart.com
http://www.chrismickens.com (currently updating)

Thanks to all my new subscribers!! I love you guys and I know things have been slow, but I'm carving out some time to do some Disney tween caricatures (Jo Bros, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, etc...) because they have hilarious faces and would be great to teach caricature styles. I'm also putting together a Ron and Hermoine fanart to show how to blend photorealistic faces with cartoon style, and I'm going to record the animation process for my website avatar for a flash how-to video.

Up next will be a quick Photoshop basics video to show you how I set up my workspace and to go over some essential shortcuts.

Listen to Mz. Tisa at http://www.myspace.com/mztisa
Song: "Ice and Chilli" by _ghost // 2009 - Licensed under Creative Commons

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Photoshop
• How to Draw
• How to make lineart
• digital lineart
• digital painting
• character design

[lenny121]

i have this problem that i get a some white pixels around my line art when i move it from illustrator to Photoshop..any reason why i might get this ?

[chrisknowsthis]

@lenny121 how are you moving it from illustrator to photoshop? Copy and paste?

[lenny121]

cool why do you prefer pixel over smart object ?

[chrisknowsthis]

@lenny121 I like to use smart object in projects where I might need to resize or update the linework and I know I won't be coloring or blending it. When I'm recording a video and working on a huge file, I rarely use them because the screen capture software murders my CPU and jumping from Photoshop to Illustrator gets a little hairy.

[Hecket]

Giggidy!

[chrisknowsthis]

@Hecket All right!

[Chiomunch]

Could you please make a tutorial about how to get from stickfigures to the final bodyshape? This is my biggest problem and it preserves me every time from going on and getting a nice body for my character i'd like to design. :(

:)

[ielaniadances]

:O Your amazing

[TheDawn13]

thank you! this is great!

[edcero7]

i like...thanks for this..

[VanKrixsz101]

its look like Sasha Grey!!!

[Sugars00]

This is so freaking incredible. Thank you so much for this tutorial, this is exactly what i needed help with, moving anchor points, fixing up the lines. THANK YOUUU! :D

[MR82LDS]

i love you

[Dzynerr]

Your voice turns me on.

[lilmissfarah]

@mymermaidstory

when you choose your colours its more neutral so you get a better idea of what colours are more naturalistic as opposed to a white background which tends to make everything look too dark by contrast

[mymermaidstory]

wuts with the beige background?

[lenny121]

@chrisknowsthis i think the problem might be i'm using cs3 which is a pretty outdated version of Photoshop, it works fine as described in your video when i use cs5

[lenny121]

@chrisknowsthis ...yup

[chrisknowsthis]

@Scurl123 Thank you! I'm sure there are some that are more efficient, but it gets the job done for me and is easy to learn and improve upon.

[Scurl123]

You are Amazing... This has to be the best method I've seen so far!

[chrisknowsthis]

@JewelBthe1 I think she's beautiful, but we're all entitled to our opinions

[chrisknowsthis]

@NYCBiGDEAZ718 Thanks!

[chrisknowsthis]

@japockx II use a wacom bamboo tablet (pen) I don't know if I could do this with a mouse anymore.

[japockx]

this one u r using only a mouse,or u hav pen mouse drowing on your pad?

[albanezi1984]

omg very very nice sp sweet :)