 Welcome to MAPCRO, the RPG art show. My name is Kyle, and today we are talking about character design. But before we get to that, I do want to mention that the Old Road's map zine is on itch.io. For download, you can download the PDF of this map zine I've been working on on this channel this whole time. And you can also download the high res images of this beautiful map zine. Look at him. Link in the description below. In our Crash Course in Character Design, we are going to look at two major points of character design, and that is silhouette and body language. For my money, these are the best things to practice in character design. I made a random table of different kinds of knights to draw, and I rolled a 10. So I am drawing a witch knight today. So the first thing I'm going to do is make an inventory of symbols, a list of words and associations that kind of exist around knights and witches that I can either choose to deploy or subvert in some way. Next we're going to work on silhouettes. Silhouettes are kind of the exterior shapes that kind of protrude away from the body shape of the character. The important thing to keep in mind is to iterate, is to make lots of almost thumbnail sketches, but we're not even solving for composition or anything, we're just trying to figure out what shapes say witch and knight together. It's important to do many of these, sometimes like half a dozen, sometimes more. Rarely do you have your best idea at first, and even if you do, you won't know if it's your best until you've had several other ideas to compare it to. Iterate on body sizes and body shapes. See if there are any motifs, the kind of repeating shapes that you can include in some way. Mess around with proportions, see what you can discover, see how far afield you can go before you completely lose sight of the original idea. Once you have some compelling silhouettes, it's time to move into body language. Now, as an illustrator, I hate tea poses. I don't have any patience for them. They're basically worthless. I never do tea poses or turnarounds or model sheets or anything like that because I would rather get to the characterfulness of the design. Choose a direction, choose a mood, choose a stance, a position. Is this a good character? Is it an aggressive character? Is it a sad character? This is all going to be able to be conveyed through body language. Not only is this going to help your final illustration have more movement and be more evocative, but it's also a great opportunity to double-check your silhouette. If your silhouette does not hold up with several different poses, it probably means it's not a very strong or distinctive silhouette. For examples of characters with very strong silhouette and clear shape communication, I always choose the examples of Steven Universe or Pokemon. No matter what direction or pose that those characters have, you can tell who they are and kind of like what they're all about just because of the exterior shapes. And those shapes help kind of tell you what kind of body language those characters should have in the first place. So we have a variety of silhouettes to choose from, we have a list of props that we can add, and we've kind of learned some of the possibility space for body language as well. Now it's time to start gesturing in the actual illustration. During the gesture phase, it's really important not to erase and not to over complicate things by trying to focus in on details. You want to make sure that you are filling up the space that you intend to use with your illustration. Not only is this important for figuring out the body language, but it's also important for roughing in the proportions. After all, if you really just focus in and start drawing things that you enjoy drawing like, you know, faces or fashion details or something like that, if it's not the right proportion, you're going to have to start over and it's going to be a lot more difficult to do that if you've already started in on the details before finalizing the body language and proportions. For our witch knight here, I had a lot of difficulty figuring out exactly where to put the feet and what to do with the hand holding the broom and where that broom should actually go. But you see, I'm not erasing things, I just kind of keep multiplying, keep drawing until I figure out what I'm doing and then I can erase. I start building out the pieces of the armor, kind of using cauldron pieces like lids or kettles, things like that. Cauldrons are made of metal and so are knights, so not only do we get the witchiness of the cauldron, but we also get the nightiness of the knight. Once I'm happy with the major details and body language, then I start in on the darker lines. Now, I'm not going to ink this later, so I'm going to take a pretty heavy hand with my pencil here. Having a cast iron witch hat might not be practical, but it is getting me the elements that I want kind of conversing together through the design and through the textures. Also, having a shield that has a handle pointing at your opponent is clearly an awful idea, but it communicates what it actually is and it gives us that communication through shapes. I decide to add a skirt to this costume because it adds a lot of movement. Loose flowing cloth is a great opportunity to add movement into what can be a stiff design. Also, it has this loose rhyme with the triangle that kind of tapers all the way from the knees of the skirt all the way up to the point of that hat. I add big old points on the ends of those shoes and make sure that there are kind of these rounded spikes on most of the pieces of the armor. Just to tie it all together, make it look threatening, make it kind of look dangerous. It brings out that evil knight quality, but it also pairs nicely with the triangle shapes from the witch. Perhaps now you can see why I didn't want to just draw a knight. I wanted to draw a knight something, modified by something. I wanted to combine two different ideas. This creates an active design space. The best design isn't just a combination of several ideas. It is a resonance between several ideas all executed together. I try to avoid using straight edges whenever possible, but when you're doing weapons, swords, that kind of stuff, it's always a good idea to take out your ruler and just get it right the first time. Once all the major details are laid in, it's time to just balance out the values and make sure everything's reading properly. You can erase and redraw things if you need to at this point, or add little greebly bits or extra details, stuff to kind of make sure the emphasis is going to the right places. But really, if you balance your values properly, it's probably ready to call it quits. I think that's it for this episode. I had a lot of fun doing this, and if you enjoyed this as well, maybe leave me a like. If you have other kinds of character ideas or monsters you would like me to do a video on, maybe leave a comment. And if you would like to see more art tutorials on RPG illustration, subscribe to the channel. And maybe one day I'll see you on the old roads. Until then, farewell.