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Design a character.
This does not have to be any character from your project, although if you are sure you will need a specific character for your project feel free to use it as the subject. Your character does not need to be human.
Create a text document named "CharacterDescription.txt" and write a character biography that answer some of these questions:
Be specific. The better you know your characters, the easier it will be for you to visualize them.
When drawing your character, you will need to turn in the following:
The posed shot is very important. If you do not know what we mean about conveying the personality of the character, take a look at some of links we provided below. (Hoon’s Ninja Talkshow series is a good example). Make sure that it is an interesting pose and make it look natural. In that refard, you should take a look at what the old Disney masters had to say about “wooden” vs. natural poses:
From The Illusion of Life (Thomas and Johnston)
The 3 latter drawings (head shot, frontal, posed) are your "final draft" of sorts, so pay attention to detail. Do not color or shade your final drafts; they should be just pencil or ink line drawings. You do not need to draw your character in a setting, but you are certainly welcome to.
Now you must scan your images into Photoshop. Open the program. Now go to the File menu, click Import and then choose the name of your scanner. The scanner's TWAIN device will open. Click Preview to do an initial scan. A preview image will pop up, from which you select the area you want scanned. Change scanning resolution to 150 dpi. Click Scan when you are ready, and your image will be scanned and opened into Photoshop as a Photoshop Document.
You can resize your file by altering its Canvas size or Image size. Using the first just resizes your boundaries, leaving your image intact. The latter resizes your boundaries and stretches or shrinks your image to fit the new dimensions.
You may choose to work at a high resolution (200 or 300 dpi) and then save your final images at lower resolutions (72 or 100 dpi). A higher resolution has the capability of producing smoother results especially if you start stretching your image, but requires a lot more memory to save and may take result in long rendering times (as in applying a filter). Generally, though, you should save your working images (the .psd file) in a high resolution.
Scan at least 3 drafts and your 3 final line drawings into Photoshop. All your rough drafts should be in one image (resize your canvas as necessary and cut and paste), and your 3 final drafts should each be in a separate image. Save them as "Roughs.jpg," "Head.jpg," "Front.jpg," and "Pose.psd." Note that Pose will be a .psd file.
You only need to color in your pose drawing, but you must sill scan your other drawings in order to turn them in. The following should help you with your coloring.
Open your pose file. Ensure that it is saved as "Pose.psd." Double-click the "Background" layer in your Layers palette. This changes it to "Layer 0." Click the tab reading "Normal", and scroll down to Multiply. Now the white values of your image are transparent, and you can do an under-painting on a new layer beneath your dark lines. Create a new layer by clicking the New Layer button at the bottom of the palette. Drag "Layer 1" under "Layer 0," and using the paintbrush tool, color where needed. If your color is not beneath the dark lines, make sure you have "Layer 1" selected, and that it is underneath "Layer 0". You may want to name the layers by clicking on the actual text "Layer X." Feel free to add more layers to isolate different parts (you could color the head on one layer, and the body on another for example).
Choose a color scheme that reflects your character and start coloring. Pay attention to light and shadow. Play around with the different blending modes (you've already changed your line drawing's layer from "Normal" blending mode to "Multiply").
Here are some blending methods you might want to try:
If these tools are too harsh, you can decrease the exposure on the top options bar right under the main menu. In addition you might want to consider the following tips:
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and change the hardness to 0%
In a typical RGB image, each pixel stores a value from 0 to 255 (8 bits) for red, green, and blue, or 24 bits for each pixel. Higher bit depth produces wider color ranges, but creates larger file sizes. 24 bits usually gives us enough colors, but if we want some pixels to be invisible, or only partially visible? This is where alpha comes into play. An RGBA image stores a value for red, green, blue, and alpha (opacity) using 32 bits for each pixel.
Now let's assign some alpha information to each pixel! On the Layers window on the right of your screen, click the Channels tab. Here you will see four channels (RGB, Red, Blue, and Green). If instead of RGB, you see CMYK, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (or even something else!) that means you are not working with RGB colors. Fix this by going to Image->Mode->RGB Color. CMYK has its advantages, but for this project stick to RGB. At the bottom of the Layers window, click the Create New Layer button. You now have an Alpha Channel.
Click on the RGB channel to select it. You should see your drawing again. From the tools palette, click the magic wand selection tool (stick with sparkled end). Ensure that "Use All Layers" is checked (on the top under the main menu). Now click on the space surrounding your drawing to select the blank space. If the selection is too great or too little, adjust the Tolerance percentage at the top of your screen and reselect the blank space. Once you have selected all of your background, go to the Select drop menu and click Inverse. Now your drawing should be selected, instead of the background. Click once more to the Channels tab of your Layers window. Select the Alpha Channel, and hit your delete key. Now the silhouette of your image should be seen. If nothing happens, make sure that your background color is white at the bottom of the tools palette and try deleting again. Ultimately in your Alpha Channel layer, a white silhouette of your image should rest against a black background.
Take a look at the channels tab. Make sure that all channels are visible (they have the little eye to the left of them) and that the alpha channel is selected. Now zoom in around the area where your character touches the background. You should see the background in a shade of pink and the character in its regular color. Using the pencil or paintbrush tool with a small size, touch-up the alpha channel. The magic wand tool most likely didn't do a perfect job selecting the background, so you have to draw black onto areas where the background IS NOT pink and draw white on the areas where the character IS pink. Once you are satisfied with your alpha channel, you hide it by clicking the little black eye next to it. Don't worry, even if the alpha channel is hidden, saving a file with alpha information will use the alpha channel to determine opacity.
Not all file formats can save alpha information (JPEGs, for example). You can tell if a file format supports alpha if the "Alpha channels" checkbox in the "Save As" dialog is not grayed out and your document contains an alpha channel. If you do not have an alpha channel, this option should remain grayed out. Select the TIFF format and make sure that "Layers" is NOT checked and "Alpha Channels" IS checked.
Create a zip file containing the following files:
Submit this zip file as "lab1art.zip" to CMS.
Due Wednesday January 30, 2008 at 11:59pm
Every artist can benefit from studying the works of others. The internet contains a vast wealth of amazing artwork to inspire your own designs. Take a moment to look at some of the artwork out there.
Here are some favorites from the course staff:
Take a note of the poses, color schemes, and styles of the artwork you like. Also, many of these artists accompany their work with character biographies. Take note of how they describe their characters.
If you are interested in looking at more artwork, here are a few popular art communities to try: