Applying feedback I got from my tutor - all characters

 After posting all of the process for creating my characters, I received a lot of feedback from my tutor which was very helpful and I decided to apply all the feedback concerning my character design and explain the process in this blog post. 

The feedback for all of the characters was very similar - add more flunctuation in the tone of the skin, so it looks less flat and is more expressive. I could easily see why my tutor advised this sort of improvement in the designs, therefore I decided to do something about it. I do agree that the faces looked a little bit flat and adding more color to them was definitely something to do, however I did see it as a challenge because I did not want the faces to look too much out of place. 

I started with the dad, and the first thing to do was to think about what parts of the face are lighter and what are darker. I came to a conclusion that the lightest parts are: the nose, the cheeks and the forehead. The darkest parts would be under the eyes, under the eyebrows and under the nose. These areas are always shaded, therefore they are darker than the rest. The nose is the lightest part because it is always exposed to the light and never shaded. This thought process was important because it helped me develop  the ideas where I want to apply more light color and where to apply the darker shades. 

I started the process by choosing a lighter shade of purple than the face is colored in by clicking on the top right corner and picking a color from the color circle as presented on the picture above. When I had my color chosen and I was sure this was the color I wanted to use, I started applying it on surfaces that needed to be lighter. 

Adding the color kind of reminded me of applying make-up on my character's face and it made it more clear to me what needed to be lighter because I know myself what elements I highlight when I put on make-up myself. At first this process was just adding strokes, with a brush called: Rough Skin, of light purple and then I would start blending it all together with the blending tool procreate offers. I used the brush called Rough Skin because it kind of reminded me of a crayon but was not exactly what a crayon is. 

This is the face in the middle of the blending process. The blending tool is the fourth from the left icon in the top right corner and when choosing this tool I also could pick in what way I want the colors to smudge. I could pick from a very large base of brushes types - the same base available for the drawing part. I tried out many different options to see which brush would be the best one for this particular job and I ended up choosing a brush called Tache. 

When I blended the light parts, I added strokes of darker tones, for which I have also used the Rough Skin brush and blended them in the same way. I personally thought it looked good and definitely less flat and that was definitely a goal for this process. 

Here is the character with a corrected face. I personally think it was a good thing to add because now the character looks more interesting and as my tutor said, more expressive. I strongly agree with that and I am very glad I took the steps to develop my work. 

The next character I developed in this way is the mom. With the rest of the characters I will not explain the process so in-depth because I generally followed the similar steps that I did for the dad and I do not want to be monothematic. 

For the mom as well I chose a lighter tone for the parts of the face that are more exposed to light and applied them while blending with the Tache smudging brush. I did the same with the darker tones and this is how the image ended up looking. Since I was doing the shades on a separate layers, the purple did cover the freckles and wrinkles a little bit. I used the eraser to erase the parts of the color that were covering the important elements of my design. 

Another character I have worked on was the daughter. For the daughter, my tutor advised me to erase the lines next to her eyes that make the character look older than I intended. I believe that it was a really good advise therefore I followed up on that by erasing the lines. 

I think my tutor was right that those lines were really aging my design and getting rid of them was indeed highly beneficial. The next thing I did the the daughter was changing the tines of her skin, exactly the way I worked it in the two previous characters. I needed the nose to be lighter - more shiny and the shaded areas to be darker. 

This process was exactly the same as it was with my previous characters and it highly reminded me of applying make up. Here is this character with all the changes applied. 

This character now looks definitely less flat and more expressive. I think taking away the wrinkle lines around the eyes let me make this character the age it should be. 

The next character I decided to work on is the grandma. With this character I wanted to make the nose even shinier than I would do with a normal character, because elderly people who apply make up, usually tend to use a lot of very pale powder. I think making this observation and applying it in my design was very important to make the character more 'real'.

This is how the character looks like after I applied the tonal differences in her face. I have followed exactly the same steps I did with all the other characters, therefore I will not focus too much on explaining it step by step. 

The next character I have worked on is the son. I needed to add some more tonal differences in his face as well so it would not be as flat anymore. 

Here is how I chose the elements of the face that needed to be lighter. The same situation that happened when I was doing the mom design happened here - the freckles got covered with the purple therefore I needed to erase some bits of it too keep the freckles visible. I have blended it once again with the Tache smudging brush. 

Here is the character after blending the colors. They are not very visible and that was my goal because it is a very young character and and they still have a lot of that shine on the face that children do. The toning I applied it mostly visible on the forehead and the nose. 

Here is the character with the changes made and I can really see the improvement. I think it looks a lot better than it did. The face looks more as if it had some sort of volume and is not just a surface. 

The last character I was improving was the dinosaur. My tutor told me that the face could be positioned differently to get a better effect. To make that change I needed to sketch out the head of the character again. To do that, I have changed the opacity of the character I had sketched out and then on a separate layer I drew out the new head. 

I started simply by creating the lines to make myself realize how I want to position the head. This action was very helpful for me to get a good idea of what I am doing. Next I needed to sketch the volumes and the face exactly like I was imagining it for this particular character. 

This is a rough sketch that I have obviously cleaned up on a separate layer. It shows that I really thought about each of the elements as if they were volumes. Especially the 'nose' part was challenging, because I had to imagine the front of the character's face. I think I did a good job and then I cleaned up the lines on the separate layer and added color of the actual character. 

When I was happy with the design I deleted the head from my past design and combined this layer with the layer with the character so it would be a one thing all together. 

Lastly I worked on some tonal differences I did with the rest of the characters and followed the exactly same steps to achieve the final piece. 

This is the final piece of the pet character. 

I think this worked really well and I generally applied the feedback I got in the right way. I am very happy with my designs now and I think they are improved.