Welcome!

Hello! This is my first tutorial for Clip Studio Paint so bear with me. In this kind of tutorial, I will share my tips in bringing fantasy races to life using one of my favorite feature, Concept art.

Introduction

A race is a grouping of living beings based on shared physical or social qualities into categories that is generally viewed by the society. In real life, we humans are divided by color, nationality, religion, etc. In anime, stories and comics, there are different races apart from a normal human being, which they are described as fantasy races. Fantasy races include angels, demons, elves, fairies, orcs, animal humanoids, and humans with animal attributes.

 

Concept art is the first step of bringing the fantasy races to life, especially if you create them as your original characters. Concept art is a form of illustration to convey ideas before it is drawn and designed into a final output. In some cases, concept art also showcased finalized works in order to fully understand how they function. Concept art is extremely useful for both the designers and the audience alike. To the designers, concept art helped them brainstorm and finalize before become the finalized outcome, while to the audience, the concept art showed them behind the scenes of how the stories were made to what is was now.

 

Now that we have covered about concept art, let's start off with creating races using concept art. This is a step by step tutorial.

First Initial Concept

This step does not involve with the software yet, but as an author and designer of my own stories, this something that is crucial in the first initial concepts. You still don't have any firm ideas how to portray or visualize them. You, as the designer of the concept of your own fictional ideas, may have at least some ideas to put them together before creating first sketches.

 

Before you go designing, you have to consider asking these questions to yourself.

 

What should they look like? Which race should they belong to?

 

How do they function? How do they get them? (In case if they are under a curse)

 

What's their role and their significance in your concept?

 

Remember, your ideal concept can affect the existing interpretation.

Perks

Perks are also what we refer as "flaws". Of course, when you design a character from a different race, perks are inevitable, but keep in mind on the perks known from every fantasy race known. Their perks may not be commonly portrayed by everyone, but designing a complex interpretation can be a challenge. However, if you have a big idea to portray, then be my guest!

• Angels and Demons both have in common perks: anatomical parts on their heads and wings. Tails and claws are for the demons. Angels have ring halos (though technically, it's not part of the anatomy) and feathered wings while demons have hard bone horns, bat wings and a long tail. Normally, the tip of the tails come in different shapes.

• Elves are quite similar regarding to the anatomy since they resembled closely to normal humans with the huge difference of their protruding pointed ears. Commonly, they interpret elves as being shorter than normal humans while there are some cases they interpret as being taller.

• Fairies are also same in some cases with elves. However, there are different types of fairies known in the European culture such as pixies, dryads, etc. Mostly, their perks would be wings, their feet and most especially the skin. If not, then it would be their whole bodies.

• Human/animal or creature hybrids are also quite common in the world of anime, comics, and illustrations. This is quite self-explanatory but take note on the common perks: the animal ears, eyes (on some cases), tail. All of this depends on the animal or creature they have.

• Orcs are basically everything. They are strong humanoids with the mixture to goblins. They look human-like, but they always portrayed as having well-built body and unusual facial features such as their ears, their mouths, etc.

Creating the Concept Art

As soon you have your outlines for now, you can start off with a simple sketch. (I will use one of my original characters as your guide :) )

 

First, open Clip Studio Paint and create a new illustration. It is best recommended if the canvas is 4000x3000 or 4000x2500 for a fine quality. The resolution should also be 300 dpi.) Once your canvas is set, change the color of the paper to something brown color.

Following by that, use any transparent brush or light pencil to start sketching the base of the character in any pose you desire.

Next, you start on sketching full body of your character. Make another new layer in order avoid the common mistake to ensure you can only see the clean sketch as you hide the rough draft layer.

When you're done with the simple body sketch, you will have something like this.

Before you go concluding, keep in mind this is only the first step. You still need to make the outfit of the character first. Next step: hide the rough layer to make it that the cleaner sketch only visible.

Here comes the fun part: designing clothes and hairstyles! In concept art, there are many ways to show the designs of the characters: the sketched and colorized, the default and secondary, the overall and the beneath, the initial and finalized, and many more. In this case, we'll use the sketched and colorized style.

 

On the left should be the sketch and on the right should be the final color design. Create your desired design of your characters' clothing and hair. Don't worry of making so many lines! Afterall, this is a sketch. You can do your lineart later. Next, you have to erase the parts in the body sketch where it will be likely covered by the clothing..

Merge the clothing and the body sketch layer together and create a new folder. Do NOT place the sketch inside the folder! Now this is your time for your art style to shine! The folder is where your colored version is placed. If your art style goes with anime style, the lineart should be at the top.

Finishing Touches

Eyy! And we're almost done! Now the next thing we have to do is to close the folder, select it, then use the move layer to place the colored version beside sketch. Align them together and there! You can see the difference!

Whether if you are creating an original character or an existing character, you may place place their name under the sketch and the logo of the series. And finally, you're done!

Thank you everyone! I hope this tutorial can help you in introducing your characters in your concept. Everyone has their story to share! That's all!