CONCEPT ART - DESIGN YOUR BEAST

INTRODUCTION

For the realization of our tutorial, the main thing will be to know the character we want to design, that is, to study his personality to give him a great story, assign his role and identify his artistic references in order to be able to give him vitality thanks to the color and an atmosphere adequate.

 

On this occasion, I have devised a character that will be a rude, strong, corpulent and rocky beast that was dominated and mistreated by civilization for its purposes, in short, a being that has been raised in a completely hostile environment, high temperatures at the same time as desert. All this will justify that in my design there are human remains of garments, chains or scars. I invite you to help with this brain storming or brainstorm documentation such as movies, comics, books and key artistic references and, of course, I encourage you to cover my beast and share it with the rest of the artists that are part of Clip Studio.

 

CONCEPTUAL ART

The first thing we have to do is open our CLIP STUDIO PAINT (CSP program from now on) and open a new file to start drawing. In my case, I have opened a document in A4 size horizontally.

 

File> New> A4 horizontal> ACCEPT

 

Once we have the blank canvas, we are almost ready to start working.

We create a new layer by clicking on the "new layer" icon in the "Layer" panel, by default it is at the bottom right.

Next, we select the tool with which we want to draw, for example, the pencil, with the stroke that we most like “Real pencil” in my case and adjust the size we want of the brush, two panels below. We can also choose the color of our line in the lower color circle.

With everything ready we can start drawing and making the sketch of our beast of the deserts. It is always beneficial to capture more than one idea. Let's do it!

In this case, I have created two ideas, as I recommended, but the second one fits more with the character I want to develop, therefore, I choose the second one and continue developing it. It is very important that you play with several sketches, it is enriching to have several options to combine or choose.

LINE-ART

We are done with the first lines, the idea is clear, so our next step is to create another new layer (repeating the previous steps) to clean our sketch. This step is called Line-Art.

 

We lower opacity to the sketch layer> We create a new layer> Line Art

 

Note: To change the color of the layers you just have to click on the gray box that I indicate in the image and choose the one you like best. This comes in handy to organize your layers.

ADD COMPLEMENTS AND DETAILS

At this moment, we have ready our sketch and the design of our beast that is already taking shape with the Line-Art. Now, we will add details or complements that we can think of. A good technique for this step is to think about the history that our beast has had, as we discussed earlier in the introduction, so, I will add some broken chains.

 

To do this, I advise that we create a new layer and use the “Decoration” sub-tool, it can be accessed in the left panel or by pressing the letter “B” on our keyboard. When the “decoration” menu is displayed, 9 small sections will appear, the chains we are looking for are in the “Clothing”> “Gold chain” tab. Don't worry about the default color, we'll take care of that later.

 

To change the color of the strings, we will go to “Edit” in the top bar

"Edit"> "Tonal correction"> "Hue, saturation, lighting"> We set saturation to -100.

Next, we create a layer mask in the “Chains” layer to erase with the eraser (“E”) the excess content, for example, the area of the horns, since these go ahead of the chain. Make sure you are in the correct layer. Look at the following image.

CREATE SOLID BASE

Before we start shading we must create a solid foundation. To do this we re-create a new layer and put it under the sketch and the line-art. We then proceed to color the base of the beast from a medium gray to give it a silhouette.

SHADING

For the shading we repeat process: We create a new layer and place it below the “sketch” layer, above the “base” layer. As shown in the following image, we press the "Anchor to the bottom layer" button. This will cause us not to get out of the silhouette when it comes to coloring and giving the shadow.

 

Note: When the layer is anchored, a small red line appears on the anchored layer.

 

To give the shadow to the chain that we created before we have to duplicate the “Chain” layer (image 1) and edit its luminosity. I hide the upper “chain” layer and work with the duplicate.

“Edition”> ”Tonal correction”> “Hue, saturation, lighting”> We set brightness to -100. (image 2).

Now that the chain is black, we apply a small blur filter to look like a shadow (image 3 and 4).

We remove opacity to the layer (30% is fine), (image 5).

We move the shaded chain layer and activate the upper “Chain” layer (image 6).

Let us now turn to the shadow cast by our beast on the ground. We duplicate the base gray layer and transform it ("Edit"> "transform") until it looks like its own shadow. This is a good technique widely used.

ILLUMINATION

Once we have all the shadows, it is time to illuminate our beast. In this case, the light comes from the upper left, therefore the most illuminated area is going to be the back.

COLOR

The time has come to give vitality to our beast, time to color! To start, we double the gray base layer again and give it a bluish shade with the paint bucket tool. I place the layer on top of all, on top of all and put it at 58-60% opacity and a layer mode “overlay”.

We re-create another new layer, this time above (and anchored) the shadow layer, which in turn is also anchored to the gray base layer. In this new layer we are giving ocher, brown and gold colors, desert and warm colors that go great with this rocky beast.

GIVE LIFE

To give a little life to this creature, we will give textures and interior illuminations.

We take internet a grunge texture in PNG (without background) and import it to our canvas (File> import).

 

We will place it where we want these textures to be by moving it with the pointer “K” and / or transforming it with “Ctrl” + T (“cmd” + T on Mac) or “Edit”> “transform”

Now we will press the "Ctrl" key (or "cmd" on Mac) + click on the thumbnail of the gray "base" layer to select it. The next step is to invert the selected area in "Select"> "invert selected area" to erase the remains of the texture outside the figure. To do this, you must also press the right button on the texture layer and click on “Rasterize”. Once this is done, press the delete key.

Then, with the area already deselected, we erase the texture where we do not want it to be, for example, on the face of the beast.

Finally, we put this layer in "Multiply" and lower its opacity to 20-30%.

Another process that we will carry out at this point is the hot lighting that comes from the mouth and eyes. To make this small effect we place a new layer on top of the layer where we have given the targets, we apply an orange, yellow or red (of your choice) in “Superimpose” mode with little opacity of approximately 80% and we already have that effect that we search Do not forget your lighting in nearby areas, such as the arm or the horns.

 

FINAL ASPECTS

This is perhaps the most important part, it depends on our beast come alive. Therefore, we are going to add some sparks of fire to his mouth to give him more realism.

 

1-We import a photo of sparks. I had previously created an image with sparks of fire combining several brushes for times when I need special effects in my illustrations. It is great this type of effects to give realism to our drawings.

 

2-Placement and rasterization

 

3-We put this layer in “Add shine”

 

4- we erase the exterior that we over

 

5- Finally, we take the airbrush tool and put its “droplets” style to make some more sparks in different oranges and yellows.

 

To continue finalizing details, we proceed to give it some atmosphere, we select the airbrush in its soft mode, white color and a soft density, we create a slight mist in the furthest parts of the figure. (opacity of the layer, to taste, mine is 50% approx.)

PRESENTATION OF THE CHARACTER

Once with all these details done, let's move on to the final presentation of our desert beast. To do this, we import a photograph that shows an arid or terrestrial texture to make the ground base. We place it transforming and rasterizing it and erase its contours with soft rubber.

To finish presenting it, we add a “manga gradient” (image 1), giving it the color that we want (image 2). In this case, I have chosen to continue with earth colors (image 3) and placing the layer in the last position (image 4).

With all this, we reach the end of this tutorial of the creation of the beast, I would like you to encourage yourself to make your own version and share it in the comments or if you have doubts I am at your disposal in my email danielpuentemorales @ gmail.com This is a good program to start because it is very intuitive and realistic in its drawing tools.

 

A pleasure to draw for all of you!