Welcome to my tutorial on how to make emotes using only the brushes that can be found in clip studio paint! Im an emote artist so im going to show you the style of emote that is most common amongst my clients!

 

Since emotes are very small files, it's easier to work with a canvas twice the size the final image needs to be. The emote I'm making needs to be 112px by 112px so i'm using a canvas that's 224px.

Sketching

I'm starting the sketch using the figure tool to create one circle for the head and one circle for the hand.

 

Emotes have very round eyes and the tips of the lashes are also very round. From far away they look cuter and more cartoony. Anything that looks more realistic or has smaller lines or sharper edges won't show up very well, it might disappear when you look at them from afar. Emotes are seen very small so they need to be very bold and distinct.

I'm using the g-pen which is the first pen that you find on clip studio paint. I'm going to be using this pen for most of the tutorial.

One of the most important things about making a dynamic looking emote is having an emote that has big eyes. They're the easiest thing to see from far away.

Usually the nose is smaller and isn't very detailed.

 

I also like to add little lines for indicating blush. It helps the blush we add later show up better.

Lineart

Still using the g-pen, I start my line art in red because it helps you to be less stiff.

 

When lining the hair don't try to add in the individual strands or flyaway strands. The further you zoom out the more flyaway strands are going to blur and look fuzzy. Keep all the lines smooth and thick.

Coloring

I recommend picking colors that are more saturated so they look better on a black background. Most websites that have emotes have dark mode so it's important that your emotes stand out. You can add in a white layer, black layer and 50% grey layer under your emote if you want to check if the colors are too saturated or not saturated enough.

 

Make sure you clean up the edges and there's no transparencies.

 

Also for the black of the hair and for the white of the eyes you don't wanna do stark black or stark white. You want to do an off white for the eyes and a navy blue type of color for the hair. This will help with shading.

For the blush and the bottom lip I use the soft airbrush.

I added another layer on top of the lineart and clipped it to the lineart so I can start coloring it.

 

Emotes look better when they have colored line art. I leave the lineart around the eyes completely black. I color the linart around the skin a few shades darker than the skin with full saturation.

 

For the eyes you don't wanna do a black pupil, from far away it'll just look black. I suggest having the pupil be a darker shade of the iris.

Shading

I added all my color layers to a folder, then clipped a new layer to the folder.

 

I paint bucketed in a saturated cool tone and used the airbrush to erase the middle of it. This will give the edge of the shadows a softer look, making your emote look more 3D. Start erasing anywhere that shadows wouldn't be.

 

Clip a layer above the shading layer and set it to glow. I used the same color that I used for shading to add highlights to the nose cheeks lips and eyes.

 

I added another highlight layer for the hair. I use the airbrush to airbrush in lines on the hair and then I used a hard eraser to erase half circle shapes into the lines for a very thick cartoony highlight.

Adding a Border

I added all of the layers to one folder. Above the layers you can see that there's a tab that says layer property.

Here you can add a white border around your emote. This makes sure your emote stands out against any background.

Properly Saving

Most websites require multiple sizes for emotes. Clip studio paints option to save duplicates makes it easy to save multiple sizes back to back. Make sure you're saving as a png on a transparent background.

You can scale your emotes by percentage. Most websites need three different sizes of an emote and they're all 50% sizes. You can scale down your emote by 50% every time and have the correct size.

Thank you for reading my tutorial! i hope it was helpful and if it was feel free to follow me on twitter or instagram!

 

https://twitter.com/EpiphanyJournee

https://www.instagram.com/epiphanyjournee/

 

Have fun making your emotes! bye!