Procreate Brushes

I've learned to love Procreate, and for the most part I use brushes straight out of the box. But there are a few that I've created or modified that I find useful, especially a couple of blenders that match the behavior of my Photoshop brushes. Here they are: (The titles are links)

The NEW Round brush: I really like Procreate's "Round Brush, but I like something a little more forgiving for smooth gradients but that still gets that nice hard edge. I occasionally adjust the spacing to get a rougher stroke and easier blending.

Rough Inking: Great for flat areas with rough edges.

Rough Ink Small: Has a smaller size range, great for outlining the edges in a similar style to the rough ink pen.

The Flattened Photoshop. Sometimes you want that digital feel with the control that a brush with flattened roundness gives you. This brush does a pretty good job!

Palette Knife. This brush doesn't have the "Height" texture controls that I like from Photoshop, but it gives me 80% of what I'm looking for out of a digital palette knife.

The Occlusion Brush. A gradient brush with the falloff of ambient occlusion, great for quickly tucking contact shadows up against edges.

The Smudge Nice. Very similar in behavior to my Photoshop smudge, but it follows the "Azimuth" of the stylus.

The Dry Blender. Like my dry blender from Photoshop, use as a smudge tool.

Character Dimension

Character dimension is a concept I’ve found very useful when striving for more appealing character designs. I’m not talking about literal dimension of forms, but how to give the characters the appropriate amount of personality and interest relative to their screen time in the story. There are a lot of theories on this, so I’m picking the pieces from those theories that best apply to character design.

This idea of character dimension is best explained with contrast. There are four different levels of dimension as it relates to visual design, with the highest level being a three-dimensional character.

The first level of depth is a “bit” character. Think of a bit as a single point in space, with no dimension. A bit character displays only one character attribute—usually meant to fulfill a single purpose as that character stands in the spotlight onscreen for a very brief time. Here’s an example of a bit part: the hopelessly nerdy character.

To keep this character aligned with that bit part, I tried to make everything on him give a “sad sack” feeling—droopy, soft, and ineffective. This character is understood in his entirety almost immediately, which makes him useful for brief moments with no introduction. A character like this can still act against type in that instant, but that action must be understood quickly in context of that simple and clear character bit, or the contrasting attributes will only create confusion. The weakness of a bit character is that after this character serves his momentary purpose, he will become insufficiently interesting* for extra time in the spotlight.

(*As a side note, I should mention that any character design can be enriched through great writing and animation. Appealing and appropriate characters can make great writing and animation better, but even the best character design will struggle without the other two.)

Imagine taking that single point in space, that surface character attribute, and stretching it into a line. Now you have two poles possible with contrasting components, or a one-dimensional character. The contrasting attributes here are different from a bit character acting against type, because this character may be seen at varying points along that line throughout the film (while a bit character acting against type will always act the same). My example of a one-dimensional character adds aggressive confidence to a hopelessly nerdy character.

I communicated the two poles of this character’s single dimension by contrasting gesture, expression, and shape language against his easily understood role or type. You can also do this with contrasting costume decisions, color scheme, and other elements. Usually, the one-dimensional character is defined by “what,” meaning both poles are expressions of how that character fills his role in the world. One-dimensional characters remain interesting for longer, and they can even have simple character arcs, but they lack any real depth.

Adding one more dimension to a character creates depth and a lot more interest. This second dimension is usually defined by “why?”, or the character’s history and motivations. Expanding on the example character, who now has one dimension that goes between hopelessly nerdy all the way to confident villain, but also adds a second dimension that shows a little bit of the inner demons driving him; a life of bullying and misfortune.

In this case I imagined the opposing poles of his second dimension are his need to be someone—to have power over his life, contrasted with his complete helplessness in the context of the strength and socially-driven world he has always lived in. I used recent fight-related injuries and the expression to suggest the character’s history and the hardening of his motivations. Typically, the visual language for history and motivation is going to be a second read, meaning that the first dimension is the first stuff the audience sees, but is then modified with a closer look at the character. A character with this much complexity needs enough screen time to show all combinations of the four extremes of these two dimensions; otherwise he collapses down to a one-dimensional character in the story, in which case the audience will feel dissatisfaction and an intuitive need to know more about him than his screen time allows, because of the amount of conflict the character suggests. That said, even if I’m designing a one-dimesional character, I will often explore the second dimension story-wise because understanding the backstory and inner demons can suggest interesting expressions of that single dimension that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

The third dimension is the “who” of the character; and it is the hardest one to quantify in the visual parts of the character design. This dimension demands a lot of screen time, as the character now needs to go through the hero’s journey. A protagonist, the love interest, a sidekick, or even the main villain can be three-dimensional, so long as there’s enough time to unravel all three dimensions.

This character starts the story being defined by WHAT he is (the hopelessly nerdy kid bordering on supervillainny), then the story would explore WHY he has become that way (inner demons of social and physical abuse by peers he wants to impress), but to gain the third dimension, then the story must test the limits of that character beyond the surface attributes and internal desires or motivations. In other words, you can’t know WHO this character is until you have seen the things that outwardly define him stripped away, and see the choices he makes when facing the resulting desolation of his failure. In visual design terms, you cannot show this journey all at once! But you can show the potential for that character to change. More nuance in shape language, a little baby face bias, more thoughtful, vulnerable eyes, and even a less “set” demeanor can help cue the audience that this character is not yet done with his journey. Unlike previous dimensions, you can sometimes apply three-dimensional design to a character in a two-dimensional role without frustrating the audience; so long as the suggestion of potential-for-change doesn’t compete with the role the character plays in the story.

Is it possible to have a character with more dimensions than this? Yes; even four and five-dimensional characters can work in a story, but fitting that extra information into a design is very difficult! My experience is that the first and second dimensions can be layered into a character after the initial design, so your design process doesn’t need to include all this information from the start, so long as you can get your art director to be patient with the exploration of those dimensions. Character dimension is less about which is good, better, or best; and more about designing characters that are appropriate for their roles in the story. I hope this proves to be a helpful tool to other aspiring character designers out there!

Class demo

Something I painted for the "sculpting with light" demo in my digital painting class at BYU. The class is for animation students so the stuff I teach is focused on painting for visual development and other animation work.

Hearthstone Murkalot

Something I did for the "Grand Tournament" expansion for Hearthstone.

Early Infinity Pitch

An image I did during very early explorations for Disney Infinity. At this point, the hope was that we'd have all sorts of types of toy in it, much like the Toy Story 3 Toybox mode. Some semblance of this idea survived, but for the main characters, John Lasseter really wanted to have a single style and toy type to unify everything. That was the right call for sure, but this would have been fun.

Some character designs I did for Disney Infinity 3.0

I did a bunch of work early on Disney Infinity 3.0, which is coming out in a week. Here are a few of the concepts that I did that I've seen on other sites.

Worked on Boba Fett. Career achievement unlocked!

Fear was such a fun character to draw. It was tricky figuring out how to pull off the feel of skinny appendages in a way that could be molded into strong plastic, though.

A take on Yoda that didn't make it in, but might have influenced the final look. It's hard to tell sometimes.

"How do you find time for personal art?"

I was asked this question by another professor during the interview for my job at BYU. Now that I've been at BYU for almost a year, I understand that his question wasn't a test for the job, but an honest question about how to fit one more thing into an always-full schedule. The thing about being a professor is that you never clock in or out---your teaching and prep time, personal time, and freelance time all blend together and you're left to make your own calls about how to balance it all. I think I actually stammered my answer, something like "Well, uh, I just do it." That was a useless answer and I wish I could have a do-over.

I get summers off at BYU, which sounds awesome and laid-back, but in reality I'm spending that time working on freelance character design, illustration, preparation for my classes, and various tasks around the house. I get to set my own schedule, but it's always full no matter what order I put things into. What I thought would be a great break where I could do a lot of my own work has been just as busy as the semesters when I'm teaching.

So I've been thinking a lot about an answer Marcelo Vignali gave in a great interview with Bobby Chiu a while back. Answering a question about how he finds time for figure drawing, he said he makes figure drawing non-negotiable. In other words, he schedules time for it, and when that time comes, no other task takes priority, no matter how urgent (of course this doesn't apply to the house burning down scenario. Or maybe it does: guess I don't know Marcelo well enough to say for sure).

I've taken that "non-negotiable" mindset with my personal art these last few months, and I'm so glad I did. I have a block of time scheduled for it every morning---not much, just an hour---but it's enough for me to chip away at stuff that comes out of my own head. I can't say I've gotten to the point where it's non-negotiable yet; there have been days when I've skipped it for a big deadline, but I'm getting pretty consistent. And amazingly, even slowly chipping away at it is deeply satisfying, and I find more energy for the jobs I have to do afterward. For me personally, it works best to not overthink what I use that time to paint on---sometimes an idea works out and sometimes it doesn't. That's not the part that matters.

One of the paintings I've been slowly chipping away at. Not because it's worth painting, but because it's good for me to sometimes paint stuff just for fun.

The reason for this post is that I know lots of artists personally who struggle to find time to draw or paint their own stuff. I know many skilled artists who haven't done a piece of their own for months or even years. Most are people in the industry who by all appearance have completely full schedules. And yet as I've scheduled in that time, I haven't noticed a deficit anywhere else. I'm somehow getting everything else done just fine. Maybe there was some slush time in my schedule that I didn't realize was there, or maybe that extra energy is making up for the lost time. Either way, if you're the person asking the question in the title, I recommend trying this. Doing your own art may not be urgent, but it is important, and if you treat it as if it is urgent, you'll be better off.

And while you're at it, go read this article.

Early Tinkerbell Designs for Disney Infinity

The one on the left is from early exploration when we were trying to figure out the style of Infinity. The right was a modification I did during Infinity 2.0 to see if it would work for the toy.

You can see the final turned out a bit different---I think Josh Black did the final design for the toy.

Infinity: Guardians of the Galaxy enemies

Various concepts for the Sakaaran enemies in Disney Infinity.

Gimme a Break

Something I started for a demonstration at the Toronto Schoolism Live workshop this year. Finally finished!

Some Gadgets from Disney Infinity

I was asked to design a robotic flying turret for AIM, but I figured there was no reason why it couldn't have a pilot.

A car-sized flying turret for Green Goblin? Sure, here you go.

I don't know if this made it into the game, it was supposed to be a Shield-issued version of the Green Goblin's glider

Some weapon designs from the Toy Story in Space playset, only a couple of these made the cut.

Hoverpirate

Something I forgot to post with the others.

This is the image I did the demonstration at the end of the atmospheric effects lesson.

Atmosphere examples from my Schoolism class

These are a bunch of examples I painted for the "Expressive Atmosphere" lesson of my Lighting for Story and Concept class.

Cover and tutorial for ImagineFX

 Finished this one recently. They pushed the saturation of the cover image into crazy land for some reason though, but I guess it turned out alright anyway. The full page image on the article is more what I imagined it should look like.

Symbols and Motifs Cheat Sheet

I've been wanting to make something like this to use in my design classes for a long time now: a quick reference guide for visual symbols. If contrast is the key to visual communication, symbols are the vehicle we use to create contrasts and making those contrasts meaningful, like words that make up a sentence, or sentences that make up a story. Having useful symbols at your fingertips is essential if you want to create designs that have a high propositional density (the link talks about graphic design only; maybe another post on how this applies to visual development later!).

This is not meant to be comprehensive: it doesn't include every meaningful line, or every version of a symbol, or every possible interpretation or meaning of the shapes. These meanings are only the ones I've run into most often (so far), and this chart doesn't include ancient meanings unless those meanings can be found or inferred naturally by a lay person.

That said, I'd love to hear your feedback. If you see errors, have suggestions for symbols that are missing, or think of meanings I should include, post them in the comments either here or on Facebook. I'm considering it an open document and I'll revise as many times as necessary until it's as useful a resource as possible!

Quick note on the negative context/positive context thing. These aren't just positive vs. negative associations: White text are meanings that will arise naturally in a neutral or positive context, while black text descriptions will only arise in cases where the context skews the way you're viewing that shape. For example:

In both examples, the triangles add an element of sharpness and danger to the designs (so sharpness and danger are white in the chart), but the context changes the way we perceive the oval in each. In the left, it softens the character and adds a sense of friendliness in contrast with the sharpness of the triangles. But in the negative context, the sphere appears extra weak and vulnerable. Let me know if that makes sense!

Large version here.

Hearthstone: Black Whelp

A little dragon I did for Hearthstone's Blackrock Mountain. You can actually see it animated (whoever did that, good job!) in the trailer here.

A Jumble of Jasmines

I didn't contribute much to the final Disney Infinity figure of Jasmine, but early on when we were figuring out the Disney Infinity style, I used Jasmine (among other characters) as a base to test out different styles.

This set was done during the dark days of our search---nothing we'd done was gaining traction and the art director keep asking for "something weird or edgy." That is why these are so messed-up looking.

"What kind of brushes did you use for this?" (My CS6 brushes)

As much as it is mocked by people, this is actually not a bad question! Although it can be difficult to answer, because it's not what the brush is that makes it great, it's what you use it for. That said, the tool you're using is still a critical part of what you accomplish: saying good painting is not about the brushes is like telling the mechanic that fixing the car isn't about the wrenches. I definitely learned this when I switched from Painter to Photoshop a couple years ago: I felt suddenly inept as a painter using all these clunky, awful brushes. This is when my long search for great brushes began.

The last time I posted some of my brushes, they were all in CS4. I've had various requests for my CS6 brushes, but I've hesitated to post them because my toolset was getting so large and unwieldy. I've found a way to organize them now that will hopefully make sense. Some of these are my favorites out of these collections, or from Chris Wahl's sets. His spatter and inking brushes are especially great, so if you like the ones I picked, I'd recommend you check out his full sets. The rest of the brushes are either heavily customized or created by myself.

I've been using and modifying a lot of brushes from the Kyle Webster Megapack lately also, which is absolutely worth the money, especially if you do a lot of inking.


So my new idea for organizing brushes is to put different categories of brush into separate toolsets, separated according to the type of work that needs to be done. Then if you use "Load Tool Presets," you can append however many preset groups you need. If a set gets too large then I have the option to break it into even more specific categories. This makes finding the brush I want while I'm painting faster and easier.

Here are my current categories. The title of each has the link to the brush download. You load these up from the Toolset menu, not from the brushes menu!

The Base Set

This brush set is mostly drawing brushes, but it includes some other tools I use all the time, like the rounded eraser and the Smudge Nice tool I created. The idea is to keep this set loaded and append the others to it. You'll notice that I use the tilt function a lot in my brushes---you'll need a Intros 4 or higher model to see what these brushes are really meant to do.


The Painting Set

I add this set in when I'm past the sketching phase and ready for painting. The occlusion brushes are a quick and dirty way to paint ambient occlusion around edges of objects. Again, you'll need the tilt function to use it.


Blenders

I have my two most used blending tools as part of the base set, but there are a bunch of other effects it's nice to have handy. This might be another set I load in when I start painting.


Spatter/Texture and Organic/effect brushes.

I put both of these in the "other" category; they're both specialized for when I need leaves, ground cover, or other textural effects. I imagine as the set grows that I'll separate character elements (fur) from environment elements (clouds and trees), but right now there aren't too many to keep track of. The way I see it, if you like this system of organization, you could add your own tool sets of tech elements, particle effects, or whatever you like, without bogging down your UI or workflow with too many things all at once. Take what you want, delete what you don't, and have fun!

Disney Infinity: Guardians of the Galaxy

I was watching the Guardians of the Galaxy tonight and thought it was time to post these. I didn't do a lot of concept for the Guardians, but I did at least one take on each character (except Rocket, where I just painted Jason's version).

Disney Infinity 3.0

I did some work on Disney Infinity 3.0 before I left Avalanche to work at BYU, so I'm feeling pretty proud/happy seeing the stuff coming out about it. Here's a great video showing the toy design process, and introducing you to some of the Avalanche concept and modeling team (I miss you guys!) and there's a bit of art I did in there as well.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/05/06/star-wars-meets-disney-designing-infinity-s-new-toys.aspx