THE MAKING OF CHARACTERS FOR A MUSIC VIDEO STAGE 1

My first Project for 2019 

STAGE 1

I came back from Holiday, after seeing Family in Ghana, and I wanted to settle back into my first project of the year, so I went online to make an online folio of my work which I did , and put myself around to clients who wanted my service.

So I came in contact with a client from Germany, who wanted some characters for a Music Video, for a Band, that had a Guitarist as a lead singer and a Drummer as part of the band, and the only reference I had was a Music video of the Guitarist and the drummer, singing a song, by a Band called Mortal Host. 

The Music video was already created, these characters , needed to be recreated in a style that is a similar to the style of the Music video, and so I set out to make this first version of the Guitarist, and from looking at the Music video, my thoughts about creating him, really came first from replaying the video, hearing the song, and putting the mood of the character in a pleasant state of mind, 

because when I create characters for myself in my own personal projects, I do love to listen to Music, to inspire me, and the music I listen to really affects my mood in when I create a character from mind to draw on paper, but with this Project I had to plan bit by bit so here are the stages below, so let me just explain my thought process and mind set where I am when I'm creating these characters.

THE MUSIC BAND ROUGH  LAYOUT STAGE 1

So the thing with me, is I really love to move around in, out and around in the open, so a lot of the time I spend a lot time in Cafes to use WiFi,and get some table space to create what I need to create, so while I was out and about I'm in a Cafe in London which I regular go to, and I have a few sketchbooks, where I  draw characters, and from the client first initial instructions,

 The wanted me to , he wants to Design the Music Band in a likeness of the Animation, where the Music Band had an a video, for a few minutes,  on YouTube  link and so as watched the video, while i'm in the Cafe, I begin to Mimic the style here 

down below as you can see, I'm using a Biro ball point that's black, I've sketched it out, and when i'm done sketching, I use my Smart phones camera as a scanner, I take a snap of the image of the characters from the sketchbook on the table, and then I upload all my images into the computer, then edit my image in Photoshop,and this is just the start with PROCESS 1

PROCESS 1

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GUITARIST ROUGH  LAYOUT STAGE 1

 PROCESS 2

Now this is stage where I edit each character in Photoshop, and separate the characters, into Layers, and my main aim is to add small detail to the character here , by drawing small digital brush marks in Photoshop, and after this has been done, in Photoshop, you can trace over this rough guitarist character, and make outer and inner edges of the character, where things are clean and well presented, where a professional look is really what the client really wants to see. 

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GUITARIST BLACK AND WHITE NEAT  STAGE 1

 PROCESS 3

Now within this Process I've used a separate layer called the transparent layer, and I've traced over the very rough character of before and I've used a digital brush to trace over the character to make this professional result, and here I've added way more detail before, from changing the emotions of the face and the over all detail of the character, to fit perfectly within this frame ready to colour in Photoshop, within the next faze, and that's what I love about drawing in digital is that you can edit your so quickly and efficiently without much issue. 

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GUITARIST IN COLOUR   STAGE 1

 PROCESS  4

Now here is the fun Part of using Photoshop to paint this Guitarist, and let me tell you all something when you have a painting editing program like this and you've just created a character from scratch the fun times are really ahead of ya when you come to colour a character in, by since i'm working for 

this clients vision, my only reference is the Music video YouTube link  (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0NlaKtb_Dk     ) and as you can see this where I had to copy the colours of this characters colour for his body and face, and here I just really tried to keep the colours as the same as possible to make sure the video with character I was making had to 

have a likeness to video and the style of the characters made from the video, and I got feedback from the character from the client. 

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DRUMMER ROUGH  LAYOUT

  PROCESS 1

The next character I put into Photoshop, is a rough sketch of the drummer, again as I said before I took reference from the Music Video to draw these characters in my own style, but also to resemble the actual characters that are represented originally, I really felt with this drummer, he was very cheerful from look of the video animated i really got that vibe, so i had to sketch him this way to keep the essence of the vibe I felt from the video on YouTube of the Music band, called Mort Host. 

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DRUMMER NEAT LAYOUT

  PROCESS 2

As I did before with the guitarist in process 1 I have done the same for the drummer, and drawing the drummer was a little trickier, because the positioning of the drums and the characters hands were an issue to try to correct as I had these issues for a couple days, so how I rectified this issues was to look at the video, and make sure the angles are spot in how I drew this characters, and it worked, because once I was able to complete this issue, from rough to neat, the character as you can see, is ready to be coloured in, so here I digitally painted over the rough drawing from process 1 on a separate layer in Photoshop, and then I closed any dots on the pixels of the imagery of the drawn drummer 

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DRUMMER COLOURED  LAYOUT

  PROCESS 3

Here again I used Photoshop in layers again, and I do apologise if I didn't explain what layers are in Photoshop just in case you know, i'll give you a quick run through, so basically when you import any image into Photoshop, that image automatically is a single image, that automatically creates a layer.

with that layer you can manipulate the image, to build your image up in Photoshop, where you can still keep the original first image that you open in Photoshop, but if you were to add to your layers of what ever image that you would open, it would give you more flexibility and variety to build your image up in a very interesting way where you could add depth and a multitude of ways to really stretch the image in ways you couldn't imagine.

So as for this drummer, I really built this character up with layers, of block simple colour, where I pretty much copied The Most Host Music video colours and kept the same energy of colour in the characters created for the Most Host Music Video,.

The only issue I had was my Wacom tablet that at times can play up on me to be none responsive at times, that can make creating of the work, fiddly at times, but hay ho when you enjoy making Art for yourself or others, its kind of part of the programme things can happen and you deal with it  just because it doesn't take away from whatever your doing that you enjoy, and yes you guessed it at this 

staged I can say I really am beginning to enjoy this project, just because although there were guidelines there was a sense of freedom while I was making these characters, that I couldn't but separate myself from them, I know this will sound weird, but I took so much pride in making these characters, in such a way I felt I was giving birth to them. 

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 FEED BACK FROM THE CLIENT 

So the FEED BACK I got back from the client, was the character looked okay, but it was too happy,  a little too goofy and it wasn't dark enough in terms of mood, and the characters were made as a whole image rather than separate layers of the image of the guitarist, being a whole as well as the drummer the same issue was the same. 

The solution for what the client wanted was the images of both music band members to be on separate layers, where you can separate the arms, separate the legs and other parts of the body, so the client can animate these characters in Flash. 

MY THOUGHTS 

My response was I took everything the client said on board, but I was a little confused, by the look of the characters being a little goofy or happy, and I was a little bit irritated with myself at first because I drew these characters as a whole image, and I felt the communication between 

 the client and myself,

could of been better, so I do take some blame in not asking the right questions at times, but it's a learning experience and although I'm the hardest on myself, because I wanna give my best to the client, I just have to accept in life changes happen whether we feel we are perfect or not at times, change happens and change is good, and so while I was making all these to characters, I really felt a 

deep connection to learning more about how to make animation characters in a way I've never done before, and there's a hidden reward I feel that's , you always  gain more , than you loose if your looking to grow as an Artist, so I set out on my new course to separate these characters into layers, and everything in my process please scroll down to see below.

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THE AFTERMATH OF MY THOUGHTS TO RECTIFY SOME ISSUES


So if you remember in the previous section where I spoke about Layers, and I spoke about how Photoshop works with importing images, and the fact that each image holds a layer which is an attribute that you can build a multitude of different layers, to make an image or even separate an image into pieces, I really hope you guys are beginning to understand , because if your still a little confused that's okay, when I was in College I studied Art and design, and I needed images to really explain what a layer was and how it works on Photoshop, to understand better how layers made a up a whole image.

So what I had to do according to feedback from the client was ( to separate the characters limbs, head, body and other parts of the Guitarists and the drummers images so, the client can use these characters in flash, so below i'm going to show you the characters being re edited image wise,
and I must admit this was very pain staking job, because I had to separate one image into so many

pieces of one images, and add expressions to the face, but even though this was a little tough at times with my Wacom tablet being a little fiddly at times,I never lost my enthusiasm to bring these characters to life, with the client being the main operator of this, so the process is down below of the layers which are separate pieces of the images, part of one image coming together.


WHAT YOU ARE SEEING BELOW ARE SEPARATE LAYERS OF ONE IMAGE



THE GUITARIST 

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DRUMMER  

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THE AFTERMATH OF THE LAYERS CHARACTERS

So the feedback after from client after doing what you see above is they liked what I did, now the needed me to a couple more characters with a few environments, which is all part of the contract initially. So now between contact with client on what to do next, and reflecting on how i'm going approach the phase of this Music video project, in terms of layering in a better than before, because

one things I learned about layering, before with the band the Guitarist and Drummer, it was so complex to separate the layers into bits that it took so much time before, that i decided to draw each part of the body on a separate layer, that meant, I could separate the image of the character easily, than separate one image into several layers of pieces of one image that would take so long to complete.

I just decided to learn my lesson, from last time and make things  bit simple, in how I created my layers, to added my ease to how I approach building the image, up with more ease of how I would animate these characters if I were the client, so I had to put myself in the clients place to see what he needed.

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Thank you very much for reading please stay tuned for seeing more of this Project the Mortal host Music video, I'll update you guys on my content on the process of this project there's a  lot to see keep your eyes peeled,as soon as I get back so follow me on twitter, 

have a great day !!!!!!!

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