I took a class @skillshare about making Creative Characters by Charles Yan, a Taiwanese illustrator.
I was a bit skeptical at the beginning for the class and I tried to carry on till the end because English is not fluently spoken by the instructor, but I still try my best to finish it as a way to respect the hard work of the instructor.
Its very rare to see online classes, specially in art related subjects that the instructor not showing videos on how to do things. This is the case, the instructor only used kind of slides to present the class.
After the introduction and the first class, I didn’t feel hesitate and want to continue to watch the rest of the class, maybe because the topics are so interest and the videos are short. Each video is about 2 to 3 mins to explain how to do a certain monster / character design.
After finished to watch the whole class, I decided to make my own monster under the instructions from the video to see how and what I can create.
The class has taught me and really open my mind at creating doodle monsters!
Black and White are my favorite color, maybe due to this fact, I tried to put even more effort while creating my monster.
Each of the monsters from Charles are really something new to me and if asked to pick one for the project, I decided to pick Assembled Monsters. Don’t ask me why, maybe because I like things organized with order.
I agree with Charles that creating something has to have some restrictions, and it is from restriction that we can come up something new.
For my monster, I called it Medieval Monster, was inspired and developed based on Medieval elements and what can we think of that era? War, castle, weapons and something that most of us didn’t really realize is snail, yes I am mentioning snails that we often see after rain! Until now in the present days still cannot find the answer why in medieval paintings have knights fighting snails, which is odd for us, but if that been shown, there should be a reason to be found.
Ok, let me continue explain about my monster and forget about history.
The elements that I chose for my monster is:
1- Shield becomes legs
2- Horn becomes arms
3- Castle becomes head
4- Snail becomes body
And to make the final touch, I add flags at the top of the head / castle just to show to the audience the castle, i mean, the monster belongs to someone, he serves some lord.
Tools I used:
Normal ordinary paper A4 size (photocopy paper)
For the doodles I used Unipin 0.8mm and Chinese calligraphy ink (japanese or korean ink also work the same) for painting the character in black with Chinese brush.
The lettering I used fountain pen from Lamy and nib size is 1.9mm.
I had a great time while doing this monster, I can develop it more, but for now I think that’s alright and I am sure I will remind the steps I learn here for future monster or character developments.
Finally the monster looks so different after I added color and texture, these are really important final touches to make the whole drawing alive!