A Tutorial Masterpost

Les’ get organic, cuz bones should be insects.

Also , hip dips <3

disorganised thoughts

i want to tell you something and i hope it helps

hi! i’m absolutely in love with ur OCs and ur art :0... how do you make ur characters so diverse? (currently struggling with same face syndrome lol)

TYSM <33 

I think it has a lot to do with big shapes and the relationship between the characters features. So with my OCs for an example I made the shape of their heads very distinct. None of them have the same shape, and the same goes for their eyes, noses and mouths. If you run out of shapes you can just change the relationships, like have one character with a square face, big round eyes and a small mouth while another has the same square face but with flat eyes and a low nose. 

This is used in siluettes and body shapes as well! One specific thing you can keep in mind is where a character’s weight is. Annix has a very square body with mass evenly distributed over her arms, chest and legs, while Aligra has all of her weight focused on her wide hips and big hands/feet. It helps to look at the body type of yourself and the people around you. I have long spindly arms and legs with most of my weight in my boxy hips!

Weight can also be used to vary the characters body language: Corvet has an exaggerated arch to her back while Kiropt pushes her pelvis out in a slouch. This movement in their spines completely defines how we read their personalities. Corvet looks high strung and snobby while Kiropt looks relaxed and careless.

When it comes to humans you get a lot of diversity for free if you make your characters different ages, etnicities, sizes etc. The most distinct differences between etnicities is the shape relationship I talked about earlier. If you make one of your characters white and one east-asian, the white character will naturally have thinner lips and a more pronounced browbone which already makes them different before you’ve even designed them.

Last thing I’m going to mention is perspective. Sometimes your characters faces look too similar because you always draw people from the same angle! Just making them look up, down or to the side a little can make a huge difference. Especially if you draw really stylized art since you can’t draw a nose viewed from the front with the same lineart as a nose viewed slightly from the left.

I know this explanation is a lil messy but I didn’t have time to do a proper tutorial. Thank you for asking though, and good luck with your art! :)

disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.

if a white person reblogs this and adds something stupid I'm going to bite and kick you like a wild animal

I have to draw a lot of gold and metal for my work, but wasn't happy with any of the metal tutorials i could find around. I prefer really specific instruction, so after some research i put together what i think works as a generalist's guide/tutorial. Not perfectly accurate, but i hope it's helpful!

how to hit your guys with the crust rays

a friend of mine was having trouble with a character of hers, he was middle-aged but looked too young, so she came to me for help. i'm something of a middle-aged-man-fan so i whipped up this quick thing to help her out. it might be useful to somebody out there so i'll share it here too!

Drawing Heads and Faces: Cheekbones

I’ve found that drawing the head starts to make a lot more sense once you start thinking about cheekbones and cheeks, and how the fit into the head structure.

You might be aware of the Mysterious Indent that Looks Good Next to the Outer Part of the Eye, or the Mystery Indent for short. 

Drawing a Mystery Indent may serve you fine if you only draw the head from flat angles, but it falls apart when you get adventurous.

Why isn’t this making sense anymore?

Drawing a ‘Mystery Indent’ is an attempt to imply cheekbones without knowing how they actually incorporate into the skull, and this is why it looks so unconvincing when you use it to draw the head in anything other than ¾ view.

The cheekbones wrap around the head and eye sockets from above the bridge of the nose.  The concave you draw if you draw the ‘Mystery Indent’ is a misunderstanding.  There is no concave.  You should instead be thinking of this as where the eye socket/brow overlaps the (convex!) cheekbone.

Compare the cheekbones on both sides for placement.  They should match up and correspond with each other.

(Knowing cheekbone structure helps when drawing gaunt characters, because their cheekbones may stick out.  Remember to compare the cheekbone placement on both sides!)

* This is part of a much larger tutorial I’m working on about head, face, and facial feature structure.  Hopefully more to come eventually?

Do you have any tips for drawing body horror/ horror in general?

ooh ooh imma put this one under a cut cuz it’s gonna be long

Keep reading

Link to my face/head tutorial

This is more just some messy thoughts rather than a tutorial, but some people might find it useful?? The best tips I can give is still just to practice. Take a life drawing class if you can, or just use images of people. You can also learn a lot by copying the work of artists you like (just don’t claim it as your own, of course).

I do have a book recommendation though! Andrew Loomis “Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth”. I remember it used to be extremely easy to find free PDFs of that book, but then it got back in print so I’m not sure. It’s a very old book.