Designing Bitmap Characters in Moho 13

We will begin the process of sketching by outlining the shape of the head.

We continue the process of sketching by covering the hair and ponytail.

Here we continue the process by sketching out the eyes, nose and mouth.

Now we move down and sketch up the body.

Here we cover how to sketch up the limbs, including rounding off the limbs for easier rigging in the future.

Once your sketch is complete, there are a few simple rules you can follow for breaking through biases and cleaning up the sketch.

We begin the inking process with the head. Here we will draw clear, bold lines to make the line work pop.

The next piece of the inking process is the hair.

In this video we ink up the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth.

With the head complete, we move down and tackle the collar, neck, jacket and shirt.

Now we ink the arms, legs, hands and feet.

Using the paint bucket tool and eyedropper to reference colors from the concept, we begin the process of coloring.

Continuing the coloring process, we move down and tackle the hair, hair strands, pony tail and eyebrows.

Here we color the eyebrows and hair.

Here we color the arms, shirt, jacket and legs.

Now with everything filled in, it's easy to see our layers are out of order. So let's take a moment to reorder everything to make the design process more clear.

It's good to take a moment and look over your design to ensure everything is as clean as possible. This process can include erasing lines, touching up areas that may appear messy and more.

Here we use Moho's masking abilities to enclose the eyelids into the boundaries of the eyeballs to ensure a cleaner design with little fuss.

Our final clean up work in this section involves fixing the belt buckle and shirt so it doesn't appear to stick out awkwardly.

Here we sketch out seven additional mouth poses to be used for lip syncing and other animation purposes if and when you decide to rig your character.

Here we utilize the sketches to ink and fill a group of seven additional mouth poses.

Here we sketch two additional hand poses the left arm for added variety if you decide to rig this character for animation.

Now we move over and sketch the two hand poses for the back arm.

With the hands sketched up, we can add clean lines and fill.

Using a reference, I offer tips and create two rough sketches of a profile and forward facing head. This will allow you to proceed on your own and ink and fill in these heads following the previous steps listed.

Using a paint brush and dark ink, we can create layers and cover all areas we plan to shade.

Switching over to a bright color, we move to the opposite end of character and add highlights to showcase lighting and depth.

With the ink laid down for the shading and highlighting, we can group, mask, and soften the lighting effects for a more subtle look.

Here we take a little time to polish up the design before finalizing.

I share my final thoughts on the course.