Creating characters and why to record your sketching sessions.

A quick look on how I begin the process of creating a character. It's all scribbles at first that follow a gesture, in order to at some point start adding details. I have recorded a lot of my sketching sessions and deleted more than half because I didn't like the resulting characters. We usually see only a finished product, but little of the search or how a character is built. Let me offer a simple glimpse on the preparation that it takes to tell a visual story.

There are different reasons why one should keep a record of your sketches. First of all to realize one's weaknesses. Mine is simply that I pay too much attention to a facial expression, and not to the complete gesture.

Including every gesture image you can perform is the first step, learning how to come up with a workable mannequin would be the next one. I guess you should say that stick figure will always come first, then a way to flesh it out, so that later you can ad shape to finish with color and shading.

Also imagination can play tricks on you, any aid you can get, a friend posing for you, a paid model, an art class, something that help you get a clear idea of how to play with anatomy just to later construct your own version of things.

The main characters in this session ended up being a double wielding killer, a dangling web slinger, and a modern day assassin with a large gun shooting from above to... that I don't know.

These are not my usual characters, they come from: www.lineofaction.com I use that website since it's made to help us with creator's block, anatomy references and poses. There are also videos you can follow on youtube, that have different poses and models. Usually with clothed and nude options. I keep going to line-of-action because it's been improved over the years, albeit not largely, but consistently. It is my daily way of warming up so that I may reduce mistakes when working on my own projects.

The video in the beginning shows a 30 minutes session where I had a certain time to draw a given picture, so one must work first with gesture in order to get ready to move on to mannequin up to the point of almost having enough time to a complete drawing. I strongly suggest that you try to work in the same way, making different and many gesture images first, before you start including shapes and/or any form of color or shading.

Hope this helps you understand the process of creation better, tell me what you think.