The creation of a portrait of a video game’s or cartoon’s character is a separate area of design that forms a basis of a character’s idea and is frequently used in creating illustrations for cards in card battlers, illustrative icons, illustrations for dialogues and more. The concept artist should not only have the skill of professional drawing and deep knowledge in anatomy but also understand the main distinguishing features of a character according to the physiognomy and how to correctly highlight them. In making your character more expressive, catchy, and memorable you should consider a lot of things: 

• The influence of age 
• The use of “accessories” 
• Facial expressions 
• History of a character
• Styling and more 

You should know how to uncover some similarities and character traits as clearly as possible by using, for example, the exaggeration of proportions.

We at Room 8 Studio are fierce believers that drawing a digital portrait takes practice, but it’s worth it. In this article, we are going to reveal the must-knows are necessary for proper creating a video game character concept of any complexity. Get to know what it takes to draw a really impressive character from one of our expert concept artists Olga Starodubtseva.

Character Portrait Begins With A Mentor

The author of this article is a professional who knows exactly what she creates! Olga Starodubtseva – Lead Character Concept Artist at Room 8 Studio has been working in the gaming industry for the past seven years and has cooperated with globally acknowledged companies such as Gameloft and Plarium. Olga is the founder of Karamba Art School that runs online courses on concept art and digital painting. This is her professional hobby. 

Olga has successfully mentored more than 200 students and helped them find employment in the leading game development companies! And, she constantly seeks extraordinary talents to join her team in Room 8 Studio. Moreover, as a CG industry thought leader and top-notch professional, Olga shares her accumulated expertise in computer graphics to a live audience at games industry conferences like Games Gathering, DevGAMM Talks, and CG Event.

From Theory To Practice

Whether you’re working from a cast, a live model or just imagination, it’s essential to use one of the main skills. It is not a skill of competent drawing or knowledge of anatomy for a concept artist, but the ability to affect the viewer’s mind. A professional draws not only what he sees, but what he knows – all in one.

Yes, knowledge and practice are the main distinguishing features of a professional artist. Studying the artworks of famous artists in different styles and epochs can become a good habit to evolve your skills. As long as you keep drawing, you’ll move forward. All professional concept artists do it, and that is why they have such amazing results.

To illustrate what we mean, let’s look at two images below: (A – professional) and (B – amateur). Both of them have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. So what’s the difference? It’s difficult to say in one word. It seems to be obvious, but how to explain? 

If we analyze the art pieces of professional artists, we see that they all adhere to the rules and canons of harmony, anatomy, and color science, and that is why they have such a great result, as in example (A). First of all, it is essential to understand that a portrait is not just a skin with a bulge in the shape of a nose, lips, eyes or ears. The head has a bone base, which in turn dramatically affects the appearance.

Skull, Its Structure, And Muscles

Craniometry. (from the Greek kranion, skull, and metrio, measure). It is the study of the shape and form of the skull. There is a technique of facial reconstruction according to bones of the skull, its relief, and structure, that also named an anthropological reconstruction of the appearance. The practice of craniometry consists of taking precise ‘landmarks’ on the skull, its “constructive points”, facial angle, gender, head shape types.

Head muscles. There are other formations in the facial area that have little connection with the bone base, but also have a substantial effect on the appearance: muscles, permanent skin folds (ears, eyelids, lips), as well as subcutaneous fatty tissue and cartilage. The muscles of the head are divided into two groups: facial and chewing. Almost all of them are arranged in pairs symmetrically.

Strive To Harmony In Everything!

There are two indestructible constants in nature – chaos, and order. And there is a harmony somewhere between them. You may hear a lot about the golden ratio –  a proportion or harmonious division, pleasing to the human eye. The ‘rule of thirds’ technique, as a simplified version of the golden ratio, was used everywhere by Renaissance artists in their paintings. And you should not be skeptical about the usage of this technique nowadays, because you can see the “rule of thirds” in action today in almost any frame of any movie.

Another description of the law of harmony in nature is the Fibonacci numbers – the elements of a sequence (“Liber Abaci” (1202)) in which each successive number is equal to the sum of the two previous ones.

You can find the “golden ratio” also in a variety of living systems, for example, spiral structures, phyllotaxis (leaf sequence), parameters of biorhythms or body proportions. The same proportions are also present in the ratio of color, tone, and of course in anatomy! Since we all are a part of the universe, all these proportions are directly applicable to us. Human is a totally proportional creature.

Characteristic Features In A Portrait

There are so-called ideal proportions of the face, also named as the “golden mask”. The closer the proportions of a human face to this standard, the more attractive it seems.

During the experiment, in which lots of photos of beautiful men and women were combined, an average ‘beauty standard’ was found. Surely, the resulting image was beautiful and attractive, but absolutely not remarkable and featureless. It would seem that people do not like extremeness in facial features, for example, а long or wide nose, obvious asymmetry, a small forehead and the like, but these deviations from the norm, the non-standard features, in fact, are the most memorable in the appearance!

Speaking about a portrait, the first and perhaps the most essential question is HOW TO MAKE YOUR PORTRAIT LOOK LIKE THE PORTRAYED PERSON? When you draw a portrait you need to understand and take into account what distinguishes your model from others. The main elements which help you create a unique portrait and to convey the similarity or emphasize the characteristic features are the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheekbones, lips, chin, angle of the lower jaw and ears. You can change a couple of characteristic features and the whole expression of the face will immediately change.

The principles of human face structure are the same for all. The only difference is in the distinction of the shapes and development of certain elements, for example, the nose can be long or very small, and lips can be plump or very thin and so on. This gives the understanding to the professional artist on how to transfer the similarity into the portrait.

This technique is often used by make-up artists. With makeup, wigs, whiskers, noses and more these professionals can completely change the appearance of an actor and create the desired image and tell the character’s story or their background details.

The lifestyle and occupation of a person also greatly affect the appearance.

Age Features

In the process of aging human faces change a lot, but most characteristic features remain unchanged, and some of them even begin to appear more clearly. Mimic folds and wrinkles become pronounced and reflect the emotional side of a person. A gloomy person has wrinkles fixed on the forehead, a sad person has the corners of the mouth and eyes lowered, the characteristic features of a merry fellow are the pronounced nasolabial folds because of frequent laughter, the muscles are always in tone and pull everything upwards.

A Few Interesting Facts About Human Face:

• The nose and ears continue to grow throughout life.
• Teeth undergo radical changes. In their complete absence, alveolar part of the mandible almost atrophies and the lips drop inside.
• Children have almost no wrinkles due to the presence of collagen and the absence of life stories imprinted on their faces.
• Very small children and newborns have clearly visible fatty deposits in the cheeks, which eventually disappear.
• A child’s nose is mostly bent upwards and called snub-nose. And only with age, when the nasal cartilage ossifies, the nose can become, for example, bumpy or hawk.

Same Same, But Different: ‘Accessories’

We are talking about individual details of appearance: the position and size of the elements of the face (eyes, nose, lips, cheekbones, etc.), birthmarks, pigmentation, the color of eyes, hair and skin, scars, etc.; as well as about some accessories complementing the appearance of the character: earrings, glasses, national decorative elements and jewelry, tattoos and more. Such decorative elements can emphasize and enrich the image, as well as become a bright detail in focus.

A face can significantly change after applying different “accessories”.

Facial Expressions And Emotions

When it comes to facial expressions, a mirror can help you. You might not know, but each Disney animator at Animation Studio has a mirror on their desktop because they drew all the facial expressions of cartoon characters from themselves.

The Stylization Of A Video Game Or Cartoon Character  

While creating a character portrait or illustration, artists often exaggerate the shape of a face or its individual elements to make the image catchy and memorable, as well as to match the style of the game. For example, it can be a hyperbolic enlargement or reduction, some sort of deformation. Exaggerating proportions also helps to convey the aspects of the character’s nature and the distinctive features of his image as vividly as possible.

Each of the points described above gives some insights and keys to creating a truly excellent character for a video game, with memorable features and characteristics. For example, knowledge of anatomy lies at the core and helps set correct proportions for your character at the sketch stage. And after that, step by step, your understanding of harmony, characteristic features, facial expressions, and emotions, and the influence of ‘accessories’ helps make your character design catchy and remarkable.

Summing up, it’s worth to say that the choice is always yours! Whatever you choose – to study anatomy or not, apply the laws of harmony and color study or rely only on your imagination, constantly practice and polish your skills or settle for what you already know — that’s always up to you. The only question is whether you paint as a professional artist or as an amateur.

Does your game need great characters? Tell us the details of their life story, behavior patterns and traits (nature) and Room 8 Studio professional artists come up with really expressive game characters concepts! Contact us to see how we can leverage our experience to create the game of your dreams.