Character Design: Goliath - Part 3

In today’s demonstration we enter the 3rd part of a gargantuan comic art demonstration for a character called Goliath. This guy is a dual Minigun wielding brute from Rob Arnold’s Replicator Comic Book series - and if you’d like to find out more about the book, be sure to visit the link below.

REPLICATOR Remastered: https://igg.me/at/Replicator1/x/20658139#/

If you missed the previous tutorials in this series, you can check them out via the links below.

Comic Book Character Design: Goliath - Part 1
Comic Book Character Design: Goliath - Part 2

Part 3 focuses on the final line art for Goliath’s massive mini guns, which are attached to either of his forearms. As for the rest of the character, well at this point his major contours have been defined, shadows dropped in and the rendering complete. So the mini guns are really the final component to his main character concept.

Luckily we built somewhat of a blue print for his arsenal of choice, to ensure the barrels and body of the Miniguns were all lined up and foreshortened in the correct perspective before going over the top with polished line work.

Defining the primary outline for these Miniguns is our first step. This requires an extremely steady hand and conscious control of my stylus as I trace out each contour as straight as possible. Something that really helps me out in a big way here is to keep my wrist ridged, while rotating my arm at the elbow as I extend the line. Doing so stabilizes my arm and allows me to draw out each line for a longer distance.

Once the Miniguns have been defined with sharply executed line work, it’s time to enter into the rendering stage. The rendering will play a big part in lighting the forms throughout the Miniguns, as well as describing their surface. But primarily, it’ll allow us to visually indicate their material.

Oftentimes it can be difficult to choose a rendering style which is appropriate for the texture and material of the forms you’re shading, and so requires a little experimentation on your behalf in order to get it coming across correctly. In some cases, choosing the wrong approach may mean taking two steps back and completely redoing your shading, if it’s not properly conveying the surface characteristics of the form.

That was certainly the case for me in this instance. My first attempt to render Goliath’s Miniguns resulted in a shaded finish that described them as having somewhat metallic surface. But it just didn’t look shiny enough for my liking. I wanted a material that appeared glossier.

So I went back and erased the whole lot, as you’ll see in this video. I got rid of hours of work so that I could get the rendering on Goliath’s Miniguns to look just right. In the end, they ended up with a much more reflective appearance, as if their surface was chrome plated. These new visuals were a perfect fit, and well worth the extra time and energy spent to do this concept justice.

I hope that you gain a ton of insight out of this demonstration and that you take away some of my best tactics and techniques for rendering chromium coated materials and surfaces.

PLEASE NOTE: The Goliath video series may not always be available for free. There’s a good chance it’ll be taken down, re-edited and packaged up as a premium product later on. So if you find this lesson valuable, please make the most of it while it’s available for free, by taking notes and putting as much of it as you can into practice. Save the video onto your hard drive as well if you’d like, so that you can refer back to it later on.

Thanks so much for watching, until next time – keep on drawing!
-Clayton

Software Used: Clip Studio Paint/Manga Studio

If you like the video, show your support by commenting, sharing or subscribing.

​

Comic Art Community - https://www.howtodrawcomics.net/comic-art-community/
How to Draw Comics .NET - http://www.howtodrawcomics.net/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/howtodrawcomics/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/howtodrawcomics
Twitter - https://twitter.com/howtodrawcomics
Tumblr - http://howtodrawcomics.tumblr.com/
Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/howtodrawcomics/