Stylized Characters for Freelance Projects

Welcome to Stylized Characters Part 2! – Stylized Characters for Freelance Projects.

This course sheds light on the daily routine of a freelance artist, with the aim of helping you find your own path as a professional in this industry. In this introductory lesson, Maria gives you an overview of what to expect from this value-packed course.

The way you express a message is almost as important as the message itself. In this lesson, Maria explains the basics of Communication Theory and how it’s essential to understanding your audience and ensuring the message of the artwork is received by them in the way that you intend.

She explains Berlos’s SMCR Model with clear, practical examples and demonstrates an easy method to use the principles in your freelance projects.

2.1

Communication Theory

06:10

2.2

The Relation Between Style and Content

08:40

2.3

課題

06:09

Maria takes an example from a past project, showing how she delivered style samples to land a job with a publishing company. She discusses how to nail the style of your artwork to meet the client’s expectations and connect with the target audience.

Don’t know who your target audience is? Maria will show you how to identify them.

3.1

Delivering style samples to clients

05:09

3.2

What is the Target Audience?

06:49

Maria explains what a marketing persona is, why it’s useful and how to create one. The decision-making and design process gets a lot easier once you know which audience you are targeting and what their interests are.

She also sets up a mock brief to follow throughout this course, and shows you how you can do the same to prepare for future real-world projects.

4.1

What is a marketing persona?

03:02

4.2

Introducing a mock brief

03:27

4.3

Persona Walkthrough and Assignment Example

04:39

How do I set my price?? This question has plagued many freelance artists, and while there is no one overarching answer across the board, there ARE important factors to take into consideration when setting your prices.

Maria discusses this subject in detail, giving tips for maintaining a good working relationship with clients, while at the same time not underselling your work.

5.1

Setting your prices

05:01

5.2

How to write a pro-forma quote

05:24

5.3

Your work has value

02:22

Find out what tools freelancers use to streamline their creative process and organize their work to avoid things falling through the cracks or deadlines being missed.

Maria shares the exact software she uses for backups, reference collections, communication with clients and file organization, and recommends strategies she personally uses, which you can implement right away.

6.1

File Sharing and Hosting

05:57

6.2

Task Management Tools

01:39

6.3

Software for Reference Collection

01:56

6.4

Communication channels

02:58

Taking the basic silhouette a step further, Maria adds secondary features and details.

Discover how she quickly creates multiple variations of the character and numbers them carefully, in order to choose the very best one.

10.1

Adding Secondary features to the original thumbnails

03:18

10.2

Iterating pose 18

05:49

10.3

Iterating pose 13

04:29

10.4

Delivering to Client or working for your portfolio

02:00

Working further on the character by playing around with hairstyles and outfits, Maria puts together features from different options to finalize the character’s look.

Remember that these features should be in line with the worldbuilding and the character’s personality and relatable to your target audience.

11.1

Finalising the Primary and Secondary Features

06:26

11.2

Creating outfit and hairstyle options

05:29

11.3

Introducing lineart

03:18

Have fun with colors in this lesson! You’ll discover practical steps for creating base layers of color, making it easy to adjust the tones and hues later on if you want to change them.

Maria also discusses colour palette options for the character and the reasoning behind choosing certain colors.

12.1

Colouring for Concept Art

07:38

12.2

Creating multiple palettes

05:22

A slightly tricker task: Creating an animal character in the chosen style. It can be done though!

Maria demonstrates how to choose poses and stay consistent with the main stylistic features she developed, while factoring in the animal’s unique anatomy and personality. She demonstrates all this with a few different animals, hitting ‘two birds with one stone’.

15.1

Designing a stylised animal

04:40

15.2

Stylised shapes and iterations

04:05

15.3

Demoing different animals

03:59

The way you express a message is almost as important as the message itself. In this lesson, Maria explains the basics of Communication Theory and how it’s essential to understand your audience and ensure the message of the artwork is received by them in the way that you intend.

She explains Berlos’s SMCR Model with clear, practical examples and demonstrates an easy method to use the principles in your freelance projects.

18.1

Colouring the male adult character

02:59

18.2

Colouring the female adult character

03:03

Let your imagination go wild in this lesson: Drawing a fantastical creature of your choice!

In this video you’ll discover tips on how to use real-life animal references to work off of, mix and match animals using the lasso tool and create cool fantasy colour palettes.

21.1

Using reality to fuel your imagination

06:55

21.2

Creating humanoid creatures

05:04

21.3

Using colour to enhance fantastical creatures

04:12

In this video, Maria wraps up the main goals of the course and gives hints for further independent studying on the subject. She also gives some advice regarding the submission of a character design project to clients or the creation of a portfolio for personal use.

22.1

Revealing the final line-up

06:37

22.2

Delivering the final product

06:25