“Creating game character – part 1 ” by Les Padrew
Drawing a Character Template
A good template starts with a front view of the character. The character should have its legs separated and its arms out straight. Some modelers prefer to have the charactes arms straight out to the sides like an airplane,but I prefer to have them down a bit because most of the time a charactes arms will be down. Figure 1 shows the front view of a character in Corel Painter. Placing the arms out from the body will make it easier to attach a skeleton to the character for animation.
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I like drawing characters in Corel Painter because I can adjust and change things in the drawing without having to worry about the paper surface when erasing.Figure 1 shows a drawing of a pirate girl in Painter.Notice the position of her arms and legs.Also notice that the flowing part of her sash is out away from the body.
A good template needs a front, side, and back view of the character. Each view needs to fit exactly over the others,so I like to use Paintes Tracing Paper function with the Clone function to help me build the other views.
First,select Clone from the File menu to create a clone image of the front view.
2. Minimize the original front view.Click on the clone image to activate it.
3. Next,choose All from the Select menu.
4. Now go to the Edit menu and select Clear.This will remove the front view image from the clone picture.
5. The little icon in the upper-right corner of the image window,directly below the close button,is the Tracing Paper switch. Click on it.The front view drawing will be ghosted in below the drawing surface.
I use the Tracing Paper image to guide me in drawing the back view. Figure 2 shows the back view drawn over the front view.
When the back view is ready, the Tracing Paper button can be switched off, as shown in Figure 3.
The back view and the front view should line up directly with each other. This is because the two views will be used as modeling templates, and the edges have to match exactly. Even though the edges match, the drawings are quite different.
Figure 4 shows the two drawings side by side.
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