Thumbnail sketches are small and quick visualizations of ideas and designs. They are essential first steps of an actual character designing process and often define the final aesthetic of a character or environment.
This lesson is all about thumbnails. The assignment at the end continues our character design and you get to draft your first ideas and see if they work.
As stated before, thumbnail sketches are small and quick visualizations that are meant to explore design ideas and eliminate bad ones. They are quick and loose, sometimes just bare scribbles or more structured shapes. Achieving your best style to make thumbnails requires practice and exploration. Simple scribbles can be enough for you to make out what design elements work or maybe you like to take your thumbnails a bit further.
Thumbnails are just rough sketches and not final concepts but still include most of the final design elements. Some artists spend more time with the thumbnails, but often the time is limited to one to three minutes per thumbnail. At that time thumbnail has all the important elements while not looking too finished.
A memorable character can be recognized from its silhouette only. Here is a list that makes powerful silhouettes:
The image below has some of the video game characters. Some of them are classics already and the others slowly becoming ones but are already famous to be recognized just by their silhouettes.
In the previous lesson, you made a small backstory and gathered references for your character design, so it's time to move to the next phase, the thumbnails. Don't think about the colors yet at all. Of course, you can have plans for them from the reference board-phase, but thumbnails are made with limited values. One to three color values are enough to start with.
You may notice that the first thumbnails don't look great. That's normal and they get better after each one, it just takes a little time for the brains to loosen up and explore more ideas.
Make 10-15 thumbnails based on references and the backstory of your character. Focus on the overall design and don't worry about the details yet. Try different styles and figure out what works best for you, be it one minute or three minutes. Same with the number of colors, either only one or couple more values. Keep the references near and pick out ideas from there and define what elements make your character look interesting.
Tähän tulee video, joka on noudettava Risestä.
This demonstration used software Krita. Pick either only one value, like black, or select two or three colors. Keep in mind that thumbnails are small and quick, and the first ones won't be good.
Let yourself ease into it and explore the shapes and ideas, and you will loosen up your drawings and brain. You can also combine previous thumbnails if they have elements that could work well together. The demo's character will be a female paladin, so the thumbnails emphasize the armor and the sword. Use the thumbnails to try out what sort of armor could work, should it be made bulkier to present strength or a bit leaner and light-weight looking to make the character flexible and fast.
Ok, so now you have the first drafts ready. Now it's time to choose a few of them that are the best ones and look the most promising. Pick two or three of the thumbnails from your drawings and focus more on them in the next step. With few values, you can start adding more details and changing them to look more like final concepts.
Tähän tulee video, joka on noudettava Risestä.
In the demo assignment, these three seemed to be the most interesting. Now is a good time to spend more time on each thumbnail, erase excess lines, and define the armor's edges. And sometimes one of the thumbnails can become a bad idea, just like the heavily armored figure in the middle. It doesn't bring out the design that was the idea in the beginning, so at some point, you have to start making the decisions if working on them is still worth it or leaving it to continue with others.
All right, we now have finished the thumbnails and have a solid design on which to build.
Do you have your favorite thumbnail sketches ready? Awesome, let’s jump right into the next lesson and talk values!