Photoshop & Magic Poser PHOTOBASH A FILM CHARACTER

Andrei Riabovitchev breaks down his character creation pipeline, based on his experience as a concept artist for film

- Andrei Riabovitchev

I have been working as a professional artist since 1991, and have been privileged to create characters for animations, films, computer games and commercials. In this tutorial, using one character as an example, I will demonstrate my typical pipeline for creating characters from scratch when working on a film project.

I will explain how I usually start the creation process, discussing what is important when drawing the initial thumbnails, how to effectively follow references, and key factors to consider in your character's design.

There is a lot in common when designing a character for animation and designing a character for film, but there are also some key differences. For example, in a movie an actor plays a character, so you don't need to invent their face. But sometimes you have to adapt their face for a specific role, creating special make-up, adding facial hair, or a completely different hairstyle. Quite often on movie projects when concept artists are tasked with creating a character, it's important for their design to look realistic, like a photograph - which is where photo manipulation techniques might come into play.

So let's dive into this tutorial, where we will learn how to build a pipeline correctly to achieve a result with the highest efficiency. We will start with simple sketches and end with the final, photorealistic character design.

1 Research and collect references