Procreate - STORYTELLING IN CHARACTER DESIGN

In this workshop, Rafael Sarmento shows you how to inject your characters with personality and underlying narrative

- Rafael Sarmento

One of the things that inspires me the most about being an illustrator is the possibility of embedding every fibre, every pixel of your artwork with a sense of narrative that’s happening right below the surface of the canvas – conveying an underlying story, just as if you’re capturing a moment in a storyline that’s already in motion. Sure, we can do this with sequential art, like comics, but I do love the story-oriented approach of creating an illustration that’s a vertical slice of an ongoing narrative – without the ‘before’ and the ‘after’, just a glimpse that will entice our imagination.

What we’re doing in this workshop is exactly that: creating a scene with compelling characters that will make us ask questions, and lead us to inspiring places. I feel that asking questions is more interesting than answering them, at least in the context we’re dealing with here, so our goal will be to develop a piece that will inspire others to pursue those answers their own way, through their own sensibility lenses.

I’m doing this workshop illustration using Procreate for the iPad Pro, but I’m making sure you can apply any of these fundamental ideas using whatever support you’re familiar with. This guide is more about the subjective creative process, not so much the drawing and painting foundations.

So grab your pencils or brushes, our story starts now. 

1 Develop the concept