How to Draw Outsider Characters

[Snoofman]

Dear Arioch,

How do you draw your characters from Outsider? What sort of techniques or templates do you use? Would you be so kind as to give a brief tutorial on how it is done and how one may match your unique character art style?

[Bamax]

Dear Arioch,

How do you draw your characters from Outsider? What sort of techniques or templates do you use? Would you be so kind as to give a brief tutorial on how it is done and how one may match your unique character art style?

There used to be a place on the comic website that did exactly what you describe... unless I can no longer locate it?. And after that all you need to know about the Loroi is that they have elf ears and eyes that are somewhat wider than normal, with slightly larger irises so as to compensate for what would be less subtle otherwise, and the eyes are slanted inward slightly toward the nose as well.

[avatar576]

Is this the page you were looking for?
https://well-of-souls.com/gallery/cg101a.htm
It's pretty old, but I imagine the technique is pretty much the same, just the software would be different.

[Arioch]

I start by sketching out rough shapes (I draw using a tablet in Photoshop) and then gradually refine the drawing through multiple iterations -- I duplicate the sketch layer, reduce the opacity, and then draw the next iteration on top of it. For heads, I do the typical thing of sketching an oval with a line down the middle and across the middle as guidelines for the placement of nose and eyes.

For the comic, I draw the rough sketches directly in the page file which is 1650x2400 pixels (1-3 below), and then I blow each panel up 150% in a separate file and refine the drawing (4), draw the "ink" line on top of it (5), and then bring it back into the page file, flat and color it (6). The shading process is more or less the process described in the tutorial linked above, though I have since streamlined the process a bit (see below).

[Snoofman]

Awesome! Thanks a million Arioch!

[avatar576]

Someday I'll have to learn the patience to draw like this. I think the hardest part for me, once I figured out shapes and proportions, would be getting the characters to look like the same person each time I drew them.

[SVlad]

The shading process is more or less the process described in the tutorial linked above, though I have since streamlined the process a bit.

Do you still color manually with paintbrush like you described in that old file?

[Arioch]

The shading process is more or less the process described in the tutorial linked above, though I have since streamlined the process a bit.

Do you still color manually with paintbrush like you described in that old file?

I still paint the highlights and shadows with the paintbrush tool, but I fill areas with color ("flatting") using the Magic Wand selection tool and some custom actions, which saves a lot of time. (The version of Photoshop in use here is 2022 v.23.1.1.)

Instead of creating a color baseline used as a clipping mask for each color, I create a base for the entire character, and clip all the different color layers to that base. To create the base layer that will be used as a mask for all the colors, I hide everything but the individual character, create a new Base layer underneath the line layer, and use the Magic Wand tool to select the area outside of the linework. (You can add or subtract additional areas with shift-click and alt-click, respectively.) If the linework is on more than one layer, make sure the "Sample All Layers" box is checked for the Magic Wand tool.



I then invert the selection, contract it by 1 pixel, and fill with the base color. (This can be done manually as separate steps, but I have recorded the steps as an Action that can be invoked with a single keypress (F8 in this case). The contract is to move the selection to roughly the middle of the line so that the color doesn't bleed outside the linework. (If you have thicker lines you may need to contract by 2 or 3 pixels instead.)



The drawback of this method is that the fill won't get into very sharp corners, so this usually needs to be cleaned up manually with the eraser/brush. It's easier to see this if you set the background to a contrasting color.



Then for the "flat" of each separate color, I create a new layer, clip it to the base layer (right-click on the layer in the Layers list and choose Create Clipping Mask. Ctrl-G used to be the hotkey for this, but in newer versions of Photoshop it's used for something else by default) and select areas of the same color with Magic Wand (shift-click to add separate selections), expand by 1 pixel and fill (F9 custom action above). Again, the expand is to move the selection to the middle of the line.



As with the base fill, sharp corners will need to be cleaned up manually with the brush tool. Some smaller areas may still be quicker to fill entirely by hand.



For highlights and shadows, I create new layers for each above its respective flatting layer and paint with the brush. To avoid going outside the area defined for that color, you can create a selection by Ctrl-click on the color layer ("black" in this case) while the highlight layer is selected ("black highlight" in this case).



Also depending on the scene and lighting, I can sometimes do a single shadow layer for the whole character with a lighter color set to Multiply instead of a different shadow layer for each color. The same can sometimes be done with highlights using Screen or Linear Dodge, but this work less well in scenes with normal lighting.

[sunphoenix]

This was VERY informative and nicely explained! Thank you so much!!!

[SVlad]

The GIMP has a specific Bucket Fill Tool mode, Line Art Detection, specifically designed for coloring comicslike images.

I think, Photoshop may have similar tool.

[Arioch]

Photoshop has some neural filters, but I don't know of any that apply to linework. If not, it's probably only a matter of time.

[VVish]

Photoshop has some neural filters

A question. Is there any footage of you doing the page from scratch, that can give insights on your technique from top to bottom? I am curious if you do incorporate Photoshop Scripts into your workflow and where you could cut corners by applying them.

[Arioch]

Photoshop has some neural filters

A question. Is there any footage of you doing the page from scratch, that can give insights on your technique from top to bottom? I am curious if you do incorporate Photoshop Scripts into your workflow and where you could cut corners by applying them.

I don't have any video, no. I can expand on the page creation process (the tutorials section is long overdue for an update), but I don't have time for that right now.

I use the Photoshop scripting function to automate export batches of the full-resolution pages for Patreon; aside from using predefined Actions to streamline the flatting process as mentioned above, I don't think there's much scripting can do to speed up drawing and shading, which are inherently manual processes. I also created some Perl scripts to automate the HTML edits needed for a new page, but that's more about reducing errors from manual edits rather than saving time.

[DevilDalek]

Also depending on the scene and lighting, I can sometimes do a single shadow layer for the whole character with a lighter color set to Multiply instead of a different shadow layer for each color. The same can sometimes be done with highlights using Screen or Linear Dodge, but this work less well in scenes with normal lighting.

Thanks Arioch! It's a similiar technique to what I use in the rare times I get to art nowadays.
(But with far less 'spider with seizures ' scrawl lines)

[Sweforce]

Those uncoloured closeup pictures of Talon show something I had not noticed before. What Ibelived to just be part of a pilot version of her black jumpsuit undergarments are actually some kind of ports. Cybernetic acces ports for breathing liquids?

[Arioch]

Those uncoloured closeup pictures of Talon show something I had not noticed before. What Ibelived to just be part of a pilot version of her black jumpsuit undergarments are actually some kind of ports. Cybernetic acces ports for breathing liquids?

Which ports do you mean?

[Sweforce]

Those uncoloured closeup pictures of Talon show something I had not noticed before. What Ibelived to just be part of a pilot version of her black jumpsuit undergarments are actually some kind of ports. Cybernetic acces ports for breathing liquids?

Which ports do you mean?

The pictures above, the last one show an extreme closeup of something on her chins. They see to only be on the pilot suits.

[Keklas Rekobah]

They look like strap eyes for a “Snoopy Hat” like the ones used by our Apollo astronauts.

[Arioch]

Those uncoloured closeup pictures of Talon show something I had not noticed before. What Ibelived to just be part of a pilot version of her black jumpsuit undergarments are actually some kind of ports. Cybernetic acces ports for breathing liquids?

Which ports do you mean?

The pictures above, the last one show an extreme closeup of something on her chins. They see to only be on the pilot suits.

They are extensions of the neck portion of the pilot's suit that connect to the helmet, to provide a better seal (as the pilot suits are subjected to much higher pressures).

[Sweforce]

I see, they had have some function or it would be a bad design. Having said that what where George Lucas thinking when he gave imperial scout troopers helmets that totally blocks out their peripheral vision? The rule of cool fail to meet reason...