Creating Compelling Characters for Comics, Graphic Novels & Illustrated Narratives (Commercial)
Digital Art Live
Posts: 123
Have you wanted to learn how to create compelling characters for your comics, graphic novels or illustrated narratives ? What makes a character convincing or captivating. How do you provide an obvious first impression with a still artwork character?
This is a new two-part tutorial, first to be broadcast live as webinars starting this Saturday the 30th of September, with the tutorial recordings available in the DAZ store within a few weeks afterwards.
Special for DAZ PA's : you can use this Discount code "characters20" to save $20 at checkout for this:-
These two tutorial sessions are for you if you have wanted to tell a story visually with convincing characters. We'll be using DAZ Studio as the primary tool to construct our character art. We include essential information on:-
- Body types
- Basic Face Shapes
- Character relationship maps
- DAZ Studio Deformer tool
- Adding scars and cuts to a character
- Factors that shape a story!
- Setting First Impressions
- Our understanding of the characters is shaped by the actions they take
- Elements to understanding a character
- Key Properties of Characters
- The Characters Populating Your Storyworld
- Major, Minor and Placeholder Characters
- Character Archetypes
- Avoiding Clichés and Stereotypes
- Raising the Emotional Stakes
- Why is it important that characters be distinctive?
- What makes a character distinctive looking?
- What keeps characters from looking distinctive?
- Purposeful Resemblances
- Challenges In Distinctive Features
- How characters are typically differentiated
- Ways to test your cast’s distinctiveness
About the presenter : Peter von Stackelberg
“Whether it’s with words or images, I love to tell stories. I’ve been a storyteller as far back as I can remember — well before I made journalism my first career.
I studied journalism at Ryerson University (long before it was known as a university) and spent a number of years as an investigative journalist and news photographer. With the emergence of the web in the 1990s, I worked as a web designer, e-commerce developer, and IT project manager. In the early 2000s, I was a professional futurist doing technology forecasting and working as a technology strategist. I also began teaching college classes in strategic management, managing technology and innovation, project management, business communications, systems thinking, and other courses.
Through all of these jobs writing and visual communication remained a core part of the work I did.
I have a B.A. in Journalism from Ryerson University, an M.S. in Studies of the Future from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and an M.S. in Information Design & Technology from SUNY IT (State University of New York Institute of
About Esther Mann
“It all starts with my deep and abiding love of comics and comic book art. It’s an obsession that started in childhood with an uncle’s 100 volume collection of Classic Illustrated comic books.
I was raised by a muralist father and can remember painting large backdrop sets, landscapes and scenes for an amazing number of years. Of all the subjects we painted I found and still find, humans and the human figure to be the most fascinating.
These loves (the human figure and comic book styles) eventually led me to 3D art, a natural extension of this interest. I started with Poser and when Daz Studio was released that became my software of choice. As I browse through my runtime, I realize I’ve been producing art using 3D models since 2003, and I see a copy of Photoshop 6 sitting here on my shelf as well. Apparently I’ve been at this a while, and yet 3D art is still in it’s infancy as an artform. It is so very exciting to see where it goes as it evolves.
I’ve sold art at Comicons, been commissioned for paintings, worked on book illustrations, and have a website for book covers. It’s awesome and so much fun! I love learning. I love art. I love the 3D art style. Together I find them to be an incredible amount of fun, there’s not much I like doing more than meeting other artists, and exchanging ideas, tips, and tricks. It is definitely my idea of a good time!”
Esther’s DeviantArt gallery
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Comments
Talking about Photoshop... not all of us have the Pro version - will this part of the webinar also work if you have Photoshop Elements, or Gimp?
Also, I have a character who needs burn scars rather than cut scars, is this going to be covered, too?
I'm already looking forward to this!
Really interested in this. Cannot wait.
I'll check with Esther on your questions to see what can be covered here.
3PM eastern time zone? On a Saturday? I guess I will try to pick it up at the store. I work Saturdays. Looks great though.
Oh BUMMER!!! It would be great to have you there.
I'll have to get the videos at the store. I have some big expenditures coming up and can’t attend the webinar right now.
Completely understandable. Would love to see you at a webinar sometime though. Digital Art Live just had a free community event last Saturday, allowing a bunch of us to get together. It's always great to meet people in the community. I know Miss Bad Wolf can't make it with her schedule, but certainly it's an open invite to anyone with the time.
I bookmarked the site. I'll keep an eye out for future events. Love comics!
Really looking forward to this one. I'm planning a new campaign for a tabletop dice & paper RPG and need to fill in some of the major non-player characters and I am just drawing a complete blank for interesting ideas (in 35 years of running games I've already ripped off all my favorite book characters
). I'm hoping this will help jog my creativity a bit. 
Awesome! So excited to see you there! Peter has such an amazing amount of information about the why's and how's of character building, it's been so fun to work with him pulling it all together.
Just a few seats remaining for the first webinar tomorrow!
"characters20" will give you $20 discount at checkout.
Look forward to seeing everyone who's registered!