How To Draw Characters Consistently Looking The Same

Hey , guys want here with a new video and how to draw characters consistently looking the same .

So that's like drawing the same character over and over without , you know , um it looking different in whatever scene .

So if you're doing a comic and having a character look different from time to time , that's not what we're working on .

That's not what we're talking about here .

We're talking about uh creating a character .

And if you're making a comic , you're drawing this character over and over and the character keeps looking , you know , the same .

So it's consistent and you don't have cases where the character might look one way here and the character looks completely different on the other side of things for this video .

Uh We're gonna be using a character as a model here .

We have Cesar and this is uh uh one of the new characters from volume two .

And uh yeah , these are some scenes from volume two showing Caesar and I'm gonna use Caesar an example as an example for this video .

So here uh starting off , I like to say that to completely understand uh what I'm about to do a whole lot more uh effectively , I have two videos that kind of explain or go into detail on how to develop your style and how to define your style .

Now , it would help if you watched those videos already .

Um You don't necessarily have to uh but it would really , it would really help you understand what I'm about to do .

So basically , when you wanna draw a character over and over , uh you kind of have to think of everything in layers , almost think of the character as an avatar and you're placing little things here and there that will always be there uh to make the character look the same .

Like for instance , you have Naruto and the three marks on his face , the blonde hair , blue eyes and the headband .

Once you do that , even if the character doesn't look exac exactly the same , someone will see that and still know you're at least trying to draw Naruto .

So it's almost like picking apart the iconography of a character and keeping it the same throughout .

So here we have , you know , the X shape and so automatically Caesar is always gonna have that , you know , this shape of head .

So , you know , we have the cross around the face and we're adding in the ears that are at the ends of the horizontal line for the uh uh cross on the face that's kind of like a little guideline um that , that can help you when you're drawing .

Um drawing character faces , drawing faces or , you know , faces in general .

So here it's kind of like egg shape and at the bottom , it , it's um Caesar is like a young character , but he's not , he's not too young , but , you know , a little young , maybe we're thinking maybe uh almost 18 , you know , 17 .

And let's just say , let's say 16 , 17 , right ?

Uh The age is kind of undefined for that at this , at this point .

But uh you kind of want to understand your style .

This is where I talk about , you know , defining your style and knowing certain things to use , that defined um that , you know , get his features down .

So the eyes they've been drawn here for Caesar , I know these kind of eyes .

Now , not every character in apple black has these kind of eyes , but um certain characters might have these kind of eyes and maybe they'll , they'll have the same shape that we had that Caesar has here , but maybe they'll have a different uh uh pupil or iris or something like that .

And um I've gone over stuff like this again .

This is where that all those other videos will come in handy .

But here we , he has the these kind of eyes .

So I want to be consistent and since I've defined my style enough , I know how to draw these , the , the at least the shape of this eye and these kind of eyes any day of the week .

So I know that Caesar has these kind of eyes no matter what , right ?

And then we put that together .

And part of his iconography is that hat and that hat kind of symbolizes some almost like a chieftain kind of title uh like um from where he's from , it's kind of like royalty .

Uh But we'll get into that again as part of his part of his iconography here , drawing in the drawing the mouth .

Again , I draw mouth so many ways in my style .

But uh I know that uh Caesar has a particular kind of mouth .

And again , someone else might have a similar kind of mouth .

But we know that Caesar has this has the same kind of mouth as well .

So sometimes I might just have like that little line at the top of the lip in the , indicating the upper lip .

But uh for Caesar here , it , the line kind of goes throughout the whole lip .

So it , it , it uh it goes and meets both end , like all the ends of the , the mountain , there are different ways I draw them out as you can see , giving a little uh some examples here .

It depends on the character .

So like you kind of almost have to recognize what mouth type I have , you've given Caesar and be consistent , right ?

Because you're the one designing in this case , I'm the one that who designed this character .

So I know the kind of mouth I gave Cesar uh that is within my style .

Um And I'm just going to be consistent with that , right ?

So when you're defining your style , you kind of have so many ways you draw maybe an eye , right ?

Like not every character is gonna have the same kind of eye , right ?

This is like apparent in almost any , any , any series .

You're a fan of like just go look at it , not everybody is drawn the same way .

So you kind of have to look in your arsenal , your style bank in a way and look how I look at all the ways you draw eyes and you can always mix and match , right ?

You , like I said , you can have the eye can have the same shape , but then you can um maybe take that shape but have a different eye , uh different poop .

Maybe here you see his eyes have a little more life to them .

But let's say I might want to take the same shape , but I could have had his eyes be hi his pupil just be like a black dot uh similar to similar to a Mchale .

That that's also in the that's also in apple black .

But um here another thing of his iconography that you all you want to like keep track of the iconography .

And what I mean by that is kind of like the things that kind of make the character , the character again using Naruto .

An example would be part of the uh the three marks , uh three scars slash marks or whatever they are on his face .

Uh And here you see that Caesar has this symbol on his left cheek , right .

So again , you want to keep those things and those things kind of make it easier for readers to recognize the character when they see them .

And here you have , he has like hair kind of falling uh uh on uh falling on the right side of his face .

Again , he has this fluffy kind of hair .

Uh You also have , keep , keep uh mind at that .

It's not like spiky hair .

It's kind of like , you know , fluffy all over the place .

A little flamboyant , not too much but a little bit .

And you're just keeping track of all the things that make Caesar .

Caesar .

Another thing would be the , the style of his eyebrows , right , similar to how I draw anything uh similar to the eyes .

I draw eyebrows in so many ways is every like characters have different kinds of eyebrows .

Sometimes they might have similar eyebrows , but maybe one thing that might uh make character a brow different from the other , even though it's the same shape might be color .

Color is another thing that taken , uh keep to keep , keep track of uh the color of the eyes .

Like I might have a character that has the exact same type of uh Caesars eyes , but color would be the difference not just maybe the pupil or anything like that um or color of the pupil and things like that .

Uh Also , again , you , you keep track of how you keep track of everything in all the things that make your style , your style .

So here , also another thing to keep track here with Caesar is that his eyebrow is kind of far uh far apart from his eyes , right ?

Uh This will be very different from say uh Riza Zaki or Ruby when he's angry and how the , the eyebrow might be really close to his eyes right here .

Uh Caesar can sometimes have this uninterested look or very calm , just relaxed look and his eyebrows are really high .

It's almost like he's , you know , so halfway you could , you could say uninterested but sometimes uh unimpressed , you know , as you can see in the other drawing , I had the footage of that drawing and it just got uh it got the II I thought I was recording but I wasn't recording and I'm gonna do something here where I'm gonna draw this character again .

So I'm gonna draw him again , but I'm not gonna look right .

So I'm gonna keep track of the same things .

I might give him a different uh expression , right ?

And that's one thing when you understand when you've defined your style to where you've drawn so many eyes in so many ways you can remember them and you can mix and match the shapes and you know , little things here and there to make each character different , but you or each eye different , each nose different each mouth .

Uh You define your style enough to where um you define your style enough to where you can play around with it and uh have characters in different expressions and still look the same , right ?

So here , the same thing you draw that egg shape .

Uh uh the the the chin is kind of like a little thin and uh smooth .

It's not too defined , the chin is not too defined and um the eye , we're gonna give it the same shape again .

So it's almost like forget about everything else .

You're thinking of the character in layers , right ?

So you can just decide to master how to draw that shape for that , draw that eye perfectly .

So you can , you know , recreate that in your sleep .

Basically , it's , it , it becomes much easier to excuse me , it becomes much easier to redraw the same character over and over again .

If you've mastered your style , if you know what you're doing again , don't be afraid of the eraser .

Sometimes you might need to erase .

That's just the way it is .

Uh Again , I'm completely , I'm not looking at uh the previous drawings here .

So I'm just drawing with the same , with the same goal in mind to draw the same character .

And here we're doing it a little simpler because we're kind of having the same even though we might have a different expression every now and then we're kind of drawing the same character , drawing the character drawing Caesar um in the same angle in the same simple shot of him just looking at you .

Um And uh I'll kind of elaborate on that a little more here .

Putting the scar , don't or not the scar , the symbol don't forget the symbol .

It's kind of like uh it represents his uh heritage and you know where he's from and things like that .

Um That's one thing with me most times when I put anything on character's face , like a scar , there's always a story behind it and uh kind of adds some depth to the character .

So here , the same thing , the same iconography , we know that we , we know that the hair is all fluffy there .

Uh it falls on the right side of his face .

Uh We know the shape of his eye , you know , the shape of his nose , we know what kind of mouth , we know what kind of nose , eye , eyebrow , the distance between the eyebrows , the facial features , the facial features in your style , you kind of like master it .

And I go into a whole lot more detail in the um how to define your art style video .

And uh if you watch the , how to develop your art style , that's also a video that you know , might come in handy for if , if , if you're interested here instead , we're gonna have him looking down again , this is kind of like a from a simple angle and this is not the same thing as say , maybe drawing the character from , from uh you know , in like a character sheet format where you're drawing him , drawing him left , drawing him from front , like a front view , profile view , side view uh and a three quarters view .

Uh I have a video on that and you can use that technique where you , you're drawing him on the same height and everything where you have lines , kind of helping you and guiding you to make sure you're drawing the character almost exactly the same from a giving that three dimensional aspect to it , seeing the same character from each angle .

But that's not what we're doing here .

We're trying to , I'm trying to kind of teach on just how to draw it off the fly , like draw the character the same way over and over again with , with , you know , not , not guidelines helping you but just draw it off the top of your head .

You know , a lot of memory and patience comes into , comes into this and , you know , it helps over time .

Also , another thing that I keep track of is obviously the ethnicity of the character .

So in this case , uh Caesar is a character of color .

So we have that to , you know , you don't want the character black in one scene and Danny's white on the other obviously .

So that's also part of it .

And if you notice I play around his teeth because he actually , he actually has sharp teeth .

Uh So I'm gonna , you know , it's one of the things I actually forgot and uh I'll put that in the uh in the other videos , in the other drawings as well , eventually in his teeth .

So it's the same character over and over again .

And one thing to keep in mind is you kind of just want it to where the reader readers or viewers understand what you're doing .

You're never actually going to draw a character 100% again , the same way , it's like it's never 100% but you can always come really , really close .

Uh Eventually what I'll then do after this is going to , I'm gonna draw the character from a completely different angle , a more dynamic angle and uh less straightforward like the three that have been drawn here .

So I'm basically gonna do something that is uh different from the rest and you can see why I , when I apply the same principles , right ?

The character is going to look , the same is gonna look like it's the same character .

And that's the whole goal of this video is drawing him from uh kind of like a partial an eye view , not , not completely anti eye but like , well , still anti but like viewing from below , but it's not like it's not that crazy dynamic , but we're , you know , we're gonna be looking at the character , we're gonna be looking at Caesar from below a little bit and he's gonna be looking up again .

You have this , I'm putting in the shape of the shape of the head adding in the ears and having that horizontal line to kind of guide me uh as to how the eyes are gonna be .

And as you can see the horizontal line is kind of curved like a frowny face .

I go into a whole lot more detail uh in my videos that um explain drawing a character from an anti view .

And you understand why the the line is kind of like in a frowny face because this is uh anti view .

So in the complete opposite is for a bird's eye view where uh the the line would be more of a smiley face kind of thing .

Uh If you're , if that is , if you're looking from a uh looking from above in a bird's eye view .

So here drawing the eye on the left of our view and um obviously , he's going to be smaller because he , he's , his face is kind of like turns where we kind of wouldn't see all of the , you know , all of his right eye , which is , you know , from our left .

Uh So here putting in the nose and I'll put the rest of his features um keeping in mind where they are .

So in this case , right , I know what kind of nose I've chosen , right ?

For , for Caesar , right ?

And , but we're , now we're drawing it in a different angle .

So this is part of what I mean when you need to define your style .

So whatever nose it is , you need to be able to draw that particular nose from every angle , right .

So , and , and , and it also helps keep things a whole lot more , you know , consistent .

And so the mouth that I've chosen , I need to be able to draw that mouth from every angle , whatever mouth you've created , you need to learn to draw it from every angle .

And when you during the phase of you trying to define your style , the same goals for ears , the during the phase where you're trying to define your style , that's where all these things come in handy .

Again , you can watch that video and you'll , I'll go into uh I go into more detail with that .

So here is the same mouth , but it's gonna be a bit different just because we're going um just because we are drawing it from a different angle .

Uh Here in this fade , I was just kind of just , you know , playing around with , you know , whether I wanted his mouth to be open or not , but uh we'll see what I end up with regardless .

I decided to close it .

Uh The mouth was a bit a little bit too small .

So gonna whiten out a bit again , putting in the symbols , symbols , you know that in this case , the character Caesar has it , right ?

And he has it for good reason .

But uh it's not , it's not , this is not a , it's not always a compulsory thing , but for sure , it always helps uh readers identify who the character is and it , it , it's , you also know you've done a , a good job .

If you , readers can , I can still identify the character without any of these uh scars or symbols or things like that .

If the character is recognizable uh and consistent without them , then you're on the right track because really it's all about defining your style and knowing where things go , remembering things here and they're remembering the iconography of the character , being able to draw the , you know , the choices you've made , being able to recreate them over and over again .

Um And that's during the phase where you're defining your style probably before you even start uh creating a comic or , you know , doing an animation or anything like that , especially if it's a one man job .

Usually , I believe the animators if they're animating a series that maybe they , you know , they , they had nothing to do with the creation of it and they're just animators , they kind of have to , I imagine go through a phase where they're learning the style and uh you're learning the style is kind of similar to , you know , defining it because um at least defining it for yourself because every animator on that team will need to be able to draw the same character the same way .

So it's almost like , you know , everybody's on the same .

So they , they do it that way .

So everyone's on the same page and the animation looks consistent throughout .

So everybody learning the iconography and learning all these little things even though it's not their style .

But that learning that learning that new style , so defining your style is also about learning your style and being comfortable with it .

So here that's the same ear , you know , but we really , you know , we've learned to draw the ear from a different angle .

That's really all it is making the lines a little thicker .

Usually when I'm drawing eyes , the upper line , I always make it thicker to symbolize um the eyelashes .

And if I'm drawing a female , the lines are much thicker , just make it look a whole lot more feminine unless the female character is not supposed to look feminine at all .

It's here , you know , going in with little strokes to just zoo lies is a character of color and that's that .

And then you can add a little , you know , his clothing .

Again , it's about thinking of everything in layers , understanding your style , remembering remembering the iconography of the character uh and you know , having a developed and defined style prior to trying this is always more effective that way .

So even the shape of his head is al also learning , you know , understanding what shape you've chosen and being able to recreate that that head shape from different angles .

So remember in the shape of the head , uh shape of head , you know , maybe the eye type , but really nose type mouse type .

So it's more about facial features , uh the facial features , you know , the type of it , you know , understanding how to draw it in all all angles .

So that's like defining , having a defined style and the developed style all in your style .

Uh to think of like the scars , marks or sign on his face or body or things like that , the iconography of the whole character , the clothing .

So another example would be the red jacket from Dante or the white hair from Dante Teeth .

In this case , uh uh Caesar's teeth , his hat , skin tone ethnicity .

And uh if this was in color uh color again , is is uh something to keep keep in mind .

Um And yeah , this is uh a show called Caesar is the Sun Prince and he's a really prominent character in Apple Black Volume two , which will be out in the in the fall .

Uh still need to work and get everything I need to do , you know , all done finished .

So I hope you guys enjoyed this video .

I hope this video helped you uh learn to draw the same character over and over again .

Uh just applying uh the same principles to whatever work you're doing , whether it's a comic or an animation .

And yeah , if you like this video , please actually like this video .

Um I really , I really appreciate it and it will help me create similar videos , you know , more often I have more videos coming soon and you can check out Apple Black .

The first four chapters of Apple Black are free on Saturday .

M I'll leave links to where you can check that out .

Apple Black volume one is available with uh chapters 1 to 9 .

Uh Y'all can check that out links in this box section below .

You can check out Sad M itself with all the other comics on there .

Uh All the other promising talent uh artists on the roster .

So uh you can check that out uh again like this video , leave a comment if you have any questions and subscribe for more uh subscribe if you like this video and you like my videos in general .

Uh It's been well guys .

Uh this is white manga and I'm a .