Introduction
A big part of the character design process is creating turnarounds. This helps you to keep your character to spec from multiple directions. It’s up to the designer to figure out how many you want to do for a character. For some, it can be just a front, profile, and three-quarters. For others, it can have many different angles and directions even sometimes focusing on different body parts individually.
For myself, I decided to go with, a Straight ahead Three-quarter front Profile Three-quarter back, and back.
I do have a few panels that use a top-down and low-angle shots. But those also have a lot of camera distortion, so for now, I will set that to the side and keep it relatively simple.
I decided to take my character in her original three-quarter design pose and remove her umbrella and adjust her arms to a different position. I have every intention of doing a prop turnaround that I can use as an asset later on. But, for know, I wanted to focus on her and not necessarily the umbrella. The satchel is technically a part of her character so that will stay on for the whole turnaround.
Remember to take your time and feel everything out. This is your chance to get to know how your specific character works and functions from different directions. And to fix any small issues that may hinder that. So don’t be hard on yourself if it takes you some time. Taking this time now will help you later on when you start working on your actual comic pages.
There were a lot of tiny issues that I started to notice when doing the turnarounds. One of the biggest problems that I had was during the profile view I felt like it was too realistic. I try to make my illustrations feel like children’s style illustrations and those have far fewer details in them. So, to achieve that I needed to cut out anatomical correctness in the face. Another thing I tried was slimming down the hands. I usually like bigger hands on my characters (whichever gender they turn out to be) but after thinking about it I tried something simpler and thinner hands and I actually really liked the results. So, I will go with that from now on.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was adjusting the positions of the arms was also a difficult process because I couldn't seem to find a reference image that matched the pose I had in my mind. So, I decided to use Clip Studio’s 3d models to help with the body's position while also being able to keep my gesturing loose. It also helped me maintain consistency as I turned the character. These models can be found in the Materials window under 3d. There are a ton of things that you can adjust and manipulate with these models in clip studio but I was just using it as a visual reference that I could pull a gesture from. Though if you have a more anime style of drawing you could actually trace over these but that can cause a character to become a little stiff but I digress.)
Images
Note: She will be fully colored in Part 2.
Time lapse
Next time
I will be posting Part B to the Girl’s turnaround. The video felt like it was running a little long. There will only be a video and images for that post!
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