How to Create a Comic Book Hero

Video Transcript

"Hi folks, in this clip I'm going to teach you how to create your very own super hero from scratch, the process that you go through when you're first designing a look for your super hero character. First thing you're going to want to do is figure out who this guy is or girl as the case may be. Figure out exactly what it is, figure out their story essentially. Figure out why they are who they are and why they fight the fight that they fight. That sounded very redundant. Basically figure out what it is that they're trying to accomplish. Because most super heroes are either people who feel a strong sense of duty or an overwhelming desire to you know, get even for something that was done wrong to them. Now the first thing you're going to want to do is really design a clear and distinct look for them. Create a clear look and pattern. And the thing that's kind of tricky about designing your own super hero is you feel like you want to be very careful not to use anything that anyone else has done before and that's getting increasingly difficult because there isn't a whole lot left that has been done already. But basically what I'm doing here is I'm just kind of taking the approach that I'm trying to create a comic book character completely from scratch. I'm basically going to give this guy a helmet look. And he's going to I think be some sort of crazy vigilante type character, or a cross between some crazy biker and a assassin of sorts. So basically, the first thing I like to do is get a bust kind of down showing what the top part of the body is going to look like. So this would be my bust sort of right here, show like kind of a general look that I'm going for, the head, the shoulders. And then from there what I would do I would give myself a full body figure. Or I'd come in and I'd take the concept for the helmet that I did over there and I'd implement it in to his full look basically. Give him key design characteristics that are, that make him unique, things that just help him just kind of stand out apart from everybody else. This is, like I said, not easy to do I know. Especially these days there are a lot of heroes populating the landscape. But when you're creating your own you really want to try and forget about all that, and you know, step in to your own world and create this character and make him a living breathing thing. And in preliminary sketches you really want to use these to kind of get you motivated and inspired to draw the rest of it because once you have a really strong idea and passionate take on a character, like a super hero character, if you're creating one from scratch, everything else just seems to flow very naturally from from that point on. So I'm creating sort of like a crazy jacket number here and make some sort of a button and zip situation here. You can figure out exactly how you want to do all these things. I haven't even really decided yet whether he's going to have super natural powers or not. Like that one thing, or another thing you kind of want to figure out early on; is are they going to be super natural or human? And that is a pretty important decision to make. Another thing, and this is just going to be kind of generic in this case, but you want to give him some sort of clear symbol that is his own. I'm just really just kind of doing something generic here. I don't really, don't know exactly what this means. I don't have a story for it really. But you see what I mean. Like, just kind of come up with something that really makes the character his own, like sort of his brand. In this case the brand is that little emblem I just did right there. Or you know you can add to it, elaborate, but I mean that is essentially and on every part give him something unique about him, something that's sort of like a trademark signature look. And I have decided that this guy is going to be a rogue vigilante character with no super natural powers to speak of. So he's going to carry a lot of gear around with him, maybe some sort of gun situation, some sort of weapon system, sort of like a cross between a biker and Hans Solo from Star Wars. I'm going to give him a, some sort of like a leg, gun, hip thing. It's really fun to get in there and figure out exactly what it is you want to do with these guys because at this point, the sky is the limit. He is essentially non existent yet until you just step in and really kind of create something unique, out of nothing really. So at this point, the sky is the limit. You can create just about anything you want. So really just take this opportunity to fully flesh out the character. Figure out while you're drawing you know, as you start to draw different personality traits and different you know ideas, will come to you for different things you might want to try or different story ideas that you might want to look in to. As far as this character is concerned things have made him risen as far as motivation for fighting and all that jazz. So in this, as you draw and sketch the character in its early concept design though, really just allow yourself the opportunity to let your mind kind of wander and to figure out exactly what it is that this character's m o is, and what is it that makes him tick, and why did he start doing what he does and who is this guy essentially. Fully flesh him out. Once you do that everything else will very easily, easily fall in place."