Chuck Lukacs - Fantasy Genesis Characters: A Creativity Game for Drawing Original People and Creatures

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to free content, and information on the latest new releases and must-have art resources! Plus, receive a coupon code to use on your first purchase from NorthLightShop.com for signing up.

or visit us online to sign up at

http://artistsnetwork.com/ebook-promo

Begin exploring the vast world of character design.

Learn the building blocks of what makes our characters show exactly what you want them to feel.

Find out how to make your characters virtuous, villainous, old or young, cute-ish or brutish.

Take on challenges to create unique costumes from once upon a time, to all over the world.

Tune your wig bubbler to new techniques for designing creatures in ways yet unimagined!

Its been seven years since the release of my first tutorial creativity game. In that time, Fantasy Genesis has been used by countless artists and craftsfolk, illustrators both digital and traditional, professional conceptual designers, and teachers and students in high schools and colleges from across the sphere. It has even been used by psychologists as a mind-expanding, world-building exercise for their patients. My simple brain game has evolved in ways Id never expected, and I cant thank all its fans and supporters enough!

Almost immediately after its release, I also started teaching with Fantasy Genesis, using my games as a group of sketch challenges in my character design class. After consistent student success, I realized that my game was a powerful tool in the creation of imaginative characters, and that it might be time for another
tutorial book.

In Fantasy Genesis Characters we will further explore our inner theater by expanding on emotional states and anatomical studies. We will journey into character archetype, behavior and age, conceptualizing cultural costumes for classy crowds, and creating crazy-cool critters and carefully confident creatures. Ill try not to practice my alliteration too much, but well be covering that as well. So, brush the dust off that stack of papers, sharpen your graphite six shooters, and set your wig bubblers to eleven because Fantasy Genesis Characters is about to begin!

Explore this swinging scene of elves, alien moths and jazz-singing, multicultural multipeds, but not for too long. The vast world of character design awaits you inside!

Every artist has their favorite tools: a host of markers, pens and pencils of different makes, a set of watercolors, or perhaps a graphics tablet. We all grow into exactly what works most consistently for us over the years, and there are bound to be differences in what we all create with. Ive found its worth trying high-quality materials first and then looking into less expensive substitutes.

Never be afraid to craft your own tools to fit your specific needs perfectly: gloves or rubber bands for a better grip, brass tubing for chalk holders, or a pencil holder refitted with tiny retractable erasers. Make tools that work for you, but remember that theres nothing in this book you cant do with just a set of dice, paper, pencil and your imagination!

Sketchbook and paper: Your sketchbook is your most immediate and reliable surface for creating your characters. So, whether small or large, smooth or toothy, whether you buy it or bind it up yourself, keep one or two around at all times. Along with my traveling sketchbook, I keep a pad of 14" 17" (36cm 43cm) Bienfang Graphics 360 semitransparent paper, along with loose 812" 11" (22cm 28cm) sheets of copier paper on hand.

Pencils: Keep a number of sharpened graphite pencils around so you can grab one when the ideas come to you. Once one goes dull, switch to a sharp one or a mechanical pencil, keeping the dull one for thick outlines or wide hatching. I mainly use Generals Kimberly HB3B pencils, but their no. 5314B sketching pencils and no. 555 layout pencil can be used for a variety of inventive marks. I also use Tombow MONO 2B-3B pencils.

Youll need six gaming dice to roll most of these challenges (two six-sided dice, two four-sided dice, one eight-sided die, one twenty-sided die). Alternatively, simply pointing at the words randomly can be fun.

Ive used Sanford Union erasers for as long as I can remember making mistakes, but now I use them along with a thinner retractable rubber eraser on my Shortys pencil holders for deductive marks from smudged-in tone. I also use a 2-inch (51mm) brush to wipe rubber shavings cleanly away without extra smudging.

Markers are effective for quickly concepting characters, using silhouetting techniques (see ). Tombow dual brush pens (nos. 879, 977, 912, 850 and 020) are excellent for making thick and thin marks like a brush. Digital inking and sketching can be the quickest inking technique, but drawing with vintage metal dip nibs, ballpoints, brushes and hand-crafted crow quills can give you rougher, more serendipitous effects that newer materials cant achieve.

There is no real substitute for life drawing or drawing straight from nature, but Ill sometimes enlist the use of maquette models and toys to help. Ive constructed paper buildings and walkways, glued animal toys to pieces of Plexiglas, and made tiny capes and doll clothes to get the exact right light and forms for certain characters. Then Ill shoot photos of my maquettes and tableau scenes. It might seem complex, but it actually saves time.