Arcade Character Art Tools

References. Create, look, collect

Searching for references for arcade character art is one of the most important stages of preparation for work. The artist selects images that help him create the right mood, choose the character’s pose, make it expressive and, of course, not violate the anatomy. Sometimes this task turns into a whole quest and it takes many hours to surf Pinterest and photo stocks to find something suitable. Here are some apps that can make your search process easier.

Handy Art Reference Tool

When it comes to showing a mood or emotion, it’s not just the face that matters – body language also plays a big role. Despite the development of oral speech, the human brain still “looks” at the hands in order to better understand the thoughts and feelings of the interlocutor. They get more attention than many other parts of the body (apart from the face, of course). Theater artists even have special exercises to make their hand movements more expressive.

Since a painting is a frozen story without words, artists need to use all available means to convey emotion non-verbally. Professionals pay great attention to working out the hands and put meaning in every gesture. At the same time, hands are a headache for many beginners. They are difficult to draw due to the complex geometry of the brushes and fingers.

If the ready-made options do not suit you, then you can make your own reference. In a special mode, “bones” appear on the model. By moving them, the user bends and unbends the phalanges of the fingers and rotates the model’s hand. Please be aware that the application does not respect the limitations of anatomy. Therefore, fingers can be easily “broken” and turned out at an unnatural angle.

In addition to the hands, the Handy Art Reference Tool contains models of male and female heads, stumps and a skull. Models of feet and animal skulls are available for a fee.

If you need to light the model, you can add up to three lights to the scene. They move in any direction. This is enough to establish a standard three-point lighting scheme: main, back and indirect light sources.

Posebook by Silver

The author of the following app is Stephen Silver, British artist and cartoonist, character design specialist. His client list includes Disney, Nickelodeon, Warner Brosers. He has worked on popular American animated series for children and adults such as Kim Five-Plus, Danny the Ghost, and The Clerks. Silver also teaches how to create characters for cartoons.

To help newcomers, he created a library of references with drawing lessons, and sells it as mobile applications Posebooks by Silver. There are versions with male and female characters. Both applications contain almost three and a half thousand photographs of sitters in different costumes and poses corresponding to the character of the character, be it a pirate, a mafia or a housewife. The applications were conceived as a practical tool for learning poses, silhouettes, and expressing emotions.