Hello and welcome to creating a male character turnaround modeling sheet
In this Friday Citizen Exclusive Tutorial, we take a look at creating a male character turnaround modeling sheet that can then be used for modeling purposes using the software, GIMP, using solely a hard edge circle brush.
What is covered?
In this tutorial, Tim Von Rueden takes you though first creating a blank canvas and how laying down some guidelines will set the pace for the rest of the piece in setting up proportions and an easy to follow character lineart. This will be down by sketching a rough outline of a character, cleaning up that lineart, and then using mirror techniques to quicken the process.
↓ Here are some of the progress screens from the tutorial ↓
Create straight lines in Gimp by clicking on the screen, hold shift and control, then click where you would like the line to end.
I lay down a sketchy version first to get a good shape of the character, and then I go over it on a new layer with cleaner line work.
Add basic guidelines to help create the side view based on the front views proportions
Creating the back view from copying and flipping the front view. Erase the inner lifework and replace it with back lineart.
and the final result ↓
Thanks again for the many requests for this type of tutorial and I hope it proves useful!
Thanks for doing a gimp tutorial! Open source users such as myself will be quite happy.
Thanks for the straight line tip! Very helpful!
I know I am!
What kind of tablet do you use?
And what is a good (cheaper) tablet for beginners?
Jeremy
With a lot of things brand doesn’t matter, but with tablets Wacom has shown they are worth any extra money you spend on them. If you get a cheaper brand you will probably eventually end up with a Wacom, so just get a Wacom first. The Wacom Bamboo is their cheapest model which is 60-70ish I believe.
I made the mistake once of getting a Genius tablet because it had a bigger drawing surface and was 40 bucks compared to the Wacom Graphire 4(Basically the old name for the Bamboos) I was using that cost me 100. I forget how big the Genius was. I think 11X8 or similar. The Graphire is 4X5 and I ended up giving the Genius to my niece and have been using the Wacom happily since.
Thanks for the great reply! Do you believe the Bamboo series is enough to do this kind of stuff? And what extras should you be more concerned with when buying a better tablet?
Jeremy
Yeah the Bamboo should be enough. I also use mine for sculpting in Blender/Sculptris. I can’t speak from experience but I believe something like the Intuos 4 it can detect higher levels of sensitivity and you can get new nibs for your stylus. I’ve read that there is some resistance to the stylus so it kind of feels like drawing on paper more so, but again I can’t speak from experience. My tablet came with a big plastic cover (don’t know if the bamboos do or not) so it is a smooth surface with no resistance to it. A bigger drawing size helps with a Wacom but it didn’t help with the Genius. The main issue with the Genius was the stylus felt cheap and I had to press really hard for it to detect it and get even a medium dark line.
That’s pretty cool. I was looking at the Bamboos, they look pretty nice and might be a good starter for me until I can afford something more. Thanks for the help!
Jeremy
Great tutorial. I appreciate you doing it in Gimp. If you did it in PS I think it would have been redundant and people wouldn’t get as much out of it. It’s the same principles as the female video so Gimp helped switch it up and added more value to the video (at least for me it did).
Just a quick tip: You don’t have to start the line in the canvas. You can start it in the gray margins and go right across. That way you don’t have to come back across the canvas to get that small segment at the beginning. Saves a few seconds, which add up if you were adding tons of lines.
he did d oit in photoshop before he did this one….
I know that. I meant if he had done this one in PS as well.
I agree, love that he is showing both programs. Both for the professionals who can afford a package like PS, and for the hobbyists and open source junkies who like to use GIMP. Keep up the good work!
Jeremy
thanks for the tutorial,
I seen you deleted lines you would normally use liquify in PS to transform it, the GIMP alternative to liquify is IWarp ‘Filters/Distorts/IWarp’ I know it is not the best, but maybe you can play with it and make it work that way
Thanks Tim,
This one gave me something I look for from you. A good comparsion of Photoshop & Gimp (& I see from Jabessette25′s comments he looks for too); ways to do the same function in both apps. That is a big help & I Thank You for doing it. This is especially helpful to me since I own an older copy of Photoshop (CS), Tutorials like this help me to learn how to do functions/processes in Gimp that you do in the current version of PS that I can’t perform in CS. Please keep up the good work.
-OldMan44
P.S. By the way, Congrats for going full time, you certainly deserved it. Wes & Johanthan made a wise descision.
Hey Thanks, with concept cookie it’s a little tough since there isn’t just one specific software that can be taught, so I figured I had to step up my game, and start making tutorials for both GIMP and Photoshop since I think those have the largest request for them now. It’s good to hear that this idea is being well received.
Thanks again!
I’m lovin it Tim, check my previous reply!
Jeremy
I also would like to thank you very much for the recent tutorials using The Gimp. Please keep them coming. We love your tutorials!
can i use the image at the bottom of the thread to make a character modeling sheet since i dont have a citizen account to watch the tutorial
You may sir, create some awesome work with it
yaaaaay thank you and i will
Excellent tutorial, I really learned something about how to use Gimp for free-hand sketching. Think I’ll try some sketches. What kind of tablet are you using?
You know GIMP and PS are equally usable. It wouldn’t be to hard for an Intermediate Photoshop user to follow along.
I tend to learn both, because each person has their preferences!
I agree that they are equally usable but I have conditioned myself to the settings, keyboard shortcuts, and preferences in Photoshop so sometimes it can be a challenge to jump right into another software without a bit of getting used to it.
Hello Tim,
thank you very much for this great tutorial!!! Its just so easy to learn by watching ur tuts. Never thought its gonna be that easy!!
Ilja
Thanks! Glad you found it helpful!
Thank you for this template
!
Thanks for the great resource
I’ll start drawing up a few characters for my own projects tonight 
That’s what I like to hear!