Project - Cross Contour on Ginger Root People

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inDrawing Basics

1.7K

Course In Progress

Assignments 368

Downloads 5

Project - Cross Contour on Ginger Root People

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

1.7K

Course In Progress

Assignments 368

Downloads 5

Cross Contour Project Deadline Extended!

I decided to add in an additional project video to practice cross contour. I'll show you how I turn up the difficulty level on ginger root blobs and turn them into characters.

Deadline: 6-10-2024

Turn the Difficulty Knob

Start with random ginger blobs. Make them humanoid by adding limbs and a head. Focus on mass rather than anatomy and proportions.
Use photos of people in dynamic poses. Ensure the photos have depth (things coming towards you, body twisting, etc..). Avoid static poses.
Create specific characters with pre planned proportions, like a monster ogre with a club. More specific characters add more constraints and chances for errors.

Refine the Drawing

Switch to a black pencil for cleanup. Focus on line weight and clean up your shape design. Adjust cross contours to show depth and volume. Emphasize interesting shapes and avoid symmetry.

Aura

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Ginger root people!

Sofia Johansson

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Lovely! And cool bird's eye perspective!

Tommy Pinedo

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Fun! :D

@dukal

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I have done some blobs and after that I try a dynamic pose. Since I was there I decided to practice cross contours.

@mwalker

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Here’s a stab at some ginger root people.

Aura

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The first one looks like Jimmy junior from bob’s burgers 😂

@offworld

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L1. Not sure any of them read as ginger root people. Fun exercise though.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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These are rad. The cross-contours are spot on as far as I can tell. Your characters are all really well done. If you would like to push the designs, exaggerate the shapes more. Push the shapes into some weird places. Push it until it breaks. Keep having fun with these. It comes through in the final drawings.

@deepanshu12

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Isabelle Afzelius

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12d

Fun! But still confused about the cross contouring though…

Rachel Dawn Owens

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10d

It looks like you pretty much got it. I traced over your drawing to figure out what I could maybe offer. Maybe this little drawing can help you understand more. This is how I think about it. Like drawing rings around the whole form. Keep going with these.

@deepanshu12

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13d

@deepanshu12

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14d

@solobo

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17d

First tries on random people

pinkfin

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24d

had so much fun with drawing these little guys!

@harrow

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25d

It's amazing how big a difference the contours can make. There was something wrong with the guy with the hat. It took a while to identify but the right leg was just wrong. Simply flipping the contours around fixed it completely

Rachel Dawn Owens

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24d

I love your hat guy. It looks like you had fun with this assignment. Dont be afraid to get even more extreme with some of the curves. It will bring out the forms even more. Stay aware of what is closest to the viewer and curve the cross-contours away from that. Hope this helps. Keep it up!

Stephen Worthington

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30d

My two little ginger people! Definitely some elements that got away from me a little, but there's also elements in there I'm happy with. Progress not perfection!

Kyle

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1mo

I wasn’t really happy with my first attempt so I tried again. This time I focused more on making interesting ginger root people than fitting them in a scene. I think these came out much better.

@landsloth

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1mo

re-did this project and I'm happy with the attempt. I feel like my cross contour understanding has slightly improved since my last piece- which is always encouraging. This is a fun project and one I'll definitely practice a lot.

Melanie Scearce

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1mo

Really nice improvement!

Jacob Granillo

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1mo

This is so cool! Well done!

@landsloth

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1mo

This was so fun! Really enjoyed trying to make a story scene with them and fit their poses around that.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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1mo

These are wonderful ginger root people. This is a really good place to add some story and character design. Nice work. I notice a few areas where you push the cross contours too much, and others where you don’t push it enough. Think about the different forms as cylinders or tubes with rubber bands wrapped around them. Maybe even wrap a rubber band around a can or bottle or something and use that for reference to understand this 3d concept. Keep playing with it. These are really cool character ideas. Overall, great stuff 👍

@androida

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1mo

Ginger persons :D The first one I started while watching the project video so the head, one leg. and the torso blobs are in the same / similar positions. Then I started to deviate. The 2nd and 4th ginger folks are from imagination. The third one is an attempt to do up to down perspective following a photo, but with changes to the character. It got very messy because the foreshortening in the legs is rather extreme in what I was going for and I had to correct things multiple times and still didn't quite get it.

Kyle

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1mo

It was a lot of fun to try different poses and create a scene with the ginger root people. I did struggle with coming up with different body types so I feel they all look similar. I did smudge the drawing when trying to add details and contour to the tree, which was unfortunate. Also why is drawing a tree so hard 😂

@deadsm

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2mo

Playing around with abstract shapes led to a cool find. Getting good at contour lines will really help with the next parts, like shading and lighting. Plus, contour drawing makes you much better at seeing how a scene fits together. I have always hated doing multiple passes of line art, but now I see how another pass could really help this feel more like ginger roots or more like humans, depending on the details. I finally feel like sketching in stages has purpose!

Axel Gyllenstierna

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2mo

For my ginger root characters, I also wanted to practice placing them within the same environment. It was a challenging task, but thanks to our previous lessons in perspective, it wasn’t impossible! I struggled a bit with the character closest to the 'camera' - I had to redo his legs a few times to account for the foreshortening. Thankful for any critique!