Making Head Angle Brushes for Comics in CSP

I recently made a Twitter post about making character head angle brushes in order to keep characters looking consistent for a webcomic, and several people asked me about my process so I decided to catalog my steps for making a head angle brush here so anyone else looking to work faster and smarter on their layouts can do so.

Drawing the Angles

For the sake of this guide, I decided to make some head angles for my character Duvont, who has a much more defined face structure than the other main characters of the story and could use his own distinctive head angles. 

The art style of the project has undergone some changes since I created this reference, so a few things (mostly his fin ears) will change on the head angles.

To start off, I took a preexisting drawing of Duvont (his character reference) and lowered the layer opacity. On another layer, I did a very simple sketch overtop of his face. My goal with this sketch was to mark where all his features are without being overly detailed, and to make it as neutral as possible so other expressions can be applied to it.

Try to mark off all the areas that are relevant to the character's face structure and important features. Duvont has noticeable cheekbones and his hairline is crucial to drawing his hairstyle so I was sure to include markings to represent both, but those may not be necessary depending on the character you're drawing.

With this angle made, you can now duplicate it and use it to make other angles. For the simplest angles that don't require the head to tip forward or backward (front-facing, profile, 3/4, etc.) the feature lines you drew earlier should line up accordingly, making it very quick and easy to draw over the previous angle and keep everything uniform. 

If you struggle to figure out certain angles you'd like to draw your character in, I highly recommend using the CSP 3D character models in order to get a better understanding of head directions. The orange stripe (or blue, depending on which model version you use) down the middle and the gray stripe across the face can help you see where the placement of everything goes.

A few things to keep in mind when drawing a head tilted up or down:

1. The angle of the ear is a key indicator of how the head is tilted. When you tilt your head up, your ears tilt back and appear lower on your head than normal. When you tilt your head down, your ears tilt up and appear higher on your head.

2. The parts of the face that are closest to the viewer will appear the biggest and most spacious. This is why the chin, mouth, and nose area looks bigger when the head is tilted back versus how they look normally. It can look a little awkward sometimes, which is why having the 3D model to double check your perspective helps!

Doing this, you should be able to make as many heads as you like. For this guide I only did these three, but my set of heads for Deryli is increasing in size all the time as I find new angles I'd like to use.

Making the Brush

With your head angles drawn, you can now turn them into a brush.

If you'd like to be able to change the colors of the heads, make sure you turn the lines completely black and set the layer color to Gray.

By setting the layer to Gray, the CSP brush engine can read the brush in terms of value rather than color. 

Once your layer is set to Gray, select one of your head angles with the lasso and go to Edit > Register Material > Image .

Here, you can register the image as a brush tip. Make sure you check the "Use for brush tip shape" box and give the image a name so you don't lose track of it. I also recommend putting it in its own folder and giving it a tag just for head angles so it stays organized.

From here, you'll need to make a duplicate of a pre-existing brush. I recommend using one of the "stamp" type brushes, like the ones you can find in the "Natural scene" category of tools. I used the Rubble brush as my base for this guide.

Delete any pre-existing brush tips and load in the head angle that you made. Make sure "Direction" isn't set to "Random" by clicking the square button to the right.

If all that was done correctly, you should now have a functional head angle stamp brush!

My Recommendations

You can use these brushes however you like. Working smarter rather than harder and finding shortcuts to help speed up your process is crucial to making comics quickly and efficiently. However, I do have some recommendations that I think will help you integrate them into your comic work.

1. Use them for thumbnailing and sketching out your pages.

My main method of using these brushes is for setting up page layouts and quickly figuring out composition for comic panels. My own freehand thumbnails are pretty messy and it can be a little confusing to follow them sometimes, so having the heads be clear and concise helps me make sense of my ideas.

2. Use them only as a base to work off of; don't limit yourself to just the brushes.

Don't limit yourself to just these angles and shapes. If you only ever apply facial expressions to a default head, your comic may look stiff and lifeless. Instead, use these brushes as a base to build off of: once the angle of the head is figured out for the composition, try drawing it freehand or using it as a rough guide for where the head should be. Add the rest of the facial features based on where they look best rather than where is technically accurate. The most expressive and visually interesting character expressions are the ones that exaggerate and work with the natural movement of the body.

3. Make sure they fit with the rest of your style.

Don't worry yourself too much about making everything anatomically accurate or detailed. I highly recommend basing your head angle brushes on pre-existing drawings of your own rather than on photos or 3D models (though both are great reference) so the art style is still yours. It might look really awkward if your heads are suddenly extremely detailed while your bodies are still very simple. 

I hope you found this helpful!