A little forewarning: Making bases takes practice, lots and lots of practice. What I am showing you here is the easiest way I know of to make bases from scratch if you aren't someone who draws freehand normally. I am fortunate to have a lot of years of drawing under my belt, so I can usually sketch stuff out, clean up the pixels and have a base. This is the method I use when my freehand muse is in a rotten mood *laughs*
Please keep in mind, the base made here is -mine-, it's not a pixel tutorial. Your pixels should not be exactly the same as mine, so please don't count pixels. That will defeat the purpose. What you will gain from counting pixels is one single replicated base and no knowledge to create a variety of bases, all your own. So now that I'm finished with the preaching *cheesy grin* let's get on with it already ^_~
Open a new canvas ( err image ) in your program. Width - 225px Height - 225pz. That is PLENTY of room for a standard sized base. Standard sized bases generally run around 150 - 200 height with width varying with the pose and head size.
The first thing I pretty much always start with on one of these "standard" bases, is the head. Creating the head first gives us a gauge for how big or small the body of our base will be. So let's begin by using our shapes tool set to ellipse ( or circle ) and drawing a circle roundabouts the upper center of our canvas.
The oval you've created is probably a little jagged and too round for an adult womans face. So you will want to go in and define a jawline, smoothing out the pixels and elongating the bottom half of the face.
The width of the chin is usually where you will begin defining the shape of the face. A tiny chin arched into high cheekbones will create the "long" face shape, a medium or broader chin with less of an arch into the cheekbones will create the "heart" face and the broadest chin with only a tiny arc toward the cheekbones will create the "round" face.
Long Face >> Heart Face >> Round Face
I tend to do one half of the head shape to my liking, delete the half that I haven't worked on, and then duplicate and mirror the good half. This keeps the head symmetrical and saves a load of time pixeling ^_~
Add a new layer.. From here you will want to create her neck. ( Of course it's a her, males are not as fun to draw - or maybe I'm just not that good at drawing them ha ha... ) Anyhoo, I digress, you will want to create her neck here. Now because these are cartoon dollz, and not supposed to be anatomically accurate realistic figures, the neck is one of the simpler aspects of base making. Keep in mind her neck will need to be in proportion with her body, so if you are planning on a slim body, keep the neck more slendery, a larger body, a broader neck ^_^
Now to figure out her height... I believe I read in one of the learning to draw human body books that the average female is about 7.5 heads tall. Well in the cute cartoon doll world, it's more like 5 ^_~ Just duplicate the head layer and move the duplicate to where the top of the duplicate head hits the chin of the original. Repeat five times so you have something similar to the below:
Now add a new layer and with a bold color like red, draw a thick line along the chin of that bottom head. This is the general area where you want her feet to be ^_^ Keep in mind these are cartoon dollz, eventually you will want to try various heights, shapes and sizes, but for the purpose of this tutorial let's go with 5 heads tall and see what you come up with ^_^
So you've got your red line. Go in and make all those duplicate head layers invisible. We are going to keep this for measuring again later. Anywazit, let's move on...
On a new layer, draw a wide oval similar to above. This will give you a general shape for the shoulders. When you have a width that seems right to you, move on to the next step.
Add a new layer, and in your original color ( for me tis black ) draw out a little hump along the shoulder that came out best. For me it was the left side of the oval...
Then clean those pixels up into something pretty...
You can make that layer with the red oval on it invisible, but DON'T delete it! We will use it decide how wide her hips should be...
At this point I usually start on the breasts. Breasts on a base are an immensely personal thing don't you think? Some of us like small bouncy breasts, some of us like large tear drop breasts, some of us prefer our breasts to be hardly there at all, waifish, to put it fantastically.. Me, I'm a boobs kinda gal, must be all that Cancer Moon / mothering influence, I dunno.. In any case, I'm going to try some mediums on for a peeksie. You can make this super easy, by pulling out your ellipse or circle tool again and adding a breast on a new layer ^_^
Now a circle alone would tip the public off pretty fast that these breasts are infact fake, so you are going to want to go in and remove the upper part of the breast and if you like tear drop instead of cantaloupe, go in and add a little length to the bottom of the breast... Firmer bouncier breasts would've been well achieved by just removing the top of that circle up there. But I just released a bouncy cantaloupe breasted base a few updates ago at my doll site, so I went with more of a teardrop:
I suppose we should start on her ribs and waist area now. These areas can really vary, im going to go with a very hourglass figure. Make the waist wider or thinner as suits your taste though...
You can make her waist longer or shorter and thereby create a longer or shorter torso area. Make sure to have a look at your base at zoom - 100% to see how much room you have before you need to start on her legs, then decide the waist length from there..
As you can see, the length of her waist is pushing it a little bit, this base ( mine anyway ) will not have super long legs for sure ^_~ But neither do I, so all is well in the world!!
At this point, we are going to make that red oval shoulders layer visible, duplicate it, and make the original invisible again. Now drag the new red oval layer downward some.. Aroundabouts where your hips might go ^_~
Now on a new layer you'll be wanting to draw a hip over that right side. For full hips and a true hourglass shape you will want to draw your hips closer to the edge of that oval, for smaller hips, within the oval...
Fuller Hips
Smaller Hips
Barely There Hips
Im going with the smaller hips for this base...
We are going to work on that leg now. Legs can be made to reflect various art styles. For instance, anime bases generally have really long legs, usually longer below the knee than above. But for the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to try to make the thigh and shin areas about half and half. Now, you can use your rulers, to measure precisely the center area between the hips and foot area *that red line down below ^_~* Or you can do like I do and just use your good old visual spacing to have a guess and draw a circle for the knee.. Like so...
Now draw a slightly inward moving line to the knee...
Now the calf /shin area is a little tricky. The calf itself should probably arc a little bit. You could also ignore the arc and just give her skinny calves lol.. But here is what I did...
Before we go any further with that leg, I'd like to get something done with the arm area. So let's get back up thataways..
The fingers tips of your base should touch around the mid thigh area.. That is what looks best to me anyway. So lets add a new layer, and draw a wide red line to indicate where we do not want our arm, fingers and all to go past..
First let's draw that area which connects are arms to our chest area....
Yep, just two little pixels ^_~ Now let's move on to the upper arm.
I know for me at least, the upper arm gets narrower as it approaches the elbow area. So draw the outside of the arm coming inward as it gets closer to the midpoint between the shoulder and that red line at the bottom. ( You can do the same thing that we did with the knee to gauge the midpoint if you like ) The draw the inside of the arm starting below the breast and moving outward toward the outside of the arm as it approaches the elbow, as in the image above.
Now her shoulders look just a little too broad to me. Just a teeny tiny bit. So I'm going finish the arm and if I still feel like that shoulder is too broad, ya'll are gonna have to be taught how to fix it ^_~ So let's get on with the lower arm..
For the lower part of the arm, and the basic "hands hanging at her sides" pose I am going for, you will want a very small arc moving inward in the outside of her lower arm, and then a nearly straight line for the inside of her lower arm...
Now I have two areas that look "off" to me...
I am thinking I want to slim and round out that shoulder, and just make this lower arm more straight than bent as it is now....
So what I will do now, is make my red lines invisible and merge the black outline of a base I have so far.
Now because this looks just a wee bit off to me, and not outright hideous, I am going to duplicate this outline, make the original invisible and start moving pixels around on the duplicate.. The pixels circled with red below, are the pixels I will be erasing..
Well I removed those pixels and it still didn't look right, so drew some straighter lines in for both the outer and inner arm and came up with something I like better. Altogether I think this arm alone took me a good fifteen minutes, so persevere!
Now possibly the most difficult or maybe second most difficult, part of making a base.. The hands. Thank goodness we are doing cartoon dollz in pixels here. Hands are hard.. So Im going to just pixel some out and you can count the pixels if you like to use them.. Hands, are, hard...
Ok, so merge everything you are happy with so its all on one layer. Next duplicate that layer and mirror it...
This page has 46 images on it already so let's click NEXT for a new one ^_~