Create custom fan content – Drawing my fan’s OC!

I’m excited ever since our last challenge video, I’ve just really enjoyed using the round brush. Now, what’s up guys, welcome back to my channel. Today, we’re going to be drawing one of my fans’ OCs. I am super excited to jump into this. I’ve asked you guys on Instagram to put your OCs under the hashtag #samdromaoc, and 700 of you guys have entered your OCs. 700! That’s a lot of OCs! I’ve made sure to look through every single one of them, and they look amazing. But we have to pick one. So today, I’ve got this one right here by Kalisami, I think that’s how you say it. First of all, this is a beautiful drawing. I don’t even know if I can do it justice, but I just really resonated with the way this character looks. The way she’s designed, and just the overall attitude and mysteriousness behind her. I think this is really cool. I also really love the little ember pieces in the air floating around. I think that that’ll be a really cool lighting touch that we could also do. So, I feel pretty inspired by this, and I think this is the one that I’m going to actually jump in and fully render.

Before we do this, I also want to give a shout out to some of these other OCs that I was really drawn to. The first one by Autumn Hearts, the costume is really simple but super memorable, and I really enjoy the aesthetics of this character. Here’s another one by No Shelter Girl_1. I love the way this character is designed. The color scheme, the costume, she just looks super cool. Here is the final shout out by Am Blue. The aesthetics of this one are just awesome. But yeah, these are some of the other OCs that I was really drawn to, and I was this close to drawing some of these. So with that being said, let’s jump into this OC by Kalisami, and I believe her name is actually Kalisa, so you have the same name as your OC. That’s some dedication right there. I respect that.

Right off the bat, I pulled up a reference photo here. I always, always, always stress having a reference photo, even if you’re drawing your own character and there are no pictures out there of them. It’s always good to try to find a picture to inform you of the lighting and how that’s going to work. We don’t store that much information in our brains, believe it or not. We’re pretty smooth. This reference here is really high contrast, it’s almost exactly like the look that I’m trying to go for. So, it’s perfect. Let’s jump right in.

This has been an ongoing problem, but I keep forgetting to record the screen on my tablet when I start doing these videos. Luckily, I caught it, like, two minutes in. Otherwise, it would have been a pain in the butt. Man, isn’t it nice to be able to just paint normally for once without any crippling restrictions and challenges? But for those of you guys who are sick and want to see me suffer, don’t worry, I’ll be doing more of those challenge videos. They’re not going anywhere.

Six minutes, 30 seconds in, we have a good sketch. Now, let’s go on to rendering. I think I’ll be taking a lot of the colored cues from the original photo as well as from the reference because they both have a very similar look to them. But yeah, it’s always good to take a look at reference photos to see how lighting is going to interact with your subject in a real-life scenario. The character has slightly grayish hair. I love whitish grayish hair on characters, I don’t know why.

As I go through this process here, you can see where I’m really taking a lot of lighting cues from the reference photo. Because if I were to try to do this from my imagination, I might not really know where exactly to put certain things. And if you were to just paint from your imagination, you might also not learn quite as much as you would from using a reference photo. So always use a reference photo, guys.

And guys, remember to always flip your canvas as you draw because that’s how you’re going to spot mistakes in your drawing. Okay, so we’ve been drawing for about 30 minutes and here’s what we’ve got so far. I’m pretty happy with the direction that this is going in. Honestly, the most annoying thing with digital art is just painting on the wrong layer all the time.

Okay, so we’re at about the 40-minute mark. I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out so far. So, okay, we’ve hit the 50-minute mark. I love drawing this character. I think the design is very simple but it’s also very memorable. Hopefully, this can do her justice.

Now, usually when I see problems with the form of whatever it is that I’m drawing, I just go back in with some liquify and fix it that way. So, that way I don’t need to re-render everything all over again. It’s a really fast, efficient process. But you also may want to make sure that if you do this, try not to overdo it. Liquify is really something that you’ve got to go in there, do what you need to do, and get out. Don’t stay there too long.

If you’re wondering how to get this glowing-looking effect, it’s just a hard light layer. But if you do try this, you also want to make sure you don’t overdo it because it’s really easy to make something look like it’s just blasted out with light. But just don’t overdo it.

Okay, there we go. It’s been about an hour and 30 minutes. The sun is up, it’s nice and bright, and here is the finished piece. I had a great time doing this. I really enjoyed the design of your this character Kalisa. And thank you to everybody who submitted their OC. You guys were amazing. We had a great turnout over 700 OCs for me to take a look at, and you guys all had amazing OCs. If you guys like this video though, be sure to hit the like button and let me know if it’s something that you guys want to see more of. I can definitely do more of these in the future and draw more of your OCs. I’d be glad to do so. I’m still figuring things out on YouTube, so just let me know. Other than that, thank you for watching this video and thank you for sticking around to the end. I really appreciate that. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, consider subscribing. It’s gonna help me out a lot. I do more digital art content just like this one. But that’s pretty much it. I’ll see you guys in the next video.

I think the sun is heating up my Cintiq. This is not good. This is not good. This is not good. I’m surprised it’s so sunny today. Toronto winters are never like this. The sun’s really setting out here at like 4 PM. It’s ridiculous. But this is crazy. It’s such a nice day today. It’s a very fitting setting for drawing such a great OC and having so much fun with this video. Pretty cool. It is by Kalisami is by Kalisa me, I think. I think that’s how you say it. I don’t know.