Tips for Drawing OotS Hair

[banjo1985]

I should have realised this some time ago, well, maybe I did and am only just admitting it. I can draw fairly adequate, if rather static, OotS-avatars, but I really, really struggle to draw hair. It looks flat and lifeless, and there's no sense of movement.

I've tried a lot of different ways, but the one I've stuck with for years is treating clumps of hair individually to make a whole, but it only works with long hair and looks like dreadlocks whether I mean it to or not:



Anyone have any tips or techniques they use to get hair right?

[zimmerwald1915]

I've tried a lot of different ways, but the one I've stuck with for years is treating clumps of hair individually to make a whole, but it only works with long hair and looks like dreadlocks whether I mean it to or not:

If you like the shape your technique makes but don't like the look of individual locks, you can use the "merge" tool to make one path out of them, or two paths, one for each side of the part.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, the OOTS style treats a bunch of hair as one solid shape, except for the part. So you have each half as a distinct shape, outlined and all. The key is in the way the outline works; stylized hair uses complex combinations of curves.

Check out the images here!

Often, hair blooms out but then sharply tapers in; you give it life by varying how that works. Plus, even though you don't define each strand, you can give definition to the tips of the hair.

I would start with a basic curve of hair, then add a bunch of nodes on that curve. pull the nodes out, and start messing with the curves, making each node into a sharp point.

[Fay Graydon]

Some things I use when doing hair is to change the actual line colour from black to a lighter / darker shade of the hair colour (I have taken to doing that with most lines now), also, take the basic shape as one object and any "Dynamic" features such as bangs/fringe, locks and so on as a seperate object, but make it a two line shape that doesnt join up at the end so you have > instead of |> sort of thing.

EDIT: oh one last thing, think about the environment when drawing the avatar, when i work I work on 120x120 pixles (everyone has their own way of doing it) decide where the wind is blowing (if any) where the sun is shining from, and put arrows to remind you the direction as you work, so you can take into consideration these factors, so you dont start blowing hair one way then another way into the wind by mistake