We recently learned about a technique used a lot in the VFX and animation industry involving making a ‘skinball’ as a colour reference to use when applying skin tones.

 

 

Firstly, we did a quick exercise on drawing hands, something which is known to be notoriously difficult in the artistic world and which a lot of people, myself included, struggle with. This is why I was so excited to learn a new technique that could possibly make the whole process a lot easier. We started in a rather strange way, being asked to draw a gravestone and add three lines in the middle.

 

 

At first, I wasn’t aware of how it would all come together to form a hand, but as soon as we started adding fingers, I understood that the gravestone was the palm and that I had done it far too big. Something which I found interesting and amusing was the use of the three lines in the middle, which looked very random but were actually guidelines as to where to start and end the fingers along the side. The hand was starting to come together but I had a feeling that it would look stiff and unrealistic.

 

 

And here is the result. In the end, I was right in my prediction, especially after adding the fingers, which I was instructed to be loose with and not use solid lines. I finalised the hand by rubbing out the original shape in the middle. Overall, this method isn’t too bad and I think that it could definitely help beginners who wouldn’t know where to start. However, for me, I wouldn’t be comfortable using this because I cannot properly visualise the hand if I start with the palm, which is in the middle, and I would probably mess the fingers up every time, and also because it isn’t as versatile in my opinion and makes it harder to draw hands in various positions in a realistic way. It does take a lot of practice to perfect drawing hands, and I am happy to have tried this technique out but I can confidently say that it is not for me.

We were then asked to draw a hand ourselves, using a reference image, with whatever technique we felt comfortable with. I did what I always do, and started with boxing out the main shape of the hand so that I could get the position and proportions roughly right before adding in the details. One thing I found particularly challenging during this task was having to draw with the mouse. I am accustomed to drawing on paper or using a tablet and pen, so this was quite difficult at first. After a while, you do begin to get used to it but I never reached a point where I could confidently draw a straight line and not have to go back to erase or draw another line on top to fix where I went haywire, so this is why the drawing is very sketchy and loose.

 

 

You can, however, clearly see a difference between my method and the one I attempted at first, and this may be because of the reference, but I believe it is because I gave myself proper guidelines by drawing the rough shapes of the hand first so that I could see the whole hand and I knew what I was doing from the start. I am glad that I did this with a mouse, despite all of the difficulties, because I know it is good practice and may come in handy in the future.

Next was the main task, which was to create a skinball.

 

 

We began by selecting a photo of a person which had no fancy lighting and where their face was clear so that we could select the varying skin tones. Photoshop has an eyedropper tool like pretty much every Adobe program and allows you to pick up a colour from anywhere on the screen by hovering over it. So, with the image in the top right corner, I selected a colour from a certain area on her face and then with the paintbrush, drew a curved line towards the top. The challenge here was to not change the size of the brush throughout so we had to rely on just the colours to blend.

 

 

Eventually, blending the colours again and again by selecting mid-tones in between two adjacent colours resulted in a blob of smudged colour. To make it more like a sphere and refine everything overall, I applied a quick mask and voila, the skin ball was complete. Or perhaps not? To my surprise, we were permitted to continue and add more things to it, like a face, hair, tattoos or whatever else we could think of. This was when we could let loose and just have fun with it!

 

 

My first instinct was to add realistic detail and make it look more like skin. Since human skin is very textured, I tried to add things like wrinkles and pores by drawing lines and dots and blending everything using the reference or the skinball itself. I almost drew on the wrong layer multiple times but in the end, everything was separate enough so that I could go back and change or delete anything as necessary. The effects of the details were subtle, but at least the skinball didn’t look as perfect and unnatural.

 

 

Next, I was thinking of drawing a face, but then I thought, why go through all the effort when it would be funnier and faster to just use the image that’s already there! I went ahead and cut out one of the eyes using the lasso tool, and then by selecting ‘layer via copy’, I created a copy of just the eye on a separate layer, and moved, rotated and resized it however I liked on the skinball. At first, I wanted to properly blend the edges and make the eye look like it was truly part of the skinball but after attempting that, I realised it was taking very long and I didn’t have the time if I wanted to add more features. So, I made the eye quite small, didn’t blend and just copied and pasted and scattered the eyes in different places. I ended up with a really weird looking ball that reminded me of an alien.

 

 

At this point, I had given up trying to make it look good and embraced the weirdness. I slapped on some eyebrows, drew a derpy mouth and even added hairs to the edge of the ball, just to take it to the next level of bizarre. Here is the final result! My skinball looks hilarious and unrealistic, and I quite like it. The process was interesting to me, thanks to the limitations and the creative part after the blending. I enjoyed creating something like this and am grateful to now have this skill, since skinballs are used quite a bit in the industry, and are useful to know even for personal work. I’ll be sure to try using one the next time I design a character!