Largiloquent

zenaquaria

replied to your post

“Hey Steph! You've given me LOTS of great advice dealing with Native...”

I've been wanting to ask this kind of question so much but never got the words for it! I have a character who's half Native American (Northwestern tribe, specifics undecided) that I've always been kinda iffy about digging into his past, since I was always kinda nervous about writing a character who could end up drawing fire and negative criticism! But this helps! Thank you Neon for asking it, and thank you Steph for answering it! <3

I’m so glad I could help! If you’re going in with respect for the culture, and an awareness of the... usual roles a Native American character (and half-NA characters) are stuck in most prominently, I think you should be okay. Do your best, and try to get as much info as possible, and put in the same kind of effort you’d give a character of Scottish or Turkish or Sicilian ancestry. 

Pacific Northwest though, aaaaah! The art style here has always been one of my favorites. Especially the black, white, and red color schemes. 

Hoof! Can try!

But, absolutely, I have to preface this with I am not a First Nations person. I am half Ibero-Hispanic, but this is not a culture I grew up in. I can do all of the research I can to my little heart’s desire, but the fact is that I will never be able to write a 100% authentically indigenous person. I could potentially get close! But that’s not my culture, I don’t belong to a tribe, I’m never going to know all of the ins and outs. But that said, I always try my hardest to respect the culture I am writing my character into, regardless of culture, but especially so for First Nations cultures, which already have a history of being erased, being portrayed inaccurately, and being portrayed offensively. 

But in no order, here’s my tips:

Respect. First and foremost, treat these cultures with respect and understanding. Do not separate things into Us and Them, but We. 

Understand that your character is not a representative of their entire culture. The burden of representation should not fall on this character’s shoulders. They are not here to serve as a tool of education. They are a person, first and foremost, who was raised within a First Nations culture. They should have their own points of view, opinions, and experiences. As with all cultures, maybe there’s parts of that culture your character agrees with. Maybe there’s parts they disagree with. 

Don’t just use wikipedia. Find as many primary resources as possible--resources directly from First Nations people. Find articles written by First Nations peoples, see if the tribe has their own website, their own youtube channel, things like that. Read interviews and articles, go to First Nations periodicals. 

Listen. Don’t pay lip service. Empathize and listen to what First Nations peoples have to say. Listen if someone of a tribe says “you’re doing this wrong.” Be ready to change something. 

Understand that in researching different tribes, you are going to find a LOT of bogus websites. And some websites that seem legit but are written from a non-indigenous point of view. Indigenous tribes are a favorite for scammers and bullshit healers to steal from and then proclaim as their own. “Native American crystal healing cured my cancer!!!” and things like that.

Dreamcatchers are very much a heavily debated idea within many First Nations groups, especially as it has become one of the symbols of the Pan-Indian movement. Learn the history of dreamcatchers, how they have been used, and your character’s thoughts on them. 

The same goes for a lot of common portrayals of Native Americans, like long hair and paint and so forth. You’re going to have a rainbow of different opinions--especially over different generations.

Don’t write what you don’t know. Really. This is incredibly important here. And understand that there may be things you will never be able to write about. Many tribes have elements that are prohibited to those not belonging to the tribe--even from other Native American tribes. And as an outsider, you will never be able to know about that or learn about it, and that’s just how things are. Respect that. Consider it much like an incredibly special, private family tradition that holds generations of importance for your family.

War bonnets are military regalia. Sacred military regalia. Having one is the same as having medals of honor. If you wouldn’t disrespect a soldier’s medals of honor, don’t disrespect the war bonnet.

You are going to need to do a LOT of research about reservations, if your character lived in one or has experience around them or people they know who live on the,. Especially there, find first-person experiences about living on them. Get ready for a lot of heart-ache.

Just buckle yourself the fuck in because you’re going to have mountains of research. Everywhere. 

First Nations people are not a monolithic culture. There is no one “Native American culture.” There are 566 federally recognized tribes in the US alone. Minus federally unrecognized tribes, minus tribes of Canada and Mexico and many other countries. Every single one is unique. 

Like I said, buckle the fuck in.

Just be ready to get something wrong, no matter how genuine your want is to create an accurate, sincere First Nations character. And sometimes people will get mad at you. Be ready for that, but also be ready to defend yourself--you WILL get non-indigenous peoples asking stupid questions like “why don’t they look more traditional???” and “shouldn’t they be such-and-such and this-and-that.” If you don’t think you can handle that, then don’t write a First Nations character.

Different fabrics will work in different ways! One of the most important things to keep in mind though is how heavily or lightly gravity will affect a fabric. It’ll affect all fabrics, mind, but some fabric, like tulle, may be able to hold its shape and “defy” gravity, as it were.

In general though, the most important parts of drawing cloth are understanding gather points and where cloth hangs. Gather points being places pulling on the fabric, grasping it. So for example, let’s say you hold a strip of cloth between your hands.

Your hands are where the fabric gathers, where you resist gravity.

The rest are the parts that are currently subject to gravity. It bows in the middle, where there is the least support. Kind of like a rope! You hold a rope between your two hands and let it slack, you’ll see a dip in the middle too!

The ends of the cloth aren’t being supported by anything at all, so they’re falling toward the ground.

Now comes the part of adding the folds. And how many, how large, and how complicated those folds are is the part that’s going to depend on the fabric! In general though, thicker fabric is going to have fewer folds, thinner fabric will have more. 

Thick fabric, like I don’t know a canvas or something:

Thin fabric, like linen:

Notice though, that regardless of fabric, the creases are radiating out from two main points!

Look what happens when we add a third grasping point.

The material in the center, where the fabric has less slack, has smoothed out. Meanwhile new folds have appeared. 

It really does operate a lot like a rope sometimes!

A quickie hair tutorial! I thought I’d show a bunch of different hair to give y’all an idea of how I go about showing different texture of hair. Mind, this is quite a lot more effort than I’d usually put into hair, but it should give you an idea of how light and texture interplay.

Tech (rough hair, naturally partly glossy)

Base color; his hair is naturally black, but the addition of white hair (what we call grey) creates the illusion of the whole of his hair being lighter.

I add a gradient since his hair is rougher, and tends to diffuse the light partially.

I took that base color to create the shadows and help define the locks of hair (the chunks you see).

Using a smaller brush, I help add tiny shadows help create a gradient effect to the shadows, a bit like making a gradient with cross-hatching. 

This is where I added his li’l grey hairs, just to show that this part of his hair is a bit more salt and pepper. I didn’t leave this step for last so as to keep the grey hairs from popping too much from his hair.

Highlights! I added them where the light would be strongest. His hair is pretty rough so it diffuses the light a lot, but there’s still a little bit of shine here and there.

Pelagosa (soft, smooth, hyper-glossy hair)

Base colors; underneath is darkest, over is the middling teal. This helps to establish the foundation for the overall look we want of high contrast.

I used that darkest color from underneath to create the shadows, keeping in mind I’m going for almost a metallic look with multiple instances of shadows.

Still haven’t added any more colors! I take that middling color and add it to the center of the shadows to give the effect of reflected light.

Now we add another color! I take a lighter, more saturated teal and use a very soft airbrush to add in the highlights. 

Another highlight! This time, to give the illusion of a very smooth, metallic surface, I go in with a thinner brush, and keep the line very sharp. 

And here’s where I do the thing everyone tells you not to do! ‘Cause rebel princess does what she wants. I used a dodge tool and very gently went over the highlights to really make them give them a brilliant oomph.

Teabiscuits (soft, wavy, brilliant colors)

Base color: we’ll be working with two major tones in his hair, so we start off the with major, middle tone.

Shadows! I’m working with two different kinds of materials, essentially. A warm, cotton-y hair and a scarlet hair that scatters light differently than the cottony color, which tends to stay fairly monochromatic. So for the white I use a pink-y darker cream to keep the cotton-y feel, and actually a purple-ish red for the scarlet part of TB’s hair. Though, whether or not I use purples or just darker crimson often depends on the full image itself, and whether or not it’ll work with the whole color scheme (I cheat).

Lights! The grey part of TB’s hair just gets a soft pure-white color for a highlight, and it’s done for the rest of the tutorial. The scarlet part of is hair gets an orange-y color now for the highlights.

More refining! I really want a fiery feeling for his hair, so now we’ve got a little yellow in the highlights!

MORE HIGHLIGHTS. MORE YELLOW. Like with Pelagosa, I use a real sharp brush to give it a glossy feeling.

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater! Again like with Pel, I went over the highlights with just a touch of the dodge tool to really make it stand out.

Mumbles (soft, wavy/curly, voluminous, mostly diffuses the light) 

Base color; darkest color his hair will be. Helps remind me not to go darker, as his hair isn’t supposed to have a lot of contrast.

Very soft highlights, a little lighter and warmer/more saturated than the base color. I’m trying to establish the form of his lumps of hair here.

More highlights, again a little lighter and more saturated. I really want a warm brown feeling to his hair.

Reflected light! I went back and grabbed that first highlight color, applying it to the undersides where backlight would be hitting.

Nothing happened here because I thought I was done!

One more set of highlight, again with a pretty soft brush. Because I decided I’m never done. I don’t want any spots of hard light to give the feeling of light being distributed pretty evenly thoughout his hair.

Oooh, you’re talking about animating a picture! Not animating as in, giving it actual movement, but giving the illusion of life. Which is admittedly quite difficult given that motion needs time, and time is not something we have in a single 2D image. We are essentially attempting to trick our viewers into believe that time is passing in a single instance of time. Hard stuff!

But the principles of animation can actually help us there! And this is going to get very long, so I’m gonna put it under a read more. I’m gonna take some stuff directly from the wikipedia article, but frame it in regards to 2D illustration.

That can depend a LOT on the texture and fineness of the hair itself, as well as how it’s being styled! For example with this kid:

the light is very diffuse over the hair, it’s a bit more of a gradient. There’s no spots of hard light, no catch lights. But then we have hair like this:

And there’s points of concentrated highlight. Depending on how well taken care of the hair is, you can even get metallic sort of gleams with refracted light! 

It is a lot of just practice, but it may also be how you’re working. With paper, you can see the entire paper in your field of view. On the computer, that’s a little harder. You may want to either open another window, and keep that one zoomed out enough that you can see the entire figure, or work on the general drawing down to the details later. So you zoom out, draw the general image, then zoom in and work details.

It may also be that you’re just not quite used to a tablet yet, it may be the texture of your tablet, in which case you can tape a square of paper to your tablet to simulate the feeling and texture of paper. c: It’ll wear your nibs a li’l faster, but I found it very helpful back when I used a regular tablet.

As far as just getting proportions down in general, I have two tips for you: the first is to learn the proportions in terms of “how many heads.” Learning where points of the body are in a six to eight heads tall character. Like this!

You can see nips hit about the second line, belly button at the third, groin at the fourth, knees at the sixth, etc..

Absolutely. Thank you so much for this, it’s a fantastic question, Red. <3 

What Red is referring to are artistic choices in designs so as to delineate the protagonists and antagonists from each other, and you see this a lot in kids media, but also in things like the old-style cowboy movies, where the good cowboy and bad cowboy will, quite literally, wear white and black hats, so that you instantly know who is the good guy and who is the bad--as Western media commonly associates white with goodness and purity, and black with darkness and evil. You even see this in Samurai Jack.

Jack is basically shades of white, and Aku is black with touches of red and green. Red being an aggressive color, and green often associated with poison. Going into silhouettes, Jack is very human-like, and made of simple shapes like solid boxes and rectangles, which are commonly associated with traits like, well, solidness, with strength and sturdiness. Aku, meanwhile, is pointed and horned and twisting, his silhouette hearkens to demons and slithering things like snakes and dragons.  

And at first this seems simplistic, and it is. But there is a reason for this. Ultimately, the entire series comes back to these two entities, who are embodiments of two forces completely opposing each other. There are absolutely other colors of the spectrum thrown in between the two. We see almost every shade of morality in the secondary characters. But at the end, everything comes back to these two forces of light and dark, selflessness and selfishness, constantly battling each other.

They also did something quite clever with this very obvious dichotomy, and that is they set up certain expectations, which, in a number of episodes, they turned these expectations on their head. Suddenly they throw this character at you: 

This is a character of like pure angles, of black, red, blue, evil colors. Based on the dichotomy the show presents, he’s not supposed to be good. And he wasn’t. He did a lot of bad things, but learned how to love, and tried to leave that life behind. And this, ultimately, perhaps, caused his demise. Aku took advantage of him to force him back into that life he wanted to leave behind. He was forced to operate in the greyer parts of the morality spectrum, trying to kill Jack, in order to save the person he fell in love with. And ultimately, could not escape.

And of course, they do the opposite, in which they give you these sirens of nothing but white and pastel and curvy soft silhouettes:

Who totally try to kill Jack. Because they’re hungry.

To really take advantage of these, not only to invoke but to subvert, a broad knowledge of cultural association between shape and color with morality is very important. Kids media is one of the best places to really see that in simple terms, while more adult media can give you the in-between shades. You can start though, in Western media, with this helpful cheatsheat:

Good

Colors: White, pastels, daylight, gold, spring, summer

Shapes: Circles, squares

Bad

Colors: Black, red, green, purple, night, fall, winter

Shapes: Triangles, sharp points