How Do I Make a Large Crowd?

[BLTX]

I'm currently working on the third issue of my comic, and I need some help with something. How can I make that wavy black thing actually look like a massive crowd of people?

(I've already decided to make the person smaller. MUCH smaller.)

▼ Newer version.

[migxmeg]

Ugh crowds are the worst, be looking in on this thread to see what great ideas anyone has. Your crowd of gerbils worked, so you can probably do something similar if anyone doesn't have a better idea!

[BLTX]

Your crowd of gerbils worked

Yeah, but the Gerbils we're easy. With gerbils you can just copy and paste them because they all look identicle. And when I got to the back, because they we're in a dark burrow, I could make them this same shade of black. People are MUCH harder, and I really want to avoid making dozens of different poeple If I can.

[migxmeg]

I feel that... I don't really know what size they're going to be, but you can probably get away with drawing 3-6 different people, then flipping them horizontally so you've got 6-12. Make some assorted groupings and color them differently. Copy-paste those. You could make the ones in the back black silhouettes like you did with gerbils potentially even - it might not look weird? Hard to say without seeing. And depends on scale how obvious this will be.

Honestly there's such a spectrum from "draw every person" to "bare minimum representation of humans" so that the reader knows it's a crowd.

In my case I did some very lazy blurring with all kinds of lighting/color on top to deal with my crowds for the most part, which wasn't super and wouldn't mesh with your art style anyway I think :(. Sorry I don't have any better ideas! Looking at some references on Pinterest that are similar to your art style might be a good place to start.

[NickRowler]

You only need to draw whoever is in the front and draw the top of the heads fading back. If it is very dense, you can recycle characters.

[BLTX]

The idea here is that he's surrounded by a cicle of people. In fact, I think I'll change the angle a bit to show the people infront of him as well. In fact, here's a newer version.

And I do realize I've just made more work for myself...

[NickRowler]

Maybe something like this

[BLTX]

That looks pretty good! Thanks!

[rainbowolfe]

If you're using clip studio, you could always draw a few figures and then turn them into a brush. You can also download crowd brushes!

[BLTX]

I've actually already got down what I needed, but thanks.

And just for the record, I actually use Google Slides, (believe it or not.) I've actually never heard of clip studio.

[nkapit]

Think of it like the impressionist painters; at a distance, if you draw how the crowd feels, it’s more important than drawing every single likeness