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Hey guys, welcome to my first-ever tutorial! Here I'm going to go over something I'm seeing a lot of users struggling with in their comics: Pregnant Characters These are examples of pregnant characters I've seen around here lately: First let me go over why they're wrong. This is a biological impossibility. Babies don't grow in the stomach at all, so putting the bump above the pants line makes no sense. ...I don't even know what the heck is going on here. The bump is kinda in the right place, but it looks like it's going over the top of the pants. There are many factors you have to consider when making a pregnant character. One very important piece is the conception. Women can discover they're pregnant via pregnancy test as soon as the day after they've had unprotected sex, but if a test is taken that soon and it's negative, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Conception can occur even five days after the unprotected sex. Plus, false negatives and all that. Another thing I've noticed in series is the girl gets morning sickness a day or two directly after having unprotected sex. This is very unlikely (But strangely not impossible). Pregnancy nausea is due to rapidly changing hormone levels and heightened senses, and that will occur at least three weeks after conception (the average is six, however). Now we get to the actual look of pregnancy. Every woman is different, every pregnancy is different, every newborn is different. Some babies are born bigger than others, some women gain weight, some don't. So, for simplicity's sake, I'll go over the things that should remain constant. If you're going to have a pregnant character, I would highly recommend keeping her in a dress, or a shirt/pants/skirt combo that could be a one-piece throughout the pregnancy. This is for masking ease. If you insist on using pants with a belt or a loose shirt, you're gonna have a lot of trouble, plus, I ain't about to go over that nonsense. I'll start with the dress. First, remember that babies develop in the uterus, which is located in the woman's lower abdomen. We'll say it's early in the pregnancy, so the bump will be small. Never, ever use the full circle. It's too much roundness for a pregnant belly, no matter how far along the broad is. Instead we'll use the quarter-circle shape like this: What I generally do is use the thin outline of the shape and place it on the lower abdomen of the character like so. Then I use the hex code of the dress for the hex code of the shape. If you don't make sure they match, masking is going to look really, really bad. Then I copy/paste the shape and select the solid color option. Your first instinct is going to be to use a solid black shape under a solid colored shape...don't do that. It's super hard to match up line thickness (as you can see in the second, third, and fourth panels) and it shifts too much. Take the solid copy of the shape and make it just a little bigger. You're gonna want to leave a little give at the bottom of the bump if you're doing this in the 3/4 view to give some semblance of shape to it. Place it over the straight edge of the outlined shape. (I made it red so you can see size and positioning.) in the next part I'll go over the shirt/pants combo. It's a little more work but once you get used to doing it, it's not a big deal. That's basically it for the one-piece dresses...if you want to add shading or whatnot to it, knock yourself out. I personally don't; I think it looks fine without it. Just remember pregnancy bumps are round and should be shaded as such. (Cont.)

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