You’re walking down a dark hallway. The lights flicker. That distinct, distorted screech starts building in volume, and before you can dive into a wardrobe, a grey, screaming face blurs past, sending you back to the lobby. If you've played Doors on Roblox, you know Rush. He’s the first real wall players hit—literally and figuratively. But figuring out how to draw Rush the place step by step isn't just about sketching a circle; it’s about capturing that specific, glitchy motion blur that makes the entity actually scary.
Most people mess this up by making him look too solid. Rush isn't a solid object. He’s more like a photographic mistake that wants to eat you. If you draw him with clean, crisp lines, he ends up looking like a generic cartoon ghost, which totally kills the vibe of the game.
Start With the Distorted Core
Forget perfect circles. Honestly, if you reach for a compass or a protractor, you’ve already lost the battle. Rush’s head is an irregular, slightly squashed oval. Think of a potato that’s been stepped on. That’s your base.
Start with a very light pencil sketch. You want a shape that is wider than it is tall. Because Rush is constantly moving at high speeds, his "physical" form is trailing behind him. Use loose, sketchy strokes for the outline. Don't worry about overlapping lines; in fact, the messier the better at this stage.
Once you have that flattened oval, you need to establish the "shudder." Draw three or four faint ghost outlines slightly offset from your main shape. This mimics the "place" or the environment's reaction to his speed. It creates the illusion that the drawing is vibrating on the page.
The Mouth is the Soul of the Scare
The mouth is where most of the personality lives. It’s huge. It takes up about sixty percent of the face. It isn't a smile; it’s a wide-open, agonizing scream.
Draw a giant, dark cavern in the lower half of your oval. The edges of the mouth shouldn't be smooth. Use jagged, erratic lines to show the "glitch" effect. Inside the mouth, you don't need individual teeth like a human. Instead, draw vertical, uneven white bars. These represent the teeth but should look more like a barcode that’s been melted.
Pro Tip: Keep the corners of the mouth slightly higher than the center. This gives him that sinister, mocking look that makes players hate seeing him in a dark room.
Those Hollow, Desperate Eyes
Rush doesn't have pupils. He has voids. When you're looking at how to draw Rush the place step by step, the eyes are the easiest part to overthink.
- Position the eyes high up on the "forehead" area.
- Make them uneven. One should be slightly larger or higher than the other to increase the "uncanny valley" feeling.
- Use heavy black shading.
- Leave a tiny, tiny speck of white in the upper corner of each eye—not for a reflection, but to show where the light of the hotel hallway might be catching the edge of his "form."
Capturing the Motion Blur (The Secret Sauce)
This is the part where most tutorials fail. To make Rush look like he belongs in Doors, you need to master the smudge. If you’re using lead pencils, use your finger or a blending stump. If you’re digital, grab a motion blur brush or a smudge tool set to about 40% strength.
Pull the charcoal or lead away from the face in one direction. Usually, drawing the blur trailing off to the left or right makes it look like he’s screaming past the viewer. You want the "face" to be relatively clear, but the back of the head should dissolve into wispy, smoky streaks.
Think about the way a long-exposure photograph looks when a car drives by at night. You see the headlights, but everything else is a streak. That's Rush. He is a streak of malevolent energy. Add some "static" by drawing tiny, sharp horizontal lines around the edges of his face. This represents the audio distortion (that loud SHRRRRRRR sound) translated into a visual medium.
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Shading and Texture
Rush is grey. Not a flat, boring grey, but a textured, grimy grey. If you're using colored pencils, mix your blacks, cool greys, and even a hint of deep blue.
- The Inner Mouth: This should be the darkest part of the entire drawing. Use a 6B or 8B pencil here.
- The Skin: Use cross-hatching but keep it very faint. You want it to look like static on an old TV.
- Highlighting: Use a white gel pen or a sharp eraser to "carve out" highlights on the tops of the teeth and the very top ridge of the brow. This creates depth without making him look "real."
Why The "Place" Context Matters
In Doors, Rush interacts with the room. He breaks lights. To truly finish the drawing, you shouldn't just draw the entity in a vacuum. Adding a few shattered glass shards flying away from him or some flickering yellow light effects in the background grounded him in the "place" of the hotel.
Draw some vertical lines to represent the hotel wallpaper, then "break" those lines around Rush's body. It makes it look like he's warping the reality around him as he moves. This is what separates a "fan art sketch" from a "tribute to the game’s atmosphere."
Actionable Next Steps
To get the best result, don't just stop at one drawing.
- Practice the "Scream" shape: Spend five minutes just drawing different distorted mouths. The more irregular, the better.
- Experiment with Smudging: Take a scrap piece of paper, shade a dark circle, and try smudging it in different directions to see which "motion" looks most aggressive.
- Watch a Replay: Go to YouTube and watch a clip of Rush coming through a room in slow motion. Notice how his face stretches. Try to replicate that "stretch" in your next sketch.
- Incorporate Color: Try adding a faint glow of blue or purple around the edges to simulate the "glitch" effect seen in higher-end renders of the game.
Once you’ve mastered the basic shape, try drawing him from a "down the hallway" perspective rather than a "front-facing" one. It changes the geometry of the blur and makes for a much more dynamic piece of art.