HAUS'S GENERAL ART THREAD

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Hello folks, I am JIHAUS, a long time lurker and relic of an old RPG maker age, who was once active in the rpg2knet and gamingw communities. I've been tinkering with RPG maker since the rm95 days but died for a long time and came back in the last couple years when VXAce came out. I'm starting this thread at the behest of my BRO Aethers who is doing a daily thread, so I figured I should do the same.

I am a sort of jack of all trades when it comes to roles in game dev, but as to the best way to describe my art, I'd be more of a character designer, concept artist, and a world builder. My work tends to be heavy on the ideas but weak on the fundamentals (dat anatomy), something that I'm currently working on. I'm also a decent pixel artist and animator.

The drawings in this thread will primarily be pencil drawings as I get to do the most drawing outside the house, which has the unfortunate downside of not having refs. I'll also have the occasional digital art and pixel art here, especially when I start getting more aggressive on current projects. As I'm interested in getting better, feel free to offer suggestions, constructive criticism, and even ideas, but do note that I tend to be the type of artist who moves onto another drawing with the intent of doing better there rather than going back and fixing up a previous one.

Anyway, without further ado, here's some of my recent/decent work. I'll be posting pictures daily as much as I can.

RUIN FRONTIER:






BONE SHIELD:







MISC:








I apologize if they're a bit huge, having a huge monitor is screwing with my sense of reality.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
author=JIHAUS


I'm so diggin this.
Ohhh, that's a very nice style and eye for design you got going :D Great character designs, great colors, great composition, fantastic stuff :D Can't wait to see more!
I'm guessing you like dudes in armor?
author=SnowOwl
I'm guessing you like dudes in armor?

Dudes and dudettes in armor, yes. I guess you could call it my cop out zone, or my comfort zone, basically that thing you like to draw a lot that you're not really improving in but you just do it because you like to. Heh.

At any rate, something new:

DAY 1



Some RUIN FRONTIER artwork, this one being another one of those typical montage/movie poster-esque pictures that I like to do way too much, depicting all of the characters (and most of the mechanical designs, in some form).
DAY 2



Well the intent was to sketchdump several mecha designs but I ended up not having that much time to draw. Well, got 2 at least, hopefully I'll make up for it tomorrow. These rough designs could be interesting if refined further.
DAY 3



Another slow drawing day and another mecha design. Meant to be some kind of sniper robot with a cloaking device (all those circles) but I'm not sure anymore. I like that head though.
DAY 4



A badly composed picture, but at least I'm getting myself back to my previous mecha-drawing form. This is an old design of mine that I revised.
DAY 5



I took the previous day's design and played around with it further. I ended up filling the page with my usual OCD diagrams of how things work which is always a good thing.
DAY 6



My horrible attempt at making the internals for the above mech. I tried to remember the various gundam model kits I've assembled but otherwise I had no idea what I was doing here. The mech has some kind of hybrid way of moving its joints that makes it look like it has some muscles, which I punched up with a red pen for illustration purposes, while thrusters are in orange.
DAY 7





I made up for the lack of updates recently this time. Lots of busy nonsense at work prevented me from slacking off at work and drawing but thankfully there was none of that today. Anyway, we're getting away from the mechs today and instead drawing the protagonists of the Bone Shield series. First picture is just a general actiony one that I had no real plan for. Second picture shows a more specific scene from Undersea Mountain depicting the looting and scavenging that happens a lot in the game (note that the girl is a ghost, hence the upside-down ness). Third picture shows Zylverhia, said ghost, and her unexpectedly massive hair. I guess I may need to update her sprites...
Nice work, Mate!
If I may, I would like to suggest that you do some studying on perspective. You've got a good eye for creating decent forms, but everything looks flat.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
author=JuurianChi
Nice work, Mate!
If I may, I would like to suggest that you do some studying on perspective. You've got a good eye for creating decent forms, but everything looks flat.

Fella, there is no problem with perspective I can see. There are flat shadows, tho. Plastic shadowing is really time consuming and unnecessary for 'simple' sketches.
Maybe you mean this by perspective and I'm just overreacting.
and yep, nice work!
author=Cap_H
author=JuurianChi
Nice work, Mate!
If I may, I would like to suggest that you do some studying on perspective. You've got a good eye for creating decent forms, but everything looks flat.
Fella, there is no problem with perspective I can see. There are flat shadows, tho. Plastic shadowing is really time consuming and unnecessary for 'simple' sketches.
Maybe you mean this by perspective and I'm just overreacting.
and yep, nice work!


I'm having a bit of a derp moment here, but could you describe what you mean by flat shadows? I don't think I've heard that term before, and I'm definitely interested in seeing how I can improve my shading as that's one of my weak points.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
The way you are shadowing in last post, you are making all strokes in the same direction (I know its not exactly the truth).
You can either keep that and pay much more attention to intensity of an actual shadow, make contrast between light and dark parts bigger. Overall, It's what you are doing now with much more precision put in. You have to be precise with various pressures level, multiple shades, so something can get real shape.
I've never been able to keep myself so organized to stick with this method. I was more about replicating the shape of the object. With this method you are creating a grid of strokes which makes plastic copy. If something is rounded then draws are too.
And less is more sometimes.
Its kinda hard to explain as long as I don't know exact terms in English. I've just found out shading is probably more appropriate term for the first method than shadowing.
One more piece of advice. Avoid using rubber the way you do at the picture with gunman and jumping witch. It's standing out, tho its supposed to be in the background. It is, isn't it?
I don't see any big problem, as most of your drawings look dynamic and well-made. You can work with colors. That gives you big advantage and new point of view back on drawing. My guess is that JuurianChi had problem mainly with last three pictures. The first one seems to be unfinished. The second has some nice touches and gunman's figure works. Witch bit clashes with the rest. Background needs some more shading to look good.

But good job, once again. I've never been able to make such a complex fantastic scenes. I got somehow skilled at portraits and figures, drawings of the reality, no big deal.
Thanks for the advice. Scene composition has always been one of my stronger points since I've had education in animation and graphic arts, it's mostly my technique and overall "toolbox" that needs refinement. I think I do get what you're saying about the shadows though, and I can recall some good examples of it from other artists. With the way I shade with a pencil, it's all been mostly a self-taught affair so I'm a bit deficient on technique in that regard. Due to my tendency to smudge a picture while drawing combined with using a pencil that doesn't quite get dark enough, my pencil sketches end up being mostly in midtones value-wise and I have to rely on erasers to re-highlight the picture.

A lot of my pencil drawings are drawn with a concept art mindset, hence the general unfinished look they have. I do agree though that in the first picture, the space could have been utilized better as it is unbalanced as it is.
DAY 8



Haven't painted anything in a while so this was a necessary exercise. This was an attempt at a similar scene as before while trying some lighting tricks.

Zylverhia (the woman), being a ghost, should not be directly affected by the lighting of the scene, so I tried to render her independently. This had the effect of making her look like she was pasted into the picture so I attempted instead to tie her into the surroundings by having her emit light. Looks a bit better but she still looks somewhat disconnected.
You have an amazing amount of patience. Any particular kind of feedback you're looking for?
author=PentagonBuddy
You have an amazing amount of patience. Any particular kind of feedback you're looking for?


Thanks. As someone else mentioned before, my technique needs a bit of work. Things like anatomy issues and whatnot I know how to practice and I need to grind studies for so I have plenty of ways to improve that. What I'm mainly struggling with is painting techniques when it comes to digital painting, as I've had no traditional painting training so all I'm doing is attempting to mimic pictures that I like. I'm have trouble with things such as how to properly lighten/darken colors when creating highlights/shadows or just working with colors in relationship with each other. I'm also still trying to find my true digital art painting style and you can see in the most recent painting that the backgrounds tend to lack crispness and definition when I paint using values without doing lineart beforehand.

I'll probably see about trying some new things with pencil shading as suggested above but I'm always open to any kind of specific feedback regarding the improvement of my techniques.