ART STUFFS

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Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
Hey everyone ^_^. Just thought I'd share a couple of pictures that I'm kind of proud of that I drew recently.
EDIT: adding new stuff to the first post :3



Hey you improved a lot, I'm impressed :D
You have some idea of what you are doing, but you need to work on your anatomy and form. Especially the limbs. Arms just aren't built like that, and the legs in the first one make her look like she's about to fall over since they are both ahead of her torso.

The first one seems familiar. I must have seen your DA or another topic of yours somewhere.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Yeah, you definitely have the lines and ideas in your head, just need to focus on structural drawing. I'd seriously consider just studying nude / bare models for a little bit, to nail down the anatomy. That way when you get to this stage of character drawing, you'll be light years ahead of your game.
Lol, Alice doesn't have a thumb. XD

These are both very nice! The coloring on the first one is lovely (although the shoes are a little bare) and the shading on Leon is very soft (which I like, but some might disagree).

Anyway, looking at your Alice, you definitely know there are muscles somewhere in those arms, you just don't know where. Instead of making them up and hoping you got them right just go in front of a mirror and look at your arm in the same pose. On the first pic, your curved line should be close to the elbow, on the other side of the forearm, instead of on the side you drew it. A(nother?) tip from me is that your forearms are never ever ever wide close to the wrist. Well, except when your character weighs like 200 lbs. There are no notable muscles there, so the only thing that could give a weird shape to the close-to-the-wrist area is body fat. I feel like I should mention the bones there.

Mentioning the bones there.

Anyway, try to make your lines thinner (Leon). This is very important in the long run. Even basic shapes are lost when drawing with thick lines and thing is, thick lines cover up more than half the mistakes you might make. That may or may not sound like a good thing, but my opinion on the matter is thin lines>thick lines. At least while you're practicing this is advice you should try to follow.

Aaand the last thing. Don't cross-hatch at 90 degrees. It leaves huge gaps in the shading and unless that's what you want, start with a small angle and layer the bigger angled lines on top.

Hope all of that made sense.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
@Arc: Thanks ^-^.
@Karsuman: Yeah, it's a ridiculous pose. I generally do stable, photo images without impossible poses, but I felt I'd try something a bit more dynamic. Guess it just turned out awkward =/.
I've posted that Alice picture on my DevArt just recently and on CA yesterday evening.
@Dudesoft: Anatomy is still my biggest issue =/. I recently have been doing a lot of comic drawing to try and improve on it. I do have to reference my anatomy a lot more...I'm just going off memory of a book I read on anatomy.
@meh_ch- It got blended in and I didn't shade it currently :<. Whoops hehe. And...I didn't shade the shoes =/. I was getting lazy and was uninspired in how to shade them =/. I think I was just being lazy, mostly.
Yeah, I felt my wrists, especially on Leon, were a bit thick. I should really pay more attention because I actually have rather thin wrists anyway >.>
And about the lines, I used to use the 7 Pen setting in SAI, but after reading Arc's tutorial a little while back I started using 4 usually. Because it was a pencil sketch my lines turned out thick. I'm not very confident without my CTRL-Z hehe >.<
I'm going to jump in here to disagree with meh_ch about line thickness being the main problem. Line thickness is more a stylistic choice and plenty of competent artists use thick lines in their work.

Another rundown based on the issue of line:

The first picture's problem is more a lack of line variation, e.g. thicks and thins. The weight looks very consistent throughout, downplaying dynamic interest and leading our eyes nowhere.

In the case of Leon it appears you are just drawing over him again and again building up his features too much, obscuring them. This is merely an issue of knowing that things look wrong but not knowing how to fix them anatomically - has little to do with line, and much more to do with an unconfident artist doing the good thing and trying to fix her mistakes. From what I see, the main problem has little to do with your lines and much more to do with your level of experience. And experience simply comes with time.



You need to become more confident when drawing your line. Don't fuss over the details until the refinement stage. Don't attach yourself too much to one drawing, especially if you feel it has gone bad. Etc., etc. This is all common advice to comic-style artists and animators.

My best advice? Gesture drawing. I highly suggest doing numerous gesture drawings of a pose when you are not confident in your ability to portray it in an accurate way - and frankly, it's a good idea to do lots of gesture drawings in general. It is one of the best things you can do for line confidence and proportion. If you don't know what I mean by this, I will explain/show you.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
I'm not sure what you mean by gesture drawings, that'd be really great if you could give me an example.
And I can see that most of my thick lines in the Leon drawing are because of my mistakes- I went over the arm in the background and edited several times before I was half-happy with it.

And I generally do scrap a drawing if I don't like it- I first of all did a front view of Leon then completely scrapped it. There were several other sketches on that page that I wasn't too pleased with. Leon's head came out looking ok, so I ended up turning it into a full-fledged drawing. I hate it when a drawing looks ok and then when it's finished it looks horrid. I recently scrapped a face drawing because of this, and I'd spent an hour on it =.=.
I leave with a drawing of Kumo, the main character of my FF parody that I just did. I played around with my anatomy a bit here and I think it looks ok. I dunno...


Actually would probably be better to throw Alice more off balance to give an effect that she's tumbling down the rabbit hole. :3

Gesture drawings are basically just really quick rough thumbnail drawings. Usually it's just to try and capture the "action" of a pose without being bogged down by details - helps keep you loose so your poses aren't stiff and things like that. Some of mine - several of those I went beyond gesture's (ninja turtle for example).

Anyway, really nice stuff. I really dig the Alice one up there.
s'looking gooood :D
i would give some constructive criticism at this point, but i think everything's been pretty much covered
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Looks like he's pulling one off in his pocket.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
I hate that arm.

My friend suggested a chainsaw but I don't think that really fits the concept.

I'm unsure how I'd get it to look any other way. I was going for the idea that he has both hands in fists because he's thinking of a bad memory or some such.

And I see what you mean by gesture drawings now. When undertaking a difficult pose I'll start off with a small thumbnail then gradually work on larger figures to get the pose down right, but that's generally only if the pose is a very difficult pose that I haven't drawn before.
Ark
Wario's-a number one!
1770
needs more breasts
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
You know, I find it really difficult to draw breasts, especially the ones generally found in anime. I prefer drawing my lovable bishies and cute male teens. Maybe that comes with having breasts myself =P.

But, since I'm doing an FF Parody with Tifa in it I have to take what I've got and run with it.


I think it's a bit pale, but I generally don't do pencil sketches full-on like the Leon one- I do them as a base, scan them, then digitally do the lineart/colour.


That isn't a bad sketch.

I think that women have a hard time drawing anime breasts because they actually have them. So, women draw breasts the way they really look - like a teardrop. Anime breasts are actually more like a big sphere pasted onto the outside of the woman's chest. It is anatomically impossible and makes no sense whatsoever, but that is how anime artists draw them.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Also, do you sketch the image and that's all? I don't see much rough stuff there. Maybe that's the problem? Sketching anatomy before the final linework is pretty crucial. Everyone does it. Either a wireframe skeleton, or basic shapes, or whatever... but it does appear that you're just drawing the final image from the get-go.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
No, I draw guidelines. Before I draw linework I generally draw an outline of the anatomy, especially when drawing fingers, female chests, etc. I just do them very lightly and I have a very good eraser. For the Kumo picture I spent about 20 minutes drawing guidelines for the arms, hehe =/. That was one of the first things I learnt when drawing- don't start drawing the clothing first, do an outline of your figure otherwise you'll have difficulty defining how the clothing folds, etc.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702


I prefer evil Alice, don't you?

EDIT:
And colour!
Improvements across the board on that one. :0
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
Yeah, I'm a big fan of how that one turned out.
I'm going to start whipping through redraws of my Cosplay Crisis facesets. The current ones date back to about March-May, and they really, really suck.
Like, really.
As per usual, I drew the main character Kumo first.


This is fairly different to my usual style, but I like how it came out. He doesn't look like a young teen here, and given he's nineteen that's a good thing. I chose an age for Kumo and Levi in between the characters they portray, since Squall is seventeen and Cloud is twenty-one, nineteen was the obvious choice.