Duredhel

[Duredhel]

Hey Mate, yeah I'm REALLY trying on the map but i'm running into a lot of trouble. Cartographic maps I can handle but isometric city maps are a whole different animal (it's also the reason why that kind of maps are usually handled by artists specialized in that).

[jack_norton]

Ah I see, sent you an email

[Tsundere Lightning]

Jaysus H. Christ, Master Carpenter!

Those are some of the best costume, armor and weapon designs I've ever seen, and combined with your command of anatomy your art is quite impressive.

My only critical observation is that they all seem to have very similar, athletic builds. Maybe you should try your hand at drawing thicker, or slimmer, or younger characters?

Edited to add: ...like you have on your Deviantart. I stand corrected.

[Duredhel]

Hey guys, I've been sort of inactive since I got hit with a slew of commissions. Including much of the art for an entire VN AND a Boardgame.

Here is some of my newer stuff


WARNING - click on this next one at your own risk, it contains boobs.

[DizzyStar]

Did you ever take art classes? Sometimes I get really down on myself for having such stinky art, and I think maybe if I took an art class... but it seems like with some people, you either have it or you don't ;-;

[Auro-Cyanide]

Did you ever take art classes? Sometimes I get really down on myself for having such stinky art, and I think maybe if I took an art class... but it seems like with some people, you either have it or you don't ;-;

Excuse me, butting in ^^'

Art classes can be beneficial, but there are many other ways to learn the same skills. There are literally thousands of tutorials on almost every aspect of art, plus there are a lot of really good books. There is almost nothing you can not learn from actual real life observation though, tutorials just help in figuring out what you are seeing and translating it into physical movements.

Everything else comes down to practice. And a lot of it. Literally years. 7 and upwards. It can be frustrating, but it is a hard skill to learn. It takes time and dedication, but I believe anyone can learn the skills. I took art in high school, but I have seen my greatest improvement after that. I learnt some great observation techniques, but the rest I picked up over the internet and through drawing. Don't give up hope

[Duredhel]

Whoa.. it's been a while. Ran into some trouble both computer and travel-wise, I'm back now to post some updates, though.

@DizzyStar - I realized you asked the question three months ago, but if you can take classes, take classes mate. They help a lot. Basically the rule with art is to do everything and anything you CAN do. The self-taught guy who became great with years of practice and observation would be even more amazing with art training. On the other hand, the guy with formal art training will never be great without years of practice and observation. So it's not one OR the other, you need both. Many great, great masters past their 60s will still take figure drawing classes every year.

Here are some new pieces;
*you can click on them to make them bigger*


This one also has a speedpainting video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2UuRCKI5Fo

[15385bic]

ur speed drawings are so good *q*

[Fawn]

I love your stuff I aspire to paint realistically someday too. I have a few questions, actually:

1. Is it easier to paint with Correl Painter? When I was watching your speed videos it seemed that it painted much better than Sai.

2. Do you colorize your grey artworks when doing larger color paintings, or do you use all color?

3. Who are your major art influnences/do you have any books you'd recommend for digital painting?

Sorry to ask so much ^^;

[Duredhel]

No prob, Fawn, as an artist I'm always happy to help other artists however I can.

1. Yeah, Painter is probably the best program for digital painting there is, in my opinion, since it lets you emulate natural mediums and get a lot of personality in your strokes. It's miles ahead of Sai, which is great thought, it takes up very little from your computer and it's good for more anime-ish style painting, quick, clean and simplified, but it's not the best for realistic painting.

2. I tend to use grisaille for most paintings, yeah, it's an amazing method and it lets me change hues at will while keeping all my values intact, saving me a TON of time. That way I don't have to use local colour, either. For bigger paintings I tend to separate each plane in a layer and overlay the hues on them independently. Then I add some general color overlays over everything so the lighting matches in all parts of the image. For other images, however, more cartoony, anime-ish stuff, I use local color.

3. Inspirations, tons, Wayne Barlowe, Keith Thompson, Tsutomu Nihei, Sergio Toppi, Range Murata. Honestly I haven't really used many books and the sort for digital painting. I learned acrylic and gouache painting and transplanted some stuff from that onto hte computer. Learning the traditional approach will usually make you much better at the digital stuff, so the best advice I can give is.. learn the traditional approach >,>. In any case, Gnomon video tutorials can help.

Also, here's a small face tutorial I did a while back and thought it'd be good to have on here. As usual, click to enlarge.

[Tsundere Lightning]

You do mechanical designs too?

Jesus. What are your usual commission rates?

[Duredhel]

@Tsundere Lightning - Yeah, I've done some mechanical designs as part of some commissions. For sprites, I usually charge US$30 per character + US$10-20 per extra pose (depends on how different each pose is from the original) / US$3 per character expression / US$10 per each extra set of clothes. For illustration (not sprites), you can find my prices here; http://0-duredhel-0.deviantart.com/journal/16350746/

Here are a pair of images from a game I'm working on with Winter Wolves. They're made so they have a ton of possible clothes/weapons combinations. You can see the development thread here; http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1980



Finally.. this is old, but it was fun to make

[15385bic]

Durehel...ur amazing and ur commision prices are pretty decent too *q*

so much detail in all of your designs
and i actually like ur old set better XD

[Duredhel]

Here's another sprite I did for Winter Wolves, you can check out the thread for this game at http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1980;

[jack_norton]

You're doing a great job on these sprites thumbs up.