Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

Questions, skill improvement, and respectful critique involving art assets.
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LinWest
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2536 Post by LinWest »

fortaat wrote:There's no problem with the one on the right, I'm talking on the dude to the left. His hips look like a woman, his shoulders like a man. there's also a problems with the angles his hips turn to the camera, but that's minor.
"Either you shorten the length of his shoulders, or make his hips more wide." - right now it doesn't look feminine, just anatomically wrong.

Self quote: "This will make him look feminine without looking bad."
The bad referred to the way you made him too thin as a way to compensate for a mistake in the proportions. Don't take it personally, I'm not criticizing you, I'm criticizing your art.
Overall the composition, execution, coloring, or line quality don't look bad. That's what I'm referring to. There's anatomy problems. A slip in anatomy does equate with a picture looking bad, merely falling in uncanny valley.

I don't take your critique personally, I understand how critiques work. I find them helpful when an individual is descriptive enough to point out coherently exactly what is is that looks off. Especially anatomy problems, which aren't always so obvious to an artist. A second pair of eyes is very helpful.

So let me critique your word choice: "make him look feminine without making his body look off" would've been a more helpful way of saying "without looking bad," which just sounds like an overall assessment of worth rather than helpful technical advice.

Yeah, I definitely think it's his shoulder's width being too broad that making everything out of whack. I'll play with it later tonight.
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2537 Post by Sakurazaki »

Fake anime screenshot quick done in about 5 hours XD Always wanted to do one of these...

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2538 Post by carosene »

Fake anime screenshot! That's genius, man! XD
Beautiful picture too. I want to know what's going on.
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2539 Post by ra-nyan »

change of pace.. need.. to.. finish.. cosplay..
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2540 Post by TzozenDark »

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My second ever character drawing..

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2541 Post by Ren »

@LinWest
I guess this is some sort of fast drawing, as I see some flaws with the inking and the colouring that could have been avoided with more time and care, and in my opinion do detract a bit from the overall look of it. I do quite like the style, it's somehow elegant and could very well suit a darker or more serious story.

Some anatomical problems that I see and I think are a bit detrimental to the overall effect are things like the way you accentuated the lines over the metacarpal bones of the hands, the position of the ear on the man on the left, his shoulders being too "tense" looking (you didn't leave enough space for the trapezius, which ends up looking way too packed in the shoulders), and their heads (in particular for the man on the right, but the one on the left is more noticeable because of his position in the picture and because he seems to be less affected by whatever filter you used on the picture) being too big for their bodies. I'm personally not really bothered by the hips being narrow, and the shoulders being broader, as it's a stylistic touch that emphasises some aspects of the male anatomy that we may perceive as attractive. Maybe Fortaat doesn't realise that this isn't the problem he's seeing and is just attempting to rationalise that he sees something with the proportions?
I did try to scale it down myself, and it seems to me it actually ended up making the rest of the body more acceptable as a result. As it is now, the distance from the top of his head to the chin seems to equal that of the chin to the sternum, which is in my opinion a bit too far from the ideal (to clear this: I'm not against playing with proportions a bit, as long as the whole picture is still harmonic).

I'd say that, as they are, it's not really clear if they're standing or laying on a surface: if they are standing, they don't seem to be in the right stance, and give the impression that they might fall at any moment; if they are laying somewhere, their hair don't really fall in the right way. I'd work a bit more on your poses, as the man on the left looks quite unnatural, and tense, as he is. His left shoulder is rotated forwards too much, and his fingers don't seem to bend in a natural way - try to have someone grab your hand like that, or just to put your hand in that position: you'll notice that only the index finger will stay straight like you drew them all, the other ones will bend progressively more as you go towards the little finger. The hand over the shoulder is problematic: it's the kind of thing you can only do well if you carefully observe reality. It seems to me you wouldn't see all the fingers down to the knuckle - you'd actually be only able to see down to the second phalanxes, and the end itself wouldn't be seen from that angle, simply because the position of the man's arm wouldn't allow it. I'd say the fingers should be rotated quite a bit to the left, unless he had a very long upper arm which allows his forearm to almost be vertical.

As for the lines, they look a bit uncertain, as if you were trying to be careful. Personal experience taught me that being faster when drawings helps a lot: a few unwanted lines here and there always look a lot better than lines which don't vary much in thickness and are somehow trembly here and there.

I'd say you concentrated the shadows on the clothes too much: you have some thick lines of darker colour, for the most part, and then some wider areas of a middle tone. What happens is that their clothes end up looking wet. I read somewhere that the more defined the creases you draw are, the heavier the fabric will look; wet fabric tends to be pretty heavy, and it sticks to the body for the most part, only popping out in small lines, which is the effect you obtained here.

Lastly, I'd say you used some sort of glow effect on the whole picture, which takes a bit from the guy on the right. He seems out of focus, as a result, and considering that my eyes are automatically attracted to his face (perhaps because he looks directly at the viewer, and has red eyes, which create a contrast of quantity and warmth against mostly cold colours here), I tend to be disturbed by the effect, rather than find it compliments the picture.

As I said, I personally like many aspects of the style, such as the sharp features, and the gloomy look that some of the things I've seen from you seem to have as a distinctive element, but I'd work on improving the other aspects of the illustration to frame and compliment them well, rather than to detract from them.

That said, this is also a totally subjective opinion. I apologise for the long comment, but I like to analyse pictures, and I generally don't red line other people's drawings without asking first as it seems a bit impolite, to me.


To be honest, I think you're being unnecessarily picky with words, "make him look feminine without making his body look off" isn't that different from "This will make him look feminine without looking bad." if you actually really understand how critique works. It seems to me that you're dismissing his way too readily as non descriptive enough, considering that it was good enough for you to come up with an alternative you seem to think is more acceptable, that seems to say the same thing just in a more diplomatic way.

Considering the recent discussion about critique on this forum, I think it's important to try and be humble about the comments we receive, and not defensive.

Fortaat may be more short than other people, but he didn't say your whole picture was bad, he was talking about the anatomy, and the anatomy alone, and how the body you drew looks too feminine in his opinion - he wasn't referring to the composition or the colouring at all in that part of his comment.

Lastly, art is a subjective thing, so things like
Overall the composition, execution, colouring, or line quality don't look bad. That's what I'm referring to. There's anatomy problems. A slip in anatomy does equate with a picture looking bad, merely falling in uncanny valley.
don't make me think you keep in account that other people may think otherwise, as your opinion is subjective.
Also, I'm puzzled as to why you would mention the uncanny valley in this context. I always thought it was the effect which makes it awkward for someone to look at a picture because it looks almost perfectly human save for a small particular which ruins everything, and I wouldn't say this is the case, since you draw very stylised things.

@Sakurazaki:

Neat fake screenshot - I quite like how you went on your way to actually picture the guy from above. Not many people attempt that kind of angle, so it's refreshing to see you trying yourself.

@ Ra-nyan:

You have a very soft and "cozy" style, I quite like it! It reminds me a bit of when I was reading Be mine, back in the days. I get the same feeling of softness and kindness (can drawings be kind anyway?).

@TzozenDark:

That's pretty good for a second attempt. Pay attention to how you draw your eyes, though - the eye on the right in particular seems to lay on a flat surface and not be affected by perspective at all. As The boy is turning his head a bit to the right, his left eye should be foreshortened.

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2542 Post by LinWest »

Ren wrote:@LinWest
I guess this is some sort of fast drawing, as I see some flaws with the inking and the colouring that could have been avoided with more time and care, and in my opinion do detract a bit from the overall look of it. I do quite like the style, it's somehow elegant and could very well suit a darker or more serious story.
First off, thank you for wall of text. Lots of information for me to contemplate. I spent maybe 5-7 hour in photoshop cs5 to test out the new features of the program. I normally work in Manga Studio EX4, Flash, or pen&paper. Photoshop isn't my favorite tool for inking, but I was more interested in trying to flesh out these characters than what tools I was using. At the moment it was most convenient. I'm shortening the quotes to the bare minimum of your critique so that this post isn't more insanely long than it already is.
Some anatomical problems that I see ... accentuated the lines over the metacarpal bones of the hands, the position of the ear on the man on the left ... and their heads.... being too big for their bodies.
That's very possible. I have three main things I do that I'm still trying to break out of: a right upward lean, head potentially being too large, and rotation issues. Rotation can be solved by a model, which I didn't have for the shoulders. As for the other two.. I just do unless I'm careful.

Ah, the metacarpals. Is it the lines or shading lines that is bothersome? Your right about the ear too, it needs to be over to the right and down a bit. I think I'm making the hair too inflated, and that's causing the heads to look a bit too big.
Maybe Fortaat doesn't realise that this isn't the problem he's seeing and is just attempting to rationalise that he sees something with the proportions?....As it is now, the distance from the top of his head to the chin seems to equal that of the chin to the sternum, which is in my opinion a bit too far from the ideal.
Could be.

Wait... One head's length down to the sternum isn't correct? My head length's equal to that, Am I not proportionate? o_o. Wait, ok, I just googled it. Apparently that's women's proportions. Considering the figure one is most familiar with your own that makes sense why I did that. People also tend to draw faces like their own face. I think since I just let this picture happen that I'm projecting on it, I'll be sure to remember that from now on.
I'd say that, as they are, it's not really clear if they're standing or laying on a surface...
You and me both. I don't know quite where they are either. I did intend them to look standing up though.
It seems to me you wouldn't see all the fingers down to the knuckle... I'd say the fingers should be rotated quite a bit to the left....
Probably there should only be the first two phanlaxes showing from the middle and index figure if they were to be curved in that direction. Which I want them to for compositional purposes to lead the eye back to the middle.
Personal experience taught me that being faster when drawings helps a lot...
Line work is my specialty, I don't normally use photoshop for it so I'm too familiar with it. I can't quite find a brush I like. Check my dev and particularly http://lindsayillus.tumblr.com/.
I'd say you concentrated the shadows on the clothes too much: you have some thick lines of darker colour.. What happens is that their clothes end up looking wet.
;) another thing that makes someone look more attractive. The eechi/hentai equivalent is the overemphasis of shadow on panties, tight shirts, and the like making them look wet 24/7. Although, considering they are just tshirts they do look rather cumbersome, that could be toned down.
He seems out of focus, as a result, and considering that my eyes are automatically attracted to his face (perhaps because he looks directly at the viewer, and has red eyes, which create a contrast of quantity and warmth against mostly cold colours here), I tend to be disturbed by the effect, rather than find it compliments the picture.
Well, he is a demon, I was trying to make him look supernatural instead just a random guy who's creeping on someone's shoulder. Knowing that, does it still look out of place? I wasn't about the red glow myself, but I'd rather take a risk than a safe option. Maybe if its less opaque and more orangey, or maybe a red purple, it won't look so jarring with the rest of the color scheme.
That said, this is also a totally subjective opinion. I apologise for the long comment, but I like to analyse pictures, and I generally don't red line other people's drawings without asking first as it seems a bit impolite, to me.
I don't mind a nice hearty analysis. I am curious why you singled me out though.
To be honest, I think you're being unnecessarily picky with words.
Words (ok, smilies too) are the only thing we really have to justify our opinions or communicate how we feel on the internet. So yes, I place high esteem on the value of words. I think it is very important.
Also, I'm puzzled as to why you would mention the uncanny valley in this context. I always thought it was the effect which makes it awkward for someone to look at a picture because it looks almost perfectly human save for a small particular which ruins everything, and I wouldn't say this is the case, since you draw very stylised things.
My view on anime: its is a symbol for a human not a realistic depiction. Yet we still emote with them because we recognize certain proportions as being human. However there and often something not feeling quite right can stop your connection to what your viewing and take you out of the experience, such as your above listings. It's the realization that this is a created thing, and therefore not an accurate symbol of what a human is. Is there a better term for such a thing other than uncanny valley? hmm

Well... a lot of work to do on this one. I'll try fixing it and I'll post it here when I'm done.
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2543 Post by fortaat »

Words (ok, smilies too) are the only thing we really have to justify our opinions or communicate how we feel on the internet. So yes, I place high esteem on the value of words. I think it is very important.
But yesterday you said! YOU CALLED ME A CHUVI-!!!

OH NO, IT'S HAPPENING!

Image

As for the rest, you pretty much nailed it. Nice analyze BTW.

Ren

Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2544 Post by Ren »

LinWest wrote: I spent maybe 5-7 hour in photoshop cs5 to test out the new features of the program. I normally work in Manga Studio EX4, Flash, or pen&paper. Photoshop isn't my favorite tool for inking, but I was more interested in trying to flesh out these characters than what tools I was using. At the moment it was most convenient. I'm shortening the quotes to the bare minimum of your critique so that this post isn't more insanely long than it already is.
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the brushes palette in Photoshop? After I've tinkered with it a bit, I can get lines I'm decently happy with. I'm pretty extreme when it comes to inking, as it's possibly the part that I find the most relaxing.
Ah, the metacarpals. Is it the lines or shading lines that is bothersome?
I'm talking about the lines you made with colour. They start directly from the end of the fingers and go down all the way around the middle of the hand (a bit over it, for the hand in the lower part of the picture) without being smudged a bit or without any variation in thickness. A personal favourite of mine is Takashima Kazusa: she draws hands that I love. As you can see in this example, she uses both the inking and colouring to define the back of the hand. In the picture, look at the lower hand: the colouring gets progressively more accentuated as you go down the hand, far away from the source of light. Another one, just because.
He seems out of focus, as a result, and considering that my eyes are automatically attracted to his face (perhaps because he looks directly at the viewer, and has red eyes, which create a contrast of quantity and warmth against mostly cold colours here), I tend to be disturbed by the effect, rather than find it compliments the picture.
Well, he is a demon, I was trying to make him look supernatural instead just a random guy who's creeping on someone's shoulder. Knowing that, does it still look out of place? I wasn't about the red glow myself, but I'd rather take a risk than a safe option. Maybe if its less opaque and more orangey, or maybe a red purple, it won't look so jarring with the rest of the color scheme.
Oh, I think my phrasing here is confusing you (I'll point out I'm not a native speaker, so sometimes the way I shape sentences in Italian comes out): I thought the red eye is actually a good idea - setting a small portion of the picture in a different colour is a good idea to actually guide the eye of the viewer, and make it more interesting. My problem here is that you guided me to a bit of the picture which I perceive as out of focus, that's what I found jarring. I've seen a nice video on the subject, in the DVD "Chaos and Evolutions" by the Blender foundation: looking at the picture you'll notice that this demoness is also in some sort of fog - what the guy did was using an effect in Gimp (some sort of Difference clouds which look a lot better than the ones in Photoshop, in my opinion) and then erased bits of it where it covered points of interest (such as the face). I think something like that would help this picture of yours quite a bit.
I don't mind a nice hearty analysis. I am curious why you singled me out though.
Again, this could be a cultural difference, but this seems to me like a defensive statement. I tend not to write any less than I did for you here, when I find a picture which I think has enough elements to discuss. Most of the time, to be honest, what I see here are drawings that, while nice, don't have much for me to say other than "Nice, keep it up!" (which I do say from time to time, but I don't find it all that useful). A lot of people here admit they posted one of their first attempts at figure drawing, or just some face shot which doesn't have many elements one could give proper critique on. It's good for them to show their progresses online and be encouraged, but I don't find there's much more to say, on those. As you said yourself, you tried a few things which made you avoid the safe option, which sometimes means you're not going to execute them so well. I think I can point out that kind of thing, and I do and I did before. I hope this explains it to you.
Words (ok, smilies too) are the only thing we really have to justify our opinions or communicate how we feel on the internet. So yes, I place high esteem on the value of words. I think it is very important.
Which is why I said unnecessarily picky. Mind, I obviously got a totally different impression from Fortaat's words, it seems to me, so it's normal we don't understand each other on this one. Bad and off often mean the same thing, when talking about anatomy, and being picky about it in particular is what made me think you were defensive.

Cheers.

Edit: stuff which is always useful.
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Last edited by Ren on Sat Jul 10, 2010 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2545 Post by Jake »

LinWest wrote: My view on anime: its is a symbol for a human not a realistic depiction. Yet we still emote with them because we recognize certain proportions as being human. However there and often something not feeling quite right can stop your connection to what your viewing and take you out of the experience, such as your above listings. It's the realization that this is a created thing, and therefore not an accurate symbol of what a human is. Is there a better term for such a thing other than uncanny valley? hmm
I'd agree that heavily-stylised stuff like manga-style art is generally not intended as a realistic depiction... which is why your usage of the phrase 'uncanny valley' seems totally out of place.

The 'uncanny valley' is a term which specifically refers to the interesting fact that intentionally-realistic representations of humans - when they approach near-realism - start to look quite disconcertingly wrong in ways which are hard to quantify. It's referring to things like humanoid robots (example), 3D renderings (example), etc. - at first, when they start out not very realistic at all, every step towards realism makes them look better. However, when they approach complete realism, there's a sudden dip in how good they look compared to how realistic they are, and this dip is the 'uncanny valley'. Robots look like creepy possessed mannequins, 3D-rendered people look like walking corpses and so on.

It's true that it's probably caused by small things which are 'not right' compared to the actual human body, an in that small respect it's similar to the way dodgy proportions in manga art can make the whole thing look less good... but it's a phenomenon specifically related to a very realistic depiction, and an actual negative feeling - revulsion - rather than just something not looking as good as it could be.
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2546 Post by muika »

Woo heheh, art thread has a lot of new art to look at. *___*
Doodled this on the plane ride to China. I dub thee Time Mage Shuuto~ It doesn't really have anything to do with Barabu, I was just bored. XD;; I drew the chibi way earlier so there are differences in the costume rofl. =3=;;
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2547 Post by fortaat »

Good work, I Really liked it, especially the color scheme.
Things that bothered me:
* The right eye of the big model. you should re-work it a bit, enhancing the color. It will really help to focus our eye on the head. It also reminded me of a black eye, but maybe that's only me.
* Though I don't know what's written in the sign to the left, I suggest you remove it - it screws the composition.
* She seems to float over the background, not actually standing on the hill/grass.

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2548 Post by LinWest »

So I took a lot of the advice given to me. It'll be easiest to see the changes in the without version which is the one with just flat cell shading and no glow effects.

I removed the hand, I tried in a couple different places but it just wasn't working out right. I shrank the size of both their hair. I lightened up the shadow lines on the clothing. Toned down the red glow to a a less noticeable haze. Redid metacarpals. Added some lineweight. Redid the left's shoulder area and added some negative space in the hair. Moved left's ear and chin. In the effects version I tried out the render clouds in gimp, which was awesome! and exactly what I was looking for!

I have the three versions here because the first time I did it, combined a saturated and unsaturated version of the picture. Compressed the effects version into a png, and applied a bunch of photo color/contrast/photo edits. I don't quiet remember exactly what I did after I compressed it. So the end results color isn't as good as the original's, which has been frustrating me.

@muika: Maybe put a logo or a symbol of some kind where the katakana is? (And it was a little bit bigger) I think the bubble balances out the chibi to the right and makes it look like a trading card or something, but the black on white is harsh with the rest of the hazy colors.
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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2549 Post by TzozenDark »

Third try..
I tried to understand how the eyes look on the face.
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Is this a little better..?

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Re: Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

#2550 Post by muika »

@fortaat; Thank you! Haha, I was worried about the colors, because on the laptop it was more purple/vibrant while on the computer I uploaded it on the colors appeared way more dull and washed out than I expected. By big model do you mean the non-chibi big version? I think I'll probably brighten up the eye, and see what I can do.

Haha, I added the BG as an afterthought so I guess it shows. I'll have to fix it to make it look like Shuu is actually standing on the grass. The sign says "barabu"- the game Shuuto appears in. And Shuuto's ah.. a umm guy. XD;; I tend to skew into the "all guys I draw look effeminite" kind of thing. ><;; I kinda wanted to put the sign because it's part of the border which I thought would be cute, but I'll probably remove it then.

@LinWest; Yeah, I originally had the bubble and chibi on hte bottom, but I thought it'd be better if they were on opposite sides haha. Maybe I'll make the white a pale pink or something like that. I think a symbol would work well actually... that would require designing a logo for barabu from scratch. Haha, time to get back to work!

Thanks for the advice everyone!

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