How could I improve on these sprites?

[briannavon]

Hi. I made these sprites but they came out looking bad and way too silly. I was trying to go for an Attack On Titan style, but it did not work...

(also, do not ask me why the girl is smaller than the boy because I can not find that out for the life of me. Just open her in another tab to see her true size)

[silverpikachu99]

You need to work on your proportions, designs and coloring.
-- Ok so what you need to do first is work on your proportions. Here you can find how to make them look more realistic. Next work on your poses. The two sprites had the exact same pose. For the boy, shouldn't he have more of a manly pose? This will help you with that. Another way to improve on your sprites is to work on the faces. Here for female and here for males. The last thing you coulld do to improve your art is the coloring. As soon as I see your art, you can tell you used something like MS paint. Anime always a nice realistic and glossy look. To do so, go here. Get a program like Paint tool sai, Gimp or Photoshop. Those are very useful in these cases. Hope this helps!

[Rozume]

(I'm not an expert, so anyone who wants to correct me or add to this feel free to do so...)

I suggest before attempting a style you have a good foundation on anatomy, light & shadow, etc. Furthermore, I think you would benefit greatly by learning to draw realistically and practicing still life.

That being said, I took the liberty of blue-lining your female drawing.

With the original drawing, there are obvious problems of proportions and anatomy. Remember that the face is usually split into perfect thirds, with some variation. However, with style, the variations can be more pronounced. In the blue-line, I didn't do much except make the eyes more proportional to the face.

With the anatomy, I made the arms less stick like, the neck wider, the breasts more relaxed, the waist more pronounced, and gave her hips. For females, the hips should be as wide as the shoulders. However, the shoulders can give the appearance of being wide if there's muscle. In all figures, the elbow should land at the waist, the wrist should end about the groin, and the hands should end about mid-thigh.

I found the pose to be very stiff and boring. You can benefit greatly from gesture drawing to help your figures be more dynamic.

Anyway, keep practicing! c:

[briannavon]

You need to work on your proportions, designs and coloring.
-- Ok so what you need to do first is work on your proportions. Here you can find how to make them look more realistic. Next work on your poses. The two sprites had the exact same pose. For the boy, shouldn't he have more of a manly pose? This will help you with that. Another way to improve on your sprites is to work on the faces. Here for female and here for males. The last thing you coulld do to improve your art is the coloring. As soon as I see your art, you can tell you used something like MS paint. Anime always a nice realistic and glossy look. To do so, go here. Get a program like Paint tool sai, Gimp or Photoshop. Those are very useful in these cases. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the links (also, I did use GIMP. Is my coloring so bad that nobody can tell XD )!

[briannavon]

@PhoenixStardust :

Thank you for the drawing! I will be redoing this character, so your drawing will help a bunch! I really needed the help with bodies!

[arachni42]

Thanks for the links (also, I did use GIMP. Is my coloring so bad that nobody can tell XD )!

I think it's the lack of anti-aliasing, which smooths out the lines and avoids the blocky look. Work on a canvas much larger than the final size of the image... it's way easier to get nice-looking edges that way. If you're not all that familiar with GIMP, look up some tutorials. It has a lot of powerful features, but a lot of them you wouldn't see just by looking at it. Get to know its capabilities, see what other people have done with it and how.

(Of course, you still need to work on all the fundamentals of drawing and coloring, but knowing your tool will help you apply what you learn.)

[briannavon]

OK! Also, I mostly use pencil tool. Would that have anything to do with it besides canvas size?

[arachni42]

Yeah, the pencil has hard edges. You should usually use the brush tool for this stuff.

[briannavon]

Note : Even though the sprite is naked, it's body is not detailed, so I think it's OK to post it here.


Could someone blue-line and color the blue-line for this and show what they would change (I mean, I see certain things that need changes like the eyes kinda have a always shocked look)

I did not add clothes or hair because I now know I can not hide my drawing body issues with clothes or hair.

[MaiMai]

First off, I think I'll leave you with this: General Body Tutorial.

And I made a blue line. And here's some notes:

* Big breasts are not volleyballs on a flat board. They are sacs of flesh that are affected by gravity and get pushed up depending on what kind of bra the woman in question is wearing.

* Torso/pelvis is too short. There is an average distance between pelvis and legs and that's why in my blue line, everything moved down. The ribcage makes up a lot of the upper body.

* Neck should be a little longer, but not too much.

[briannavon]

Thank you! Hopefully I am getting closer to being good at drawing bodies.

[LVUER]

Note: I've merged the topic.