Art critique please!

[champignonkinoko]

Hi all! I'm working on a VN 'Journey Against Ouva', and recently it has been brought to my attention that my art could use some fixes.

<< Questions for you! >>
1. I thought the character and the background needs a bit of distinction, any ideas on how this can be done?
2. Flaws with anatomy/shading you see?
3. Comments I received on some of the characters - not catchy enough. What are your thoughts on how to improve on this?

[truefaiterman]

1- Add more contrast, both characters and backgrounds feel plain. If you give more contrast to the characters compared to the bgs they'll stand out more.
2- I can't examine very well the anatomy right now, but just as a start I repeat point 1: Needs more contrast.
3- The poses are a little stiff to me. Perhaps they need a little more exageration, and trying to show better their personalities through their expressions.

[raistlintg]

I'll try to help with my limited abilities.

Question 3 : maybe some of the lines need to be more strongly drawn ? That could add some contrast and dynamism.

That might also help with Question 1.
Also, about Question 1, aren't saturation and brightness a little too similar between characters and background ?
[edit] the first post wasn't published when I began writing, but it seems we see the same contrast problem.

Question 2 : the green jacket man's clavicula ?

Your work looks fine anyway
Good luck !

[SundownKid]

They aren't bad at all - I think the main issue I can see is that their poses are a little stiff. It could use slightly more dynamic poses. Their necks also seem slightly long in some cases.

[champignonkinoko]

Just taking down a few notes to fix the artwork...

1. Dynamic poses (Thanks SundownKid & truefaiterman!)
2. Add contrast to char & bg (truefaiterman)
3. Stronger lines, Saturation & brightness, Raphael's clavicula (raistlintg)

The first one will take a while to fix but is an important point, so I'll be posting a fixed piece in approx two days' time!

[LateWhiteRabbit]

<< Questions for you! >>
1. I thought the character and the background needs a bit of distinction, any ideas on how this can be done?
2. Flaws with anatomy/shading you see?
3. Comments I received on some of the characters - not catchy enough. What are your thoughts on how to improve on this?

Answer to #3 first:
There is no real problem with your character designs - on an individual basis. However, they are not 'catchy' enough, because their silhouettes are all VERY similar. At a quick glance, it is hard to distinguish one character from another at a distance. This leads to the impression that all the characters are the same, and thus, boring. Following other posters' advice about more lively poses can help with this some. Doing a slight redesign of your characters so they have more distinct shapes would help more. Silhouettes are one of the MOST important things in character design.

#2:
Hard to tell with the style you've chosen and the bust shots, but the necks do look a little long (could be a stylistic choice). However, I can't tell whether your line on their necks is there to define their Adam's Apples or the sterno-mastoid muscle. If the sterno-mastoid, that muscle stays straight - it doesn't curve like that. Skin or other connective muscles can give the appearance of curves in that area, but for the most part the muscle is a straight shot from inner clavicles to the connection point behind the ear. The line you've added on the neck of the character in the left panel in the middle looks really weird. The clavicle bones on the first character are also really low.

#1: Contrast can help - adding bolder outlines to define volume and perspective (thicker lines around parts or objects closer to the viewer, and thicker lines opposite of light sources). You might also try running a few filters on your 3D backgrounds to help the consistency between them and your character art.

Really solid stuff though. You are off to a great start.

[champignonkinoko]

Thanks LateWhiteRabbit! Adding to my notes...

1. Dynamic poses & silhouettes (SundownKid, truefaiterman, LateWhiteRabbit) - did waist shots instead - hopefully fixed this a little..
2. Differentiate contrast, saturation, brightness between char & bg (truefaiterman, raistlintg) - hopefully this is partially fixed now
3. Raphael's clavicula (raistlintg), adam apples/sterno-mastoid

However, I can't tell whether your line on their necks is there to define their Adam's Apples or the sterno-mastoid muscle.

It's actually adam's apple. Must be the shading not done right if it's not clear enough then :] I'll be fixing this at a later stage, thanks!

#1: Contrast can help - adding bolder outlines to define volume and perspective (thicker lines around parts or objects closer to the viewer, and thicker lines opposite of light sources). You might also try running a few filters on your 3D backgrounds to help the consistency between them and your character art.

These are very specific tips, thank you!

Please have a look at the most recent version and let me know if that's better!

[akemicchi]

1. I thought the character and the background needs a bit of distinction, any ideas on how this can be done?
Silhouettes for the characters like LateWhiteRabbit said and playing with contrasts like other people have mentioned. :)

2. Flaws with anatomy/shading you see?
There aren't any glaring mistakes other than the clavicles, but that's been mentioned. One thing I do want to mention is the shading isn't distinct enough. The shades sort of blend with the base color. You'll want to make it pop out more-- either by picking a slightly different color for the shading (instead of red, you choose a violet color, for example), or a darker color. Make it more distinct! Contrasts are important when it comes to coloring!

One trick I like to do to figure out the values of an image is to change the picture to greyscale. You'll be able to see how the image looks like as a whole. For example, turning your image greyscale shows how difficult it is to see the characters when against the background. The shading on their skin is hard to tell apart from the base color on their skin, too.

3. Comments I received on some of the characters - not catchy enough. What are your thoughts on how to improve on this?
One thing I noticed about artists is that coloring plays a big role on how skilled you appear. Some people cover up things they're weak at like anatomy with pretty coloring... and it works! People fall for it all the time! I've seen artists that don't know how to draw hands or legs or even bodies in general, and people still fawn over their pieces because they know how to color and downplay those mistakes. If you can get really good with coloring, your art will look tons better! Your art's pretty good right now, actually; you're definitely not bad!

I say look up references of coloring styles you want to use in your art and emulate them. One thing you definitely need to work on is making sure your pieces-- especially the characters-- have more contrast. Be more bold with the colors you use to shade. Go darker with your shadows, go lighter with your highlights, don't choose similar colors, shade warm colors with cool colors... Things like that! Try a little more than you're comfortable with, is what I'm trying to say. You can always fix it if it doesn't look good!


Anyway, good luck with everything! ^^

[Deji]

Here comes Deji meddling where nobody has called her :'D

I'm going to give you a few very rushed examples of things you could work on
*Disclaimer*: While I do have experience, I'm not an expert at art and my examples could very well be full of flaws.

First the background:
It's not a bad idea to make the Bg lighter and desaturate it a bit!
You can also add a thicker outline to sprites to make them pop out
You could even blur the BG a bit (not too much).

Second, the poses:
Try sketching the poses lovely and making the hairstyles a bit more flow! Look at references from people posing that way or take a webcam snapshot of yourself posing that way, or just look at sprites from japanese companies to see the poses they have.
I always try to start with very loose sketches so when I ink them they don't get *too* stiff.
Look around!

Third, the colouring:
Like other people mentioned, the shading seems to be a bit too soft/too much like the base color.
There is a very "simple" way of shading that involves toying some with the layers in your software of choice
Here's a step by step of it:

1. Put every color on its own layer!
(I do this by filling a layer with the skin color and then using "clipping mask" layers on top, this helps a lot!)

2. Make a white layer. Then make a new layer on top of that white layer and using a desaturated purplish pink celshade the shading of everything.

2.5 You can soften the shading a bit! I used a soft airbrush-y brush to add some soft shadows and used the same airbrush soft brush to erase softly some of the hard celshading. You can play around and see what works for you ^^

3. Now hide (or delete) that white layer and set your shading layer to multiply. This is what it's going to look like. Not too bad, but it can be improved

4. This step involves a bit of layer hopping.
Say we start "fixing" the shading of the jacket. Go to the layer where you coloured the jacket, select it (and make sure no other areas with different colors are selected!), go back to your multiply shading layer without deselecting anything and then use Ctrl+U to fix the hue (you may also fix the saturation and lightness a bit, but you mostly want to fix the hue).
Do this with every coloured area!

5. Color the lineart and have fun detailing if you want

I hope this was useful ^___^
Good luck!

[champignonkinoko]

Thanks Akemicchi! Whoa, Deji, that tutorial is amazing! You've just gotten yourself a new fan ^^
Adding to my notes...

0. DEJI's TUTORIAL!!! =D
1. Dynamic poses & silhouettes (SundownKid, truefaiterman, LateWhiteRabbit) - using waist shots, might try and improve on again later - keep in view (KIV)
2. Differentiate contrast, saturation, brightness between char & bg (truefaiterman, raistlintg) - hopefully this is partially fixed now
3. Raphael's clavicula (raistlintg), adam apples/sterno-mastoid (LateWhiteRabbit)

You guys are such gurus! I'm feeling the need to compile all of these wonderful tips and tricks later on...

1. You'll want to make it pop out more-- either by picking a slightly different color for the shading (instead of red, you choose a violet color, for example), or a darker color.
2. One trick I like to do to figure out the values of an image is to change the picture to greyscale. You'll be able to see how the image looks like as a whole.

3. Silhouettes are one of the MOST important things in character design.

I'm going to give you a few very rushed examples of things you could work on
*Disclaimer*: While I do have experience, I'm not an expert at art and my examples could very well be full of flaws.

Deji that work of yours doesn't look rushed at all to me, it looks really good! I've used it as reference (hope you don't mind) to color Stan, but I think it's still nowhere near your shading skills!!

[truefaiterman]

Well, I see some change here, this looks waaaay better, more volumetric and intense. I personally don't like that blurry effect with the background, I'm more into well-defined ones, but I'm no expert on that matter.

I also agree with the shilouette stuff, that's a very important design aspect. Sometimes you don't even need to change their looks to give them distinctive shilouettes, sometimes it's good enough with a pose which expresses an attitude.

I'd also say, be careful with that jacket, that orange feels weird to me compared to the rest of the hues, perhaps trying something more beige or yellow-ish? And I'd also I'd recommend you to add more colour to the skin (not more contrast or anything like that, I mean a bigger variety), that way it will feel more alive (some purple or bluish touches in the shadows, perhaps some red touches on the skin...). Some highlights like the ones on his arms would give his face more strenght.

It's still a great improvement, though, keep this up!

[champignonkinoko]

I also agree with the shilouette stuff, that's a very important design aspect. Sometimes you don't even need to change their looks to give them distinctive shilouettes, sometimes it's good enough with a pose which expresses an attitude.

That's true. This would mean redrawing from sketches again O_O" I'll do this for the character who has the most problems right now (IMO - Thiago)

I'd also say, be careful with that jacket, that orange feels weird to me compared to the rest of the hues, perhaps trying something more beige or yellow-ish? And I'd also I'd recommend you to add more colour to the skin (not more contrast or anything like that, I mean a bigger variety), that way it will feel more alive (some purple or bluish touches in the shadows, perhaps some red touches on the skin...). Some highlights like the ones on his arms would give his face more strength

Thanks for the hue & skin colour tips! I've given it a go, hope this is an inch better

I've always wondered why the Cinders VN could stack characters together and it wouldn't look odd. Now I know why... It's an issue with my coloring.
Thanks guys! This has been fun! I'll still be posting fixes to address silhoutte/dynamic poses

[Laniessa]

Wow, the improvement is amazing! I'll just put in two cents -

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes you draw foreheads too long. Eyes should be around halfway down the head - and you got this rightish for the redhead and glasses guy, but the blond guy's forehead is way high. Your female protagonist has the same issue, but I can't get an image of her. Remember to upsize the head afterwards too, though, so it's not too small in relation to the rest of the body.

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My second issue is the shading, a bit. It's a bit of stylistic thing, but saturation should go down in absence of light - skin is a special case, though. So be careful that the shadows aren't too saturated unless you want a really bright and colourful look, or you have some funky lighting. For skin, the same happens, but when light meets the skin, it lights up the blood as well. You can't see this in lit areas of skin, since it's reflecting the skin, but on the borders between shadow and lit areas, sometimes the blood is lit up but the skin isn't, so saturation goes up right at the border, until it's shadow again. I decreased the saturation on some areas of skin, so you can get an idea, but again, this is a bit stylistic. I have a really muddy art style.

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Thirdly! Just remember - there are two types of shadows. One is called cast shadows, which is when one object blocks the light so the object behind it doesn't get light. For example, the bangs. The edges of these shadows are relatively sharp. The other kind, which I think is called the form shadow, is when the object is like, rounded, so it turns away from the light and thus, doesn't receive light. These are relatively soft, and it's like the face.. You should use a combination of both when drawing to be effective.

Good luck!

[champignonkinoko]

Hi Laniessa

Again, valuable two cents to note! Laniessa's notes:
a. Head anatomy - ratios
b. Cast shadows vs. form shadows <--- this is amazing! Never thought of this before

Thanks very much Laniessa!!
Here goes an attempt to fix!

I think I'm happy with Raphael's color scheme (blond guy), although maybe Thiago's would need fixing... I have no idea of a quick way to fix color schemes but it will happen tomorrow

[Laniessa]

A quick way to change colour schemes would be a hue and saturation filter, if that's what you're talking about?