Just stopping by to say that I flipped through the pages of this thread, and I think you ought to be proud of the last 6 months. You were lacking an understanding of center of mass in your figures, but all your recent ones feel very balanced, and the gesture in your 1800s military gal is fabulous. One critique I have for your figures is that you often over accentuate the curvature of arm and leg bones. In your most recent image you have her right tibia curving outwards, which is anatomically correct, and her left tibia curving inwards, which gets you a nice s curve but also looks a bit wonky. Same thing going on with the forearm of that gal in your personal sketch. Still, solid stuff, I'll be watching this thread.
about the detail thing, it looks like you always try to make everything equally polished, but thats not necessarily needed at all, many artists leave most of the image raw with broad strokes and then polish up the focal point with the final detail. You dont need to make everything equally detailed, that will inevitably take a lot of time. Fortunately does the brain fill in a lot of the details, and a strong focal point will carry most of the weaker points without resulting in an unfinished looking image, i think the true magic of concept art / illu is making an image look great without the detail and polish and i would rather try making more with less over finding time to polish after polish. Nothing against fully polish but you dont need to do it every image and it does not necessarily make the image better.
All your images are perfectly equally rendered
taytahs Hey, thanks for taking the time to have a look, and thanks for the compliments! I'm aware of the curving issue-- it's sort of a left-over from when I drew super stylized people with no-bones arms a lot. I'll keep it at the front of my mind for the next few pieces and try to break the habit.
Shrike
Thanks for the kind words! Thanks for the reminder, too, this is something I know, but have yet to really nail down where it sits in relation to my art. I've ended up with a pretty strict process when I paint that makes me feel comfortable but really does give me a product that takes a long time and doesn't really pay off. I'll try to limber it up and give myself a wake-up call when I'm thinking about rendering something that just doesn't need to be rendered.
Got busy doing comic stuff and I'm back on being paid to do 3D stuff too, so no personal 2D to update with. Just wanted to acknowledge the replies left here. :thumbup:
Hey! Sorry for the off topic but THANKS for the comments and critiques you give to other artists in this forum. I'm a newbie trying to get to the videogame industry, learning a lot of digital painting and 3D just by myself and a pair of your posts helped me more than days of randomly stumbling through the internet looking for tuts and so! Right now I'm just doing photo and master studies and sketching and reading a lot of books but when I get serious and design some character (I hope this happens soon :P) I'll be looking forward to your critiques!
I won't technically comment any of your drawings since most likely I won't be able to tell you anything that you don't know, BUT...
I love the style of your military woman, I like her face and I think that it fits pretty well the overall style of the character.
And also another personal comment... I've noticed you kinda like to paint anthros for what I've seen on this thread, but most of them are similar to the "typical" anthros that everybody does (not a bad thing actually) and I would like to see some crazy and more imaginative anthros with a different style or something! There's a lot of animals and different styles to try so why stick to the classic anime eyed anthro? Actually you did one that I like a lot because it's kinda different: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2015/041/2/e/stream_sketch___kyo_knightly_by_bagelhero_works-d8hg6zy.png
Although the anime eyes are still present in some way but I hope you get what I mean :P
Hey! First of all, it's no problem at all. Thanks for going out of your way to thank me, it's actually pretty amazing to hear my posts helped out!
I hope to see you start creating original work soon! I'll definitely keep an eye out. Don't be afraid to start trying to push out some ideas and silhouettes aside from your studies, if you have ideas get 'em out before you forget.
And I'm gonna say it now, don't be afraid to comment on/crit stuff that you might feel is out of your depth somehow. You might even be picking up on things other people just can't see, or aren't noticing!
Thank you for the compliments, and regarding the anthros... Every anthro in here (and in fact, that I've posted elsewhere) has been a commission, actually.
The one you linked was something that's more my personal taste (offered to do that as a freebie for someone) but even then, there's anatomical quirks that I wouldn't include in my personal works, if that makes sense. I'm actually pretty into creatures in general, but I know a lot of really boss creature designers, and I have a bit of an inferiority complex about actually posting my proper creature/weirder anthro stuff. Should I drop that? I just realised how dumb that is to do after writing it out...
I really wouldn't mind doing some more non-typical anthro stuff... I think the only one of my own design that I have anywhere is really Roach... Unless you count Crabguy. And the weird Baluga-guy sculpt on my folio...
You know what that actually gives me an idea. Hopefully I'll be back to post something in this thread in just a bit. Thanks so much for bringing that up (and I hope I'll continue to see you around)!
Yeah! That's what I mean with my other post, those are some really original critters! I specially like two of them:
- The one on the upper right: you can see a spark of his personality on his little eye. Also the dolphin tail gives a hint on how will he swim, and the little fish on his hand makes me wanna know if they're friends or if the big fish will eat the little one!
EDIT: I love animals and nature and I've got a lot of references and links of interesting animals and bugs that look kinda weird and sci-fi so if you want some inspiration when you get to paint some of those concepts just ask me!
I might just ping you about grabbing some refs sometime. I appreciate it!
Not having an amazing time recently (not with art, I'll stress, but with life in general), haven't been doing too much as a result.
But a friend was drawing today, and that made me wanna draw. Sketched up their English singing synth, Cz. Touched on the Japanese side of this stuff a few posts back, but Chezzie busies themselves with pushing the boundaries and expectations of English vocal synth. While some of the context is lost here, do check out their work.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSJDH0bUF8[/ame]
Wow, it's actually been longer than I thought. Kind of went on a downward spiral, it was finally hitting home that I'm out of school again and also that I kinda blew a few projects, so I took a step back for a minute to assess.
Been doing a ton of 2D work in the meantime, which... actually didn't help because now I'm questioning my career goals, too, but I'm not gonna dwell on that here as it is not my blog.
I can't post everything-- I've been pumping out a ton of work (like... near none of it study, but I digress). I also can't post the one thing I actually really need crit on, as it was a commission for a project that has not been publicly announced. I'll post that when I can, but for now... uh. Here's all of this. If you see a problem or three here, broad or on a piece by piece basis, I'd love to get some crit. It's been a while. I hunger. :poly124:
This is honestly some of the most productive time I've ever spent doing art. It feels good! Now, if I can just stop doing fanart for a minute and apply myself to study and creating portfolio pieces... :poly142:
Nothing super exciting. I wanted to work on some proper concept sheets but life's been getting me down. So some Dishonored fanart and... junk lmao. Lots of sketches!
And I'm back here double posting because that last post was huge but I stayed up late thinking about Warframe and got some quick and dirty thumbnails out
For my weekend "daily" (I combine the weekend so I can take a breath) I started a slightly bigger painting. Was good practice, but a reminder that I still don't know what I'm doing in a lot of areas lmao. Crits, feedback, suggestions etc very much appreciated as per usual!
"Death. But you know...Sexier. Like, Showing some skin." Today's daily was pretty fun
I dig the more animated style youve gone with, allthough I would probably size the feet down a bit myself. On the mech image there for instance, theres a lot to love with so little information in the image, but the feet kind of stick out to me as opposed to the cool mech design.
your costume design is pretty solid too, especially on the civil war esque designs youve done. Cool stuff!
Okay, for a while there I got pretty fast and efficient but I'm slower again now. I probably need to scale back the size of the pieces I'm doing so they stop taking me a few days.
Coming a little closer to #42, which is when I plan to wrap this up and do private morning warmups instead. I feel like I've gotten most of what I wanted out of this little project. Of course, I'll continue drawing daily regardless...!
Hi Bagelhero! I think your designs are cool, but the faces you draw tend to be very similar, both male and female. As a result, your male characters are often a bit effeminate looking. On the other hand, your female characters tend to be a bit mannish.
When you compare your facial divisions versus the average ideal, you can see a reoccurring pattern.
In an average head, you can divide the face into three equal pieces: chin to bottom of nose, bottom of nose to brow, brow to hairline. The eye line is halfway down the entire height of the head.
In your heads, the chin to bottom of the nose usually takes op 1/3 of the overall height of the face, as expected. But the bottom of nose to brow height is often twice as long as the forehead. This gives them a long-faced look, with the eyes much higher up in the head than expected.
Considering that your characters are quite stylized, I think that kind of deviation from the average works, except for the part that all of your characters seem to share this same facial proportion. I think it would be a good idea to experiment with facial divisions and try some other configurations, just to vary your characters more.
I definitely think your female characters would look more girly if you were to stick closer to average facial divisions. I also think it would be fun to see you try the other extreme: having a very tall forehead and a tiny nose. Just an idea!
Replies
about the detail thing, it looks like you always try to make everything equally polished, but thats not necessarily needed at all, many artists leave most of the image raw with broad strokes and then polish up the focal point with the final detail. You dont need to make everything equally detailed, that will inevitably take a lot of time. Fortunately does the brain fill in a lot of the details, and a strong focal point will carry most of the weaker points without resulting in an unfinished looking image, i think the true magic of concept art / illu is making an image look great without the detail and polish and i would rather try making more with less over finding time to polish after polish. Nothing against fully polish but you dont need to do it every image and it does not necessarily make the image better.
All your images are perfectly equally rendered
https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/505/247/large/jose-martins-jsm-06022014.jpg?1424984568
JamesArk,achillesian,wizo
Thanks a bunch!
taytahs
Hey, thanks for taking the time to have a look, and thanks for the compliments! I'm aware of the curving issue-- it's sort of a left-over from when I drew super stylized people with no-bones arms a lot. I'll keep it at the front of my mind for the next few pieces and try to break the habit.
Shrike
Thanks for the kind words! Thanks for the reminder, too, this is something I know, but have yet to really nail down where it sits in relation to my art. I've ended up with a pretty strict process when I paint that makes me feel comfortable but really does give me a product that takes a long time and doesn't really pay off. I'll try to limber it up and give myself a wake-up call when I'm thinking about rendering something that just doesn't need to be rendered.
Got busy doing comic stuff and I'm back on being paid to do 3D stuff too, so no personal 2D to update with. Just wanted to acknowledge the replies left here. :thumbup:
Got a teeny bit of time to touch an old hobby:
[ame]
The art I used in the video:
A quick sketch to try and figure out what the character looked like before I did the final:
(this one is in a link because it's stupidly huge)
I feel like it goes without saying, but the music is not mine, it's a cover. I tuned the vocals and did the video, that's it! :thumbup:
Hopefully I'll have something more useful to show soon, I'm going to work on forming some better habits to keep me productive while I'm at home.
I won't technically comment any of your drawings since most likely I won't be able to tell you anything that you don't know, BUT...
I love the style of your military woman, I like her face and I think that it fits pretty well the overall style of the character.
And also another personal comment... I've noticed you kinda like to paint anthros for what I've seen on this thread, but most of them are similar to the "typical" anthros that everybody does (not a bad thing actually) and I would like to see some crazy and more imaginative anthros with a different style or something! There's a lot of animals and different styles to try so why stick to the classic anime eyed anthro? Actually you did one that I like a lot because it's kinda different: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2015/041/2/e/stream_sketch___kyo_knightly_by_bagelhero_works-d8hg6zy.png
Although the anime eyes are still present in some way but I hope you get what I mean :P
I hope to see you start creating original work soon! I'll definitely keep an eye out.
And I'm gonna say it now, don't be afraid to comment on/crit stuff that you might feel is out of your depth somehow. You might even be picking up on things other people just can't see, or aren't noticing!
Thank you for the compliments, and regarding the anthros... Every anthro in here (and in fact, that I've posted elsewhere) has been a commission, actually.
The one you linked was something that's more my personal taste (offered to do that as a freebie for someone) but even then, there's anatomical quirks that I wouldn't include in my personal works, if that makes sense. I'm actually pretty into creatures in general, but I know a lot of really boss creature designers, and I have a bit of an inferiority complex about actually posting my proper creature/weirder anthro stuff. Should I drop that? I just realised how dumb that is to do after writing it out...
I really wouldn't mind doing some more non-typical anthro stuff... I think the only one of my own design that I have anywhere is really Roach... Unless you count Crabguy. And the weird Baluga-guy sculpt on my folio...
You know what that actually gives me an idea. Hopefully I'll be back to post something in this thread in just a bit. Thanks so much for bringing that up (and I hope I'll continue to see you around)!
Fish. Might paint a few of these out, might not. *shrugs*
But I wanted to do some critter designs. So I did. :poly124:
- The one on the upper right: you can see a spark of his personality on his little eye. Also the dolphin tail gives a hint on how will he swim, and the little fish on his hand makes me wanna know if they're friends or if the big fish will eat the little one!
- The one in the bottom-mid: I don't know about your references for this one but it reminds me of a Glaucus Atlanticus (https://www.google.es/search?q=glaucus+atlanticus&espv=2&biw=1160&bih=616&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=wXkNVfTCMMGqUd-LgoAM&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ) which is a very beautiful sea creature. Moreover I've never seen any critter/monster based on this animal, I would love to see a polished painting of your concept!
EDIT: I love animals and nature and I've got a lot of references and links of interesting animals and bugs that look kinda weird and sci-fi so if you want some inspiration when you get to paint some of those concepts just ask me!
Hey, thanks a bunch. Yeah, it's definitely Glaucus Atlanticus inspired. They're really cool!
I might just ping you about grabbing some refs sometime.
Not having an amazing time recently (not with art, I'll stress, but with life in general), haven't been doing too much as a result.
But a friend was drawing today, and that made me wanna draw. Sketched up their English singing synth, Cz. Touched on the Japanese side of this stuff a few posts back, but Chezzie busies themselves with pushing the boundaries and expectations of English vocal synth. While some of the context is lost here, do check out their work.
[ame]
Edit: putting this image in a link because it's too big
Thanks.
More scribble results.
Been doing a ton of 2D work in the meantime, which... actually didn't help because now I'm questioning my career goals, too, but I'm not gonna dwell on that here as it is not my blog.
I can't post everything-- I've been pumping out a ton of work (like... near none of it study, but I digress). I also can't post the one thing I actually really need crit on, as it was a commission for a project that has not been publicly announced. I'll post that when I can, but for now... uh. Here's all of this. If you see a problem or three here, broad or on a piece by piece basis, I'd love to get some crit. It's been a while. I hunger. :poly124:
This is honestly some of the most productive time I've ever spent doing art. It feels good! Now, if I can just stop doing fanart for a minute and apply myself to study and creating portfolio pieces... :poly142:
Value studies, in chronological order (first two one day, the third on the next).
More commission work. I'll post the clients' final product when I can (about a week, hopefully).
[ame]
I'm working on updating my own UTAU to have a sample library using that method, so I'll probably be posting my work for that here too.
Anyhow, other junk,
(click that last one for a large version)
And then a crosspost from my Warframe Contest thread
More daily stuff, same race, different functions. Personal stuff. Tomorrow I'm gonna have something completely different, hopefully.
I'm honestly out of things to say if I'm just talking to myself. Here's a very nervous (alien) shop keeper.
Some fanart, today.
Thank you very much!
Not 100% happy with today's output, but that's ok. Not every day can be a good art day, and mostly did 3D instead. Will probably revisit later.
Kinda studying the stuff I like about some of the character concepts in my ref folders. 1/2
Stuff it I'll edit it in:
Xpost from my Warframe Workshop Thread:
Yesterdays' daily:
Here's today's daily.
"Death. But you know...Sexier. Like, Showing some skin."
Today's daily was pretty fun
Definitely did one of these yesterday. Yep.
Also, for fun, take a signed autograph.your costume design is pretty solid too, especially on the civil war esque designs youve done. Cool stuff!
Hey Nic, thanks a bunch! It means a lot.
RE: the feet; great spot, I'll definitely tone it down a bit.
Okay, for a while there I got pretty fast and efficient but I'm slower again now. I probably need to scale back the size of the pieces I'm doing so they stop taking me a few days.
Anyway, updates.
Coming a little closer to #42, which is when I plan to wrap this up and do private morning warmups instead. I feel like I've gotten most of what I wanted out of this little project. Of course, I'll continue drawing daily regardless...!
And a daily after being sick for a little while
When you compare your facial divisions versus the average ideal, you can see a reoccurring pattern.
In an average head, you can divide the face into three equal pieces: chin to bottom of nose, bottom of nose to brow, brow to hairline. The eye line is halfway down the entire height of the head.
In your heads, the chin to bottom of the nose usually takes op 1/3 of the overall height of the face, as expected. But the bottom of nose to brow height is often twice as long as the forehead. This gives them a long-faced look, with the eyes much higher up in the head than expected.
Considering that your characters are quite stylized, I think that kind of deviation from the average works, except for the part that all of your characters seem to share this same facial proportion. I think it would be a good idea to experiment with facial divisions and try some other configurations, just to vary your characters more.
I definitely think your female characters would look more girly if you were to stick closer to average facial divisions. I also think it would be fun to see you try the other extreme: having a very tall forehead and a tiny nose. Just an idea!