Stickadtroja: Ok I tried to bang this out for you over lunch but didn't have near enough time to express everything. What you have right now is an interesting concept, especially where you have these vastly disproportionate body parts. It's a little unnerving in places. If you're going for creepy ab-human you're not doing a bad job of it. I think where you're running into issues is where you're consciously choosing not to use reference when defining your anatomy. You can drastically alter the basic elements of the human frame to something completely inhuman, but by having the call back to what is real the design becomes grounded and more acceptable to the suspension of disbelief.
My recommendation is to separate the muscle mass and frame from the lumpy effect you're after with the skin. By trying to combine both the musculature ends up feeling like it's pooling at the bottom ends of the ankles and biceps. Also once you separate the two from one another you're free to run with it further and see where the design might potentially go. Here's a paint over to explain my thinking:
Thanks for the suggestion for the perspective issue, at this point now that I have the robot built I'll probably spend some time tracing over it from different views to get a little muscle memory going. I usually find that tracing out shapes in advance can help anchor what I produce for a final piece.
thanks a lot! that makes a lot of sense actually, to seperate the two. i guess im hesitant to do that since its more comfortable keep it loose instead of deciding on stuff. i do this a lot for my sketches, intentially keeping it loose, so i can read in whatever i want. this becomes a problem however when i want to polish or bring it in to 3d.
i will go over it again, and do what you suggested.
Kind of wary posting this and wondering what you guys think about giving critiques. I have a fear of giving a misinformed critique, (something that I have done plenty in the past). I'll look back at a critique I had given a classmate and feel like I failed them because my present self would sometimes contradict my past advice. But then,
Is it better to keep silent? Sure, for things I know nothing about silence is best. But what about the things that we do know, just not very well. I'm well aware of how little I know, so does that mean I shouldn't give critiques. Maybe I should wait it out until I am better.
However critiques rely on both parties. One who gives and the other who receives. The receiver can choose whether or not to follow through with the critique.
...But if they do choose to follow through and I had given the wrong advice I still feel terrible......
So I was wondering what would be better. If someone is asking for a critique and you knew a little bit about the subject. Should you give it or tell them that you don't really have an authority to do so?
Stinkhorse: I was playing around with your perspective issue. I think you need to find your horizon line and vannishing points. It's still a bit off but maybe this could help
Before i say this I'm going to preface this and say that posting feedback is always a good thing, and if you are unsure of what you are thinking, then say that, it's only bad if you act in the way that you "Know" that you are right. Being wrong is is a chance to learn, even if our instincts are to get hurt and embarrassed. I'll say that a lot of my knowledge comes from interacting with people, and giving others feedback, analyzing what others are doing is a wonderful too to learning, and i hope that you keep doing that.
However, i feel like a massive dick for having to say that your feedback is off here. Stinkhorse isn't using 1 point perspective here, he is using orthographic projection which means there is no vanishing points. These are game sprites and with a game like this perspective means you can't actually make your game.
I personally think he also made that mistake when he did the 3d model and should have done it in orthographic as well.
Yeah you're absolutely right about that Muzz. My problem that evening was the top of the robot's body was drawn in ortho, but I had a running disconnect where I kept drawing the arms in point perspective. The program I built the bot in doesn't have perspective options but Blender does. I'll try that next!
Oh and even though we did end up with four pages of "Waywo for art techniques" this absolutely should be the place where people come for serious critique. I really love the idea of posting in a thread not to show off, but because you want your work burnt to the ground with the intent of rising from the ash as a better artist.
i want to continue with my concept, but i want to make it more interesting, more storytelling, so i made a couple of thumbnails;
i will run into tons of challanges later on, like anatomy and lighting, and im defenatly going to incorporate your critic about the skin and muscle structure stinkhorse, but for now i like some feedback the basic composition. preferably on the last one, its my favorite, so i will probably push that farther. i want the pose to convey a calm confidence and pride. does she look powerfull compared to the humans, or just big? does the size look realistic or cartoony?
Second thumbnail would give you a nice chance to use triangular composition with some spotlight coming from the top, that way you call pull off a really menacing piece, and these figures to the left could be like slaves chained together or something.
Muzz, heh don't worry, there's no need to feel like a dick. I don't mind being told I'm wrong, it's more me giving wrong advice that I'm worried about. But one must overcome oneself or some zen stuff like that eh .
stickadtroja: number 3 hits all the notes you were hoping for, with the size and confidence. You can help the calm and improve the composition by adding a few touches around the scene to help corral the viewer's eye. Let your eye unfocus as you look at the piece and see where your eye drifts to. If it wanders off the page try and figure out what let it wander off and adjust it to account for that. For example anywhere a character looks the viewer will follow. Consider each of the faces of your characters as being ray points that someone will follow instinctively. If your eye wanders off the page like in that upper left corner, you could include something like a flight of desaturated birds to catch the viewers eye. Angled right they'll encourage the viewer back across the image toward the upper right and then back down to your Ogre.
The one suggestion I'd make at the moment is to increase the size of her weapon's haft. Her size is making the pole of the weapon feel very slight, it feels like her strength could shatter the wooden pole on a good impact.
Hey, guys! Some awesome work (and even more awesome critique!) in this thread. I'd love to contribute, too!
This is the piece everyone dotes on me for, so I thought it'd be a good piece to get critique on - especially as it's my first limited palette drawing, and a lot of my typical stylization shows through in this piece.
I'd like a critique on everything about this. I mean everything. If you don't like my style, if it's too anime, let me know, I really want to change. I want to get better, but I could use a helping hand. Or eye. Or several!
Hey, Crybaby (...I feel bad calling you that, haha), I don't feel too qualified giving you too much crit on this because I'm on the same boat for a lot of your potential shortcomings, but I can give a few pointers. It looks long but I'm just kinda calling it as I see it, don't take the length to heart too much.
Your light source is vague. Limited palette is one thing, but while you did attempt to paint in some shading here it's not particularly confident and seems very generic and ambient. I feel like you could have gone with some cool lighting choices here, particularly with that huge glowing symbol/halo right behind her... It could create some very striking values and composition and it's a shame that, for now at least, you missed that opportunity. Try to be more confident, and make a point of picking some light sources thoughtfully and trying to stick with them.
A few basic anatomy/depth errors. Your style is pretty, but not pretty enough to excuse a number of pretty basic mistakes. I'd look into planes of the face/head, for one. A lot of your facial features read as kind of floaty and flat, or oddly shaped. A number of major landmarks are not described, either. Even in straight up anime, most of the more appealing styles or the more painterly ones describe these shapes well. So don't worry too much about style stuff and just focus on learning how you can be more accurate.
Also on this point, what are boobs. This explains that point better than I ever could, really.
Oh, also, Anatomy4Sculptors is always great, check that site out.
Your design also suffers from something Muzz got called out on earlier in the thread. Her arms-- why and how are they attached? They just kind of are, there's no wires or scarring or joints... Try to explain that in the image, without having to type up any back story. Her design should explain itself. But yeah, just as an aesthetics thing, this currently doesn't tell me how her arms function and they don't really add anything to the silhouette.
Lack of dynamics. Her pose is... very... Uh. Girl-sitting-there-in-blank-space-looking-to-the-left-thinking-nothing-inparticular-esque. I suffer from this condition constantly, so no hard feelings, haha. I feel like you could have added a hand in there doing something, a harsh expression to go with the arrow through the neck... it also seems like you did legitimately try to tilt the head but at some point during painting it kind of all ended up floating back to something very slight. In the long term I'd look into gesture drawings, honestly. They really help.
Here're some doodle-y examples of alternative routes...
Don't be afraid to draw the entire bust instead of just cutting it off at slightly above nipple-height. I think this has caused you to squish some features as you got further down the canvas. It's better practice to make the canvas bigger than you need and crop it after you know what you're doing.
Don't be afraid of just painting over your lines, either.
Lastly, a paintover. It's not... great, I struggled with it a bit myself and take everything under chin-height with a grain of salt, but I hope it can at least clarify some of what I've rambled about above.
I think that's about it. A question for you, though. Are you using SAI for this?
Holy jeez, that's a lot of info and all of it is amazing and helpful..! Thank you so much!
First things first, I made some attempt to keep her expression detached and distant, since it's a large part of her character. I'm sure that the more I post, the more we'll end up seeing of her apathy, especially in situations where it draws attention to its own absurdity.
The suggestion of adding more - and a hand - is great, though, I think I really should have done that to emphasis her strange serenity in a bad/painful situation.
I am using SAI! I do have Photoshop at my disposal, however, if you'd like me to try to repaint the piece in PS. I'd like to have a little bit of time to study the gesture drawing book first, though, if that's alright!
Bagel already got most of what I was going to say so I'll just add on.
You don't like drawing anime but you are still doing it, what that means is that you aren't consciously designing your shapes and lines. You really need to wrap your head around the idea that you are in total control of everything that you draw! Every mark every stroke every shape.
You need to be designing every part of your drawing, from your facial features, the lines you draw hair with, what shapes you make mechanical things out of.
Only when you are in full control of everything will you really be able to move forward and destroy that uncontrollable style.
In that case, get all the interesting aspects of her body in. Her face/expression certainly isn't going to tell the whole story by itself, so find some other way to add visual interest. I think there's still more you could do with her expression, but it explains why there's no extremes.
And... I knew it. It felt very... blendy. Look, I don't have anything against SAI. I prefer the mixing brushes myself (and I use Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint at home because of this), but I think right now it's stopping you from developing your colors, values, lighting and mixing on your own.
When you feel like the time is right and you want to step up your game, it's probably best that you move to Photoshop for a little while and get to grips with handling painting in that before deciding which feeling you prefer.
You don't need to re-paint this piece in PS though, that may just lead to frustration. No sense in trying to learn two (or more) things at once.
Good luck!
EDIT: Also, what Muzz said is so real. Listen to that.
Hey guys! I'm a noob here in PC, and I'd love some feedback on my latest character! On a sidenote, this was my first non-human character, so I don't have too much affinity for this kind of thing.
I'd say that I'm somewhat satisfied with the lighting/shading, but: right arm looks too "bright"/drawing too much attention, I'm terrible with poses and he'd probably fall with the weight of the scythe (he was supposed to be kinda supporting his weight on his tail), the feet's anatomy seems off.
I can't really say which animal this is based off, so I'm not sure what I would do to make it better.
Although I'd probably not mess with this anymore, but I'd love feedback to take in consideration for whatever I'm working with at the moment/in the future.
Also, how do you guys go about creating these kind of backgrounds for your concepts/characters? Like these gradients/colors with visible light sources? I always pick something kind of random, and sometimes it works (I think it worked in this example), and sometimes it doesn't.
Although I'd probably not mess with this anymore, but I'd love feedback to take in consideration for whatever I'm working with at the moment/in the future.
this puts me off from criticising your piece. i said similuar stuff myself, but i try to refrein from it when i remember too.
the reason why;
to biggest reason for me to give critic to you, is to see that that has effect. that you learned from it. and made something better because of it. if i dont get see that, i have very little incentive to critic you.
you can think of this way; its effort from my side to give you critic. it takes time, and i need to think really hard why some stuff work and others dont. if you dont put in the effort to actually make use of that information, and show it to me, it feels slightly unfair to me. it feels like i put more effort than you.
it also makes you seem a bit arogant, like "tell me what you think of this, and i will MAYBE use that later". it comes of as a way of milking comments, becuase you simply enyoy the attention.
if you instead had a earnest will to improve, you would jump at this oppertunity and implement the critic straight away!
now, this will sound harsh, and i apologize for that. i know very little of you, and your intentions and mindset. this rant is only me sharing what it looks like from my viewpoint. it is also more a response to this happening in general, rather than you specifically.
anyway, since it took way longer to write that rant, than criticising your peice, i might aswell do both;
the shading on the character isnt that bad, but it is way to light, compared to the background, which make sit look flat. if the character actaully was in a envorinment like that, it would get way darker shadows. armpit is a noticable example.
from which direction does the blue/white light shine? it hits the foot, the tail and elbow from underneath, which is only possible if the character is floating above it. actually it hits the character from a number of directions which isnt consistent with its place in the background.
pose is a bit weird. is it sitting on its tail? then the tail would be squezed down towards the ground, and it looks way to thin at the base for allowing that weight.
claws on the feet should be a different colour. they just blend together with the rest of the feet now, which looks weird.
the green light hitting the back, doesnt make sense. the hair would be in the way. maybe part of the neck works but not the rest.
making backgrounds is hard, and a big part of that is making the characters look "grounded" in the scene. to achive that, they need to have the same lighting. the green light that hits the character from above, why doesnt it light up the ground?
so yeah. keep up the good work, and preferably keep working on this one, in either case, keep posting!
ps. im a bit of a hypocrite, ranting like that, and then doing the same thing when stinkhorse criticised my rhinolady. so, i guess i only can promise real hard that i will implement it at a later stage, and put it in this thread.
Hmm, i don't mind people getting critiques post art, but then i think it is a case of if there are glaring problems it is worth implementing them straight away. I mean hell with my first image i completely restarted it!
I also want to say that there seems to be a problem here in the 2d section of people coming in and posting work for feedback and then not going out of their way to help others. I probably try and help others more than i personally get help, and it's the only way forums grow and thrive.
You should aim to help out twice as much as people help you. I'm hesitant to give solid feedback to new people and invest time that isn't going to stay in the community if you aren't going to stick around and contribute. There are tons of threads where people just post work and get no attention. That isn't because their work is bad per-say, but it's that we aren't just another place to post work to get eyes on it.
Oh well, first of all, thanks both of you for your feedback.
I'm really new here so don't know how stuff goes, I'm sorry if I caused a bad first impression, but I do plan on stay and improve.
I'll see what I can change on that piece then, and I'll post here with updates! Sorry about being such a bad noob :P
Also, Muzz, I've been following this and some other threads, and I suppose noobs like me would refrain from blending in and giving advice like the "big people". I'm hesitant to give solid feedback simply because I don't want to be someone new pretending to know everything (even if I don't/am not necessarily doing that, it might come out like this) or bossing people around, it goes both ways I guess. Thought I'd just jump in a "public" thread to avoid drawing too much unnecessary attention, you see?
Don't think that im scolding you! I'm more interested in getting active community participants!
Posting feedback to others is a great way to learn actually. If you aren't completely sure it is an excuse to go research and find the answers yourself, and you can always say something like "I'm not too sure, but i think you could try this".
So welcome to the forums btw, didn't mean to come across in the way i did .
yeah me too, sorry for the rant.
just crit away, if anybody think that you dont should critic them, they can simply ignore it.
i think its a weird misconception that only the "best" can give feedback. i want everybody to enyoy my drawings, therefore everybodys opinon is valuable to me.
Well, here's what I got so far.
I increased the contrast, and tried to make the light sources make a little bit more sense. I resized the right foot a bit, it was a tad too big aswell. Toned his musculature a bit more, thought it'd make him a little more interesting and less flat. Also put some sort of ground to make it less floaty.
Can't figure out what to do so it looks more like he's balancing his weight between his tail and right foot, though
I'm still tweaking out a few details that seem like I forgot to retouch for this version, but it's getting there, I think.
Ops, forgot to mention. I'm currently struggling with how dark the lower areas of the shape are. Those areas would be a little lighter due to light bouncing off the ground, but the ground is too dark! What do?
this puts me off from criticising your piece. i said similuar stuff myself, but i try to refrein from it when i remember too.
the reason why;
to biggest reason for me to give critic to you, is to see that that has effect. that you learned from it. and made something better because of it. if i dont get see that, i have very little incentive to critic you.
Don't want to move the thread away from its purpose, but I would like to chime in and say I don't think this is a very good mindset for giving critique. Nobody should give critique and expect that the artist in question is going to implement, and illustrate that feedback in practice. Even if the artist does intend to implement critique more immediately, what if two people give opposing critique? It's then up to the artist to decide whose advice to implement, and whose to ignore. Yeah, it's always nice when you give someone advice, and you see that they've implemented it and appear happier with the end result because of your feedback, but this can't - and won't, always be the case. Is it more arrogant to say, "I might implement this critique you've given me in future pieces", or to think another artist is obligated to implement your critique?
It may also be the case that someone wishes to start a new illustration rather than hammering away at an old one as a way of measuring personal growth. "I did this piece to the best of my ability. I got advice on that piece, and created a new one later with that advice in mind and can see growth from one to the other." That mentality isn't wrong, though it may not be as immediately satisfying for the critique-givers.
Personally, I give critique and consider it nothing more than a sharing of my own experience, and - potentially, a chance to learn something myself. Just as my giving critique might help push someone in the right direction (even just other readers, not necessarily the person who's art I'm critiquing directly!), it is also a great chance for somebody else to point out if I'm wrong.
Edit:
Shit, can't believe I forgot critiquing the actual art.
Nedd, I think the piece at the moment struggles most from a lack of planning and intent. What is the purpose of the piece? Is it meant to be a strong illustration? An interesting, compelling image on its own? A concept or basic design for a character?
I think the pose doesn't make a whole lot of sense - seems to defy physics a bit as you seem aware of. The character design doesn't offer much in the way of information on who or what it is, so how you present the little information that's there is going to be pretty key. I think you could also benefit from picking a more primary lightsource, at the moment you seem to have two strong secondary lights - which lets you throw highlights on one side or the other, but the illumination of the scene (based on the character itself and the shadows you've placed on your newly-visible ground) doesn't seem to be all that consistent. I might try and pick this up and do a quick paintover with some suggestions in the near future, if that's something you wouldn't mind.
Oh, I wouldn't mind a paintover at all. In fact I'd love it, but don't worry too much about it!
The intent behind this was simply practice. Wanted to try to deviate from my almost-always human characters and see if I could start out with some basic anthro-ish character, nothing too detailed or complex, so I wouldn't mess up the basics.
I suppose that what went through my mind when I was creating it is that the character would be lightweight enough that he could balance himself mostly on his tail, which is what I tried to picture. But I really didn't go over any of the character creating points before making this, as in trying to figure out who/what he is, what is he doing, etc.
I did record the timelapse of the painting process, it was basically a "speedpaint" of sorts, just to practice working sorta quickly.
About the lights, I see your point. I honestly don't know why I went with 2 light sources. When sketching, I had one wamr and one cool source, but I just scrapped it and went with that. The projected shadows are a mess, yeah. I also think it might partially have to do with how much I'm exposed to Riot's splash arts. They don't do that with that many splash arts, but they do it a bit and I like the feeling, supposed I tried to do something similar!
two listen:
im not saying that my mindset is good, the best would obvoiusly be if everybody gave critic selflessly all the time. but, im saying, i have more incentive to do it if i will see it in effect. thats not something im proud of, that is just the reality.
also, im not saying that everybody have to implement all the critic i give. that would be super stupid. i could be dead wrong with it, of course.
BUT if they agree with the critic, and see my points as valid, i think its better if they implement it.
i know for myself that im vary lazy/hesitant to change anything on stuff i have finished. partly beacuse im sick of looking at it, but also that its, how you say,"hard to kill your darlings". which in the end is only something that can hamper my development as an artist.
so, when i see someone recive critic and dont act on it, i always assume that is the case, that they dont take the critic serously. and there is no way they can prove the opposite to me, except implement the critic. no matter how many comments like "sure ill remember that until next time", becuase its hell of a lot easier posting a comment than to go back to artwork you feel done with and go over it again.
in the end this is just my opinions, no one has to care, except it they want critic from me.
but, i do consider this to be a vital part keeping the critic-giving nature of this community going, since its very fragile.
muzz, for example, said that he is hesitant to give critic to new people. i feel the same way. is this the best mindset? no. but its the way things are.
so the best thing we can do, is to make into a rewarding loop, where both the critic giver and the critic getter gets rewarded.
if you got a better idea, im all ears. but then, dont you act the same way? dont you rather critic someone who has a 4 pages thread full of responses and is making obvious progress due to implemting given critic, than someone who is a firsttime poster?
Uhm, chiming in as someone whose done a lot of paintovers for friends and such: If you find yourself worrying about whether or not the other person will incorporate the critique, become a little more selfish.
You see, the moment your start doing paint-overs and giving critique, you have to start explaining art-basics to someone... Which means that you revisit those art basics, and start applying them point by point... which means you master them more properly.
Indeed, some of the biggest improvement-spurs I've had were while tutoring someone else.
We can't force others to follow our advice. However, we can intensively study what makes a good artpiece by trying to take a flawed piece and trying to fix it, thus becoming better artists.
So, be helpful and selfish by doing exactly the same thing!
Edit: Nedd, here you go, I'm still a polycount newbie, so I hope this attached correctly.
1. The skeleton: this is really rough, but primarily to check for obvious anatomical problems. Your creature for example, has his tail coming out of his... anus. That's a bit too low :x
Other than that, hands are too small, and I have the feelings the legs are uneven. The roughness is pretty bad due to me doing this paintover on an android tablet.
2. This is looking for the visual center of gravity. There are mathematical ways of finding this, but what I do is draw a polygon, and imagine myself using the plumb-line method as described here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centroid
From there, we find a visual center of gravity, which seems to be too far away from the feet+tail of the creature. Now, this does not always apply, in fact, it only really works for homogenous material shapes. Many statues do all sorts of tricks to make it seem they defy gravity. But it's a useful tool for when you're trying to avoid seeming you defy gravity.
3. In combination with the tail, we can start constructing a draw-over. The tail is moved back to be at the center of the gravity, returning a whole lot of balance to the picture.
The feet are put down more solidly, and the scythe made less curved, so it looks a little more practically held.
4. Here we do something different, and look at the rendering: your picture is unecessarily dark. By using a brush set to the overlay blendmode, and using a light grey for colour, you can quickly strengthen the highlights.
In general, the image of course lacks a story, but I think that with using these tools you can tackle the technical mistakes.
I just wanted to get some feedback on this study of vivien leigh (Very classy lady) and the exercise I'm doing is one of observation. Trying to get proportions and angles right, and also re-engineering a photo into an image with a sense of 3D form. It's a work in progress (some areas more rendered than others) But I'm putting it down for the moment to refresh my eyes and to get input. I'll pick it back up tomorrow.
I can see a bunch of issues, namely little shapes are out of whack, proportions and angles are weird. but the one thing that's really getting to me is that.. 'look'. You know the one. She has this aware gaze with the very... sharp... stare. I love it, and it's driving me nuts that I can't get it.
Any/all help will be appreciated. I'll now scour this thread to find someone who I can provide feedback to.
When it comes down to the look, this is partially due to the proportions being skewed, however, there's also the values of the iris+pupil to take into consideration. She's no anime character, but there's still quite a lot going on in terms of value in her eyes, including which, if you look closely, very tiny high-lights, your study in comparison is a little simple. Her pupil's are also more tiny than your study's.
Overal, for subtle expresions like this, the whole portions of the face must me right, but starting with the values of the eyes is good way to go. Also, draw some straight lines down from the corners of her mouth to her eyes, and other such proportion measuring tricks. In the photo, she seems to be tilting her head forward very slighty, in your study she's tilting it to the side...
Good luck!
EDIT: Also, her eyes are a tiny bit more hooded... and after experimenting, I think plopping down some guides will really help you see where the proportions get wonky.
Hey Wolthera, thanks for the amazing paintovers and feedback! I'll look into it when I get home (game jam time right now!). I'll study the center of mass/gravity a bit more, and see what can be done with the scythe, tail, pose and legs/feet to give them a better feel!
I personally like darker paintings, but I'll give a shot at increasing the value range!
Looks like you've got a decent start here, Wolthera is dead right, try periodically flipping the canvas, it'll help a ton. To me it looks like you're drawing what you think you see, rather than what is actually there. For example you've got a sharp highlight on the nose in your version, whereas the reference doesn't. Your overall skintone is also darker than the ref image. I think faces are one of the hardest things to draw from ref because we have so many predefined ideas of what a face should look like.
For me there are a couple of tricks I use to stop this. Flipping the canvas is one (vertically as well). The art teacher Betty Edwards (drawing on the right side of the brain) noted how much better her students drawings were when copying the ref upside down. Another is to draw the negative space, ie. the shapes in the background like that little triangle between her arm and torso, rather than trying to draw the outline of the figure.
Mister Jackson, here are some of my thoughts and I'm still learning to
I think it's a nice image but what's bringing it down is the composition and lighting.
Composition. First what is your story and where are you drawing your audience's attention to? One of your focal points (areas of most contrast) is all the way at the corner and the other in the middle. And after looking at his red jacket my eye is constantly looking at the blank blue green spot.
The middle focal point is fine depending on what you are trying to achieve but also remember you can use the rule of thirds.
Lighting. Your big cast shadow is impossibly straight. There needs to be at least a tiny bit of breakup. Since we are looking so far away the light also needs falloff. Your objects also don't seem to react with the light.
EDIT: Daew beat me to the punch with something with better explanations haha
Hey, I like the rendering on your character, and the trees are nice, but...
What is this? Why does it take up a good 30-40% of your image? It seems unnecessary. That percentage of the image would be better off used by your character or story/scene setting, but you've barely even rendered this area. If those glowy bits are supposed to be eyes, it ends up seeming kind of out of place. I dunno, I just feel like these elements could be arranged more thoughtfully to result in less negative space. In any case, this area needs to be rendered, too.
It's brighter than your character, so it draws my eye as part of the image flow and I really notice it's not as polished.
Another note, The lighting on the tree trunk in the middle ground is lit from the opposite direction than your main spotlight, which is also really immediately odd. It may be too late to fix that, just something to be aware of in the future.
Good luck on your journey to consistently finishing pieces-- I'm on a similar one myself. Keep up the good work!
Okay, I hauled ass, did I do okay? Tried to address the empty space in the left hand corner with a lame ass rock fixed the lighting (I hope) and rendered the hill/turtleshell/thing. Oh I toned down the eyes at at bottom
Ok, so i have something that i need to be absolutely drilled on. I have made progress latley, but it's really slow and i really need a kick in the ass.
And that is drawing faces. In my group of artists I talk to regularly, the faces i draw actually has a name, "Muzz Face" as in something about how I draw makes them always have some sort of quality that looks the same.
Normally i would say that it's a case of just not drawing enough from reference, but it's on such a core fundamental level that even 5 second sketches with nothing more than a few blobs possess the same feeling to them.
While i can get away from it with a lot of effort, it's a major struggle requiring a ton of iteration, and i would appreciate some honest analysis to try and work out just what the hell i am actually doing. This is something that has been with me for my entire drawing career, and I just want to get past it and make unique attractive faces.
Here is some more examples.
(I HAAAATE THIS ONE, but it does show up the problems stronger than the rest i think?)
I'd really appreciate the help in diagnosing the problem. It's been annoying me for waaaaay too long.
I don't have time atm but at first glance a lot of the faces seem elongated. This could be problems with perspective and anatomy. (shapes of the mouths and angles of the eyes, etc). Sorry! I would like to get deeper into this because I have the "same face" problem as well but gotta finish the riot contest.
Muzz, have you done any facial proportions reviews recently? Or face drawings/paintings/studies from reference? Quick facial block out using a tool like this?
I've got a bit of this myself, but I find that it always helps to go back and have a bit of a review of the basics sometimes.
It's worth noting that I'm with Daew, even your blobby sketches up top possess elongated features. Just a note and not entirely relevant, but your girls all also have a very similar nose structure on a front and 3/4 view. Even if they have an interesting nose from the side, it seems to get flattened.
I think something also good to note is that it seems like a lot of the ""worse"" ones, the ones that really feel a little wonky, seem to have all the facial features on a flat plane and not curved around the face as they should be.
Like you got a bit of this going on.
Question for you, do you do facial guidelines, Muzz? What do they look like right at this point? It might play a part in why your structure ranges from almost perfect to fairly off (other than regular quality fluctuations that just come with being an artist, of course).
I've been doing a ton of studies recently. It's been helping, but i think it's going to take some active analisis to get rid of this as i need to activley unlearn bad habits.
I haven't been posting them all up though. The problems persist regardless of how i start, whether from scribble, construction, painted blobs or drawing with sand on the beach.
The long nose is a good one, and i think i noticed that but hadn't acted on that properly. So i'll try and nail that now.
What i'll do is try and isolate some of the issues. I'll also point out i am more interested in stylized faces than realistic faces, but of course i need to draw realistic faces to get there.
I took a Kr0nPrinz Picture and cut out the eyes nose and mouth, and jumbled up the locations. I then tried to place them back where they were supposed to go from memory. I really did overestimate the distances! So i think this is probably my biggest issue.
EDIT: so i tried liquifying the proportions on this image. I think it's helping.
Oh look at that. I thought it was going to be something to do with the softness of the eyes but that change to the nose completely eliminated the "muzz-face" look.
Out of genuine curiosity what are the proportions of your own face? Does the "muzz-face" actually match the Muzz Face?
Yeah that is interesting. I always found that myself and many of my friends unconsciously draw our own faces to a certain degree. That doesn't seem to be your issue though...
I'm not sure I'm going to be a lot of help on this one...
I can actually see a few of your features in your head sheets now, haha. Ain't that always the way, though certainly not where the longer features come from.
Love the forward momentum, Muzz, looking forward to seeing that next sheet.
Haha i think perhaps in a few. Most people i interact with are white dudes, so it's only natural that it influences how i draw faces.
God it's hard to try and break habits like this -_-... All of the good ones required drawing then redrawing to destroy bad things.
I feel like dude bottom right is personifying all my issues other than nose gap proportion issue. (i don't like him but i left him in as a good case to look at.)
I'm going to pull apart these sketches and see if i can work out some things from here properly.
So i think i pinpointed another problem here, I am drawing the face in comparison to the features as too big, slimming down the face, seems to be the right move.
I can try and do a tutorial i guess, but i don't draw these at all in the same way, i don't have a linear process. I'll make a process gif for the hell of it though i guess.
Replies
about your perspective issue, maybe you can draw the rest of the angles the robot is facing by hand, and use your 3d buildup as a ref?
My recommendation is to separate the muscle mass and frame from the lumpy effect you're after with the skin. By trying to combine both the musculature ends up feeling like it's pooling at the bottom ends of the ankles and biceps. Also once you separate the two from one another you're free to run with it further and see where the design might potentially go. Here's a paint over to explain my thinking:
Thanks for the suggestion for the perspective issue, at this point now that I have the robot built I'll probably spend some time tracing over it from different views to get a little muscle memory going. I usually find that tracing out shapes in advance can help anchor what I produce for a final piece.
i will go over it again, and do what you suggested.
Kind of wary posting this and wondering what you guys think about giving critiques. I have a fear of giving a misinformed critique, (something that I have done plenty in the past). I'll look back at a critique I had given a classmate and feel like I failed them because my present self would sometimes contradict my past advice. But then,
Is it better to keep silent? Sure, for things I know nothing about silence is best. But what about the things that we do know, just not very well. I'm well aware of how little I know, so does that mean I shouldn't give critiques. Maybe I should wait it out until I am better.
However critiques rely on both parties. One who gives and the other who receives. The receiver can choose whether or not to follow through with the critique.
...But if they do choose to follow through and I had given the wrong advice I still feel terrible......
So I was wondering what would be better. If someone is asking for a critique and you knew a little bit about the subject. Should you give it or tell them that you don't really have an authority to do so?
Stinkhorse: I was playing around with your perspective issue. I think you need to find your horizon line and vannishing points. It's still a bit off but maybe this could help
Before i say this I'm going to preface this and say that posting feedback is always a good thing, and if you are unsure of what you are thinking, then say that, it's only bad if you act in the way that you "Know" that you are right. Being wrong is is a chance to learn, even if our instincts are to get hurt and embarrassed. I'll say that a lot of my knowledge comes from interacting with people, and giving others feedback, analyzing what others are doing is a wonderful too to learning, and i hope that you keep doing that.
However, i feel like a massive dick for having to say that your feedback is off here. Stinkhorse isn't using 1 point perspective here, he is using orthographic projection which means there is no vanishing points. These are game sprites and with a game like this perspective means you can't actually make your game.
I personally think he also made that mistake when he did the 3d model and should have done it in orthographic as well.
I'm posting it here though as i think it's pretty relevant to the discussions we have had in here so far
Not sure how people feel about me linking out of polycount though...
i will run into tons of challanges later on, like anatomy and lighting, and im defenatly going to incorporate your critic about the skin and muscle structure stinkhorse, but for now i like some feedback the basic composition. preferably on the last one, its my favorite, so i will probably push that farther. i want the pose to convey a calm confidence and pride. does she look powerfull compared to the humans, or just big? does the size look realistic or cartoony?
The one suggestion I'd make at the moment is to increase the size of her weapon's haft. Her size is making the pole of the weapon feel very slight, it feels like her strength could shatter the wooden pole on a good impact.
This is the piece everyone dotes on me for, so I thought it'd be a good piece to get critique on - especially as it's my first limited palette drawing, and a lot of my typical stylization shows through in this piece.
I'd like a critique on everything about this. I mean everything. If you don't like my style, if it's too anime, let me know, I really want to change. I want to get better, but I could use a helping hand. Or eye. Or several!
Also on this point, what are boobs. This explains that point better than I ever could, really.
Oh, also, Anatomy4Sculptors is always great, check that site out.
Gesture Drawing for Animation PDF (on the fence about legality, treat it as a preview of the next links because it's basically what it is)
Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961"]Volume 1[/ame]/[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240811070/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0REJTF66E8VSF62YHGS1"]Volume 2[/ame]. These are entirely worth the money for what you'll get out of them, and I'd lightly recommed them.
I think that's about it. A question for you, though. Are you using SAI for this?
First things first, I made some attempt to keep her expression detached and distant, since it's a large part of her character. I'm sure that the more I post, the more we'll end up seeing of her apathy, especially in situations where it draws attention to its own absurdity.
The suggestion of adding more - and a hand - is great, though, I think I really should have done that to emphasis her strange serenity in a bad/painful situation.
I am using SAI! I do have Photoshop at my disposal, however, if you'd like me to try to repaint the piece in PS. I'd like to have a little bit of time to study the gesture drawing book first, though, if that's alright!
You don't like drawing anime but you are still doing it, what that means is that you aren't consciously designing your shapes and lines. You really need to wrap your head around the idea that you are in total control of everything that you draw! Every mark every stroke every shape.
You need to be designing every part of your drawing, from your facial features, the lines you draw hair with, what shapes you make mechanical things out of.
Only when you are in full control of everything will you really be able to move forward and destroy that uncontrollable style.
I hope that helps!
In that case, get all the interesting aspects of her body in. Her face/expression certainly isn't going to tell the whole story by itself, so find some other way to add visual interest.
And... I knew it. It felt very... blendy. Look, I don't have anything against SAI. I prefer the mixing brushes myself (and I use Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint at home because of this), but I think right now it's stopping you from developing your colors, values, lighting and mixing on your own.
When you feel like the time is right and you want to step up your game, it's probably best that you move to Photoshop for a little while and get to grips with handling painting in that before deciding which feeling you prefer.
You don't need to re-paint this piece in PS though, that may just lead to frustration.
Good luck!
EDIT: Also, what Muzz said is so real. Listen to that.
I'd say that I'm somewhat satisfied with the lighting/shading, but: right arm looks too "bright"/drawing too much attention, I'm terrible with poses and he'd probably fall with the weight of the scythe (he was supposed to be kinda supporting his weight on his tail), the feet's anatomy seems off.
I can't really say which animal this is based off, so I'm not sure what I would do to make it better.
Although I'd probably not mess with this anymore, but I'd love feedback to take in consideration for whatever I'm working with at the moment/in the future.
Also, how do you guys go about creating these kind of backgrounds for your concepts/characters? Like these gradients/colors with visible light sources? I always pick something kind of random, and sometimes it works (I think it worked in this example), and sometimes it doesn't.
this puts me off from criticising your piece. i said similuar stuff myself, but i try to refrein from it when i remember too.
the reason why;
to biggest reason for me to give critic to you, is to see that that has effect. that you learned from it. and made something better because of it. if i dont get see that, i have very little incentive to critic you.
you can think of this way; its effort from my side to give you critic. it takes time, and i need to think really hard why some stuff work and others dont. if you dont put in the effort to actually make use of that information, and show it to me, it feels slightly unfair to me. it feels like i put more effort than you.
it also makes you seem a bit arogant, like "tell me what you think of this, and i will MAYBE use that later". it comes of as a way of milking comments, becuase you simply enyoy the attention.
if you instead had a earnest will to improve, you would jump at this oppertunity and implement the critic straight away!
now, this will sound harsh, and i apologize for that. i know very little of you, and your intentions and mindset. this rant is only me sharing what it looks like from my viewpoint. it is also more a response to this happening in general, rather than you specifically.
anyway, since it took way longer to write that rant, than criticising your peice, i might aswell do both;
the shading on the character isnt that bad, but it is way to light, compared to the background, which make sit look flat. if the character actaully was in a envorinment like that, it would get way darker shadows. armpit is a noticable example.
from which direction does the blue/white light shine? it hits the foot, the tail and elbow from underneath, which is only possible if the character is floating above it. actually it hits the character from a number of directions which isnt consistent with its place in the background.
pose is a bit weird. is it sitting on its tail? then the tail would be squezed down towards the ground, and it looks way to thin at the base for allowing that weight.
claws on the feet should be a different colour. they just blend together with the rest of the feet now, which looks weird.
the green light hitting the back, doesnt make sense. the hair would be in the way. maybe part of the neck works but not the rest.
making backgrounds is hard, and a big part of that is making the characters look "grounded" in the scene. to achive that, they need to have the same lighting. the green light that hits the character from above, why doesnt it light up the ground?
so yeah. keep up the good work, and preferably keep working on this one, in either case, keep posting!
ps. im a bit of a hypocrite, ranting like that, and then doing the same thing when stinkhorse criticised my rhinolady. so, i guess i only can promise real hard that i will implement it at a later stage, and put it in this thread.
I also want to say that there seems to be a problem here in the 2d section of people coming in and posting work for feedback and then not going out of their way to help others. I probably try and help others more than i personally get help, and it's the only way forums grow and thrive.
You should aim to help out twice as much as people help you. I'm hesitant to give solid feedback to new people and invest time that isn't going to stay in the community if you aren't going to stick around and contribute. There are tons of threads where people just post work and get no attention. That isn't because their work is bad per-say, but it's that we aren't just another place to post work to get eyes on it.
I'm really new here so don't know how stuff goes, I'm sorry if I caused a bad first impression, but I do plan on stay and improve.
I'll see what I can change on that piece then, and I'll post here with updates! Sorry about being such a bad noob :P
Also, Muzz, I've been following this and some other threads, and I suppose noobs like me would refrain from blending in and giving advice like the "big people". I'm hesitant to give solid feedback simply because I don't want to be someone new pretending to know everything (even if I don't/am not necessarily doing that, it might come out like this) or bossing people around, it goes both ways I guess. Thought I'd just jump in a "public" thread to avoid drawing too much unnecessary attention, you see?
Posting feedback to others is a great way to learn actually. If you aren't completely sure it is an excuse to go research and find the answers yourself, and you can always say something like "I'm not too sure, but i think you could try this".
So welcome to the forums btw, didn't mean to come across in the way i did
just crit away, if anybody think that you dont should critic them, they can simply ignore it.
i think its a weird misconception that only the "best" can give feedback. i want everybody to enyoy my drawings, therefore everybodys opinon is valuable to me.
I increased the contrast, and tried to make the light sources make a little bit more sense. I resized the right foot a bit, it was a tad too big aswell. Toned his musculature a bit more, thought it'd make him a little more interesting and less flat. Also put some sort of ground to make it less floaty.
Can't figure out what to do so it looks more like he's balancing his weight between his tail and right foot, though
I'm still tweaking out a few details that seem like I forgot to retouch for this version, but it's getting there, I think.
Ops, forgot to mention. I'm currently struggling with how dark the lower areas of the shape are. Those areas would be a little lighter due to light bouncing off the ground, but the ground is too dark! What do?
Don't want to move the thread away from its purpose, but I would like to chime in and say I don't think this is a very good mindset for giving critique. Nobody should give critique and expect that the artist in question is going to implement, and illustrate that feedback in practice. Even if the artist does intend to implement critique more immediately, what if two people give opposing critique? It's then up to the artist to decide whose advice to implement, and whose to ignore. Yeah, it's always nice when you give someone advice, and you see that they've implemented it and appear happier with the end result because of your feedback, but this can't - and won't, always be the case. Is it more arrogant to say, "I might implement this critique you've given me in future pieces", or to think another artist is obligated to implement your critique?
It may also be the case that someone wishes to start a new illustration rather than hammering away at an old one as a way of measuring personal growth. "I did this piece to the best of my ability. I got advice on that piece, and created a new one later with that advice in mind and can see growth from one to the other." That mentality isn't wrong, though it may not be as immediately satisfying for the critique-givers.
Personally, I give critique and consider it nothing more than a sharing of my own experience, and - potentially, a chance to learn something myself. Just as my giving critique might help push someone in the right direction (even just other readers, not necessarily the person who's art I'm critiquing directly!), it is also a great chance for somebody else to point out if I'm wrong.
Edit:
Shit, can't believe I forgot critiquing the actual art.
Nedd, I think the piece at the moment struggles most from a lack of planning and intent. What is the purpose of the piece? Is it meant to be a strong illustration? An interesting, compelling image on its own? A concept or basic design for a character?
I think the pose doesn't make a whole lot of sense - seems to defy physics a bit as you seem aware of. The character design doesn't offer much in the way of information on who or what it is, so how you present the little information that's there is going to be pretty key. I think you could also benefit from picking a more primary lightsource, at the moment you seem to have two strong secondary lights - which lets you throw highlights on one side or the other, but the illumination of the scene (based on the character itself and the shadows you've placed on your newly-visible ground) doesn't seem to be all that consistent. I might try and pick this up and do a quick paintover with some suggestions in the near future, if that's something you wouldn't mind.
The intent behind this was simply practice. Wanted to try to deviate from my almost-always human characters and see if I could start out with some basic anthro-ish character, nothing too detailed or complex, so I wouldn't mess up the basics.
I suppose that what went through my mind when I was creating it is that the character would be lightweight enough that he could balance himself mostly on his tail, which is what I tried to picture. But I really didn't go over any of the character creating points before making this, as in trying to figure out who/what he is, what is he doing, etc.
I did record the timelapse of the painting process, it was basically a "speedpaint" of sorts, just to practice working sorta quickly.
About the lights, I see your point. I honestly don't know why I went with 2 light sources. When sketching, I had one wamr and one cool source, but I just scrapped it and went with that. The projected shadows are a mess, yeah. I also think it might partially have to do with how much I'm exposed to Riot's splash arts. They don't do that with that many splash arts, but they do it a bit and I like the feeling, supposed I tried to do something similar!
im not saying that my mindset is good, the best would obvoiusly be if everybody gave critic selflessly all the time. but, im saying, i have more incentive to do it if i will see it in effect. thats not something im proud of, that is just the reality.
also, im not saying that everybody have to implement all the critic i give. that would be super stupid. i could be dead wrong with it, of course.
BUT if they agree with the critic, and see my points as valid, i think its better if they implement it.
i know for myself that im vary lazy/hesitant to change anything on stuff i have finished. partly beacuse im sick of looking at it, but also that its, how you say,"hard to kill your darlings". which in the end is only something that can hamper my development as an artist.
so, when i see someone recive critic and dont act on it, i always assume that is the case, that they dont take the critic serously. and there is no way they can prove the opposite to me, except implement the critic. no matter how many comments like "sure ill remember that until next time", becuase its hell of a lot easier posting a comment than to go back to artwork you feel done with and go over it again.
in the end this is just my opinions, no one has to care, except it they want critic from me.
but, i do consider this to be a vital part keeping the critic-giving nature of this community going, since its very fragile.
muzz, for example, said that he is hesitant to give critic to new people. i feel the same way. is this the best mindset? no. but its the way things are.
so the best thing we can do, is to make into a rewarding loop, where both the critic giver and the critic getter gets rewarded.
if you got a better idea, im all ears. but then, dont you act the same way? dont you rather critic someone who has a 4 pages thread full of responses and is making obvious progress due to implemting given critic, than someone who is a firsttime poster?
You see, the moment your start doing paint-overs and giving critique, you have to start explaining art-basics to someone... Which means that you revisit those art basics, and start applying them point by point... which means you master them more properly.
Indeed, some of the biggest improvement-spurs I've had were while tutoring someone else.
We can't force others to follow our advice. However, we can intensively study what makes a good artpiece by trying to take a flawed piece and trying to fix it, thus becoming better artists.
So, be helpful and selfish by doing exactly the same thing!
Edit: Nedd, here you go, I'm still a polycount newbie, so I hope this attached correctly.
1. The skeleton: this is really rough, but primarily to check for obvious anatomical problems. Your creature for example, has his tail coming out of his... anus. That's a bit too low :x
Other than that, hands are too small, and I have the feelings the legs are uneven. The roughness is pretty bad due to me doing this paintover on an android tablet.
2. This is looking for the visual center of gravity. There are mathematical ways of finding this, but what I do is draw a polygon, and imagine myself using the plumb-line method as described here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centroid
From there, we find a visual center of gravity, which seems to be too far away from the feet+tail of the creature. Now, this does not always apply, in fact, it only really works for homogenous material shapes. Many statues do all sorts of tricks to make it seem they defy gravity. But it's a useful tool for when you're trying to avoid seeming you defy gravity.
3. In combination with the tail, we can start constructing a draw-over. The tail is moved back to be at the center of the gravity, returning a whole lot of balance to the picture.
The feet are put down more solidly, and the scythe made less curved, so it looks a little more practically held.
4. Here we do something different, and look at the rendering: your picture is unecessarily dark. By using a brush set to the overlay blendmode, and using a light grey for colour, you can quickly strengthen the highlights.
In general, the image of course lacks a story, but I think that with using these tools you can tackle the technical mistakes.
I just wanted to get some feedback on this study of vivien leigh (Very classy lady) and the exercise I'm doing is one of observation. Trying to get proportions and angles right, and also re-engineering a photo into an image with a sense of 3D form. It's a work in progress (some areas more rendered than others) But I'm putting it down for the moment to refresh my eyes and to get input. I'll pick it back up tomorrow.
I can see a bunch of issues, namely little shapes are out of whack, proportions and angles are weird. but the one thing that's really getting to me is that.. 'look'. You know the one. She has this aware gaze with the very... sharp... stare. I love it, and it's driving me nuts that I can't get it.
Any/all help will be appreciated. I'll now scour this thread to find someone who I can provide feedback to.
When it comes down to the look, this is partially due to the proportions being skewed, however, there's also the values of the iris+pupil to take into consideration. She's no anime character, but there's still quite a lot going on in terms of value in her eyes, including which, if you look closely, very tiny high-lights, your study in comparison is a little simple. Her pupil's are also more tiny than your study's.
Overal, for subtle expresions like this, the whole portions of the face must me right, but starting with the values of the eyes is good way to go. Also, draw some straight lines down from the corners of her mouth to her eyes, and other such proportion measuring tricks. In the photo, she seems to be tilting her head forward very slighty, in your study she's tilting it to the side...
Good luck!
EDIT: Also, her eyes are a tiny bit more hooded... and after experimenting, I think plopping down some guides will really help you see where the proportions get wonky.
I personally like darker paintings, but I'll give a shot at increasing the value range!
For me there are a couple of tricks I use to stop this. Flipping the canvas is one (vertically as well). The art teacher Betty Edwards (drawing on the right side of the brain) noted how much better her students drawings were when copying the ref upside down. Another is to draw the negative space, ie. the shapes in the background like that little triangle between her arm and torso, rather than trying to draw the outline of the figure.
Hope this helps!
Mister Jackson, here are some of my thoughts and I'm still learning to
I think it's a nice image but what's bringing it down is the composition and lighting.
Composition. First what is your story and where are you drawing your audience's attention to? One of your focal points (areas of most contrast) is all the way at the corner and the other in the middle. And after looking at his red jacket my eye is constantly looking at the blank blue green spot.
The middle focal point is fine depending on what you are trying to achieve but also remember you can use the rule of thirds.
Lighting. Your big cast shadow is impossibly straight. There needs to be at least a tiny bit of breakup. Since we are looking so far away the light also needs falloff. Your objects also don't seem to react with the light.
Hope some of this helps
Hey, I like the rendering on your character, and the trees are nice, but...
What is this? Why does it take up a good 30-40% of your image? It seems unnecessary. That percentage of the image would be better off used by your character or story/scene setting, but you've barely even rendered this area. If those glowy bits are supposed to be eyes, it ends up seeming kind of out of place. I dunno, I just feel like these elements could be arranged more thoughtfully to result in less negative space. In any case, this area needs to be rendered, too.
It's brighter than your character, so it draws my eye as part of the image flow and I really notice it's not as polished.
Another note, The lighting on the tree trunk in the middle ground is lit from the opposite direction than your main spotlight, which is also really immediately odd. It may be too late to fix that, just something to be aware of in the future.
Good luck on your journey to consistently finishing pieces-- I'm on a similar one myself. Keep up the good work!
I know this was a really late reply, sorry
Ok, so i have something that i need to be absolutely drilled on. I have made progress latley, but it's really slow and i really need a kick in the ass.
And that is drawing faces. In my group of artists I talk to regularly, the faces i draw actually has a name, "Muzz Face" as in something about how I draw makes them always have some sort of quality that looks the same.
Normally i would say that it's a case of just not drawing enough from reference, but it's on such a core fundamental level that even 5 second sketches with nothing more than a few blobs possess the same feeling to them.
While i can get away from it with a lot of effort, it's a major struggle requiring a ton of iteration, and i would appreciate some honest analysis to try and work out just what the hell i am actually doing. This is something that has been with me for my entire drawing career, and I just want to get past it and make unique attractive faces.
Here is some more examples.
(I HAAAATE THIS ONE, but it does show up the problems stronger than the rest i think?)
I'd really appreciate the help in diagnosing the problem. It's been annoying me for waaaaay too long.
I've got a bit of this myself, but I find that it always helps to go back and have a bit of a review of the basics sometimes.
It's worth noting that I'm with Daew, even your blobby sketches up top possess elongated features. Just a note and not entirely relevant, but your girls all also have a very similar nose structure on a front and 3/4 view. Even if they have an interesting nose from the side, it seems to get flattened.
I think something also good to note is that it seems like a lot of the ""worse"" ones, the ones that really feel a little wonky, seem to have all the facial features on a flat plane and not curved around the face as they should be.
Like you got a bit of this going on.
Question for you, do you do facial guidelines, Muzz? What do they look like right at this point? It might play a part in why your structure ranges from almost perfect to fairly off (other than regular quality fluctuations that just come with being an artist, of course).
http://i.imgur.com/5As7eFk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aYSVN5k.jpg
I haven't been posting them all up though. The problems persist regardless of how i start, whether from scribble, construction, painted blobs or drawing with sand on the beach.
I think the flat face thing is a good observation I'll try it out and see how much it helps. Though I'll point out that it changes between races. http://artists.pixelovely.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/G100757-669x1000.jpg http://artists.pixelovely.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/G100759-669x1000.jpg
The long nose is a good one, and i think i noticed that but hadn't acted on that properly. So i'll try and nail that now.
What i'll do is try and isolate some of the issues. I'll also point out i am more interested in stylized faces than realistic faces, but of course i need to draw realistic faces to get there.
I took a Kr0nPrinz Picture and cut out the eyes nose and mouth, and jumbled up the locations. I then tried to place them back where they were supposed to go from memory. I really did overestimate the distances! So i think this is probably my biggest issue.
EDIT: so i tried liquifying the proportions on this image. I think it's helping.
Out of genuine curiosity what are the proportions of your own face? Does the "muzz-face" actually match the Muzz Face?
I think this is just part of the puzzle, so i'll draw another sheet and come back for feedback again.
I'm not sure I'm going to be a lot of help on this one...
Love the forward momentum, Muzz, looking forward to seeing that next sheet.
God it's hard to try and break habits like this -_-... All of the good ones required drawing then redrawing to destroy bad things.
I feel like dude bottom right is personifying all my issues other than nose gap proportion issue. (i don't like him but i left him in as a good case to look at.)
I'm going to pull apart these sketches and see if i can work out some things from here properly.
New rule, ever face needs a readable expresson.
So i think i pinpointed another problem here, I am drawing the face in comparison to the features as too big, slimming down the face, seems to be the right move.
I can try and do a tutorial i guess, but i don't draw these at all in the same way, i don't have a linear process. I'll make a process gif for the hell of it though i guess.