Mario Manzanares' art & stuff
polycounter lvl 5
Hola a todo el mundo!
My name is Mario and I like to populate the internet with all the stuff I draw. Even though I post my work in more places that I'm able to track, I didn't have my own thread at Polycount because I used to post just my 3D stuff over here. Cry no more, 'cause I'm here to end this non-sense.
So, what's this thread for?
- Showcase my 2D work (finished pieces, studies, sketches, just random things...)
- Receive feedback and comments. Overpaints are allowed! (and appreciated!)
- Discuss about illustration, concept art, maybe make some friends?
- Learn and improve!
- That also includes English! Don't laugh too much if I write weird things, but please correct me!
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Replies
Sushi Summer. A drawing is not perfect when it's flawless. It's perfect when you have fun drawing it from start to finish. And this was so much fun.
Sansa from GoT. This is from August, and at this point I was obsessed with cleaning and polishing every surface and line in my drawings. I'm very happy with this style, but It was very time consuming and the drawings were a little bit stiff. I guess my experience working for casual gaming makes me feel like my drawings should be more "vector", even though I hate to vectorize things.
Moar flats. I guess it´s a cool style if you are trying to get a cartoon/casual feeling.
Old man experiment. Art experiments are the way to avoid art blocks, or at least, getting over them. At this point I wanted to keep my clean-flat surfaces but evolve them into something more loose.
Halloween' 14. I did this one trying to polish every surface like I did with Sansa, but at a certain point I felt like "cleaning" it too much was killing the freshness of the picture. I guess the more you polish, the more stiff it gets, so I stopped and realized that maybe it's ok to have some "unfinished" parts in a drawing
Moar fanart, this one is Blackwall, from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Yes, I have a crush on him. Yes, he's my husband in the game. And yes, this is kind of Bara. No regrets.
Interpretation of a set of pictures. I see this drawing as a milestone, because it mixes all the things I'm struggling with just the way I like it: Clean surfaces, unfinished parts, textures, expression, movement... This interpretation comes from this beautiful collection.
Study. First 2015 drawing, yay!
Mason (fan art from snowpiercer). I've been experimenting with "oily"-textured brushes recently, trying to embrace my natural "dirty" approach when I have to envision my illustrations. Even though I would like to have a cleaner style, I get better results when I don't mind about polishing surfaces or detailing edges. This took around 4h.
More to come!
vguerra: I'm from Spain
darkmag07: Thanks! That's a good memory!
I'm currently working on a character design for my portfolio. This are the thumbnail explorations I did so far. Any inputs?
You are already kicking ass with this, so keep going.
Just to make sure I'm reading it right.
Old rich cranky aristocrat, Kind of arrogant, but very smart and probably has some blunt but good advice?
as for your current project...I really like the middle 2, both for color and design. I think the grey and gold one could be really awesome if you introduced some slightly cooler greys/desaturated blues into it to contrast more with the cloth of gold cape.
looking forward to seeing this character completed. Keep up the stellar work man
!
Espero aprender de tu estilo e ilustraciones!! Much
Hofsta: Thanks! I love golden+grey too, but at the end I decided to go a little bit red instead of blue. I'll try to introduce some blue cooler colors in order to contrast, though.
LReisis: Thanks man
vguerra: Claro!
Some progress on the old woman! I made some grey variations to test every possibility I had in mind, and in the end I putted together my favorite parts into a final grisaille. It changed a bit during the coloring part, though.
Speaking about color, I think gold + red + white were the best scheme, but I tried to desaturate the gold because all the fashion references I'm using have beautiful pale gold surfaces. I don't want Cleopatra but something more... elegant?
The following picture is NOT FINISHED but a WIP update to gather some feedback before calling it done, because I want this to be a portfolio piece, so c'mon guys and gals, speak up you minds!
For instance, there's a few parts of the clothing that I want to fix, and the style of the foxes and the lady is slightly different so I want to make her more painterly.
Thanks!
Just some feedback
*Feet look wonky, get some actual heels reference.
*Boobs are too low for such a strong push up bra. Also boobs are out of perspective, raise her left boob.
*I feel like you could really benefit from some serious fold and cloth studies. Cloth doesn't bend and flex like you have it, and i think it would really help sell the character.
http://www.mightyartdemos.com/mightyartdemos-bradley.html
On another note... I completely updated my portfolio!!
I'm thinking about getting an in-house work instead of the freelancing, since I feel it fits better with me and my goals. What do you think about the website? Is there something you would change? Something you would add? Once more, feedback and comments are welcome and encouraged!
After some job interviews I realized my weakest point is environmental design, so my main goal now is to improve that aspect and generate a bunch of good landscapes and environments to add to my portfolio.
What do you think about this one?
PS: If you want to imporve your enviromental skills too, there's nothing better than Eytan Zana and Kalen Chock's tutorials
This newest environment is also super lovely. I'm a huge fan of the colors.
More environments please.
Dilanka: & JamesArk : Thanks for the kind words!
I've been practicing likeness lately because I really want to be able to draw recognizable characters, even if I don't "copy" from a single picture but a bunch of them. I'm starting to understand that likeness is all about essence, not realism or measurement.
These are William Morris and Bjork. Can you recognize them?
Kneel to Krinja! Sith master of the light whip!
[Soundtrack: http://youtu.be/iQPWjtqWYyk]
*This is my entry for the Star Wars CDChallenge: http://on.fb.me/1DQLxus*
Born in a planet of slaves and raised around the sound of the flesh being punished, Krinja freed her people the day she stopped a whip just with her force. Not a lot of girls can say they led a rebellion at the age of 12.
After that, she was trained by the Jedi to become one of them, but her heart full of hate was always attracted by the dark forces. One night, she fled and all that its known since then is that she ended becoming a Sith master.
Her unique style of fighting makes a light saber a very stiff weapon for her, so she ended up contracting (kidnapping really) some engineers to develop an deadly light whip for her.
Hope you like this very geek design!
Some process:
Noahbradley's #21days sounds like a great idea to practice even a little more!
Its time to try new things, make better mistakes and have some fun.
This first drawing was made after one frame from Lars Von Triers Nymphomaniac. Very, very loosely.
I think I'm starting to feel satisfied with the way I render things. Yeah, probably.
I could use some feedback in that regard, though
I feel like i want to see you go finer with your forms and get more variance to it all. I guess things feel like they were kind of drawn with conte crayon in a way. The obvious reference i would recommend paying more attention to is leyendecker. With how he uses lighting, and the scale of his details and lines.
Not sure if that helps or not!
I am crafting more work in this vein and I'm happy to say that I'm very satisfied with the next one, which is something key to me because I'm in a phase when the important thing is to achieve satisfaction and learn how to enjoy my vocation, if that makes sense.
Feedback is encouraged and appreciated, as always!
Love your stuff, man!
Ok, next piece continuing the Gypsian theme/collection! I'm trying to give further step from the "plain portrait" stuff I usually do
HD: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rebeca-the-gypsian
I feel like I've improved A LOT in the last months, and that's thanks to my incredible colleagues and friends, who are always willing to give me good advice and feedback on my drawings. It's just invaluable how good is to have a different point of view on your work to grow as an artist. And that's why I'm coming back to this beautiful community! I'll be showing my last works over this week, so stay tuned!
First, let me introduce you The Guano Kings, a crew of riders always looking for trouble! Güilly and Güendolin are brother and sister, descendants from a lineage of atrophied bats, dwellers of the underground mines. Do not mention inbreeding in front of them.
What do you think? I think there's a noticeable improvement since my last posts, tight? I'm so happy.
Well, all the comments and feedback are very much appreciated!
Cheers!
Now is time for a piece I started in 2013 but never finished. At that point, I felt like I didn't have the skills to take this to the level I wanted to achieve. Now that I feel more confident with my rendering and with a lot of feedback from friends an colleagues, I finished this swamp witch and I'm very happy with the result. There's a lot of room to improve yet, so feedback is very appreciated. Hope you like it
High resolution: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kZRn2
I tend to find inspiration in the sneak peeks of the lives that random people share on the internet. This is a semi-stylized study that became a more complex piece. It was started in 2013 after I saw this picture, but I didn't feel confident enough to finish it until last week: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bohemea/15895624263/
I learned a lot about depicting subtleties, water and the female body. There's a lot of room for improvement yet, so I'll appreciate your comments and feedback on this!Thank a lot Greg! Those are very encouraging words
Continuing with the "dark fantasy" project, here you have a frog lineup I designed to live in the swamp:
High def: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AvYry
"Peculiar events occurred when the witch Ophylias dwelled the swamp. Fishermen were the first to report abnormally sized animals like frogs, snails and dragonflies.
Of course, spooky events are always denied by the conservative folks, but it is difficult to keep looking the other way when, on a rainy night, you find a human-sized frog digging up bones in the village's graveyard."
Hope you like them! Like with Ophylias (two posts ago) I started this design almost 2 years ago, but never felt confident enough to finish it until last week. I'm very happy with the result, and I think I have "evolved" a lot since the first iteration:
