David's Improvement Thread : CC Welcomed!
interpolator
I'm new to the community, and although I've been doodling and messing about for a while I never really had my own project to drive with design-wise. I finally decided to give it a shot! Standard set by works in the community is frighteningly high, but as a learner I thought it'd be nice to keep my progress posted so I had courage to ask for critiques
I mostly focused on trying to convey my ideas and designs rather than rendering details at this stage. Any kind of CC would be welcomed and appreciated!
I got my inspiration from studying the Opium War, imagining what would have happened if Qing Dynasty somehow accepted and culturally connected themselves to European empires. Since this was an era of exploration too, I took a lot of inspirations from Chinese and Dutch explorers of the history.
Replies
This is the most recent design work I did for a soldier accompanying this expedition as a guard. I know I have way to go, but I thought it'd be nice leaving a record here
Thought I'd drop in and perhaps give you some critique/advice. Looking at your work, i sense you have a particular sense of proportions - my advice would be to really learn off by heart a standard/idealised set of proportions for the human form (check out Andrew Loomis) and then once you've got it down, always work thinking about your proportions.
Hope that feedback is useful!
I dont know how this reply system works
Most definitely! I completely agree with you on my proportion issue, which was one of the huge reason why I left for a month just constantly studying anatomy and stuff. (I constantly drew that weird 10-headed-proportion monster)
Hopefully it'll start to reflect on my newer works, thanks for your feedback and I'd be grateful if you would keep up with criticisms
Hey man, ok cool! Personally I stick to around 8/8.5 heads, sometimes 9 for manga work (longer legs you see) - I'll do my best to keep an eye on your stuff!
I've been stranding away learning maya, decided to come back to my comfort zone and do some more 2D works
This time le theme is doctor / engineer, enjoy and always welcoming C&C.
your rendering and lighting is pretty good, but your anatomy and proportions are WAAAY bellow the rest of your skill set.
up to the points where its almost comical. Im not saying this to be rude, but you really should get those basic proportions up to par with the rest of your skill set.
I did some basic under drawings on your two latest painting to illustrate what I mean.
so, lets break them down:
- you tend to paint forehead pretty huge, also none of your characters have any real eyebrows.
- your overall heads are REALLY small. thismight be why @ArtofScott felt the characters lenght where closer to 9-10 heads.
- you make torsos REALLY wide, making the heads feel even smaller.
- arms dont have a consistent lenght, they basically are as long as they need to be to fit the pose, for example the soldiers right (our left) lower arm is super long, but his right arm is pretty normal.
- then we come to the big part, legs, they are freaking HUGE dude xD
I hope this is helpfull!
O god I hope I'm doing the tag thingy right here.
Thank you so much for your feedback! And regarding anatomy yeah, it's currently the biggest frustration factor that's bugging me and I'm spending most of my time just working on that. Especially the head and leg part, it's bugging the hell out of me..
I do work on underlying anatomy before I jump in, and usually they sorta seem right and then I start rendering and it goes nuts. I think this is because I don't have a firm grasp on how to werk on anatomy which just drives everything nuts when I paint over them.
I put the belt way above the waiste because that's how some of the officers used to place their belts during the historical time, but I think it's giving off some weird signs on where the actual location of their legs are..
And holy shit are heads hard to balance with rest of the body.
Thank you for your feedback again
Sorry if I blabber too much, I rarely get to do crits with my arts anymore (at least until my duty is over). Please keep coming back once in a while when you're feeling generous and give more feedbacksssss!
P.S: How do you like my design choices like color and attire?
Im spending most of my time just studying anatomy which are too crappy to upload here, but for the sake of dragging this project forward and planning my next move I made a lil mask design on contemporary (as in 19th century) Tibetan mask.
I think my next project would be more fitting in my comfort zone which are post-apocalyptic rendition of..musicians. I had that planned long time ago when I didn't have skillsets to drive them through bit I guess I'll give them a shot.
Meanwhile, back to le histroy research. As always critiques welcomed please! Rip it apart
Edit: O god how awful those perspectives are
Thank you for coming by and for your kind words! Yas, need to get back on the grindstone whenever I have spare time. Please do come by and check on my updates whenever you're free
Edit: Like, not in weird forceful way, but yaknow, if you'd like to.
Had some thought about how I would make my project more interesting and purposeful, and I decided to provide a specific narrative in it and stray away from historical accuracy a bit (while remaining practical and authentic) to make it more.. cool?
I really love post apocalypse but I always thought it was sorta overdone in modern days with nuclear weapons and viruses. So I took a look at 19th century where air pollution was actually a life-threatening issue to many people, and started looking up filtering masks of that era to see how they work.
Will update you further on main character design... As always, whatever comment or critique that comes up to your mind is super appreciated
If you're not doing it already, I suggest studying radioactive protection gear from our time and theirs, it really helps to think a prop inside out, from the manufacturer to the user with no effort to make it plausible, after having studied things.
Always ask yourself is you can take away stuff that is taken for granted. I read at the Skillful huntsman from Art Center, Scott Robertson was asking one of his students who was given the task to paint a forest from a book chapter, if the forest had to have trees at all to be a forest? I think they ended up with making it with only moss and mushrooms and weird plants, it was great.... moral of story is, do your air pollution control has to be done by using masks?
Masks are a great prop to give a character some mystery too, some darkness as well, (think Dishonored). Make sure you're conveying the right idea.
And the most important, take what I say here with a grain of salt, I have not read your story so maybe the advice I'm giving you is not 100% appropriate, I just wanted to help.
Painting and design is a big topic and it will always require more than you can give it, if something gets easier, there will be another thing within design and painting that you can improve. Think a donkey and a carrot, it's the same thing.
These sketches are good, better than mine, ahah, mine are a mess. Here's a good start!
thank you so much for your feedback! Your comment on taking away existing things is really interesting actually, never thought about approaching designs that way. Predominantly the inspiration for this was my experience of living in China for 3 years, pollution was so bad that literally everyone on the street was wearing some sort of protective mask and I found it visually almost ominous yet intriguing. But definitely your advice would be an improving factor in my project, I feel like!
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Hello beautiful people of Polycount!
Apologies on my lack of update for almost a week now! I've been stuck in horrid art block; couldn't produce a single work for like what, almost a week even after grinding through wasted psd files until 2 in le morning everyday
To refresh myself out I've been jotting and doodling a lot of different stuff which are all too clunky and crappy to upload here, but I feel like Im slowly moving away from this art block and getting back on track so I wanted to just dump couple of non-project related doodles..both of which are WIP.
Spent some time at work today rendering this thing
I wish I'd added more details, but it's scrap A4 folded in half and le only pen I had at work was horridly think ink pen
Not in my best shape recently, so many things going around me and all of them looking pretty grim. But still wanted to keep this thread alive with.. 'something' at least, so some WIP stuff I've been draining out of myself
Update on previous sketch
Also took a whole new different direction in this one
thanks for your occasional feedback
Regarding the bubbles, holy crap I totally agree with you! I was going for that 'infected' look and thought it might look quite boring the way it is, and your idea of creating different sized bubbles with rhythm definitely sounds like a good idea.
I really liked the direction this piece took and I'm trying to merge my previous projects with this and sketching little concepts, will update on it asap. Please do come back and check by!
I'm not a recruiter in the industry and I haven't looked actively for a job, so read al this with some caution, but if I was, I guess I wouldn't hire the guy who shows another cyberpunk cityscape with flying cars and bright neon lights, I see them everyday and they are all Blade Runner knockoffs, but the portfolio that would make me feel something would be the one I'd stopped to take a real look.
But what do I know?
@SamKaewkhiao
THanks for your kind words
ANyway, hello again people of Polycount! Been away for long long time because I looked back at my arts and they were all atrocities!
But then, isn't that how you sorta..learn? HOpefully.
I've been mostly learning values, anatomy and perspective paintings. Here's new WIP work I'm going for, heavily heavily influenced by Noah Bradley (In fact, Im practically doing a master study of his work in terms of composition and inspiration), gave it some of my twist to practice value painting and perspective. HOpe ya enjoy, and feedback welcomed!
(UNFINISHED WORK)
I'm generally in super low self esteem with my art and constantly wonder whether I'll ever be good enough to land a practical job, but first time in forever I sorta feel like I accomplished something with this one.
Learning Zbrush and Maya sideways is also lovely but haven't had much breakthrough in my 2D skills for a while, hope you guys enjoy
I had this side-project thread I was keeping, but I just decided just to put everything here to see my gradual progress
Still at quite rough stage but wanted to move on with next design in mind, so for now here's whatever that came out of my previous work
Looking over your last images I thought about mainly four critique points:
You rarely see absolutely black colors in reality and I noticed you're often using the 90%-100% black pallet. It's super cool for giving
contrast, sure, but the oversaturation of this dark values takes away a tool from you, that you could utilize to set a striking focal point.
Secondly I find one of the often overlooked helpers of aesthetic design is rhythm. When you paint a brutal orc with spikes all over his armor you can't put a perfectly trimmed lawn in as a background; you surely want to go for the spiky mountains. What I'm trying to get across is, if your design relies heavily on round objects, make the designs of the machines around it also rounded and not edgy. Or the other way around.
One thing I see in your digital works are muddy outlines. Have you ever thought of quickly selecting an area with the lasso tool and painting within that border ? It's one of my favorite tools of the trade to give my objects a crispy look.
The last one is just from my personal experience, but I find doing still life paintings would help you a lot. I always found them to be the most boring thing to do, but they helped me tremendously.
I'm keeping an eye on your environments; keep it up!
Thank you for your thorough critique! I really really REALLY APPRECIATE IT OH MY GOD
But seriously. Thanks. Regarding black pallet I completely agree with you, and when I paint I try to keep the absolute maximum to 90% but I end up controlling the levels or brightness when Im done so they get really dark
Quick lasso tip also sounds fantastic! Never even thought about using that and I absolutely love your works, will try that as soon as possible.
I used to do a lot of still life painting and I find them quite lovely to do, but I'm out of school at the moment for my military duty and can't quite afford environment in which I can comfortably paint in
Im sorry but my response is getting ridiculously long, but I'm super glad my works have been an entertainment for you
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And to the REst of polycount, hello lovely people of Polycount! I've been busy working in my duty recently but managed to grab some time for fun character concept doodle
It was really quick study to see what kind of character I'm going for that would fit my previous environment so it's super rough, but I quite like the direction Im taking with this!
Working on new environment / character work called the 'judge', finished sketching out and giving it some vague mooddddd
Still quite rough and got a lot of value correction to do but all of these works are practice exercises, and I wanted to move onto something new (will probably come back on this later with better skills)
Meanwhile, please enjoy and C&C always welcomed
Been writing and working, and I decided to render this really far. Here's some WIP shot I made, post-processed brightness and levels so I can aim for overall atmosphere when I'm done with it. I was thinking of finishing it here but then I really wanted to make a piece that I can proudly present as 'finished' and I have none so far, so why not make this one?
I'm hoping one day I'd be proficient enough to incorporate it in my paintings! For now I'm literally a noob, the screenshot above was first model I attempted to sculpt except for cups and boxes I made watching youtube tutorial.
When I started doing 3D I felt sorta obliged to do it since it's such a crucial part of production pipeline, but more I learn it more it benefits my 2D work I feel like. Before I was sorta eyeballing shapes and details but after learning basics of modelling now Im constantly thinking about how my drawings and paintings would look if it actually exists in 3D space, which is tremendously helping me in terms of design and proportion.
I feel sorta ashamed to post stuff here because every month passes by and stuff I thought was good previous month looks awful as hell, but Im hoping that would mean something like an improvement no matter how meager it is
I dont even know what this thread is becoming, I guess my improvement thread?
Anyway, while I was 3D modelling I was thinking why does my design look so horrendous, and realized it's not believable or practical at all. So I went back to gathering resources and studying a lot of references especially early IBM computer era, and started re-concepting the robot part. Here's the head I just quickly made up!
Throwing out some rough ideas of what the body part is going to look like (btw, this is a redesign of le robot that's in the middle of my previous room painting)!
I think I was too obsessed with real life references on this one to the level where the design is just plain boring. I'll scrap it up and make it more exciting, but still this was a quick study and I felt like sharing the entire process with you. C&C welcomed and enjoy!
Been studying perspective and value painting and all that, and along with the theme I've been developing I thought it would be ncie to put it to test
Again, critique always welcomed! Also thanks to @Vasburg , your critique on my last environment piece gave me a lot of self-criticizing insights when I was working on this.
Thanks! Hopefully I'll be able to get them to look better
Hello lovely people of polycount! Been super hectic and busy with my duties lately but managed to find some time for value studies, I feel like I'm getting more comfortable with them. Enjoy!
Second one is still WIP D :
Here's some skinned (?) version, I wanted more volume so gave it bit of a redesign. Hope you enjoy!
http://polycount.com/discussion/175037/jims-ill-mind#latest
dont have any real crits or anything. just wanted to say keep up the good work!
@lotet you have no idea how much that means to me, thank you so much. (Although if like when you say you dont have crits is it because my works are that bad then im sorta self conscious about that and Im... I dont evne know) Seriously, thanks for dropping by and giving me a boost!
Also, hello lovely people of Polycount! This is technically not 2D work but my main drive is 2D, and I will be using my 3D works to give a boost to myself in terms of 2D so I'll just put it up here
This is my first ever Zbrush sculpt, all rendered using basic Zbrush Sculpt! Give me loads and loadss of critique since this is my first 3D work, I know its dodgy as hell and have much to improve on
Been really sick, so took a long holiday from work for 3 days. And to come back to my main tablet not working, yay!
Had to dig up my old tablet to get something going, so here's a quick character sketch I did. Will bring more proper works later this week
Going back to designing a character with bit more of narrative and theme, also trying to do more research on shapes and make my designs not too boring. Some concept sketches for the head of my new character..
I see you post a lot and havnt gotten that much comments lately. I just wanted to make sure you didnt get discouraged by the lack of responses and basically ad a "keep it up and youl get there!"
Thank you so much for your encouragement! And it's fine
And hopefully I'll get somewhere in the end, I dont have conviction but fortunately I have enough drive left in me to keep on pushing. Very excited to see where it'll land in the end
I've been trying brand new style while doing visual research on some real life robotics company to add realism in my designs. Ive been doing series of characters and just to share a peek at what's upcoming
also, hurray for 50th post! (That nobody cares about! hehe)