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At 8/25/11 10:51 PM, TheSnakeSkull wrote: I find your style to be quite nice.

Tell me, what program do you use?

Thanks, and I tend to doodle/draw thumbnails on paper, which I then ink part of and scan to finish in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro or another program. If I am short on time, I'll skip the computer bit if it is something like a single comic panel and ink it in its entirety on paper. I might add screen tones in that case (if the rest of the panels on that page have screen tones). Other than that I use ToonBoom animate for vector lines if I really want them... I also have, but don't make much use of Corel Painter Essentials 4, Gimp, Photoshop Elements 6, Serif DrawPlusX2, Manga Studio (whatever the pro version is called) and.... MS paint. I got a lot of these at student discount prices and for free over time.

Sketchbook Pro is pretty good for sketching things, and can handle a large load of layers fairly well. Below is a is a heavily reffed sketch turned photo-trace "drawing" that I never finished. I did this all in sketchbook pro in a couple hours with the pencil tool.

Final note: The first image is now submitted here

At 8/25/11 08:12 PM, Sockembop wrote:

I like the contrast that comes from using black and white, but I think the balance is a little off in this pic. There is a lot of black and not so much white.

Also some of the shapes are shaded white, like the character in the robe, but some are drawn in a thin white outline, like the unfortunate chap on the ground. I think you should pick mostly one or the other and keep it consistent.

I understand the problem you see with the white outweighing the black, as well as the problems with the thin white lines. The rock in particular (in the first drawing) has too much "weight" in the image, with nothing as large to balance it out on the left. I'll try and avoid thin white lines in the future and see what results. Thanks for the help.

Below is what I might call an "advanced doodle" in that it has no composition, but has had more than 20 minutes spent struggling with details. The blanket gave me considerable trouble trying to figure out and I still don't like it. It serves only as an example of trying to digitally ink dark scenes, not as any "good" piece of art. The only reason I drew it was because of a very long and drawn out inside joke between me and a friend involving a would-be stalker, finding 2 pieces of glass in my morning pancakes and other shenanigans. If it still doesn't make sense, more explanation will defiantly not help.

One final Note: The hood is purely coincidental to being similar to the last drawing. I asked my friend what he wanted to look like, and he wanted a hood and stache.

Rather than continue lurking, as I have in the past, I have decided to create an art thread and quite possibly get in the habit of getting help and helping people. Not that lurking is bad, but I take a lot and never get to show what I've done with it. So in a way, this is to show what I've done with the loads of lurked help I've got (not that I've done all that much with it).

Things I know (read: think I know), but feel free to educate me further on:
Posemaniacs, and my lack of use of this helpful training
Art101
To never post the first thing you do in a new program
To keep it all in one thread
To search before creating another thread, such as for the elusive critique thread
That you shouldn't start out with anime/manga, but instead anatomy, which you then simplify/distort

Now that that mess is out of the way, here come the fun part (art). I have been recently been trying to get into drawing in black and white after reading all of Bone. Which is strange, because I used to hate b/w stuff. So I basically need help with these techniques, be they traditional and digital inking. Below is the first of this type I have done in a year, so it is a mess composition and technique-wise. Feel free to red-line it to death.

This is wonderfully full of 1984 goodness, with newspeak, IncSoc ministries, and all, right down to people actually buying the telescreens, erm wii, with their own money. This could be a great animation or whatever you plan on it being, provided you make some sort of reference to other gaming systems. As you probably know well enough, a lot of IncSoc's control over the people came from the perpetual war they faked (sort of) in order to control the people.

I recommend that you include the enemy of the day on the wii's broadcast (like the five minutes of hate) to be an actual console developer (x-bawks or play-stay-shun) and be portrayed as as an actual threat to the citizens (gamers). After you switch the signs/speeches a few times, make sure to imply that the great nations (developers) don't actually want to destroy each other, only to get you to by the same game twice and pay for online play (and take your money in general).

Other than those additions, sounds like a great idea. I would stay away from generic "there he is" moments unless the include something like a kid turning in his father because "I saw him playing a contraband dreamcast in the basement!" Oh, and a joke about Sony's security (and how Nintendo forces defeated them) would be lawlz as well.

"Nintendo=Nazis. But then again, I'm not sure how Nintendo is fascist"
I think you need to re-examine the themes of 1984, it is not about Nazi fascism, but instead a warning about what might happen if socialism goes to far. The author supported (limited relative to his books) socialism himself and just wanted to show what had to be avoided.

Also, Nintendo is presented as a Goliath of video game system manufacturers in comparison with Sony and Microsoft (they are with handhelds), but in reality the console market was dominated by Sony with the PS2 for years (just look at the sales figures). Loads of video game magazines continue the bias against Nintendo and portray other systems as underdogs for some reason, one of the biggest examples being the advert magazine Game Informer. Play up this bias as the reason that war against the others must be waged if need be.

If you take/pose the references yourself you can add a whole new level of complexity. The composition and such are of your own creation, but you are still "cheating" in that you do not have to fully reconstruct said composition from memory. At least one artist I have read of takes photos of his models, then traces them and corrects what he wants to, then draws from the tracings as references. If you want hyper realistic drawings this is a good way to start, but if you want to prove that you can actually draw from what you "know," people tend to disapprove of references. Street art uses a lot of this technique in making stencils, wheat-past posters and such.

Most people don't tend to get picky here (or most places) on the interwebz about you using references to base stuff on (as it is almost necessarily in the case of drawing aircraft or other complicated machines), but it is nice if you list any of the free-use stock photos you used as references, especially if posting on the site that the person posted said photographs. *cough* dA *cough*

Note that the only acceptable refs to be able to claim the work as your own (and not get people mad) tend to be photographs from free stock sources (or the US government, since most of their stuff is in the public domain) and photos of stuff you set up yourself. If you want to draw video game/comic book characters, people tend to frown on drawing directly from the official art, and you should instead try to draw them in your own personal "style" rather than the artist's who was under contract from the studio who made the game.

Below is a drawing I did last summer that I reffed to heck and back. This was to the extreme end of the reference to outright tracing (as I did with parts of the rifle by measurement as the photo was out of focus). I took/posed the image and model (unhappy friend) myself, but some would still consider this cheating so the finished version will not see the art portal based on my beliefs.

In the end it is up to you to set your own personal standards regarding the practice.

Your variation is quality is confounding to say the least. What I can say is that for now STAY THE FRICK AWAY FROM MS PAINT. Your pencil drawings could have real potential if you spent a bit more time on them. Study facial features and proportions etc *insert generic draw from life/posematics speech here* and you can improve with those (I am pretty terrible at these, so I can offer no advice from experience).

On a second note, your stencil-ish drawing could lead you on another path, as that looks pretty nice and simple. I can safely say your stuff could be loads better by simply spending more time on them, even if there is a steep learning curve. Oh, and you don't have to post EVERYTHING you make, I let 99% of my stuff rot on my hard drive and it doesn't bother me.

I am not in any way an expert on anatomy, but I do have a small amount of firearm related knowledge. You fell for quite a few common gun errors in the (first) drawing. First off, DAT THUMB. If he fires another shot it will be a broken, bloody mess. This is because that wonderful slide thingy on top will slide back violently when the handgun is fired. This is how handguns cycle to eject the brass (cartridge casing) and feed the next round from the magazine (note, magazines are not clips). A small artistic license may be issued if he is returning the hammer to a non-cocked position, but that brings up a second issue.

His index/trigger finger is HUGE, as well as still on the trigger. Even pikachu knows trigger control (see here for pikachu with a gun demonstrating trigger control).

Lastly, you fell for the "all guns are flat" trope of flash and drawings in general. Just because every traceable gun ref. known to man is from the side, doesn't mean that every pose possible for someone with a gun has the gun perfectly parallel to the camera/viewer. Please note that in the image that the camera was above the level of pikachu's gun, so some of the top can be seen. By looking at images of guns at different angles you can get a "feel" for the gun's shape and learn to draw them more realistically (at different angles). This takes time and practice, but if you are going to draw a bunch of guns it is necessary.

Sorry for ranting at you like that, but all of these gun related issues plague a lot of artists so this is meant to be helpful to others as well.

Although I have no experience with sprites, I can help with concept art. I whipped this up for the heck of it. I couldn't stand looking at a MS paint picture in this post. I hope you don't mind, I needed a break from drawing comic panels. This little guy was quite fun to doodle. No pupils though? hmmm....
HQ available if you want it.

JA-ME