Well, i dont know what its worth to you but in general what makes an effiminated face is the shape which is rounder than man usually, lips who are bigger, eyelashes are longer and eyebrows are thinner. No matter what style you go for, realism, cartoon or anime they are the decisive factors which are usually exagerated in the case of cartoons and anime.

Well if you are a noob with computers it is no problem but if you are serious about it, do it by hand but at least put some effort into it. Here is something we learn in graphic design when it comes down to create our own lettering. The 4 base lines are the fundamental of lettering, every single professional fonts follow that rule, if its a capital or a tall letter such as l,t,f, you need to take it to the top line, if the letter has a ''tail'' such as p,q, you need to take it to the lower line, if we have a tall with a tail letter such as j you need to take it to both lower and upper line. Here is a picture to help you out.

You kinda screwed it up by adding handwriting to it, no offense but your lettering skills kinda sucks, you would be better to edit it later with a software.

You really should be using vectors for logos instead of pixels, it has much more flexibility and make your logo way sharper. By the way, a professional logo should always be effective in Black an White, if you wanna replicate the real way to do logos, you need to sketch down at least a page or two of little drawings like you did but once you selected one you must do at least another page using a similar setup to the one you have chosen.

After you have your final sketch, go ahead using your computer software, preferably with Adobe Illustrator if you have it, otherwise any program who support a ''Path'' button to make vectors should work. If you do it in pixel, it will frankly be underwhelming. Just keep in mind that when using vectors, the less points you have in a curve, the cleaner that curve will be.

Seem harsh to me to ban MS paint because of spammers, its just another medium to use, while it cannot really produce high quality artwork, it can still give interesting results sometime. Banning paint is just like banning pencil artwork for no real reason other than ''people tend to spam with it''. If there is something im sure of, is that it wont stop spammers.

Now mind you, i dont post often so its not like my opinion really matter but if there would be a needed change in these forums, it would be sub sections within the art section, a place where people can actually ask questions and find help as well as some sort of Gallery where you can have your artwork exposed. Newgrounds attract all kind of people from different ages and skill, so i think it would be neat to have a place where you can teach and learn stuff without necessary being blocked by the ''post a picture'' rule that actually encourage you to spam in order to get your questions answered. To me it seem like Newgrounds community could become quite a good place for aspiring artists or even amateurs who just want to learn how to draw a bit. That way, with sub sections and possibly sticky threads with ''how to'' tutorials, spam would be by far less frequent. Just my 2 cents on it.

The same way you draw a face view, frankly only the 3/4 view can be hard to pull. Tho if you say you cant draw shit without seeing something, just take reference pictures for the body and modify the pictures themselve by adding clothes over the body or whatever is fit to your setting.

At 5/7/08 01:26 PM, sherru wrote: thanx hay, its just im trying to get an "anime" feel here, thanks for the help I will really use them, specially the arm part

hahah its funny really, the one guy gives me a thin figure to help me (tanks a lot for that) and now you give me a slightly more plump figure

okay so this is what I have:

needs to be a bit shorter 9-11 heads

vousielle pointed out how my hips actually go ^_^

something's wrong with my ears

and my breast should be rounder

Right got that now, ill post an update... again with black lines, dont want to edit her untill im sure its right, TNX for all the help guys

Wooo hold a second there, it doesnt ''need'' to be 9-11 heads tall, i merely stated that fashion design use that standard (if you want some stylish feeling), its way out of proportions, 9 head talls is fine but anything beyond that will look extremely unnatural (like the pic i posted). True proportions of a human body is 8-8,5 heads tall. 9 heads tall is considered the ''beauty'' standard and is not really seen in real life.

Other than that, for the waist, as long as the head fit inside, you are fine, Raguel waist was a stylish touch to his particular style of drawing, same as going beyond 8,5 head talls characters.

In the end, its all a matter of preference really. Clearly you werent aiming for ''true'' proportions there as you said you wanted to do animish style of character, so no one should actually yell at you for not being straight in proportion (aka: anatomy nazis). Longer limbs usually create a grace feeling in a character but are not proportionally correct.

Hope it clarify the confusion a bit <_<

Doesnt have much to see with the scanner itself but the scanning configuration you gave it, there is a buttload of settings you can adjust depending on the scanner. You just need to toy around with it and eventually it will give out what you want, sometime its a bunch of automatic correction options that are active and make your picture crap. No real secret here, if you could post a picture of the configuration console i could help you more.

Ah! There you go, way better this way and seem like Vousielle covered up eveything.

She just need larger hips, in general when you draw a female character using lots of curves is the way to go in order to effiminate it. Kinda like what Raguel did but personnaly im not a fan of the super thin waist style. Wish i could doodle over your drawing as you asked but i just cant do shit with my mouse.

Anyway i can shoot up an old pic of mine with a similar style to what you were aiming for, the totally too long figure is actually used by fashion design artists which is 9-11 heads tall figures. In my case, its a rather pure experimental drawing than anything else but it has a good overview of the shape.

At 5/6/08 12:40 PM, mercyfire wrote: Its just that I find it hard to do smooth lines on photoshop, even with a tablet. Any tips?

Yep, an image worth a thousand words.

At 5/2/08 02:35 AM, ATHUMB wrote: Isn't it a breach of privacy posting personal info like this?

More or less, i mean its his business info no? Its pretty silly to call it a breach of privacy when it is written on cards meant to be distributed in public. The only consequence now is that a bunch of newgrounders know there is a clothing shop in Vancouver and they have the contact info for the businessman as well as the adress of the shop.

Making some good progress but if you want to push further, use more contrast in your work.

There is so many techniques, its not even funny. I experimented with so many different things but my favorite approach (because im extremely lazy) is to scan my pencil drawing, save it, save it as another document so i have the original in backup. From there, i magic wand off all the empty areas around my character and paint it white while keeping the paper texture inside the character. From there, duplicate the layer, select the white area, erase it, slap the layer either into multiply or darken blend mode depending on the result, from there you should have both a layer which act as the background with the white empty space and another which the color go right through the pale areas. After that i create a buttload of layers for every base colors and body parts, shade on more layers, as always, layers = flexibility which is good. You can shade either with a low opacity brush passing over the same areas a few time to apply more color which is more like painting or you can go the cell shading way. Tada you got a digital drawing done.

Variety is the spice of life, or so they say. A few other approachs i use sometime is to completely ditch out the original lines and use the pen tool to create paths (save them) which i can either use to ''ink'' over my lines like you did with your brush but in a much more cleaner and precise way. Paths can then be used as selection for quick coloring. As they are selections, you dont have to slowly follow the lines, you pick a big brush and paint it really fast (this is good if you suck with a mouse). From there i repeat what i said in the last paragraph, layers, shading, done. Paths are definitly for the win but relatively time consuming and hard to use if you never touched them.

When you hit stroke option with a path, it will basically do the ink job, if you wanna be fancy or add some spice to your lineart you can use the simulate pressure option to give some kind of caligraphic style to it and with a bit of innovation you can have it do exactly what you want. Otherwise there is also the option of using no lines at all and use the paths to select areas of your drawing, in the end you will end with a more paint like piece.

Just a tip with the magic wand, if it doesnt do what you want, change the tolerance either higher or lower and try again, usually you can get a good selection with it and you can always adjust it with either the quick mask or lasso tool.

In the end, to summarize, experiment a lot and innovate.

Bah, take it easy, your comic wasnt really great i admit, it lacked a real punchline but a share of users are gonna insult you for it. Btw that guy is 13 so age isnt much of a factor on newgrounds.

As Raguel said, follow up some tutorials, thats how i first started 5 years ago, following up Polycarbon tutorials and with time i made it evolve in my own style which doesnt have much in common with anime anymore. Not much to say on the drawing itself since there isnt enough to comment on.

Oh those are pretty nice, i did went to school in graphic design so i can help you out a bit with a bunch of technical details.

From the 4 design you made, id personnaly go with either half the second or fourth one, the composition is really classy with the large empty pale blue area, the squid and the company name. If i was you however, id play more with the text side since it feel like it doesnt do justice to the other side. Just an idea might be to replicate the octopus and the octopus clothing word on the text side but in light blue so the text can go over the octopus, you could move the logo elsewhere to allow octopus clothing to repeat itself in light blue.

Other than that, here is a few thing you would most likely need to fix if you were to go all the way through the project.

1- Dump the colored logo and make it monochromatic, the less color you have in your work, the less expensive it is to print, if i were you, i would dump the black as well and go for what is called a Pantone color, pantones are basically just a single color, in your case, it would benefit your friend wallet considering you have next to no colors outside of blue. If you pick a rather dark blue, you can reduce the opacity to get a light blue for the image side and it would allow your text to be dark blue. Assuming you work with the Adobe franchise, usually you can view them by swithing the color palette to swatches, clicking the little arrow thing and you have an army of Pantone style there, most used are Pantone solid coated and solid uncoated. However, dependin on where and what method is gonna be used to print them, you will need to design it in function of the method, some cant handle pantone so you will be force in CMYK (4 color process). RGB is a screen format only, if you design your stuff in RGB, it cannot be printed and once the technician change it to CMYK without you knowing it, you might be up for a shitty suprise when you pick up whatever you printed.

2- What most people dont know about graphic design is that you need ''bleed''. Basically everytime a color or a picture go to the border of the document, you need to make it ''bleed'' a bit by making it go outside the document, kinda like the squid in the 4th concept. The default value is 1/8 inch. Why? because when they cut down your cards, they will use a machine that send down a blade over a pile of your cards, its not 100% precise, so leaving a small bleed around it make sure you wont have any white in your color due to the machine cut.

3- That curve on the text side of the card kinda suck, it doesnt curve with grace, anyway you will need to redo it because of the bleed. It must bleed from both side and the bottom.

4- The word clothing under Octopus feel squished and frankly, the i is too close to the P, up to you to figure how to place it, you can try squeezing it under Octo and see what happen.

Think thats it for now, those are what struck me.

Haha, the shitty quality one looks like he just had a cumshot straight in the face.

And to complement what as been said, if you have photoshop, you can use the save as web or device option. Even a normal jpg with a low quality might be big but with that option, you can keep a great quality while reducing the size a lot more.

At 4/27/08 02:24 AM, ScorpianX0 wrote: the point of layer confuses me. I shade without them, the only thing they're good for is effects. Is it easier to shade with layers? Is there any other strenghts of layers? please tell me.

Major advantage of layers are that if you screw up and arent happy with the result, you can simply alter the layer to whatever you see fit. For example, i apply a texture as a base, if i dont create a layer over it to shade, i alter my texture directly and if 5 minutes later i decide that my light source would be better if it was blue, im screwed and need to start over. Layers give you a lot of flexibility, for simple things you can deal without it but once you get in advanced work, you cant live without them. For example if you decided to add a scratch over your metallic armor and later you decide its just out of place, you can simple delete the layer without having to recolor that part.

If you would end working in the illustration or graphist industry, you need your stuff to be flexible as your client might not be happy with your final work. Convinving them is a big part of the job itself but some are just plain damn stubborn. It can be something as stupid as ''my wife hate yellow but if it was blue, id take it as it is''. From there, you can switch your base color to blue without having to alter the black and white shading done over the picture. Its also way faster to correct a picture with layers. In the industry, time is money and your clients mean everything. Usually you are set with a budget given by the client, if he say he has $100 then you need to give him $100 worth of time, if you redid your picture 3 time, you will be forced to do overtime for free in order to finish your work. If the client isnt happy with the result, he may badmouth you, which can be quite devastating. If he was happy with it, he will pass the words to a bunch of people, these might become future clients themselve.

Another good use would be if you wish to create more version of your work without having to redo the whole damn thing, the wip picture i posted is one of those, by simply clicking a few layers off, i can see my character face. In that picture i have about 30 layers for diverse parts of the body for quick access.

To sum it up... get used to layers! and name them...

Well im not really sure how gimp really works since i used it a few time way back about 5 years ago but from what i know, you can do similar stuff to photoshop if i remember.

Im pretty shitty when it come to coloring my pics if we compare to what can be done but hopefully i can help out.

No real secret with digital art, there is so many different techniques to pick up. But first, you should have clean lines to work with since having any white mixed with the lines looks extremely unprofessional. You can either trace your drawing again or figure out yourself a technique to proceed. For example if you had photoshop, you could ajust the levels to get a nice balance between blacks and whites then put it on Darken layer style to keep everything from the original artwork. Since you have gimp, im not exactly sure where are the limits of what you can do but the best bet is experimentation.

For the coloring itself, the basic steps are colors, shadows, highlights but you already know that. What you can do tho, is switch colors for textures to give it a very nice little touch (self made textures are better). Another possible technique you can pick, which come from a real guy making comics for a living is to add gradient in your cell shaded pics. If you want to go for a more freehand style over cell shading, lower the opacity of whatever tool you work with and go gradually up in opacity for darker or lighter zones.

Lights and shadows dont have to be black and white, it can totally make or break a feeling if a character has a blue light showering him.

Now as i said, there is so many damn techniques that you can be totally lost into it. Wish i could be more helpful but i know jackshit about Gimp.

I personnaly use texture, shadow, highlights but as i said im not even close to be good at coloring pics. Still a step in front of the basic color, shading step.

Here is a work in progress of a drawing of mine, can give you an example. White highlights, black shadows, self made texture as colors.

Fair drawing, its really dirty however, if there is something you could work on, its making the lineart clean.

Now its all up to you if you want to try it out or not but i can give you a tip on how i do my drawings. I usually sketch out the whole thing with a 4h pencil then proceed to make clean lines over the sketch with a normal HB pencil and for the final touch i use my mechanical pen to retrace the HB pencil lines again. The 4h pencil lines dont strike visually when there is way darker lines over it, the mechanical pencil lines just give it a final touch of precision. The mechanical pen lines also need the previous step with the HB pencil, otherwise they appear kinda shaky. Feel free to give it a try, it would really make your whole drawing style extremely cleaner.

Well, you can always google up for tutorials or go the lazy way and take a picture of your hand in whatever position you need it. There is no shame in tracing when you wish to do something nice but dont have the experience to accomplish it.

I do have begginer tips tho for bodies, i havent drawn the hands or the head as i threw it quickly together in a few minutes for another user but i guess it could help you with bodies (mind you, the proportions arent exactly accurate since i made it quickly but still). You can still use the geometric forms (second step of the small tut)to get the hand done.

Check my post over there.

At 4/25/08 07:39 AM, Dad00 wrote: i want to make a movie but i cant do that with scanned drawings so do u have any help for drawing on the pc

Trace your own scans? If you can do it with a sniper rifle picture, why not with your own drawings?

Now you lucky bastard, my first post on newground is for you.

Its really not as hard as many make it looks like, basically you simply want to make web comics so i wouldnt go for realism at all. Drawing from thin air and using references are very different for a beginner, while i agree realism will help you get better, for a begginer its better to start in a simple way.

I searched for some shit i made for the same purpose about 4 years ago... cant find the sketchbook it was into but i threw the basics in a few pics so you can understand. Mind you those pics sucks since i did them with my mouse in psp within like 5 min but it does give you an idea on how to proceed.

I threw them in my photobucket since i dont think i can upload more than one picture in here and i dont want to make multiple replies.

First we stick to what you know, stick figures, however we are going to push it just a little further and make a slightly more complex figure and add joints. Joints serve as reference to know where the limbs end and where movement is possible. Which looks like this.

Second, i never really used this step but it may help a lot for a begginer, basically start applying basic geometric forms around your stick figure so it start looking like whatever you want to draw, which in this case is a character (duuuurrrr). Looks like this.

Third, we got our basic layout on our character, this is where depending on your skill, you will start ''modelling'' your character in that mass of crap we did. So start fleshing out, it should looks something like this.

So if we removed the second step from it (which should be done with a light pencil as should the first step) we end up with this.

Now if we removed the stick whom the role is to be the ''skeleton'' of the figure you are drawing we end up with this.

So now you got the basics done, from there its all about adding the details into your drawing, like the faces, draw the clothes over it and whatever you want. Use yourself as a reference for anatomy.

Take note the stick figure which is called the ''skeleton'' is used by many artists when it comes down to draw shit from thin air. It gives you a really good reference as to what the position of your character will be, once you have experience you will skip directly to the fleshing out of your characters.

There you go... hope it will help you a bit.