Dear Critics Lounge,
I've been trying to convert the pixel style I use for comical adventures (sort of like in Cedric a. t. R.) into a clean, simple line-based drawing style. I'm not used to drawing comical stuff and there's a lot I'm not sure about.
First off, the drawings + some of my older, cartoony pixel art for reference:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1b.gif)
(Please ignore the duck)
Proportions: Taking the style into account, do you think the proportions work like that?
Style: Some say my drawings look like manga stuff. Is this still the case & if it is, how can I get rid of it?
Lines: I'm trying to vary my line thickness, but have no idea where I should make them thicker or thinner.
Overall: Does anything look weird? Does the level of detail work like that? Anything wrong with the stances/poses?
Thanks in advance!
The drawings look excellent! I like your simplistic style, and the duck is just amaaazing!
I dont really see anything you should change.
I would say that it still looks abit manga-ish. I dont know why it looks that way, but i dont see why you want to get rid of that.
IMO (and I'm nowhere near an expert), I think that it looks MANGA because you have strange proportions reagrding the head and the rest of the body.
If I'm not mistaken usually Japanesse comoics have big big heads and small limbs/bodies...
The duck is great though!
The guy with the spear looks like a dwarf, with these proportions...
The level of details seems fine to me...
I like them!
I'd have to say it looks eastern because of the shape of the nose and head. I have no idea why, though; It's hard to define.
The spear guy is the only one I'd say is problematic. His upper body is big, but his legs don't taper off as you would expect for a huge upper body- small legs comical style. He's also lacking a package. The lower right sprite is great. As far as style, I'd say the drawn ones are definitely similiar to anime. If you want to get rid of that, make the nose and chins more realistic (more pronounced and defined, and not falling away from the nose as your top right one). I made a really sloppy edit that will probably explain it better.
(http://members.cox.net/progzmax/randomart.gif)
Thanks for the replies!
ProgZmax, I like the edits you've done. I'll edit them and will post the results later. The guy with the glasses is supposed to be young (15 years), your edit makes him look a little too old. I'll try to find something in-between for him.
The duck is my interpretation of Alfred J. K., it doesn't really count. ;)
To me, the man with glasses looks manga-like only because he's young and has glasses, and that's rather superficial. Based on the samples you've given us, I don't really think you have a particularly great amount of manga style to get rid of.
I agree with eldkatt, your style isn't that much manga at all (take into account I watch way too much anime). And generall, any style has kids look like manga since the eyes are usually bigger and so too the heads (and rounder).
I want to see more bernie games!!!!
Those drawings are excellent.
To me, most of the ears seems misplaced (esp. on the man with the spear). In general they are placed too low.
buloght: Thanks! More games will follow later this year. :D
EldKatt: Zat is gut, thanks.
New edit + fixed ears (thanks, Neil) + random new stuff:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1c.jpg)
nice drawnings!
o/
Ah, that duck is CUTE! the rest are great with a wonderful grace and fluidity. It has that manga delicacy of line, with out being TOO cutesy in the eyes. Great work!
Alfred J Kwak? Great, now I'm all depressed. God, that show was miserable.
As for wanting to not be manga? Why? Unless you're anti-japan, I can't see what's wrong with it looking that way. As long as you like your style of drawing, who cares what it's similar to?
I think it works rather well as your own personal style of art - unfortunately, people are going to draw similarities to a specific genre of art no matter what you do; it's just hard to be completely original when most facets of art have already been explored. I'm not sure exactly why you're trying to distance yourself from 'manga'. I suppose you're talking about the Dragon Ball/Sailor Moon stuff. I'm not going to get into a big explanation about how that's a bit of a misnomer, as there's a whole lot of variation of art even in Japanese comics (manga).
But I digress. If you don't want people coming up with similarities between your work and the work of the more popularly imported Japanese stuff, you'll want to work a lot more detail into your pictures and be very exact, or very loose with your anatomical proportions, while avoiding the simplifications that you find in Japanese comic art - I find that a lot of attention in noses, for some reason (as Hillbilly also pointed out), can push you more towards a western style. The child in the running position at the top of your page has the closest to what I think people are talking about, largely due to the way you drew the nose (mostly undrawn, with a few well-placed curves to suggest it) and eyes (also simplified, lower lid completely undrawn).
As your proportions are concerned, I find that most comics in Japan are actually generally very anatomically correct, at least as height and body-type are concerned (This is, of course, a generalization, as there are plenty of exceptions to the rule on all shores, such as the work of Tezuka Osamu (http://www.tezuka.co.jp/) and Toriyama Akira in Japan, or Albert Uderzo (http://gb.asterix.com/) and Chuck Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Jones) of the western world.
Basically, I think you should just stick with drawing things the way you're comfortable, and don't give a damn about what people think it looks like. You drew it, so it's your art, no matter what it may or may not be influenced by.
Re: line thickness
There are a couple books out there on comic book inking that go into more detail on this topic than anything on just drawing would. I recommend The Art of Comic Book Inking by Gary Martin.
One very basic technique that I recall is to use the lines to suggest lighting. For example, if you want the light source to be on the left of your character, make the lines on the left thinner, and those on the right thicker to suggest shadow.
Hope this is useful
HoN
HeirOfNorton: Defining shadows... I'm gonna try that, thanks! :3
SpacePirateCaine: You've convinced me to keep the style (with ProgZmax's suggestions applied). You're right, I'm talking avbout Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon and such. It's what most people think of when they hear anime/manga. However, I really like the drawing style used in the manga 20th Century Boys, if you know it.
Spleen: Haha, I'm not anti-japan. :) I also don't see why I'd have to be anti-japan to not like some of the manga drawing styles. I like the style used in One Piece. I also drew my avatar in my manga style. It's just that I also want to be able to draw something that doesn't look like it too much.
lo_res_man/Exsecratus: Thanks! ^^
I'd like to use this drawing style for a short comic. I probably should point out that I drew it with a tablet, but I think the general drawing rules still apply.
Slightly older, more manga-esque works for the same comic idea:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1d.jpg)
This adaptation looks very much more YOU and not borrowed or inspired from other sources, Bernie. The approach of just drawing nostrils is a good idea as it definitely sets you apart from anime and the simple style of the eyes fits better with it imo. Good show!
Thank you! :3 I only put some more details into the eyes if I draw my characters bigger. Sort of like in these two sketches I drew a few minutes ago:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1e.jpg)
me thinks you shoud get a real problem :P
well if I could draw like that I would do the same thing I do every night - I would try to take over the world ;D
I love the new versions. Much more personal than the previous sketches.
Really cute sketches, i love your lines!
In reference to matching your style, i think at the resolution you're working it it'd be an idea to look at the sprites from games like Street Fighter Alpha, Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear, Metal Slug. The pixel mock ups you've done reminded me of these styles, and i think they'd carry your drawing style well.
progz: the nostrils technique is overly used in manga ...
In that case it's back to the drawing board for me. Can you name a few of these mangas that do that, buloght? I want to see how they do it.
Bernie, I wouldn't worry about it. These new versions have alot more of a western flavor to them (if that's what you're going for) than anything.
I'm a huge manga fan and I doubt these drawings and pixels are manga.
They look a lot more like western images, though they might have a tad influence.
Besides, what's wrong with manga?! (I just had to say that...)
There's nothing wrong with manga, but there's a lot wrong with 'manga influence' in my opinion, and Bernie is doing well to try to evolve his style so it's more cohesive.
I don't have anything against manga, too. I just want to be able to draw non-manga stuff when I want to do so. You could compare it to making sprites with and without outlines; just being able to do different styles.
Manga style - it seems for most that's:
-Huge eyes big enough to drown baby kittens in them which also reflect things/lights that aren't even there
-Small, pointy noses
-Slim people with legs way longer than the upper body
-Overexaggerated expressions
-And, of course, huge boobies which would cause a real woman back aches to no end
At least that's what I've discovered when browsing through the manga comic section at keenspace.com (which now is called comicgenesis.com for some reason). However, don't do that if you value your sanity. :=
Yurina/ProgZmax - If you say it's looking more western now, then I must be on the right track. Thanks so far.
Helm - Aye, I'll keep at it.
I've given it another go:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1g.jpg)
I've been trying out other styles lately, ranging from 'cartoony' to 'a bit realistic':
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/randomart1h.jpg)
I tried to do shading on the lower right guy. I never know how to adjust the shading lines... should they complement the form of whatever I want to shade or do they align with where the light comes from?
That soldier is much better than anything you posted on this thread earlier. It looks a little weird though because of his left eye that is so much lighter than the rest of that side of the face, like it was protuding somehow.
I'm not sure that one should be compared to the other pics since it's a completely different style, but still, thanks. :) I'll look into this eye thing.
That little scene with the kid on the fountain a couple posts back is great. I could easily see something like that on tv or in a comic. It just reeks of life and personality.
I'm so jealous of your stuff here. It really does just have SO much personality and life!! I'm not dying to see a comic drawn by you, I think it'd be exactly the sort of thing I love. The more you do, the better you get at it, in a very short period of time. I'd say you're a natural, you definitely have the instinct and the skill to pull of a really excellent comic.
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=163&stc=1&d=1040168674
After seeing this picture, I was so impressed by it that I only drew boney faced people for a long while. With the shading, I guess there is no better way than understanding the skull in it's entirety in 3d so you know which parts would hit a light source (difficult for me around the cheekbone area) and then start to draw people that don't look like cancerpatients (this is my approach).
I still think it's great even if it's not in the same style, because it looks like you made an effort with it. The previous ones apply some of the same tricks over different characters, it's kinda like colouring the tip of every nose a little reddish, which works in some pictures and can be a nice trick but also a crutch.
biothebop: That picture is pretty awesome, thanks. :)
Just to clarify, the shading question was actually about how to align the lines I define the shadows with on the surface, not where to place the actual shadows. I could make these lines that make up the shadows horizontal, diagonal or vertical or whatever I want, but what would work best? I was hoping there were general rules or smething similar.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'tricks'. I tried to keep the characters in the older images in the same style, which means they will share certain ways of drawing bits of them. Please elaborate, I'd like to know what exactly you meant.
The image you posted will definitely help with my shading itself. Thanks for the ideas!
Kinoko: Thanks! :3 I'm not a natural, I've been drawing for a good 5 years now and only got this far. I'll keep at it, though. By the way, your comics are awesome (the mangas on your site).
LilBlueSmurf: Thank you. A comic is what I wanna do and I need a simple, light style for it. :)
You pull the "tricks" off so well that it should probably be called style instead, but as an example I could mention the ears of the characters in the first picture you posted (which in my case has a long time been a body part of low interest, so I didn't have knowledge why a particular ear I had drawn looked good or why another seemed bad, because I had never bothered to study the anatomy of it and was drawing quite symbolic ears that I had learnt via comics and such).
Since your characters are quite different but the ears seem to have been simplified in the same way, it could be either intentional as a "style" or uniformity thing or unintentional because of a lacking knowledge of how a ear looks like. It still looks good though, but there are several ways to symbolise/simplify. As an example: My interest in art originated from bombing/graffiti, where style is a product of a steady hand, practice but mostly the ability to break a letter down to it's building blocks. Even if it looks like a Seak-spaceship, trained eyes will understand it as a symbol.
I believe the things that form a peron's style (and make you recognise the artist) are partly the tricks and shortcuts they use (as well as shortcomings), as ultrarealistic art often is inexpressive regards to brushstrokes and technique (although very nice).
I believe that the direction of your lines should make the shapes of your picture easier to read. If you simplified one of your drawings/faces to primitives, the direction you would shade those primitives in should work when applied to the real version. If you however shade the individual shapes too differently or in different directions, the end picture might not hold together very well, and seem like you forced or pasted several pictures into one, which I believe is why da Vinci chose a direction for his lines (but they follow/emphasis the shapes) throughout his drawings.
The direction of the shading can also be used to draw attention to a certain part of a picture (I did it in this one with the circular halftone pattern, but didn't bother to draw the effect myself, so I cheated to accomplish it and some other details).
http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/kuvat/dreamtwo.jpg
I also once saw a tutorial thing (by Mullins?) that explained if the lines for the shading should should be along or cross the shape and how they affected the dynamics of the picture and general readability (I seem to remeber that it favoured lines across the shape), but I haven't seen it for a while. If I find it, I'll post it.
All this could be bullshit though, since I tried to find some good tutorial about that the directions of pencil-lines when shading but didn't come up with anything yet and everything is from my head.
bernie, post a clean-outlined human face at 3/4 or whatever with no shading on it, nice and big and i'll illustrate a few different techniques you might find interesting.
Quote from: Bernie on Thu 23/02/2006 21:43:25
In that case it's back to the drawing board for me. Can you name a few of these mangas that do that, buloght? I want to see how they do it.
I couldn't help but look towards your avatar, Bernie... :)
I don't think it's overly used in manga at all though. Some use it, most don't.
Kinoko: Well, I drew that avatar, so it doesn't count! ^^ It's a leftover from a manga style I tried out a while ago.
biothlebop: I do neglect the ears a lot, I often find myself browsing through my reference folders when I have to draw some. I drew the ears for my light comic style simple on purpose. It would be weird if I made the ears very detailed when the rest of it isn't. That said, I haven't looked into drawing ears much at all, that's something I should catch up on.
It would make a lot of sense to draw the lines either along or across a surface, both could compliment the form of the surface which I think would help to increase the feeling of depth. But I'm just guessing. It also sounds right to make sure not to use many different shading line directions to keep it focused, so I'll try doing that. Thanks for the informative post!
Helm: That would be very awesome indeed! Would THIS PICTURE (http://www.origamihero.com/pics/guy1.jpg) work?
Sure. working on it.
EDIT: so, here goes, 30 minute stuff here, drawn in ps and not real inks, so sorry about quality.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy1.jpg)
This is your guy here. The lineart is pretty solid as it is, although one can never tell until you ink with real ink. Photoshop never is good enough. If you have to ink on the computer, go with Painter or Illustrator. Having said that, all my examples were with a 3pixel black brush in photoshop, so whatever. Let's move on.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy2.jpg)
This is really light, basic feathering. When you want something fast and clean. It doesn't suggest a particular texture, and can be applied to any material without making any serious issue. If you want to do something fast just to pronounce the shapes, feather in the direction of the lightsource, or a few degrees offsetted from that. Feathering in 90 degrees from the lightsource can be kinda strange looking, but it does lead to some moebius-style as you'll see below, if you take it to a logical extreme.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy3.jpg)
Some of the time, you'll find yourself needing high contrast when doing comic work. To accentuate a mood, or just to make a shape punch out from it's environment. This is pretty sloppy high-contrast work here, with no finishes. What I mean by finishes is that the contours of the black are just bare against the white, which is a style in itself, a very difficult one at that, used by artists like Munoz, or Breccia or even Frank Miller. Sometimes you might find yourself working from a contrast base such as this, but wanting finishes also.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy4.jpg)
This is again, feathering from a high-contrast base, this time. It's pretty simple to see how this works. This is pretty much 50% of my own work, only I mix the feathering with cross-hatching sometimes, but I'm pretty comfortable with BLACK - light detail - WHITE on the whole. This is a good skill to have, I suggest it.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy5.jpg)
Sometimes a more stylized feathering style, thicker lines, more space between them might seem appropriate. I don't do very well here, but there's a lot of people that work almost all in this style and do wonders. this is like 100% black, 0% white and the middle tone of the feathers being about 40% which is pretty strong if you can do it.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy6.jpg)
This is pretty much me, here. High contrast, then feather, then mix it up with controlled cross-hatching and a bit of noise. There's not much to say about how to cross-hatch other than it has to do with intuition, practise and developing your own feel. Usually I start with a feathered base, and then start to do short groups of angled lines on top of that base, then I go again, rotating the lines until I'm happy with the cluster and the shadow and texture it suggests. Speaking of texture, this is ALWAYS a dirty effect style. Anything you do like this will turn out rugged and dirty-looking, which might suit some things, but some things not. There's a huge difficulty in drawing things like this and then doing a pretty girl face next to this and appling only a light feathering. The style shift is tolerable, but always looks a bit out of the ordinary, so take care.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy7.jpg)
Just a different feathering style. All downstrokes. The effect this has on the viewer is psychological. Downwards feathering makes the face look tired, weary. Just saying that somehow, the downwards lines do this.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy8.jpg)
If you don't really need/want shading, but just definition, try angling your linework. And putting in more strength to your outlines. one-stroke belgian school is cool, but sometimes a bit of american oomph in lineart can be useful. Use straight lines, use curve against straight line, use dissagreeable curves against each other, make it dynamic and flexible.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy9.jpg)
And from that base, there's room for so many Jack-Kirby-isms it can make a man cry. The lightning-bolt-chin, the cheekbone dagger, the random-lines-I-dont-have-names-for! This is pretty much ready to jump into spandex and cape and go off to fist crime. I mean, fight crime. Hm.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy10.jpg)
This is a weak attempt at doing what Moebius does with his linework sometimes. He does a lot of things, but this is one of the more strange and interesting effects. Something like a blinder strip thing going on, useful when you want an increased sense of unreality. Doesn't suggest any sort of texture, in fact, if you do this all over in a pic, it unifies everything into one massive holistic ripply effect. It's interesting, give it a try. This usually is 90 degrees from direction of main lightsource.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy11.jpg)
The wonders of modern technology. I had a busy cross-hatched base, and then I cross-hatched on top of this with the eraser. This is a difficult effect to achieve on paper, but so easy in digital. Diffusing from black gives better control over implied noise and specular highlight. I suggest this however, sparingly.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy12.jpg)
A simple diffused line can make such a big difference as you see. Sometimes by doing little, you can signify enough about the shapes you want to shade. Just saying this, you don't want to go all charcoal-mad on everything you try to shade. Comic art isn't fine art, stylization is good and wanted. Forget reality. Think about what mood you want to achieve as much as you think 'now, where's my lightsource?'
(http://www.locustleaves.com/guy13.jpg)
A lot of people can use pure scribbly noise shading to great effect. As you can see, I'm not one of them. What's useful about this is how it implies uneven texture, though. Just something else you might want to practise once in a while.
EDIT: also, look at this comic page I did a while ago, for different shading effects all in the same page:
(http://www.locustleaves.com/wheel2.png)
That's quite a handy technique reference. It's not often you find examples with the same pic in different styles.
Less constructive criticism and more for-the-hell-of-it, I did my own take on shading one of two ways I normally do.. never knew there were names for these beyond "scribbling until it gets darker".
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/TheYak/ballpt.jpg)
Sorry.. lovingly rendered in ballpoint and captured with a digicam.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/TheYak/hicont.jpg)
Whenever I attempt high-contrast, I get scared once I approach the highlight-sections. I'll be watching Helm and Bernie's posts in a creepy, stalkerish way.
Helm: Thanks! You're an awesome artist. :) I'll give each technique you've shown me a go, even if just for the sole reason of excercise and memorizing them. All my drawings here are 3-pixel brush photoshoppy pictures (you probably noticed), so I'll have to start looking into Painter or Illustrator soon - that, or maybe even actual inking.
The comic page you posted is fantastic! Did you ink it by hand? Can something like this be achieved using Painter or Illustrator at a printable size (300/600 dpi)?
Thanks for the time and effort you've put into this. I appreciate it.
TheYak: Unlike myself, you're using non-computery stuff to draw. That's a good thing and I'd recommend to keep it up! :)
(http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/new/flowlines.jpg)
Since you already recieved excellent help about the direction of lines and general shading (thanks for the downward-strokes thing, I never laid notice to that) I did a little overpaint which is how I visualise the shapes and flowlines of your character's face. It's not a shading thing as such, (but it could be used like this if you wanted to draw a darth-maul thing) but rather the way how I feel that all the shapes flow out from the corner of his left eye and around his head. If you shade him, you could try either across these flowlines or along, some of them are unneccessary and probably a little misplaced, so any great artists are free to submit their improved versions.
biothlebop: I'll keep this image as a reference, it's pretty interesting. First time I hear about flowlines... very interesting indeed! Thanks! :)
Here's a go at shading with a strong light source coming from behind - possibly a bad choice for excercising shading:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading1.jpg)
(By the way, this is what I'd consider manga style. It's shown me that I'm still very clumsy at doing poses.)
It might be because I just invented it for this thread but it might also be a word for some other art thing that I don't know of. I was thinking of it in the way that if skin was like water that was dropped on a bare skull, it would flow along and around edges (due to bumps, crevices and the wrinkles caused by muscles) somewhat like that (kind of like tapestry folds). The forehead has some strangeness to it (since I stopped some of the lines near the hairline and haven't bothered to examine the lumps in my own upper and back of head) and as does the upper part of the nose (where the white edge seems too close to the right eye as my nose has a litttle crevice between the forehead and the bone point). The cheek-region is for a person that is quite fit, rounder cheeks wouldn't bend inward like that nor would the cheekbones be as defining (they would be more spherical).
Here is something quite alike it, but with more general lines.
http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/oversoul.jpg
http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/cc_detail.jpg
If your light source is straight from the behind, I'd say the hair and the lower arm look the best, while I'd probably go a little further up the shoulders and shade a part of the neck.
Looking at how you have shaded across the shapes (example arms) but along the surfaces and wrinkles, you have done the exact same thing as I was trying to accomplish with the flowlines picture. Also as I seem to remember, the shading across (or over the shorter side) method was supposed to make the picture more dynamic, which I think you accomplish very well. A person blown away by an explosion should probably look a little clumsy and off balance, however I dont think the pose is bad at all. It's not overly foreshortened/fisheyed/tapered (which could speed the movement up a little more), but it is good as it is since it doesn't look gimmicky either.
Lighting from directly behind (or directly in front) is not a good thing to practice shading with, and not to be mean, but yours just looks like you shaded the interior of all the basic shapes. Back lighting usually results in a silouette, possibly with some light reaching around on the very edges, and sometimes a small amount of reflective lighting on the dominate features. In general, shading practice is done with 'classic' light angles, like overhead, 3/4, side, and below. If you get all those down you can usually shade everything in between with much less trouble. Strong back and front lighting are each their own beast however, so at some point I guess you have to experiment with those too.
LilBlueSmurf: You're not being mean if you point that out, and you're right, too. :) I'll try to shade a couple of 3/4 views tomorrow. I just felt like experimenting.
biothlebop: Those pictures are interesting, thanks for sharing! You're right about the forehead issues, I wasn't sure how to draw a few parts of it, specifically the area where the nose connects with the forehead.
The recent picture was a foreshortening/pose excercise. I'm not very confident with those two aspects and end up guessing most of the time. I really should look into more basic shading for now, though. More pics tomorrow.
Thanks for the feedback!
Drawing explosion-behind-character-in-front is difficult and you did it pretty good. Good shading on the clothes generally, maybe the face is a bit scribbly, but I think it's passable for what it is.
on the comic page, it's real ink on paper, I very rarely ink for work on photoshop. This is an exception (http://www.locustleaves.com/dancefinal.png) but usually, my best iniking in with real inks.
Glad if I could help at all, if you have any questions I might be able to help with, shoot. From working on your face I noticed: you're weak at nose and nosetril placement, you don't define the lips, especially upper lip, much, and finally that you make constantly round faces. I put more chin on it for the kirby-esque edits, and edited the lips in a different manner on every iteration to give you a sense of how many different 'faces' there exist with very minor alterations. This is what you need to break out of the manga style thing: more definition. Don't be afraid of full lips, more bony faces, long faces, narrower eyes, crooked noses etc :)
I was inspired... So here is a quick paintover, the second one I stuck in just because it seems like it should have some sort of dark background (yes I know it totally screws up the nice blast art, but I wasn't worried about that. Don't look too close, I did it sloppy. It is also a bit 'shiney' but I refrained from shading very much.
(http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/3741/shadingwo0sh.png) (http://imageshack.us)
(http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/4014/shadingwblk3lk.png) (http://imageshack.us)
LilBlueSmurf: I see what you mean - more black could have put more effect into it. It would make the light behind the guy appear stronger. The black background also is a good idea. Thanks! :)
Helm: Thanks for the feedback. I drew a new face, trying to adress these things. Then I added the high contrast shadows and a little bit of feathering. I don't think it turned out very well, I must have done something wrong... the feathering seems unbalanced somehow. And now that I look at it, his left eye (from his view) is a bit misplaced:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading2.jpg)
I'd like to give inking by hand a go. What would you suggest? I'd need something that can do very thin lines and I like going over my lines to make them thicker.
Your exception is also very awesome. :) I'd like to explore all the options I have, so I'll also check out painter and illustrator.
I really like yor shading in the lowest picture. The lineart's got some anatomical issues though that make it a little strange. For example, the hairline usually recedes in the corners of the forehead and comes closer down in the middle. Since his hair looks kinda short and combed backward you could try something like this (unless he has real good hair, which gives him that hero-look).
http://www.newhair.com/images/photos/hairline/ra_a01.jpg
It seems you were going for that gorilla-like male with the quite straight nose, sharp jaw and bulging forehead, but I personally think you could ease on the shading above his nose in the third picture and combine the shading you did in that region the rightmost picture with the overall shading of the lowest.
The lower part of the line from the corner of the eye is a little too crooked in my eyes, when I do it I imagine it as the line that runs from the eye to the outermost tooth (not the one that is most back in your head but the one that is the most to the side in a front view of the skull).
I have my own struggles though when drawing (my lines/style is rarely coherent) and I don't follow all the advice I posted here (or at least think of them while drawing) so don't take this as the absolute truth.
As for hand inking, I am a sucker for brush pens (but my rendering is generally more sketchy), otherwise I like both technical pens with really fine points (I rarely use these since the lines are so even, the smaller the tips, the easier they are destroyed), as well as general overhead markers, for graffiti-sketches I use a Magic Marker with two tips (mostly because it's faster but it makes really clean lines too and never bleeds). The thing I go for is usually price, and my staple is a permanent overhead medium from your standard bookstore, but if you haven't used a brush pen, go buy one.
Here are some of my incoherent techniques, in 100% working size (although I usually work zoomed out, but I prefer working with larger brushes and straining my computer on huge canvases). I rarely work long on a single picture, and usually scale them down/up the contrast/generally just try to simplify them when I think they look good enough and retain some of the living lines I kill in the process.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/new/crack.jpg
I think that final high-contrast+feathering look worked quite alright actually, bernie. The problems are more with the original lineart than the rendering on this one, I'd say, and as it was mentioned. Keep at it!
as for real inking, I suggest any good pigment ink marker, from 0.1 to 0.3 for fine work and 0.7 or so for fuller lines, and an ink brush or well pen with lots of different end bits for variable length one-stroke lines.
biothlebop: Hehe, that's a wild picture, and it speaketh the truth! :) Thanks for the feedback. I usually draw more comical things so there's bound to be a lot of mistakes in these new ones, I never bothered to look at face anatomy before. It's good you point these things out. I'll keep it in mind for my next drawings. Thanks once again!
Helm: I'll go and grab a few of these pigment ink markers, they sound easy to get. I have a few but they don't work very well anymore. I'm a bit scared of actual brush/well pens... sounds like messy business. :)
I noticed that my hand is very unstable and shaky when drawing things with pens. Can that be trained away?
I've had Painter 8 installed for a while but never started to use it, so I spent a few hours getting used to hit. It certainly is tougher than drawing stuff with 3-pixel brushes (which is cheating in a way, but great for sketches). However, Painter has cool smoothing, allowing me to draw at 50% size or lower, even. If my art had to be printable, would I have to draw it at A4/300 dpi? It's a pretty huge image and drawing at that size is very difficult.
Is it normal for lineart at A4/300dpi and 100% zoom to look rather messy? It seems to be okay when I print it. I'd love to take a look at one of your comic panels scanned in at that size. Would that be possible?
Thanks! :)
Here's my first Painter pic that actually looks like something (and he looks friendler than the guy before):
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading3.jpg)
EDIT - one more:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading4.jpg)
EDIT - 'nuther one, to adress the combed back hair thing biothlebop mentioned, should look better now:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading5.jpg)
(http://?)
Yes, things will improve the more you train. But a super-steady hand in not needed to do art. When you have to do straight lines, use a ruler. When you have to do a long smooth curve, use curve tools. The rest freehand them and you'll be ok.
QuoteIf my art had to be printable, would I have to draw it at A4/300 dpi? It's a pretty huge image and drawing at that size is very difficult.
As a general rule, yes. A4/300 dpi. I've gotten used to drawing at 25% zoom and then zooming in to 33% to do more detail, sometimes going up to 50% zoom with an 1pixel brush for more detail work. It's something you pick up, again. Inking on the PC at such resolutions isn't as traditional inking. Go from general to specific. Do thumbnails at small zoom, go in and start refining as you go.
QuoteIs it normal for lineart at A4/300dpi and 100% zoom to look rather messy? It seems to be okay when I print it. I'd love to take a look at one of your comic panels scanned in at that size. Would that be possible?
Yeah, quite. Lemme show you.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/geo.png)
(http://www.locustleaves.com/geo2.png)
That's 300 dpi and 72 dpi respectively.
About your examples, tighten up the feathering more, I'd say. Pay special attention to every line.
When you draw the heads facing that diagonal direction, something about them looks "stretched" or if it was in an isometric perspective.
Mostly this one:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading4.jpg)
Helm: Very informative. Thanks for posting the picture! :) That gives me a few general guidelines. I'll post more pictures later.
Geoff: I can see what you mean. It's like his face is kind of narrow. I'll look into it, thanks!
EDIT - More photoshop feathering (still need to work out a good way to do it in painter):
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading6.jpg)
NOTE: I wrote this before the bodybuilder man picture. It is almost perfect in my eyes. In fact, it brought tears to my eyes.
I noticed the same thing as Geoffkhan, but your pictures really are rapidly improving. Try drawing some bald people for a change, and maybe drawing hair on a new layer on that skull form. Also drawing the head from really awkward angles helps in mysterious ways and you soon find yourself drawing the 3/4 portrait better.
There is no substitute for drawing people from life (I do it in trains, libraries, buses, everywhere in the summer) but photographs are almost as useful (less fun though), but at least for me, trying to copy a expression or doing anatomical studies (without painting over) is extremely frustrating and repetitive.
If you get good enough at it though, you will never have to learn anything new (drawing wise) if you own a camera.
My drawing motives are quite limited, since I haven't made nearly enough studies, and mostly scribble (which doesn't advance my skills but sometimes gives me ideas).
Looking at art (mostly sketches in my case) made by real artists can result in Eureka's that throw your style off in a completely different direction or advance it and your pictures suddenly look better but you might not understand why. This is what I believe is wrong with much anime, some people learn it by using exact guidelines or copying other's styles. Same goes for Loomis, though his ideas are more generally applicable (don't reinvent the wheel), and the thing I believe should be learnt from him (not the old-school illustration style).
That is what you are struggling with when you do your foreshortened/dynamic poses. You have learnt that the arms and legs are cylinder-shapes and you just connect them, instead of thinking of the figure as a whole, flowing form that is frozen in air. If you want some examples/inspiration, this guy is a master of dynamics and strange poses.
http://www.hpx1.com/
Now for some concrete thoughts:
The lowest of the three was best, it's quite three-dimensional and has the looks of a handsome Russian person from a old communist poster.
The first picture has some conflicts, the inward cheeks and defined cheekbones suggest a slim person, while the line on the edge of the right nostril curves in the direction that suggests a fatter person, a child or someone with food in their mouth.
The second picture has some three-dimensionality issues to it, the back of the head is from a slightly different view than the face/eye region as is the other side of the face that we do not see. The eye is quite close to the eyebrow and the forehead downward V-shape / downward arrow shape doesn't fit with the eye. The shadowing at the cheek is very well done.
In all three pictures you have used the same forehead V-trick. I don't know if you understand why you place it there, as it is now, it looks like something a person who looked at someone elses art would do (copying a nifty trick from it and placing it into every drawing), like in the Eureka/why I hate Anime section of this post.
After all that, I'd say that if you draw something and it doesn't look right to you, you are improving. When you have found out what was wrong with it, you fix it and it looks good, your progress stops.
Sometimes I don't realize the mistakes I have made, because bad anatomy and errors are easily covered in style.
Personally, I think ugly is the new beautiful (in art at least). I seem to remember someone sayng that Catherine Zeta-Jones had one of the most perfect faces (which lead me to believe that there is some standard for what is beautiful/a perfect face, forcing you to use those standards if you want to draw pretty people). Ugly people on the other hand have a more wide range of features, and can be much more expressive (and fun to draw).
Here is a ugly-beautiful-man sketch I made for this post, and how I would simplify it if it was made for a comic book. I'd probably still use filters to simplify it (it saves time, unless I took it as a learning process), they are gimmicky though, and it is highly recommended that if you do this, you touch up them afterwards by hand.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/new/comics.jpg
(http://www.locustleaves.com/shading.jpg)
you have anatomy issues, here I edited only the left side of the body to give you a sense of what would work against what you did. same mirrored below to give a more full impression
(http://www.locustleaves.com/shading2.jpg)
joint of the arm is on the same circular path as the navel. Your abs were too small too, and you've misinterpreted the muscular structure of the arm quite a bit. Nothing you can't fix by doing general anatomy work for a while. Book studying here will help much more than internet message boards.
Helm: Thanks for the edit! I'll go and find some literature about anatomy for art. I think all these issues stem from starting to draw comic stuff thinking you wouldn't really need anatomy because it's 'just comics'. It's a big mistake to make, but there's always time to go back and study it - like right now.
I posted here because I wasn't sure what to work on, and now I have some good directions. Zat is gut!
biothlebop: Your pic is good fun. :) I'd say I prefer the original image of fatty guy over the filtered ones. I usually use very few filters and generally none on lineart. I like my lines the way they are. And your lines are good, no need to filterize them.
I've been drawing men because it's easier to do details on them. I think I could give an old woman a go, too. Another thing I'll start doing now is sketching stuff before I draw my lineart. I haven't done that for pretty much all of the pictures I've posted in here. I hope that studying anatomy will also get rid of most of the weird drawing habits I've collected over time.
Drawing motives... I'm not sure if I have any, I just love doing it.
Thanks for posting that link, there's a lot of awesome stuff on there. :)
I'm off to learn anatomy. Thanks so far, Critics Lounge!
Before you're off learning anatomy, I'd really recommend looking into mass and lighting.
I'm very envious of the linework and character of the pieces in the first pages, but the shading of the later pieces reveals a lack of understanding in these two areas.
Especially when doing highcontrast work, which is sort of inevitable in comics, you really have to know your form/mass if you are to apply light, or else the shapes will turn out distorted and freakish looking.
Some like the creepy style you automatically get when you determine the light with limited understanding of the shape you're dealing with, and how light works in general, but if you aspire to have control over how things will look, I'd recommend taking some time to learn how to construct objects, rather than relying on linework, and postpone things such as anatomy and lineart studies.
Basically, you learn how to simplify shapes so they become comprehendable, and also because blockiness is quite attractive if done right, and will boost the 3D feel, since we're dealing with a 2D medium.
So, if you were to construct some planes on the head of the character, it could look like this (really rough):
(animated)
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/b_bb_o_anim.gif)
If we were to follow the simplified shapes of the planes, you can easily see that the current shading is sort of arbitrary, as in, the shadows overlap the planes, getting darker at places without any real reason n so on.
If we instead rely on the planes, we get a simpler, and more comprehendable result. Here I used only three tones, or two, depending on how you count:
(animated)
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/b_bb_e_anim.gif)
Here are the two after eachother:
(animated)
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/b_bb_oe_anim.gif)
Now, he's lost his ruggedness, and this might not at all be what you want, but that's easy to add. The tricky part is to learn how to construct object and apply light and have it look convincing. This is how I do it:
First, construct the head. You can draw out the planes like above, in more or less detailed versions, or not at all, once you get used to it.
Secondly, determine the lightsources. Usually there's more than one, but for excersise it's best to start with a single strong one. Later you probably want to add a fill light, to light up the shadow side, and a rimlight to accentuate certain edges.
This isn't an easy decision, since if you stick to the lightsource placement and type consistently, the look of the image will drastically change depending on this choice.
Thirdly, picture, or draw the object as seen from the lightsource/s. This will be your guide in deciding what value the planes will have.
Note what edges are facing you directly (as seen from the lightsource). These will be the brightest ones.
Then note which ones you can't see. These will be in shadow, and completely black, if no other lightsource hits them, or reflected light bounces onto them.
Now note which ones are visable, but facing away from you. These will get a value according to the angle in which they face you, the more away, the darker.
Lastly, note which areas are concealed from you, not by turning away, but by being obstructed by other geometry, such as a nose. These areas will fall under cast shadows.
The difference between castshadows and ordinary shadows is the geometry that causes them. In the case of ordinary shadowedges, we can take a ball on a table as an example, the shadowedge will be "feathered", since the geometry gradually goes into shadow. In the case of castshadows, the light is instead blocked by an object, such as the ball blocking the light from the table beneath it. In this case, there is no gradual surface change, since the table is either recieving light, not blocked by the ball, or vice versa.
The edge will be feathered anyway depending on the distance between the blocking object and the castshadowsurface - the further away the more blurry -Ã, the spread of the light, and the intensity, the more intense, the sharper shadows, which is just our brains compensating for the contrast.
Here are some examples illustrating how I determine the values using the planes extracted from your guy, the first one being your lighting situation:
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/b_bb_ex.gif)
I really recommend obtaining a fairly solid understanding of form and light before anything else. Anatomy knowledge and feathering techniques are both neccessery to achieve high standards, but serve really as icing on the cake.
A character with messed up anatomy will still look right if properly shaded, since we'll just assume his anatomy is strange, which is the case some people. A character with perfect anatomy, but shaded without understanding will always look crap, atleast to other artists, since light is form and texture.
As always, I recommend Andrew Loomis' books, which used to be available for free online, but has been removed as of late. Due to their popularity, it's not hard obtaining them anyway.
Great style in general, and good luck.
Edit: Some spelling
Edit II: Also, I'd loose all the small lines that I assume you've created to add detail, until you get an understanding why they're supposed to be there. Lines will be concieved as form, and any erroneous ones will distort the shape.
Wow, thanks for the informative post! It makes shading a lot more logical to me. I had to give this a go right now:
(http://www.origamihero.com/pics/shading9.jpg)
(Left: Photoshop, Right: Painter, still pretty hard to handle for me)
I'm going to try this on characters in different views with different lightsources later tonight and try some more complex polygon meshes. I used to work with 3dsMAX, but I never thought of applying it to 2D art like this.
I've also been looking into a bit of face anatomy earlier (Dynamic Anatomy/Burne Hogarth). Interesting book. I'll also try to acquire Loomis' books. I'm sure I can find them at the local bookstores.
The neck is too fat and doesn't connect to the head on the left one.
I won't 'critique the critique' of Loominous, we've been through this before, I'll just stick to saying that comic art is not fine art and the idiosyncratic approach of each artist is a wonderful thing that shouldn't be sacrificed for realistic-interpretation type of clarity.
But you get all sorts of different critique here, I'm sure you'll find out what you want to do, Bernie.
Quote from: loominous on Sun 05/03/2006 18:36:38As always, I recommend Andrew Loomis' books, which used to be available for free online, but has been removed as of late. Due to their popularity, it's not hard obtaining them anyway.
http://www.fineart.sk/index.php?cat=1
Here is a link of a comic making tutorial, from drawing to computer colorize.
Very interesting style.
http://www.boltcity.com/workshop/copper_tutorial/
I just have to say WOW.
To all of you:
Bernie, Helm, Loominous, Txarly, Skurwy.
This must be the best thread in the critiques lounge, ever...
WOW
Quote from: Nikolas on Mon 06/03/2006 09:30:26
This must be the best thread in the critiques lounge, ever...
Threads like this were everyday life when Pessi was around.
But this is an interesting thread, lots of helpful advice here. The first images you posted had very Bernie-ish feel to them which the latest one seems to lack. Perhaps it's just because I'm used to seeing fantasy type art from you, and then you suddenly draw normal people!
But it's neat art nevertheless.
loominous, that's great!
Petteri: Don't worry, I can always do that style whenever I want. The new ones are just me trying to learn other things. With learning basic anatomy, drawing whole persons won't be sort of like a puzzle to me because I'll actually know where to put things. Shading and feathering can also be applied to my old style, but I'd do it in a more basic way than I'm doing now.
Helm: I hope so! For now I've got a lot of stuff to try out and learn. I'll post the results in a few days or weeks, depends on how well it's gonna work out. Thanks for all the help!
loominous: I actually prefer not to build the actual character's face on the polygons themselves. However, putting them over an existing face and working from there seems to work very well for me. Thanks.
Skurwy & txarly: Thanks for the links! :)
Quote from: Bernie on Mon 06/03/2006 22:20:41
I actually prefer not to build the actual character's face on the polygons themselves. However, putting them over an existing face and working from there seems to work very well for me. Thanks.
I think that I may have been misleading when I introduced the polygon mesh like construction.
The point of the demonstration was to illustrate a way to determine how to shade a face, not how to construct the head. I'd suspect that very few people actually draw out mesh-like grids like that except for studying purposes. It's simply something you project onto the face in your mind. When it comes to shading, I just picture the object from the lightsource, and note what parts are hit, and how.
That said, drawing models like that is an excellent way of getting to know and sort of "feel" mass, that is, a way to begin to sculpt on paper, seeing and working in the z dimension whenever you draw, even without any construction models or meshes, rather than drawing lines in a 2D space.
Something I forgot to mention in my other post is that if you are to add grid like surfaces as illustrated, it would be added after you've constructed the basic shape of the head. The pic below illustrates a common approach how to do this.
A construction like that would be redundant if you are to draw a frontview, since the lack of perspective problems makes it easy enough, but once you start doing trickier angles, it's pretty much the only alternative to using references, and is how animators work, since they need to maintain the volume and shape of a character's body in whatever way it moves.
The constructions are just like perspective grids, that is, something you lay down lightly and quickly beneath, and use as guidelines.
Here's an excerpt from Loomis' Drawing Heads and Hands:
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/loomis.jpg)
So while you can of course continue simply adding the "grid" once you've drawn the face/body, you'd be missing out on the major point of the construction approach, and would be sort of similar to drawing a building in freehand, then adding a grid onto it, which would probably result in a wonky building with a grid, instead of starting out with the perspective lines, establish the major shape, and go from there.
-
Here's (http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/loomis_cartoony.jpg) how you can construct some easier more cartoony characters (crappy style, but illustrative) (from Loomis' 'Fun with a Pencil')
You can see this technique in pretty much any book on animation, and the idea is the same as the top illustration.
-
Btw, the same techniques are used for bodies,
here's (http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/loomis_body.jpg) one construction model from 'Figuredrawing for all it's worth' (a great book on anatomy and constructing bodies).
-
The techniques may seem cumbersome, but really aren't. Getting tricky angles right on the first try will take a while (I havn't reached that point), but for easier angles/poses, it's mostly it's a matter of spending 30 secs.
Hope you find it useful, and good luck.
Edit: Fixed links
I reached a similar part in Burne Hogarth's book, his approach slightly differs but is still the same basic idea. This is definitely useful and something I'll tinker around with. It goes hand in hand with that anatomy book, too. Thanks! :)
I've got a lot to try out and learn now. It may take a while until I post some results, and they'll most likely go into a new thread, so... thanks and until then, CL!