Pixel Art Style -> Drawing Style

[DanClarke]

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.

[scourge]

progz: the nostrils technique is overly used in manga ...

[Bernie]

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.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

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.

[A�rendyll (formerly Yurina)]

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...)

[Helm]

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.

[Bernie]

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:

[Bernie]

I've been trying out other styles lately, ranging from 'cartoony' to 'a bit realistic':



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?

[biothlebop]

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.

[Bernie]

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.

[LilBlueSmurf]

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.

[Kinoko]

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.

[biothlebop]

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.

[Bernie]

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.

[biothlebop]

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.

[Helm]

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.

[Kinoko]

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.

[Bernie]

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 work?

[Helm]

Sure. working on it.

EDIT: so, here goes, 30 minute stuff here, drawn in ps and not real inks, so sorry about quality.



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.



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.



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.



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.




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.



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.



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.




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.




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.



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.



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.



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?'



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:

[TheYak]

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". 

Sorry..  lovingly rendered in ballpoint and captured with a digicam.

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.