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I made such a logo for a death metal band called Nordskjalf. Readability is not the primary function for a logo in these scenes, the text tranforms into a mesh of decoration, but that example is just mindblowing. I think I can see an 'v' in the middle..

For a good game, try Clock Toweron a SNES emulator. Scissor Man!

There is a difference inbetween naïve values and deliberate naïvism, and pardon my saying so, but your piece lacks both. It may sound hard, but when trying to break the "rules" you need to know your rules well enough to be able to break them. And this piece comes out amateurish in all the bad ways the word can provide, and frankly none of the good ones.

Technical issues aside, I think your design is very blend. Now this can be good, especially for a main character, but I can't help but wonder how to further improve the characteristics. That and his posture, which makes him look like he's got a rod shoved up his rear. 

You could work around with facial traits in order to produce a not so blend expression and appearance. What you have now is the first example above, a total blank. It would be nice to hear what typeof character it is,and from there to work with eyes, eyebrows and mouth.

The running in place anim seems a bit smooth for something fast paced. Perhaps let it jerk a bit vertically whenever the foot touches ground.

Very solid animwork. Dare I ask what software you use for this?

I do prefer your second piece before Neils paintover. Moonlight is seldom so bright that it causes the effects portrayed. His ground is more well done though, you seldom get highlights on grass at night.

I'd say your piece is well made, but the composition gives you a kind of focus in the center of the piece, and there is nothing there. You could try lenghten the cliff, aswell as shaping it more rigid and chaotic, so that the player character will be perfectly in focus whenever he walks out there. Right now, the shift inbetween cliff and air is perfectly centered, and centered is not good for your composition. On the other hand, I see some birds flying in the background, so perhaps this isn't a background. As a painting the composition is really halted, having a problem in the bottom left corner where the eyes slide of the piece in the darkness aswell. And the horizon is malplaced I think. But all in all, a very moody picture. Good work!

Allright, lets get back to Step 1, using stickfigures.


Here we have several moods depicted WITHOUT any usage of facial traits or symbols to deliver them. The first is a confident posture, the second a rather gloomed view of life. Then we have two gentlemen, the first suave, the second scared. By using the shoulders and stance to deliver, we could easily remove the hat and cane, and have simply a man/woman either relaxed or far from relaxed. Then we have a curdled stance and finally someone either really pissed or having the worst case of gas ever.

The core elements here are neck, shoulders and hips. The feet is placed where gravity needs them to be - if not, the person will seem to be unbalanced. The head is a continuation of the neck, and the torso just follows the shoulders and hips. But the CORE ELEMENTS are NECK, SHOULDERS, HIPS.

We have three lines; one being the neck, following down with the spine. The others move from shoulder to hip, creating a flat torso. With these, you can easily produce stances and posture, aswell as twisting and turning your flat shaped stickman into the desired results.

Now, here you can take a photograph and trace these lines; the neck+spine and the shoulders to hips; in order to analyze the posture.

I personally love the girl traced in orange. Great posture, confident, selfassure. The green girl looks a bit troubled, her stance points all over the place. The blue boy is simply a normal stance. Nothing special at all. Oh and look. There's young Helm in the back.

Let's get back to our first two postures and work with them. Perhaps not realistic, but exaggeration can be used to increase the expression, WHILE NOT ruining the proportions. If you look, there is still the same proportions within the body, but the expression is even greater. The first is confident as hell, and the second is in total despair.

Now, when we like our posture, we flesh the stickmen out, and ONLY then. I manipulated the confident stance even more with a wide chest and square figures, making a rigid and powerful superhero (even though that stance is now a parody). The second got a cone head and a round beer belly.

To fleshed out your stickman, still work with basic shapes. Circles, spheres, squares and cubes. They bring you a sense of form for your character, making it easy to portray the same character in every angle possible. It is like modelling in Bryce, only with a pen and fixed camera. When you feel confident about form and shape, you can skip this and model down more complex shapes such as the legs or hands.

This was Part 2; focusing on the Posture and usage of Stickmen.

Well, drawing is a two edged sword. All I can teach is how to improve your technical knowledge, sadly that removes the core of your expression, namely the naïve values of your work. You stop being unique as soon you pick up a pencil in the pursuit of mimicing some other peoples work. Nothing wrong about that, people tend to mimic what they like, and few people study so hard they remove the sense of individuality within their work. But every exercise takes away a bit of you. Bear in mind that before you proceed. There are a hundred people that can draw like Rembrandt, but only one that can draw like you.

Step 0: There are two parts of drawing. One is technical advancement in your hand; the way you can move your tool in the way you want it to. The second is experience; knowing HOW to achieve the effect you want. We'll focus this pre-step on the first of the two, namely TEChniCAL ADvANCEMENT(!!111). I had the great honour to study under Baron Yoshimoto, and his first lesson was brutal but effective. None of us followed it, but it is suitable if you are so called "unable to draw". The exercise is making lines on a piece of paper. Only lines. Long lines, short lines, wavy lines, straight lines.. Do this for a month, only to train up the eye to hand coordination in your hand of choice. Yes, I know, none of you will do this, but that is what differ inbetween people you find talented or not: eye-to-hand-coordination; the way of making lines where you want them to be. This is hard work, and you don't get it for free.


Step 1: The usage of guides. None of you demands that you make a good drawing from scratch. Step 0 helps you make clear sketches, nothing else. Use stickmen, because everyone can draw stickmen. Yes, even you. And you. But to draw GOOD stickmen is another situation all together. Firstly, with the stickmen, work with posture. Notice how this stickmens joints are juxtaposed? That is the no. 1 posture in nude drawings, because it gives dynamics AND relaxation to the body. Not saying that you MUST use this posture, it is only there to portray how the joints can be manipulated into delivering a mood. When your stickmen works, only then put some flesh onto it. I will develop this further on later.

Step 2 is proportion - AND how to mess with it. Whether you strife for realism, surrealism or plain cartoons, the proportions is your friend. Some people will disagree and spoke that the expression is above proportions, but I say, a solid expression made with correct proportions is to strife for. So what is proportion. It is how large parts of the body are compared to each other. THIS IS EASILY TRAINED USING STICKMEN.. again. Start with the head, for realism, make a body about 7 heads. 8 is the ideal, but none of us are 8 heads tall. Really, it all smells race biology. The Indy sprite in FoA is 5 heads. Still realistic. My other example is 4 heads. Big heads, smaller bodies (even though that looks like a baby, but with adult proportions of the torso and legs). The reason you often enlarge the head is that the face is the key element of characters and expression, you deliver through facial expression and exaggeration. Well the face and hands actually, but the face is what brings us to...

Step 3: Face proportions. This is how parts relate to eachother on the face. The eyes are middle, and one eyes width apart. Mouth ends by pupils. Nose placed about middle inbetween chin and eyes etc etc. But lets mess with that. Because frankly, that face is boooring.

Step 4a: Here we use the face proportions correctly within weird shapes. And this is not only an experiment, always work with shapes before adding detail (Step 4b). Remember our stickman? Give your stickman different shaped heads and different shaped bodies. We then destroy the proportions in our lower examples where the forehead is removed, but the ears still follow the eyes. Or the opposite, a abnormly large forehead.Ã,  To maintain a sense of proportion within the warped piece, always start from correct proportion and stretch some out while maintaining others. There are no rules about this, only the experiment and decision whether the result is appealing or not. I will develop this further aswell later.

Step 4b works with 3dimensional shapes to form a fablelike creature. The core is here that several shapes are formed together to produce a whole. Regarding your pieces as a 3dimensional shape helps you portraying your character in all angles, and all actions. And remember SIMPLE IS BEST. Always..

This is Part One. If you want to reply, do this ONLY to debate elements of the lessons. Please don't fill this with "Wow, thanks!" or "You suxx0rs.." please.

You dare dodging me? 

It is VERY cute for being an evil bad boss. The design is made for that angel character, and does not work as well. I'd rework the hairstyle, the eyes and the shape of the head. Try smaller eyes, or squinting. And work with the eyebrows to deliver a more eviliscious look.

Good luck!

If you have paypal, you can send an invoice along with the shipping fees. My account is linus at riotamot dot com, I'll PM you the shipping adress when I've decided if I am to buy anything else wondrous.

I am but slightly interested in The Young Ones DVD and the Swing CD's. That and Lolita.

Is it possible to pay through Paypal?

Inbetween 3d characters or photos, I'd say photos.
And on the other question; earth.

It is hard to say anything about your first piece. As a title screen, it conveys some nice Escher-feel to it, and it works. The composition between the text and content is nicely placed, with room for "New Game" etc on the bottom right. However, I am no bigger fan of 3d art, so the piece feels generic and fabricated. Nothing bad about it, the color schemes are nice, and I assume every sphere leads to aformentioned worlds, so there is thought behind the contruct. It is just.. 3d.

Welcome to the forums. 

You have a very slick and decorative way of producing your pieces which I respect very much. I am more of an expressionist when it comes to painting (digital or no digital), but there is just something very nice with rich detailed pieces. Be careful though, so the detail don't compete with the attention. You have balanced this well, making the details blend together into a whole - especially in the Warcraft piece. I guess time will tell if this is true in this piece aswell.

When it comes to characters, the core element is always the eyes. Well ok, portraits, not characters, but when you work with stylization, the facial traits are even more important. Especially the eyes, because in the eyes lies the characters life. This were you're main issue with the aformentioned Warcraft piece (even though that was a "blind" eye so you couldn't really work with the eyes there). I realise you are far from finished with the faces and eyes on your work, and I really look forward to seeing the next step.

I do personally enjoy naïve art, especially in adventures. Larry Vales just wouldn't be the same with "good" art, and Ultimerr's humour got through more efficiently due to its graphics. Graphics does not need to put you off - look into it and see that it might enhance the gaming experience, being as it is.

I think the second background, albeit using a more innovative perspective, is a lesser piece than your first. The main issue is that it lacks sharp edges. It's all very blurry and tiresome for the eye. It is ofcourse hard to explain, or even point towards what good balance of sharp and blurry edges mean, but a combination of those gives wondrous results. The other is the lightning. Sure, it's all set to work with moonlight, but I can't help wonder what it would be like with somewarm hues, maybe from candlelight in the actual basement and not only in the top of the stairs. The design is good, but could be better. Also, it seems like a WIP, I don't know what those top left thingies are and that strange light coming from above.

It's a bit cluttered up. You have separated the different pieces good with tables but it stills suffers from a highly cluttered background, and frankly, too much stuff all in one. For instance, the poll can be places underneath the menu, and Saving Harold may be fun, but placing it on the start page? It seems like you put together content and feats you liked and put them all together in a single page, without asking yourself what the site is about.

It is about RPG's, or just FFVIII? Is it about your blog, and what is your blog about? Is it about your games? Sit first down and decide what your site is about and how you should present that most efficiently. If you like it to be just like a presentation of what you find amusing and fun, then simply turn it into a blog and present what you find amusing within that instead.

Hope that helps you somewhat.

I don't know much about 3d art, so I'll comment on your 2d. I sense some Naruto influences. The "inked" (dunno if it is inked or not) is nice. A good flow in the "commander" piece, albeit the right part of him is somewhat funky. Better make a negative space just like in the left side of him. The design is great, simple and effective. Very gung-ho piratey. Your sketches could benefit from minimising the amount of lines, but if they turn from those sketches into the good lineart in the "commander" piece, I have no real trouble with it.

I like the final piece, even though it could still benefit from some greater changes in values in the flesh. The pink gives a nice change in hues, but could have been even greater aswell. Nothing bad about it, I just feel you were afraid to overdo it. I think I see some variation in hues in the bark aswell. Looks good. My greatest concern is the spear, which seem a bit too blurred in some parts, not what you would expect from hard rock (badum-dish;)). The background is also a bit too eyecatching with the more saturated colors. The previous take had a better yet blender background IMO. I'd love to see that pattern you mentioned.

Art is sadly also regarded as an investment, you pay up loads and it may go up and down, just like stock shares.

Many artists don't put the pricetags on themselfs though, the gallery does, and the gallery work with the hype and preexpectations of said works, trying to joust them higher. Oh well.. we're all whores in the artistic business either way.

The designs and concepts are great. I have one thougt on your background though. It is a very large open space for an office. He basically has his corner, but unless you are about to put something else in that room, it's awfully vast and open.