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A probable reason why people are acting harshly is that the thread title is very pretentious.

If you d have called it "Bill Watterson inspirered" or "Bill Watterson attempt" etc you wouldn t claim to be on the same artistic level as he is. Most of the things you ve said so far suggest that you believe that you are.

At the moment you re obviously a novice; that is you may well be most talented painter there is but your current skills are very basic. So to avoid flaming I d suggest you choose your titles/words more carefully.

How would you like it to sound, what mood?

I think it s pretty uninteresting (to static, flat, monotonic) at the moment and think you need to add more instruments if you don t make the melody more interesting.

What instruments to add depends on the sound/mood you d like (massive, light, romantic etc).

Even:

I believe u missed one of his posts:

this isn't him asking for detailed critiques and comments for himself

the reason i don't post art here is because i hate when people post "great!" or "WOW EYEPOPPING EMOTICON!" i'd post here to have my art critiqued not praised

Andail:

I m well aware of the rules n I support them to the extent that they encourage people to try to citicise constructively.

But they have a wierd consequence: If Bill Watterson himself would post some background in here his thread would ve no replies, save perhaps for those who don t like his style n could suggest that he oughta paint differently.
If that d happen, I think we d have seen the last of mr Watterson in here.

So wouldn t it be preferable if the rules to allowed me to post an openmouthed smiley or just express my admiration if Bill or the likes of him would pop in here?

Certainly getting there, looking really good imo.

Some things:

(i) although his strokes are loose the trees are still realistic in their form, just loosely rendered. The middle tree n the right one in particular looks distorted in their shapes in their upper parts.

(ii) the ground beneath the middle tree looks a bit dirty imo. I m not sure what you wanted those lines to resemble but at the moment they just look like small lines filling up space to me. In snowy pics he usually have small trees looking up through the snow. Those could fill up some space

(iii) the black shapes on the left foregroundtree looks too blurry or messy imo.

(iv) the illustrator feeling is still there in some parts imo. I understand that it isnt easy to get rid of, just wanted to tell.

(v) the outlines as mentioned earlier looks much better but some has a blurry character, as if they were done with charcoal. Bill uses ink for his outlines so blurriness is pretty impossible.

(vi) the sledtrails looks a bit too messy imo. I think they could be improved much if u just spent more time on them.

(vii) the snowcolor is too blue imo. He usually uses white or very lightblue for snow with lightblue for shading, that s what i recall anyway.

All I can think of at the moment. I really like the improvements from the last n would love to see this sort of graphics in a game.

Big as in size. A4 or A3 is prefferable. Don t know if wacom still sells the artpad series but you could probably find some on Ebay or whathaveyou. (the artpad series is like the newer intous serie, though much less fancy)

I dont see the problem with one-word posts or a smiley.

They become a problem when they arent complemented with constructive posts. This is where Eric n the relatively highly skilled people should step in. But unfortunately they rarely do.

To criticise constructively you actually have to have about the same skill as the artist, otherwise you re pretty much stuck with normative judgements. The higher the skill in relation to the artist the potentially more thourough the criticism.

This means that the ideal thread to me could contain any number of openmouthed smileys posts, as long as people with relatively high skills take some time to provide their thoughts.

So Eric n others, if you want some useful criticism of your work I d suggest you encourage others by providing some insightful comments yourself regularly.

I d say go for size n not features if your budget is limited. The old Artpad series ought to be cheap by now n I d go for a larger version. Not as fancy as the other series but has all the neccessery functions.

Working with those micro tablets (A6-5) is really pesky in spite of all the features, so once again, buy the biggest one you can afford would be my recommendation.

I like the style, however I dont think of Watterson when I see it. If you intended to copy (not just be inspired) his style here re some things that comes to my mind:

(i) Using a real brush n indian ink does make a hugh difference in my experience. I take it your pic was done using a tablet and perhaps the effect can be simulated with painter but I m not sure.
One thing that is significative for Watterson imo is the seemingly sloppy brushstyle with thick dynamic strokes. The lines in your pic has the varying thickness but they look too stylized n vectorized imo.

(ii) The trees have a cartoony look to them that I dont see in Watterson's work.

(iii) The trees have too small black areas imo. Watterson's trees are usually halfblack and if they re in the background they re usually black silouettes.

(iv) Another significative thing that I miss in the pic is the vegetation at the foot of the trees. Watterson has a special way of doing it that you might wanna have a look at.

(v) The tree outlines are too thin imo. Atleast one side (the shadowy) should be very thick if not both.
The outlines are too even n unorganic as well (~what I ment by vectorized).

That s about it I think. Being a hugh admirerer of Watterson myself I felt the need to comment it since the comments so far has suggested that it looks spot on. So I hope you don t take my criticism the wrong way.

Lovely contrasts. Bit too high saturation for my taste though.

I definitely prefer the first version although I don t think the font is very fitting.

Here s an idea:



I used a font called 'Lucida Sans Unicode' which is a standard font.

Oo man, u make it look so easy. The colors and lighting is remarkable imo. This wacom investment proved a real treat for us viewers.

Hope you ll keep them coming.

I really like the style. Some sort of oldschool feel to it.

I don t know if this ll intrude on the style but you could test raising the crotch or lengthening his arms.

Another thing you could try is making his feet (in the frontal view) point more ahead n less in opposite directions.

Lastly the idea of drawing his left leg/foot above his right in the sideview might give you unnecessary perspective problems. Think if you lowered the left leg to about half the present elevation you d have less complications later on.

Her expression is really adorable. Well done.

Oh man that s hideous.

So I guess it passes that test.  Anyway I didn t really get the same kind of nauseating feeling boybands usually evoke n I d guess it s because there re some abnormalties in your song:

Firstly, there were no real groupsinging. Even though the verse may be sung by a single member I think the chorus requires groupsinging.

Secondly, the arrangement and song in general reminds me more of a eurovisionsongcontestcontribution from the '80s than a boybandproduction. I d say less blipblopping synthesizersounds and more soft instruments and the chordprogressions are too retarded even for a boybandproducer to come up with nowadays.

Lastly about the leadsingers voice. While the repulsive vibrato is there alright, it has a distinct sort of heavymetalsinger-singing-sensitively sound to it which isn t very suiting although almost as revolting.

Think the biggest issue is the perspective that s off. Fortunately it s very easy to correct by determening n using a 'vanishing point' (VP in the pic).

Simply draw straight lines from the vp n it ll turn out in perspective.

Another thing is lack of interior which makes it look like an storageroom. A simple way to fix this is by using a lot of borders n frames (i ve added doorframes n a border on the bottom of the walls).

A table isn t (most often that is) just a squeezed cube with four cylinders. The edge of a table alone often have 2 borders.

Think it ll be easier to come up with a continuation if you introduce more instruments during these 40 secs; in addition it ll sound richer.

One way:

at 9 secs - let a bell like instrument play some kind of arpeggio of the chords. For example a celesta could play: c5 a4 f4 f5 d5 c5 a4 g4 f4.... in a fitting rhythm.

at 19 secs - the "bass"pizz (that takes goes: f c f c f d f d) could be lowered or doubled an octave down to provide some variation n depth.

General thing:

To make it sound richer you could pan out the pizz to make them belong to a stringsection.

For example: the melody would probably be played by 1st n 2nd violin section so they d be on the left; the current bassnotes would be played by the viola section or the celli, n would in the former case be in the center n latter to the right.

If you ll add deeper bassnotes (the "19 secs thing" in my example) they d probably be played by the doublebasses n which are ordinarily placed on the far right.

Go thoroughly through these n u ll be well on ur way:

http://www.gameartworks.com/LoomisBooks/heads/page_01.htm

http://www.fineart.sk/page_01.htm

I like them alot. Some comments:

(i) The eyecolors strike me as a bit strange. I d give them *one* of the blue colors you use or use a darker skincolor (since the iris (the colored part of the eye) is not very representative of the eye as a whole).

(ii) The characters in the darker uniforms looks flat n could use some shading.

(iii) the boots looks a bit wide at the ankles n calves.

I like the pic. Some suggestions:

(i) Those tiny highlights looks wierd imo, as if her skin was made of plastic n illuminated by a small flashlight. I d increase the size of them.

(ii) Her hair looks a bit too stripy imo n that single hair that hangs across her face looks like a string. I d make the highlights in the hair larger n interlaced with eachother, something between the present n anime highlights; n id increase the size of the lock of hair that hangs across her face, at least close to the roots.

(iii) Lastly I think it s those shoes that make her look juvenile. I d replace them with some kind of smaller leathershoes to add some years to her looks.

Think you should make the lightning even more dramatic by increasing the contrasts. Something like this: