Rotohail's "Reclusive" SketchBook

[Rotohail]

id say counter clockwise, think of the wall he's hanging on as a line, a nice diagonal line, starting at 10'oclock would make it really dynamic i thinks. play around with that rotate tool, see how it feels

I did a test after a quick color pass (testing the color also) to see how it could feel. What do you think?



So having the horizon tilted does give an extra punch to the sense of off-balance, that can be powerful, but also makes me a bit dizzy. The problem is that the vertical foreshortening looks messed up now ha, I would have to stretch the image.

Right, in the first version I hadn't realized the woman was in free fall - the background was too rough and I thought she was stumbling on 'something' while attacking and the grapple and rope were focal elements. Now it all makes sense, and I agree that cropping the rope is not a problem. The man's hand is not necessarily too big but the space between the knuckles might be a bit too much, unless you want to go really non-human.

So you like to try every visual art trade but you tend to lose motivation. You need to dig deep and find out why, if you want to persist. In my case, the stories I wanted to tell were the motivation, they pushed me to study everything I could. When I abandoned the projects realizing it was too much of a time investment for no return - non-mainstream-minded comic artists don't make a living - I lost the motivation for drawing.

My impression that you are increasingly merging realism and cartoon may be wrong and just due to the samples that you posted. I find this a good direction but if you aim for more realism I know you can do it, your have such pieces in this thread. And I think that making cartoon can actually be more difficult than making realism. The comic author Zep says that he can somehow rest when he makes realistic comics, as compared to his main cartoon series.

I understand, I'm also quite terrible at making scenes so I can see they can be difficult to understand. I need to do better at this. Aha! Yeah I see it now, the space is a tad too much, I though maybe I could make the fingers thicker but to me is the palm the problem, shouldn't be as big, my mistake. I'll take note of that.

I lose motivation because I feel sometimes like I don't know if what I'm doing makes sense to others, that eats away at me. Drawing and practicing I do alone, and I felt I had to find peers to talk to and get feedback from, to see where I'm heading. As content goes, action, mostly, or epic, woot! shots is what really gets me pumping. But I would like to be able to draw anything, like create any mood I want, and setting.
I think it's amazing you want to tell stories, I'm pretty terrible at it, the only way I think I can tell stories is by suggestion or hints, not really in a direct way, but that is fun also so maybe I can build on it.

Well I tend to go towards realism to learn things, and because everyone recommends it, but again, being able to just tackle anything would probably be what I want. I see cartoons and stylized as design/abstraction which is subjective, meanwhile realism is more technical knowledge of light, form and value, which is objective. Realism you can always train, it's there, you just need to look. But anything subjective, abstract, oh boy. Is a maze, you don't know if you are heading right, left, up or down, that's why probably is a lot harder. But I feel comfortable in there, don't know why. Ha.