12-06-2014, 08:22 PM
Hey man, I've had a chance to have a look over your work on dA and the CA sketchbook. Just a caveat so you know exactly where I am coming from. I am not a full time working professional. I have freelanced with some limited success earlier on in my development. I took a break to develop my skills and 'personal vision', feeling I jumped in the game too quickly. I am aiming at getting to the art fulltime within a few months with better skills under my belt. So yeah take or leave any part of what I say as you wish.
So first a couple of observations on your interests based on the work I saw and you can correct me if wrong.
1. You seem to be more drawn to stylistic and comic inspired art
2. You are heavily focused on anime.
3. You seem to be tending more towards comic character pinups than narrative illustration or creature concepts.
I guess the first thing to think about is whether my first impressions, aligns with where you would want a potential client to view your as your strengths, because first impressions are all that matter in securing work. At the moment it seems what you are focusing on is divergent from what you told me earlier.
Based on what I saw I would be inclined to say that you need to work more on your fundamentals in order to build a folio that attracts higher paying work. I think you can probably get work, but I feel that it will be on the lower end of the payscale. I think you could probably find work on indie projects in comics or any number of mobile app games companies or tabletop games that use a more stylistic or comic based approach.
I picked a few pieces that I thought might showcase your best efforts below:
![[Image: muscular_xenomorph_by_gjergji_zhuka-d7bal2d.jpg]](http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/082/3/2/muscular_xenomorph_by_gjergji_zhuka-d7bal2d.jpg)
![[Image: dragons_by_gjergji_zhuka-d80tbik.jpg]](http://th00.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2014/272/e/8/dragons_by_gjergji_zhuka-d80tbik.jpg)
![[Image: knight__contest_entry__by_gjergji_zhuka-d8891w5.png]](http://th09.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2014/334/0/b/knight__contest_entry__by_gjergji_zhuka-d8891w5.png)
These seem to be the most polished, however they still exhibit flaws in fundamentals, most obviously in proportions of figures and accurate form building.
The Knight piece is probably the most consistent character. The "Dragon" piece showcases a thing that is reflected in a lot of your sketchbook in that you seem to not get the head proportion in relation to the body looking "right". I realise you are aiming for stylised and distorted, but there still needs to be an internal consistency in the distortion. If for example only the head is out of proportion things will tend to look "wrong" rather than stylistic. It is even more evident in your sketchbook.
Out of all those I actually liked the Xenomorph illustration the best. It seems the most finished, it has energy and mood, it has a good attention to form and composition. It could be a panel in an Alien comic. There are polishing touches that could be made : saliva doesn't look like saliva and the green goo is a bit out of place,
there are some squiggly lines that need to be fixed, but in general it feels mostly complete.
In terms of study and development, I noticed in your sketchbook that you are doing (or at least posting) mostly things from imagination. I didn't see a lot of observational studies. Since characters are a focus, I think you would really benefit from more observational studies from (preferably) life drawing classes, photo/video studies such as the Croquis cafe on youtube to improve your anatomy and proportion skills.
You tend to draw one body type for males and one for females, but there are endless variations that you could explore. What happens if you are asked to draw a hunched over old woman, or a really obese male ballet dancer? You have to really understand real proportions and abstract them, to be able to distort them believably from imagination.
You actually have demonstrated some good lines and dynamic charming gestures with characters and seem to have an intuitive understanding of foreshortening which can be tricky, but I feel you just need to consolidate your study more.
I loved this loose sketch of yours actually out of all your work including the more polished! It shows dynamic
gesture, good proportions and consistent lighting, palette and energy.
![[Image: attachment.php?attachmentid=2051999&d=1414105241]](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=2051999&d=1414105241)
Another thing you can do that will help are general still life studies, that you can set up yourself, of objects
with various textures and forms in different lighting setups. Doing anything from observation will only help your imagination skills.
I also noticed less emphasis on design study. Character design is mostly about coming up with a unique design and how that sells a character, rather than rendering generic things in nice ways. I think you should really focus on the design aspects that make up a unique or interesting character than just simply going for mimicked or generic memes. You might want to consider taking part in things like the character design challenge here on CD and on other forums to hone these skills. Design is a skill that needs practice, as much as rendering technique.
I didn't see a lot of work on creature design. Check out Brent Hollowel's work ethic. He does creatures. he studies them, he lives them, he breathes them, he combines them into unique living entities. I used him as an in-development example, but if you look at any master designer this is the work ethic they all follow. This is what makes them good, not just the technique but the study and application of the study. You probably should be doing this as well if you want to do design for creatures. The more you know about real creatures, the more you can develop imaginary ones.
I feel you have again an intuitive understanding of colour but perhaps more study from life would help add nuance to this.
Basically, you should probably focus your study in order to build your skills and produce a folio that gets you the work you want to do in the future. If you don't showcase exactly what you want to do, you will end up getting work doing what you have shown instead.
A small note also, if you enjoy doing T-Shirt designs, definitely do not just discount that as a 'hobby'. You should generally follow your own sense of enjoyment and give it priority because it will lead to better work and perhaps other opportunities. Study and folio building is all an important part of the whole game but also as a general rule I believe it is better to focus these things on what you love more than what you think the market loves.
Hope this wasn't to rambly and was useful for you in some way.
So first a couple of observations on your interests based on the work I saw and you can correct me if wrong.
1. You seem to be more drawn to stylistic and comic inspired art
2. You are heavily focused on anime.
3. You seem to be tending more towards comic character pinups than narrative illustration or creature concepts.
I guess the first thing to think about is whether my first impressions, aligns with where you would want a potential client to view your as your strengths, because first impressions are all that matter in securing work. At the moment it seems what you are focusing on is divergent from what you told me earlier.
Based on what I saw I would be inclined to say that you need to work more on your fundamentals in order to build a folio that attracts higher paying work. I think you can probably get work, but I feel that it will be on the lower end of the payscale. I think you could probably find work on indie projects in comics or any number of mobile app games companies or tabletop games that use a more stylistic or comic based approach.
I picked a few pieces that I thought might showcase your best efforts below:
These seem to be the most polished, however they still exhibit flaws in fundamentals, most obviously in proportions of figures and accurate form building.
The Knight piece is probably the most consistent character. The "Dragon" piece showcases a thing that is reflected in a lot of your sketchbook in that you seem to not get the head proportion in relation to the body looking "right". I realise you are aiming for stylised and distorted, but there still needs to be an internal consistency in the distortion. If for example only the head is out of proportion things will tend to look "wrong" rather than stylistic. It is even more evident in your sketchbook.
Out of all those I actually liked the Xenomorph illustration the best. It seems the most finished, it has energy and mood, it has a good attention to form and composition. It could be a panel in an Alien comic. There are polishing touches that could be made : saliva doesn't look like saliva and the green goo is a bit out of place,
there are some squiggly lines that need to be fixed, but in general it feels mostly complete.
In terms of study and development, I noticed in your sketchbook that you are doing (or at least posting) mostly things from imagination. I didn't see a lot of observational studies. Since characters are a focus, I think you would really benefit from more observational studies from (preferably) life drawing classes, photo/video studies such as the Croquis cafe on youtube to improve your anatomy and proportion skills.
You tend to draw one body type for males and one for females, but there are endless variations that you could explore. What happens if you are asked to draw a hunched over old woman, or a really obese male ballet dancer? You have to really understand real proportions and abstract them, to be able to distort them believably from imagination.
You actually have demonstrated some good lines and dynamic charming gestures with characters and seem to have an intuitive understanding of foreshortening which can be tricky, but I feel you just need to consolidate your study more.
I loved this loose sketch of yours actually out of all your work including the more polished! It shows dynamic
gesture, good proportions and consistent lighting, palette and energy.
Another thing you can do that will help are general still life studies, that you can set up yourself, of objects
with various textures and forms in different lighting setups. Doing anything from observation will only help your imagination skills.
I also noticed less emphasis on design study. Character design is mostly about coming up with a unique design and how that sells a character, rather than rendering generic things in nice ways. I think you should really focus on the design aspects that make up a unique or interesting character than just simply going for mimicked or generic memes. You might want to consider taking part in things like the character design challenge here on CD and on other forums to hone these skills. Design is a skill that needs practice, as much as rendering technique.
I didn't see a lot of work on creature design. Check out Brent Hollowel's work ethic. He does creatures. he studies them, he lives them, he breathes them, he combines them into unique living entities. I used him as an in-development example, but if you look at any master designer this is the work ethic they all follow. This is what makes them good, not just the technique but the study and application of the study. You probably should be doing this as well if you want to do design for creatures. The more you know about real creatures, the more you can develop imaginary ones.
I feel you have again an intuitive understanding of colour but perhaps more study from life would help add nuance to this.
Basically, you should probably focus your study in order to build your skills and produce a folio that gets you the work you want to do in the future. If you don't showcase exactly what you want to do, you will end up getting work doing what you have shown instead.
A small note also, if you enjoy doing T-Shirt designs, definitely do not just discount that as a 'hobby'. You should generally follow your own sense of enjoyment and give it priority because it will lead to better work and perhaps other opportunities. Study and folio building is all an important part of the whole game but also as a general rule I believe it is better to focus these things on what you love more than what you think the market loves.
Hope this wasn't to rambly and was useful for you in some way.