Muzzbook

[OtherMuzz]

Cheers bro. :)

Wip

[Andantonius]

Nice sketchbook! Your latest WIP is looking really nice, the design of the ship is cool and you're capturing the time of day really well with your colors. The values and composition is working pretty solid too!

For a little crit, I think what's hurting the most in this piece right now is the clouds. They feel pretty organized and contrived. I've attached a paintover to help explain what I mean; essentially the issue is that each cloud is basically identical in size, shape, and spacing. When designing anything, especially natural organic things, you want to design them with variety in mind. A good way to think of it is the Three Bears rule, which is pretty self-explanatory: you have a large, main element, a smaller secondary element, and an even smaller tertiary element. You can then arrange these any way you like, but having that in place automatically creates focus and dominance.

This is handy because you can use it to your advantage compositionally, which I tried to do in my paintover by placing the largest, brightest, and most saturated cloud behind the focal area of the ship, which helps your eye get started in the right place. So I think if you fix that it'll help the overall composition a lot.

The only other tweak is I pushed the blues a little bit more in the shadows to get that reflected light from the sky really vibrant in there, which you may or may not want to do, but it could help sell the lighting. Other than that I think it's just a matter of refinement and polish, if you get the rest of the piece up to the level of the ship I think you'll have a winner on your hands! :)

Great stuff, keep it up!

[OtherMuzz]

Cheers dude! You are completely spot on with that crit, I'm currently implementing that stuff.

EDIT:

[Samszym]

Heyo, thanks for the comment and really cool stuff here! Great to see you're working hard and pushing your boundaries, I'm inspired to too now *_*

I think the lighting and clouds are looking better in your WIP piece, but I'm not certain I like the bright white on that smokestack that you've added. To me it feels like it's become too important in the picture and is drawing the focus from the awesome ship. It also made me notice that the smokestack is perfectly aligned with the foreground dude's head, which is a type of tangent and might be taking some depth away from your piece.

Hope that's helpful. Just my two cents, take it or leave it XD I can't wait to see this piece finished!

[OtherMuzz]

Thanks dude! Your stuff made me feel lazy so the feeling is mutual :D.

Crit is also spot on, i need to dial that back. I was thinking of making it a water tower instead as it's too small to be a control tower as i was intending.



Also fuck being colourblind, it makes skin tones impossible.

Edit: this is almost a perfect simulation of my colourblindness, might explain why it's so hard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RuOt28or...r_embedded

[Madzia]

Also fuck being colourblind, it makes skin tones impossible.

Edit: this is almost a perfect simulation of my colourblindness, might explain why it's so hard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RuOt28or...r_embedded

Crazy! Is it really that bad?
Skintones looks much better anyway :) so don't worry!
You may consider that a stupid idea but I recommend to watch few basic makeup tutorials :D It's actually great source of knowledge what to do, to make woman face pretty. specially eye makeup, sculpting face shape using blush and shaping eyebrows there's science behind it and it's pretty useful in drawing girls :D



I reshape her eyebrows, added more shadow around eyes and her pupils where too high and too small. Also her lips need more saturation in my opinion :D Keep going!

[OtherMuzz]

You pretty-a-fied her! Awesome. makeup tutorials are actually something I've been wanting to look into for a few years. I guess now is as good a time as any to do it! Thanks, this helps a ton.

And yeah, that colorblindness video is bang on perfect for what i see, as i can't tell the difference between the two images. Every other simulation I've seen has been far too exaggerated including Photoshops colorblindness proof settings.

[Warburton]

hey dude, gotta say i'm petty impressed with thhis work you've done since i last dropped by, your making me feel all lazy and shit lol :p

In regards to my last comment, i competely understand what you mean and i can't disagree with it either. I guess when people give crits it's all based on our own interpretations and ideas, and seeing as we're all diferent theres no right or wrong to this. Pushing something to finish always helps for me, i almost come out of the image after battling with it with a completely different mind set, it's weird to explain.
Also something to consider when aiming to get things done as quickly as possible, that seems to be the mentality of a 21st century culture but it's not nessecarily the best. Bear in mind old masters used to spend sometimes years doing paintings and pouring hundreds if not thousands of hours into them. I was thinking the other day how crazy it is that even with all our tech and knowledge to old masters still kick our asses lol.

The eyes are already looking better and so are your colours! That video is pretty crazy though, i had no idea it was like that. The soccer players and the red wine was bizzare to me. If you continue to have problems with your colour blindness you should get in touch with Dan because he has the exact same problems. Whats even better is hes been able to work around it, he might be able to help you.

Great updates dude, keep um coming ;)

[OtherMuzz]

Cheers dude.

Don't worry too much about your pace haha, I am currently on an art binge and i'm not sure how long i'll keep it up. Trying to make up for lost time :/.

And i completely get your point with the great masters. but they also did sketches and quick studies, i think it would be foolish to assume those paintings were everything they did. You also have to remember most of them made those paintings later in their lives. Like it took a life time to get that good. Most of us are trying to do is in <5 years. It's a different world and we have different tools.

Colorblindness is my bane, I'm pretty proud of what i can do despite it. I've spent a lot of time training my eyes so that i can see much more subtle hue changes than i used to be able to, but that's just paying a lot of attention.

Here is my post mazdia's paintover face. I think hers is still better though so i should do more.

[devin]

Looks much better, good stuff! It might help to flip your image horizontally often as you work, theres some weird stuff going symmetrically like the pupils not lining up correctly. I think you are showing too much of the sclera under the iris as well, gives the eyes sort of a weird expression.

I feel your pain on the colorblindness thing, but I really think that concentrated practice could make up for any deficit. Luckily values are the most important anyway Keep up the art binge!

[OtherMuzz]

Oh damn, your right the eyes really aren't symmetrical dammit! Thanks man.

[OtherMuzz]

Shitty fashion sketches :).

[Beeston]

When a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and rubs it in your face you get a lesson on anatomy

Anyway, I like your citizen sketches, they're looking a little stiff though.

[Lex_paul]

You have an nice style, very delicate paint and i like this! I wold only advise to add more contrast(value and color) in to your images. Also thanks for dropping by!

[OtherMuzz]

Cheers mate :), I appreciate it. I'm not that great yet.

That being said i'm not a fan of high contrasty images, i prefer having a lot of detail in my darks,

Anyhow, some strange failed experiment



Also a sketch to do with my summer pitch.

[Samszym]

Oh man, you just reminded me I gotta start working on my own pitch DX
Nice new sketches! Drawing from fashion is a fantastic idea. I like the style you drew the wizard girl in, really appealing cartoony shapes going on. And oh man I love boots that flare out like that!

Taking a more critical glance at it, the alignment of her eyes looks a off like the left one is too far left, I think if you're going for a "looking at the viewer" then the pupil would be in the same height as the other eye and mostly to the left but with a sliver of the white of the eye on the right. Possibly push the nose more to overlap the far eye. Also maybe make her teeth overlapping the cheek, or have some more space between them and the cheek to show they're inside the mouth, just to add a bit of depth. and definitely use the sleeves of her shirt, boots, and shorts to show more depth, they should be considered ellipses you're looking down or up at. And I miiiight play with the length of her shirt thing to make it a more dominant shape, that's just a suggestion tho.
I guess I wound up doing a drawover.



haha may have gone overboard here hope you don't mind the crits XD I look forward to your next update, and to seeing more about your pitch!!!

[OtherMuzz]

Hey man thanks for taking the time to do that, me rebutting is more me running through my design choices and trying to explain them than challenging you I really appreciate the effort,

Yes the eyes were messed up, The tangent on the nose is indeed a problem but i don't think you can just move the nose to fix that, I'd have to rotate the whole head a bit, otherwise the nose won't be in the center of the head. I don't mind the mouth being flat, but point taken :).

I will explain some of the stuff that i think you misinterpreted in the clothes though (it was a messy sketch)

So the top is actually tucked into the shorts; that's the reason why it was sitting out square like that is that there was a sharp fold pushing down, on the other side because of the hand on the hip and the thumb going up there is a sharp fold.
I don't like how you tried to emphasis the feminine form. I think this is something that we easily get in the trap of because we don't want to hide our nice anatomy! But check out any fashion magazine, a good portion of high fashion actually doesn't cut in under the breasts, which just serves to put focus on the breasts instead of the cut of the garment.

Point noted on the angles of the circles, i will just say that this was a super quick sketch so i think that's excusable but i did touch it up on the pants. But you can get a way with a bit of it, as it can create bolder lines than having a circle, like i prefer having it flat on the far sleeve.

but yeah that is just the thoughts behind the design. Again thanks for the crit, it's pulled me up on making sure my eyes aren't derpy thats for sure. (been a more common problem than i like to admit lol).

[Samszym]

Ahhh, I see what were going for now! I completely agree with you about the chest area, I added that shadow in without thinking about the way cloth acts or the character. And I read about that kind of flaw in character design all the time, big fail on my part DX The updated sketch looks much better. Oh, in my image I decided to raise the shoulder that was holding the staff, don't know if you caught that or if you disagreed with that. I didn't mean to mess with the design, I think now I should have just mentioned the problem with the eyes and left it at that.

Thanks for the clarification! I can see how I jumped the gun to correct some things that weren't actually problems, that was actually quite presumptuous of me and I apologize :\ I'll be sure to be more careful about this kind of thing when I do crits! :D

[OtherMuzz]

It's cool man you had some really good points, and i listened, and it forced me to actually justify my design decisions.

My thoughts on rebutting critique, is that you can only rebut it if you can justify your reasons, so that both parties learn some stuff.

I think raising the shoulder could work, but that arm isn't lifting anything, it's having it's weight taken by the staff, so by lifting the shoulder it seems to me like she is exerting a bit of upwards force on the staff? I dunno could be wrong here.

[Samszym]

I agree an your line of thought about critique!

I wasn't sure either so I went and grabbed a staff, the lifted shoulder can be the result of downward force on the staff; since the staff can't go further into the ground the shoulder raises instead. It was a pretty comfortable lean but not really any more natural than both shoulders being level, so it just depends on what your character would do.

And you're right, the shoulder would also go up if she were exerting upward force on the staff, which is what I thoughtlessly drew, but it's not a restful position so it wouldn't work.

I think I'll start assuming the poses I'm drawing more often, this was great to think about! I don't know if you have Walt Stanchfield's Drawn to Life books, but he talks about this kind of thinking all the time, and I believe I just now got what he meant.