Fedodika the Koala

[darktiste]

The back leg muscle is to tense in my opinion.Try to compare with your own leg.I would say it start to buldge at around a 45 angle on a standard leg.

[Leo Ki]

hey if you cant make out what something is, just know this little  koala was scrubbin away at somethin and shared the energy!

And I appreciate that ^^ I was just having a go at constructive criticism - but knowing I suck at charcoal it was probably a miserable attempt :S

gonna go study some knees and feet tomorrow

Trying some more criticism, not about knees and feet but the overall posture of the "boday" image: My eye can't decide between foreshortenings and a very supple bone frame. I can detail further what I mean but I'm not sure if you are already making changes to it, or you intentionally deviated from realism.

[Fedodika]

Leo Ki: yea its a pretty bad drawing because of the bad foreshortening.. I dug out some 3d and remade the pose then did a copy to learn from the mistakes, it was a frustrating effort, but just another stone to hobble accross. 

A really frustating day of trying to do 3d; spent all day yesterday watching instructional stuff from this dude on yt named anton who does them on 3dcoat. Im doing a study of this ugly little bust on my desk. I feel like if i can get an idea of a brush that can hit sharp crisp edges and smooth well, i can wrap this up a lot better. Im using the carve tool and shift for smooth and it gets close but still jagged and lumpy in areas.  Im curious how much 3d my computer can handle, at 500k triangles currently with no problems so we'll see.

[Leo Ki]

The levitating lady is back! Looking more flowy and natural now. Still a bit unsure about the hips-to-waist connection, and the right-facing shoulder.

[Rotohail]

Alright! So I would like to say I tried to check the whole thing but holy cow! How much work have you done in like 6 years!? Is insane! Talk about grinding volumes! So I saw around page 30-40 huge leaps on portrait drawings gains, but then you seem to have gone back and roll up and down depending if you were doing caricatures or trying things out, I guess experimenting is tough.
I see also you do a ton of anatomy and life-drawing? And some are fantastic, I said whoa! a few times, but for each of those there's like 5 that I felt were drawn by someone else. I feel like an asshole saying this but I imagine you throwing yourself against a wall, and sometimes it cracks but most often than not you bounce out in pain ha. Honestly though, the improvement shows quite clearly when you go first 10 pages to last 10 pages, but again it surprises my how much you had improved around 30-40 and then you seem to have been dangling around there.
I was baffled the picture you copied from a dog outdoors? White with dark spots? Amazing. I can't do that for the life of me.
For all that I have seen, although I've seen a few around in there, I would have expected to see more non-human construction drawings, but that's OK, like I'm not sure what your end point is, do you want to do pin ups or along those lines? That's what it seems you are heading. I'm asking because I feel you could move onto more design stuff, some I saw about fantasy drawings and paintings were pretty damn awesome.
The other thing I might say is that you do perspective exercises if possible, that's the thing I feel you are at the weakest, your cones of vision feel usually kind of safe, around below 30 degrees, and you could punch a lot of impact (that's my thing ha ha) if you practiced withing 60-90 degrees cones. Do some extreme foreshortening drawings or things like that? Boxes, geometric things, play with curving the view, etc.
Let's keep it up!

[nymph0]

Keep it up Fedo, you doing awesomeness, keep it up!

[Fedodika]

Leo: ya its a weird torso, thanks for the writeups!

Roto: my duuuuuuuuuuude, opened up a cool path for me to research. im taking Erik Olsen's course on NMA on perspective. it certainly is something i havent formally understood; your point about the 30 degree camera angle thing is a very good observation; ive noticed i dont even know how to like start somethig outside the standard camera perspective, like i get 3 point and 2 point and all that, but i need to formally get it down. Im gonna really try to truck out this olsen course, hes a good teacher so far, its extremely dense, but i'll make a lotta shit a lot less intimidating.

Hope you enjoyed looking through the struggle, all the reflecting and stuff ive wanted to do on those days is all in this sb somewhere, so thanks for lookin!

Nymph0: Koala Bless

Had a beautiful pregnant woman at life drawing on friday, and figured out the plane tool in 3dcoat, which is pretty intuitive. Theres a channel called "3dcoat training channel" which i imagine is run by the company and just tells you how every little bell and whistle works which is priceless. I only need a few tools so far, but im sure i'll need more when i want to get more advanced. 

And yes perspective course was begun, its extremely long and dense but im crazy enough to do it, its about 20 courses and each course is about 5 hours of content so, ol fedo is gonna be crankin wish me luck. I cannot imagine how stale but enlightening this will be once i get into the thick of it. So far its just stuff i intuitively knew from drawing a lot, im excited to see someone explain things that dont fit into that criteria.

[Coinhero]

Use a different matcap for sculpting, this grey one I think is useful for checking cast shadows but not the best for seeing what you are doing. I'm sure 3dcoat has one of these "brown clay" ones and I think that would make it much easier to see the geometry. 
example of matcap I'm talking about:



also from the pictures it looks like you have some sort of smooth shading or smooth normals turned on and while it looks better sculpting, flat shading / normals makes it easier to see things and is more accurate. Or maybe it's just the matcap that makes it look like that, I'm not sure and all of this is personal preference but it wouldn't hurt to experiment a little. Also 500k verts is way overkill for a low detail face you should really decimate that and try to make it a habit to work with as little geometry as possible.

[Rotohail]

Heya! I'm glad to hear! It's mostly boring math angle stuff ha! But If you get the gist of it, and starts fooling around, I think you will do a big jump, because you already have the anatomy/proportions/value and other stuff down, it should give you a big boost. I don't know the course but I'll check it out because I from time to time like to go back to basics and see what I did not catch the first time or forgot. Let me know how the course was when you are done!
The life drawing looking good! I haven't touched Zbrush in many years and also 3D left it aside around that time so I can't give tips on it, just keep doing what you do!

[Fedodika]

Rotto: big thanks my bro, learning perspective is tedious but im patching up loads of little things, STAY TUNED!

Coinhero: Ill be getting back to 3d after a few weeks, but ya definitely will size down! i was using that filter since if i press 1-5 it changes the mask on it, and i couldnt find how to get back to the original. 

Did this exercise to apply the 1 points perspective ive been learning, im about 14 hours through 100 hours of the perspective series. I noticed as i uploaded it the cast shadow on the triangle on the ground is  wrong. the light from the square is in congruent for that shape. I already see more mistakes in my previous drawings from learning this stuff, so it is having an impact. Feel free to rip this exercise up if something is out of place

[darktiste]

My only concern with the last thing is the triangle and cube tangente even if it probably not relevant and your cylinder in the front is strange looking.

[Leo Ki]

OK, second time I'm inspecting this perspective, but if the light source is distant (and the light rays are parallel) I don't understand the cast shadow on the top right upside-down cone; it can't seem to come from the cube to the left of it unless I'm totally misunderstanding the position of both objects.
Your latest charcoal is gorgeous!

[Rotohail]

It's got a much better sense of depth with this one, than whatever I've seen you done before. So keep at it! I would say the closest cylinder to view feels tapered? Not sure if it was on purpose but the front feels narrower. ! point perspective if you follow it religiously always looks odd, so I would move onto other stuff. Also remember 1, 2 or 3  points are just examples to explain how lines converge based on your direction of view. But perspective or complex scenes don't have just one of those types of perspectives, each object based on their rotation and position in relation of yours and your direction of view will follow their own convergences and forms. Just a thought!
Also I would recommend you get used to draw a grid of similar sized squares (in perspective) so you can get used to see how forms decrease in size as you move inside the picture plane, can help you out when laying proportions and repeating objects.
Keep the grind going!

I dug out one of my 3point perspective attempts at understanding how to translate proportional units. Which was the most troubling to me at the time I think. A chore to set up. Is to show you the grid of equally spaced squares I talk about (violet lines).

[Peter]

Mind sharing what perspective series you're going through? I intend to get back into perspective sometime in the future.

[Fedodika]

Leo Ki: I dunno the lighting was a last minute thing, thanks for pointing that out! so happy you liked the charcoal!

Rotohail: many thanks my dude, i think ill try that square grid thing tomorrow just to see whats up. I tried a buncha exercises today from imagination, im clawing my way through it; this knowledge is quickly making me see errors in my recent work, which is great! feel free to rek anything in these exercises, if my rough fundamental perceptions are wrong i need it pointed out to grow :)

Peter: Erik Olson on New Masters Academy, its 21 lectures each lecture is 4-6 hours divided up into about 20 videos per lecture. So its like... 100+ hours of videos. Im on lecture 6, use the 1.5X speed and take notes! 

So yea, clawing my way through, Ol Fedos gonna be draggin for a while doing these videos. These are some quick scribbles to put something down what im taking in. If you think my understanding is off, even in these simple drawings do point it out! Its opening up my brain to like... i can imagine scenes differently because i have this knowledge, thats one great thing of fundamentals, it helps you visualize a lot more effectively. 

This... is really friggin hard :O

[Jephyr]

Returning the visit. Its' awesome to see all your anatomy/movement and perspective studies on the the last couple of pages.

I'm noting your preference for a soft touch and limited color palette in some of your work though and think you should push your values and and expand your color choices to give more pop to your images.

Looks like you are investing a lot of time on your craft and it is paying off

[Rotohail]

I feel this late ones have gone back to your smaller circle of view angle, like the convergence is very subtle? Except on the 3rd one I guess,? Feels like a corridor? But also makes me think of a kitchen with cupboards lol. If you can try to show the vanishing points/horizon line or circle of view construction on what you put up, maybe that way I can check better what is it that you are doing, how are you approaching it.

[Fedodika]

Roto: yea i did a reference drawing just to apply this stuff, so see what you think of that

Jephyr, many thanks my dude

on lecture 7/21

[Rotohail]

Roto: yea i did a reference drawing just to apply this stuff, so see what you think of that

Jephyr, many thanks my dude

on lecture 7/21

Hey! Well It's a bit unstable at the moment, ha. I think what jumped at me the most was, that you seem to be doing a 2PP, but the original has vertical convergence, so is 3PP. Did you do that for simplicity? Maybe you are working on 2PP as of now and avoiding that vertical vanishing. I made a yellow note about that.
So next thing was, that the side vanishing points, some parts of the house look crooked, the windows for instance jump pretty severely like having the closer one to view be smaller? Seems like it follows an opposing perspective, and that the  tower top seems to go to a different horizon than the main house. Use other VPs, but they should share the same ones, since they define the leveled planes where people would stand (grounds) so they should be parallel, barring some distortions from the original picture and imperfections.
Anyhow, I leave you a quick CLIP ruler 3PP guide on the reference and the comments.
I personally think you should keep marked on the drawing where is your horizon and where are your vps, so is easier to spot if you are off base about something or mixing perspectives, which can be okay. Like in 2PP the top of the tower will look very odd, so doing a different perspective for it can be more pleasing. I would juts do 3pp instead of pushing the horizons around.
Also try to practice at first following the rulers religiously, even when later on you probably won't use them and eyeball everything, lol. 
Keep grinding!

[Leo Ki]

Nothing to add to Rotohail's excellent teaching :)
Just one thing: Drawing the edges of the wall boards/panels in this particular image can help you tremendously in getting the lines right, for instance on the small door roof to the right left.
Rotohail, is this Clip Studio's perspective lines? I never think to use this tool, shame on me.