John's Thread (Used to be super active! Still the longest thread name ever in CD)

[Amit Dutta]

Oh actually I totally misread the pose. Thought her arm was her leg. Foreshortening on the leg is ok, but there is a bit of a tangent with her outside forearm and heel. Guess I'll reserve any further comments till you finish the lineart, it's hard to tell at this stage.

[DQ_Nick]

Your latest character kind of looks like a military-themed Samus. Finish her!

[John]

Mechanizoid : It's kinda tricky to mark down infomation given a short amount of time. Group them according to mass. Implied lines. Blocking in... I should come up with a different approach though... 

Amit Dutta: Yeah, the arm and the leg were meshing, I can see where the stump is coming from. After twisting them around, finally realized it looked better if I crossed the arm and leg a bit more. And yes! I do use a toy for reference.

I thought about using people to model for me. But all the lines I thought up how to approach and ask end up sounding... err.. pervy.

DQ_Nick: Hey hey! Samus is actually a good reference material... Didn't think of that before.. Thanks!

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Personal:

[John]

Personal:


I already have flats down. Super stoked to finally color! I'm riffing on the iconic Adi Granov Iron Man pose!

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey dude, thx for the encouragement in my SB!

I don't want to discourage you, since I know how exciting it is to get to finally colouring something, which is great practice (that I rarely get cause my stuff is hardly ever 'good' enough to me). Plus, you're pretty damn hard on yourself as it is, but I just noticed a couple things that I felt I'd share about your silhouette. I think it can be an awesome pose but couple points don't feel right.

You mentioned the iron man pose, I'm not comparing yours to that one since it's your own thing - and the iron man below isn't the greatest silhouette in the world and has it's own ambiguous things, like the weird bulging part that looks like an ear but it isn't - but looking at them together I hope shows where yours could be more successful.



You've got this thing where her torso feels super small because of a weird optical thing with that protruding chest piece, but I think that will be super clear when there is some lighting on it. Mainly it's the shoulder guard behind her head that turns the whole drawing into a different shape that makes the pose a little difficult to read. If you're tired of doing lines, I'd say go ahead and colour it since it's good practice but if you can bear working it a little more, I think it can be way more awesome.

Hope it's useful, if not feel free to ignore!

[Amit Dutta]

I was doing a paintover, and then jyonny much smarter than me found the perfect ref. He nailed it. The torso is not foreshortened well, the chest piece is overly twisted and large given her body twist. A side thing, but always put in a ground plane and basic perspective of the environment or you and we won't know for sure what you are going for (I assume a more downward looking pov in yours)

[John]

JyonnyNovice: Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I'd say your comments are on point.. I tried to raise her arm up like the Iron Man pose, but the shoulder armor makes it look impossible. Good point on the head silhouette. I'm currently contemplating to have her hair blowing due to wind! Super helpful!

Amit: Bah.. I would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids...

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Personal:
started painting:


stopped painting and reworking the lines:


I decided to fix them now than to eye-ball them once the painting is done. I hope I can finish it soon! I'm raring to go slap on some colors!

EDIT:
PS. What's happening in the world right now is so depressing.. In fact, it's beginning to be overwhelming. I'd probably move away from the Internet for a bit and keep my head down on this piece..

[John]

Personal:


*Note to self. Fix left arm.

I admit it's not the best update. Reworked almost everything from the ground up but the face arms and wings.. Got to stop noodling. I'd probably spot more errors once I'm through with painting.

Big big thanks to Amit and Jonny. Your comments continue to nag me towards improvement. I'll carry those thoughts to the finish.

[JyonnyNovice]

glad you moved the hand forward, there is a better sense of weight with it out from the feet. That silhouette thing is really useful and really quick to do over linework, if you don't know it already, you can use the 'quick selection tool' (under the magic wand) and set it at the top to 'sample all layers' then you can draw around inside your linework and it'll automatically select up to the edges. As usual use the 'alt' key to deselect, it automatically 'adds' so no need to use 'ctrl'. Doesn't come out absolutely perfect but so so fast compared to manually lasso'ing the whole thing. (this is assuming you use photoshop)

[Amit Dutta]

Perhaps beef up that right rear thigh and leg a little, it's looking a tad skinny. Other than that, carry on my good man, I think you addressed the major issues with the pose/foreshortening

[John]

JyonnyNovice: Swear to god Jonny, Quick Selection Tool is my go to tool at the moment. I've been doing photo work (deleting backgrounds, ugh, boring) and I breeze by them so fast now! Thanks for the wonderful tip!

Amit Dutta: The perspective guide tip worked wonders! I'd probably do more adjusting, now that the painting is done with. That leg still looks bothersome.. Thanks!

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Personal:


Just background and more adjustment to the pose! Thanks to Se7enLives! Lotsa lotsa advice! Woohoo! No work Sunday here I come!

[John]

Because of self imposed time limit, I'm abandoning this piece:


and moving on to the next one!

Super thanks to everyone who pitched in! Not perfect, but I'd be noodling forever if I didn't give myself deadlines.

[Piotr Jasielski]

Looks really nice. The leg is way to skinny though. You could also do some metal studies so it wouldn't look like made from plastic (unless that was the goal). Keep this up! You're getting better.

[Bledley]

Nice consistent study in your sketchbook so far John! great to see. Haven't got much else to say but keep 'em coming! Leaving this comment to stay in the loop ;)

[Artloader]

Awesome work Johndude! I love the design of the armour - good job with that. Is that a tattoo or something on her cheek?

Keep it up my friend.

[JyonnyNovice]

Congrats for taking it to a finish, really comes to life! I've seen tons worse used in various commercial works, so be happy with that for sure : )

As well as what's been said already, I'd say to do more gesture drawings, do them from imagination too and try and fit the simple forms of head ribcage etc on top - give yourself a training ground to figure out all those difficult foreshortened and unusual views so that they become second nature when you want to do an illustration. It seems you really like drawing characters, so it's worth grinding that stuff.

Just my opinion of course!

I've been doing it a lot recently, at least 50% of my gesture drawing is from imagination now, on top of perspective grids, and I'm finding so much benefit.

[John]

Piotr Jasielski: Hey Piotr. Thanks for the leg tip. I've changed it in my final output. As for the metal rendering, I decided to keep it as is. I tried to make a pass but it only made things much worse! Fail! Oh... need to hammer out those pesky materials.. The Crimson Crucible nightmare I had rears it's head once again!

Bledley: I'm screaming! "Ahh!"

Artloader : Oh no, it's not my design. It's an Overwatch character fan art. And yes, that's supposedly a tattoo on her cheek!

JyonnyNovice: Oi thanks! Like really thanks. It would've been a disaster piece if it weren't for your help. Oh god, if only I had more time for just exercises.. with work and everything, it's a luxury to squeeze in some time for art. It's just that I feel like I need to pump some illustrations out for the folio! But yeah, totally valid. My anatomy is still grossly shaky. Thanks again Jonny!

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Hand gestures:


In need to finish this by Monday, a self imposed art test!:


Praying to the art gods on this one!

[John]

Art test: Figure done


Doing BG later, then colors next, then polish.

[John]

Ugh, totally bombed on this one. I hate the arm the hand and the background.


Finally decided to make portrait studies; Hands studies (not just silly quick gesture drawings); and learn more Sargent in the coming days. Things will get ugly!

[johny]

nice work and i liked to see the process of the lady with the armour and find the crit someone gave to you vey helpfull. keep up the good work.