Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Some recent inktober stuff:







I have real trouble connecting heads to bodies. I can draw ok heads on their own, and I can posed figures ok, but trying to connect the head to the body is causing me no end of problems... tried doing this page below practising but it didn't help me when I came to do a full figure. Have to practice them more.

Had really frustrating few days, got some kind of block going on where stuff I could draw easily a week ago I just can't visualise how the pieces fit together and it comes out as garbage.

The first images are warm up doodles where I didn't really think too much and just drew. Some nice expressive stuff came out.





Then when I try hard and try to do something specific and not just freeform / random this is the best I got:








My characters eyes just look dead for the most part, no expression reaches them. Not sure what I need to practice exactly to get better at these cartoon faces.

Got my confidence back a bit today, just need to find my specific weaknesses and attack them head on. Today is eyes, trying to get a 3D / rounded look to them, realised mine look pretty flat which is what is making them look dead.





And started doing these warm ups before I ink. From Gary Martin's 'The art of comic book inking'. He says to nail the strokes perfectly in these exercises before trying to ink any kind of character (spacing / thickness / angle / thick to thinness). Gonna try to do these every time I use the ink brush:

Damn bru, i remember your inktobers stuff from the last year. Awesome to see you doing this

Ihor Hey dude! Thanks man, thanks for dropping by! I hope life is treating you well and shit isn't too crazy over there ^^

Some recent inktober stuff:











I've been trying to learn Tinkerbell better; she's maybe the only disney female that you see from every possible angle. Also her skirt is short so you see how the legs connect and all that (that's my excuse anyway).









I think I have the construction of her head figured out. Next need to work on the features and get the proportions better.

Inktober is finished now. Kind of feel that I let myself down but I need to squash that thinking since I did so many things this month that I've never done before and learnt a lot and, probably most importantly, exposed many many many of my weaknesses (I have made a big list of them). Now I can focus on those one at a time. I am determining to keep doing imaginative stuff / comics, I plan to spend weekends on them so I don't fall into the endless loop of study / practice / study / practice without ever feeling ready to do a project.


Anyway, this is my 6 panel comic strip that took up around 9 or 10 days or inktober with a few ink sketches and re-doing a panel, then underneath is all the thumbnails / ideas / progress sketches. Please leave me comments about it! I think I screwed it up and the story doesn't make sense. Let me know if it does / doesn't and what you think. Thanks ^_^b



(HQ version here: http://i.imgur.com/CjWy95O.jpg )

Trying to compose this page better, really should've planned this stuff from the start!

Mariyan Thanks man! I'm trying hard : ) did the comic make sense?


I tried adding these spots of colour to make the idea more clear. Do let me know if you get the story!

the squirrel is a transition to the final panel, its supposed to make you go wtf but then should make sense in the end, I was too subtle in the last panel I think. Thanks for commenting!

Hey Jyonny,

Great stuff going on here - really interesting to see all the extra work that went on behind the scenes for your inktober comics too, you're really focused.

I hadn't really thought much about the squirrel not working, to me it kinda read pretty well but I can see how it might seem out of place if the initial setting looks more like an indoor rink, although if the aim is to throw in the twist, it kinda works either way.

Only thing I could suggest is you set the scene as it is in the last panel, so a natural setting, but leave everything else as it is, so it looks like they're skating together on a lake in the initial frames, rather than leaving the background so clean, then the twist would still work without the dramatic change of setting?

Agh, it's tricky!

Also been looking at your drawings from last inktober too - big improvements man!

Mariyan Yea I get you totally, the pacing isn't ideal, probably also because the squirrel is drawn with textured fur on a background with three values and the figures are pretty flat line / 2 value backgrounds. The style is different so probably stands out for that reason. I will develop the control and sensitivity to prevent that kinda stuff someday : )

Lurch Thanks for the comments, definitely some kind of unifying element could work. My girl suggested having the snowflakes falling in all the frames and not just the last two.

As long as you guys got the point of the comic though, which I think you did? That the first four panels are the imagination / memory of the girl at the end? Aesthetics aside, as long as that reads I can feel it was a success. (do let me know if you did / didn't get that!)

You are relentless!! I can see the improvement coming and building up, just like your foundations. Keep it up!! I can't wait to see where you get Jon.. ;)

Thanks Lale! I get down sometimes that I'm not where I want to be but if I look back a few months / a year I'm really happy how far I came.


Following inktober I came up with a new art schedule / timetable to tackle all my weaknesses, study new stuff and make comics but have had one after another health problems since 1st Nov. It's nothing serious (pretty sure anyway... still waiting for some various tests) but lots of small things all piled up at once. Makes it so hard to focus so I only manged a few days of my schedule so far. But I am determined to do it, soon as I get better.

In the meantime just working through Alex Woo's gesture course and doing tons of gesture type things (because I don't need high concentration and focus over a long period of time for these). All these are 30 sec up to 2 min, focusing on communicating the idea rather than anatomical accuracy.










^ left handed







The next lesson is about extrapolation - looking at a pose and using it to draw an animal doing some kind of cute pixar like thing.

EDIT

Oh yea, did this too for some paid work:



The characters are a bit messy but it looks good printed small on their letters. They were pretty happy with it and want me to do this A4 page illustration for some kind of info pack or booklet (still waiting for the details). I'm not really too into it since it's taking time away from other stuff and I don't really want to be an illustrator (and not so confident I can create the awesome illustration I expect of myself), but I'm sure I will learn some stuff so I accepted it.

Hey there Jon, thanks for the comment on my Sketchbook!

I've got to say, if you look at the first page of this thread and compare to where you are now, you've really came far. All I can really say is keep it up, I think you're on the right path, as long as you have your dedication I think you'll go far, my friend. 

Also, splendid work on that logo, it looks very professional to me, though I know little about graphic design so I might not know what I'm talking about.

Stardust Thanks man! And me neither I know so little about graphic design, which makes these kind of jobs not fun since I dunno what I'm doing... just trying things at random til something looks ok.

Finished the illustration for this booklet / poster thing, I was quite happy with how it turned out - was filled with so much doubt and low confidence during thumbnailing / sketching phase but it seemed to come together alright:

This is the version I wanted them to use:


But the lady preferred it flat with no shadows:



The colours are pretty dodgy, especially in the thought balloons but I haven't gotten to trying to understand colour properly yet. Someday I will when I get better at all the other stuff! The text is supposed to be just a placeholder, since they have a graphics department who can do a better job than me, but I have a feeling they are going to just print it like that. It's up to them I suppose.

All in all I'm really happy I took this job, since it forced me to spend many hours on something and push it further than I usually do (mostly I abandon stuff when I've spent more than an hour on it, inktober aside), so now I have more confidence to put more hours into stuff that has potential. Comments / critique are very welcome ^^

Some recent stuff, kinda random bits and pieces. Gesture stuff is following Alex Woo's Gesture Drawing course from Schoolism, the Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde are assignments from the first three lessons of Stephen Silver's fundamentals of character design on Schoolism. Also Akane from Psycho Pass and some random heads - still struggle a lot with those but they seem to be coming out more appealing, if not hitting totally solid structure and likeness yet.

Nice work, man. Sounds like you'll be learning a lot from all those courses.

Adam Thanks, schoolism has really amazing courses. Around $140 for a years access.

Some recent stuff, more character design stuff, some quick people sketches and some gestures. I got out of the habit of uploading my stuff on here, should get back to updating more of my progress.

Trying to get into the habit of updating my sketchbook every day / most days. Will see how it goes! This is everything I did today.







Sketching this guy from memory, an exercise from Stephen Silver, take some mental notes of someone you see during the day then some hours later draw a face / character with those characteristics. For this guy was the really round / smooth forehead, double balls on his nose, thin lips and that hairline that cuts his head in half. Pretty good exercise for memorising different types of features for characters.


Head study day, did noses:

Today's stuff; portraits, hands and How to Render book:

Struggling when I try to do a bigger sized, carefully constructed / measured portrait (the middle one), proportions keep getting away from me. They work out much better when I quickly throw down the shapes and work the likeness out after.