Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Just want to pipe up and throw another thought into the ring.

Seems like you just went through your first major reality skill mismatch. Man It can be one of the most crushing things about art, when you realise that you've been spinning wheels when you think you have been making gains. I would go so far as to say that the guys that make the most progress are the ones who are able to keep this in check better than others.

It's a pretty natural thing with art, because one thing they don't tell you is that as you improve, so does your perception of the world, but what that means is that before you get past a mental barrier, seeing the issues are incredibly difficult. What you can do to counteract this is to get outside views, and have a teacher, but to do it on your own you can also do it. You need to start doing studies and exersizes that have a testing mechanism built in, so that you can check and make sure that thing you are trying to learn is correct. This might be making sure to draw with properly constructed perspective lines, or to work from a photo, and make sure you are drawing it accurately, it could be any number of things. Trying a method like rielly method won't fix the issue, because it isn't addressing what really happened.

Now you've got to this point, you just learnt something about being human, and if you can move forward with this i mind, you can go and kick some ass.

Hi Jonny.

Not so sure about this. Have you tried to do a really comprehensive model sheet? Spin your character around in 3D, give it facial expressions, try to make it look consistent across all views?

Kinda like this: http://mnwelldir.org/film/images/1943_Mc...lSheet.JPG

I am not sure if this is the way to go.

But, I always point back to Loomis whenever I see myself in whatever art pickle I'm in. I remember this section in "Fun with Pencil". http://www.joshuanava.biz/easily-learn-t...oomis.html

The entire PDF is free as far as I know. Might be worth it to check it out.

Eyli Glad it was useful! Thanks for the link, I definitely need to practice that stuff more.

Zip Thanks for the encouragement dude! Didn't notice I'd hit 30 pages, I guess that's an achievement of sorts : )

Adam I'm not overwhelmed, just not as confident with heads. It's good advice you gave, I've been told it before and have always acted on it and gone back to study further but at some point the training wheels have gotta come off and need to move onto more designed stuff - as long as you bounce back to it every now and then I don't think there is a point where you can say you're ready / not ready to branch out.

Muzz Nah I've had those experiences before, what confused me about these recent comments is that I haven't got any decent heads in my sketchbook for a while, my heads are weak but my focus has been on inking. I assumed people knew that, I guess it's rarely good to assume, so I figured everyone was referring to my post #573, which was kind of a milestone for me and I was really happy with it (far from pro standard but for me it's a huge achievement). I looked at it over and over, in the mirror, upside down and just couldn't see where the head was going really wrong. I got some crits from other daggers on skype and they felt the heads were ok (as in structurally ok). So I feel better now and totally agree that my other heads are weak. That they are inked didn't mean I thought they were solid and finished, just inking practice.

John Thanks dude, I did a few 'fun with a pencil' drawings and they were fun to just relax and see what comes out, I'll try and do those more often. I will do a model sheet like you linked too, I was kind of planning to but seemed to have forgot along the way, so thanks for the reminder!

Decided to knuckle down and spend a bit of time with heads. I put anatomy study on hold for a while and my goals now will be mainly about expression (on top of getting good solid heads). Just some kind of warm up stuff to get me back into it first:






Next one is from about 6 months ago, its only a few centimetres big, but putting it to show that I can do a solid head from imagination when I'm in the zone. Far side eye is not good but it was really tiny, looks ok at real size.

Those asaro head studies are kickass man, great to see you rising to the challenge!

Hey Jonny those are some nice and solid looking heads! Even the stylised ones are looking really 3D - the shading helps I guess.

Keep going mate.

Great job taking on the crits as always man. Hopefully this draw-over helps you. The problem I noticed is the three quarter angel of the brow area. Dont forget to use horizontal lines to follow the angel of the brow/bridge of the nose across the face. That head from imagination looks decent. I have old drawings of heads that I was proud of as well. It took some hard consideration before I realized how little I still understood about the forms, though. Im still learning obviously as well. Doing those harder angels will show you where your blind spots are so keep them up!

Jyonny! What a ride it's been, huh? I come back after about four months and after seeing your progress you make me wish I never stopped! Keep up the work dude, those Asaro heads are looking good. Looking forward to the new age of your work, Jyonny!

muzz Thanks dude, I got pretty negative about all that head stuff but managed to turn it around and use it to fire myself up.
artloader Thanks, the shading part really does make you see mistakes to correct that you miss with just the lines.
adam thanks for the paintover
pax use that feeling and look at it the other way to think if you keep going how good you will be in 4 months from now!



Here's my entry for the crimson crucible comic challenge:



And the WIP stuff:



Pretty disheartened I didn't get placed, I agreed with all the crits and felt them myself but not sure where I went so wrong. Maybe I didn't create enough empathy for the character, or maybe since it relies on an emotional response from the reader it doesn't work if they don't have experience of someone dying from an OD, or a family member being an addict or being without a father or have kids or something like that - in which case I can see how it would just feel like a dark story that might leave an uncomfortable feeling. Maybe I just misunderstood the challenge and approached it in the wrong way. Either way, I think I am going to retreat from online activities for a while and just work on my own stuff, not sure if critique is helping me at the moment or just making me question and doubt myself. Doing this challenge really pushed me to see what I could produce when working at my absolute hardest (too hard really, 12 - 13 hour days on top of family stuff, a new caffeine addiction to deal with, too little sleep etc.) but I am grateful that I got to see what the top end of my ability is. I'll be back sometime (maybe soon idk) when I've finished my next comic.

Hey there Jynonny - just want to thank you again for that Cone Of View post in my SB - pure gold mate!

Sorry to hear that you're withdrawing for a while - I thought your CC entry was excellent, I felt the depth in it. You have a strong sense of story - kind of reminiscent of Alan Moore in the feeling that it left me with. I like that it was dark but there was light at the end. Solid stuff dude.

Take some time - regroup and regenerate - eat healthily - look after your body - and I look forward to seeing you back when you're ready :). It's guys like you make this place so awesome - so I hope you don't disappear completely.

No probs man, and wow Alan Moore, I aspire to something like his work!

I was in a pretty low life state when I wrote my last post. Since then I chanted and prayed a lot and was read this quote at a recent meeting (it's Buddhist stuff but I think it makes sense to anyone):

"The Devil King of the Sixth Heaven attacks the forces of good with his 'ten kinds of troops'. The 'ten kinds of troops' are listed as:
1 - greed
2 - discouragement
3 - hunger and thirst
4 - craving
5 - sleepiness
6 - fear
7 - doubt and regret
8 - anger
9 - preoccupation with fame, fortune and false glory
10 - arrogance and contempt for others.
All of these are devilish functions that arise within us.
In Buddhism, 'devils' or 'devilish functions' are defined as 'robbers of life' or 'robbers of benefit'. In other words, they drain away the life-force we need to lead positive lives, and rob us of the benefit we have accumulated. The ten kinds of troops and the devil king of the sixth heaven are not actual beings. They represent the inner workings of life. In that sense, attaining Buddhahood (a 'true' and victorious state of life characterised by unlimited courage, wisdom and compassion) is essentially a struggle not against external forces but against the destructive forces or negativity that reside within our own lives."

I had a lot of those devilish functions working in me the last few weeks, although I created a lot of value at the same time. It helped to read that and understand what are illusions created by the destructive forces within and it makes me better able to fix my goals in my head and my heart.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you read all that! Just wanted to leave things on a more positive note. I'll see you again sometime in the future!

Here's a page of doodles so this post isn't all text:

Jyonny, you did an amazing job, especially in the exploration part. I'm stunned by the fact you used 3d, it made last panel look great. I'm a bit surprised by some of Dan's picks but he was the guest judge so his opinion was valued the most (although, he wanted to give you at least a honorable mention, but we forgot about it in the end). I believe the most important thing is what you're learned by doing this challenge. Who cares about winning or not. You have a great potential for comics and animation storyboards, so just keep it up!

We will surely do another comic challenge sometime in the future and I'm looking forward to see your entry!

Yeah Jonny, I gotta pipe up here too.
We all basically picked yours out for honourable mention because of how ambitious and how well executed it was, but forgot to actually say this outloud in the stream. We did think it deserved highlighting.

What we didn't talk about was why it didn't get into the top spots. For one reason or another it didn't connect with us on a visceral level. Remember that ultimately judging is a very subjective thing, especially when it comes to comics. It is so hard to do. If we had it our way, everyone would win, but that takes out too much of the element of reward which we think is important to increasing participation in the challenge. But ultimately that isn't the point. It is about what YOU learned that matters.

I'd like to say that yours was probably the best planned, was the most ambitious, really nailed all the elements of readability, and definitely straddled the line incredibly well between the narrative and the technical. The story was poignant and smart, and dark (I love dark) and I totally relate, having family members that have addiction problems, and being on the risk scale myself.

So why didn't we pick it? I honestly couldn't tell you for certain, but I get this sense that you perhaps didn't give us enough for us to empathize with Max. It was a string of life moments seen very much from outside, and the time frame was so great between panels that perhaps the gravity of the nature of the change from one to the other didn't impact as much as it could have? Note this is just me wondering...I truly can't fault your execution, directly. By the second to last panel, I still felt a little underwhelmed by the payoff, in that I knew it was horrifying and I should have felt awful, but in reality I simply didn't. In truth it surprised me a bit that I had that reaction. Maybe that is more my issue with empathy than yours in showing the situation. Or perhaps, because the story arc itself is a very well known one to us all it didn't really surprise or show us anything new that we haven't seen many times before. The trope of "drugs and addiction are horrible" are pretty much all around us, so in order to engage us with a well trodden trope, there really has to be an original and unique twist to things with the story. You did really well with the use of cute dogs, and the really clever use of the donut device, but the story itself while executed brilliantly, was ultimately a little underwhelming for me personally. Again you tried to cover and nail all those challenges in ONE page. Talk about ambitious. There is nothing I would take away from this, than absolute pride in how much you actually nailed. The only thing you didn't nail was a meaningless spot in the "top three"
Note this is just my own subjective opinion! There will be others that are hit hard by your story, no doubt. That's the nature of the game :)

What I do know is that out of all the entries, you put in the most work and are probably the most passionate about comics, and that passion will take you far. You told a story that was deeply personal and used the medium for more than just a good laugh. If you keep that up, I predict you will be producing some great stuff in the future!

Hope to see you back sooner, once you've had some time to process!

Yep, it's the battles within that are the most significant.  Sounds like you're well equipped to handle those battles Jyonny.  Thanks for sharing the quote - powerful stuff.  Take it easy my friend.

Thanks for the comments and further feedback, it's really useful and reassuring. I agree it's not about winning but it's natural to measure the success of your entry against those who placed. It felt weird that Dan talked through the other stories panel by panel, but with mine he just focused on technical stuff, felt like my story had really bombed out. I got over all that stuff though now, and your comments really helped! so, onward to new things!

Oh dude. Don't worry about bombing on a story.. It happens to everyone! Even to the people who are writing comic books commercially.

For example: Brian Michael Bendis. 5 time Eisner Awardee. Great material on books like Spider-man, Daredevil and the like. But his current run on Guardians is just horrible! Horrible I tell you!

Flash back to the 90's, he wrote a book called "Angels of Destruction". The art, for the most part, looks like part fantasy (Angels! Demons!), and part sci-fi (there were ninjas, and armor, and armor ninjas!) but the writing... the characters talked like they're from a crime noir movie!

And of course.. He also got crap on high profile books. There's his Elektra: Scorpio Key (I didn't even finish reading it), and his Daredevil: Ninja run, which he advised everyone not to go look for it!

We all have bad stories thinking it's good. And vice versa. What works for this guy, won't work for the other guy. Like Peanuts! I love the great Charles M. Schulz. But he had bad, "I-don't-get-it" strips as well.

Alls I'm saying. Super stoked to see more work from you! Bomb until you finally put out a masterpiece! That's how every single thing 'works' anyway.

And if it's any consolation. Your one pager is better than Bendis' Elektra run! Oh I better run before I turn into a bitter fan boy!

Hey jyonny
Sorry to hear you feeling down and disappointed.
I say don't be , there's nothing to feel bad about though I understand and have been through that mental state just remember to always catch it and revert it into a positive one.

So ill say it again theres nothing to be frustrated about, because all I see are progress and experience that's going through in this sketchbook.

Hey man! Awesome to see you still grinding! Just wen through a bunch of your sketchpad and its was fucking awesome to see how much you've been crushing it this last year!

Look forward to getting back into it along side you guys and get back in touch with mah roots at the Daggers! ;D

Kurt & Mariyan & John Cheers for the encouragement from before!
Heliux Thanks dude! Let's get some hangouts going again!


So my plan was to come back and post up progress on my new comic, which I started but was having so much trouble with the drawing side I got really swamped by it all! I could've continued battling with it and improved that way but decided to go back to study and focus on each thing in isolation. So I've been in a kind of study / practice mode for the last few months, not going so hardcore but doing some productive sessions everyday. Now it's Inktober and I've been hitting that with all I can, here's my first 9 days:

Nice job on the ink stuff. I think you'll like the next CC challenge in November. Our gest is working for Sony Pictures Animation on a movie.

Piotr Woa sounds exciting! I'll check it out for sure. Thanks for stopping by!

Some more inktober stuff; I've injured my back and can't sit down and draw for more than about 20 mins at a time, so I've kind of slowed down which is a bit annoying, but I'm doing plenty of physio and exercises so hopefully I can do a few more developed ones before the end: