My name is Graziele, im 22, i live in Brazil and im sorry in advance for my broken english. 
Someone just sent me the link of this place and i was really nervous to join out, but well, after reading some threads i think i got some courage to finally start.

So, i am currently self studying to try joining the concept art carreer for animation and games (its actually my dream since kid, i also do a bit of illustration). I did game design and graphic design (forced to choose something in the new town, since my parents were dissapointed with me, not that i don't like, but i don't see myself doing something like it) colleges but didnt finish due financial problems, and since i always lived in small towns (actually, i'm always moving to new towns and none have any of it) i was never able to join art schools or anything like that (excluding game design college, i needed to move, but again, money problems, needed to come back home). I'm also writting a fantasy rpg-based book to let my mind active, also thats my main project for the future with  my boyfriend, but since its just the two of us we going slow (we want to do a comic/game about it, but for now we focusing on study the hardest we can, he also doing game design college).

I though that i could join here and have some help with tutorials, critics and anything else related to it. I like my current artstyle, but i think i lack alot on my painting skills, so im trying to learn what i can to reach the style i desire, i also think i need to improve more on details for concepts. 

I also have some fear about the carreer, since Brazil is not so opened to it, so i'm a bit lost in where to start, but i hope you guys can help me out with it   .

Hi my name is Geo and i am invalid(easy way) i have twilight epilepsy it's not close relate to art but to my personality.
Maybe because i have goverment pension,  i can't recieve good money out of my art, maybe because of this illness that made me so immune to cooperative work, i try as hard as i can to make it work learn from masters of great passion and balance in their hearts. But it all ends by my stubborness and willing to end all pieces that i made in chaos (unfinished). 

This some kind of force that are preventing me for getting good reliable job to enjoy myself and achive my long-running goal of becoming director like miyazaki,kojima,nolan,cameron,scott,jodorowsky,tarkovsky ot atleast of becoming art director...Right now i have living all alone by myself, i have separated with my sister, and long before it happends our grand-and-real parents have passed away, from that point i've started to precieve my art is to be my only goal in life (Also act but i haven't try myself in movies before) so that's it brutal honesty i don't to be hypocrit and also i do not wait misery for this introduction i hope you guys check my sketchbook out, thank you! 

P.S. sorry for big ego photo.

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Hello, my name is Danielle and I am 30, I live in Wantagh, New York, in the USA. I am a fine artist/illustrator who works in all kinds of media, but primarily I use acrylic paint, collage, pen and ink, colored pencils, watercolor, and marker. I work digitally too, but not as keen on it...nor the best at focusing for long periods of time on a screen when the temptation to check email or play around on Facebook lingers over me. I also enjoy the feel of the organic process of making a mess/managing natural errors and surprise mistakes (...sometimes I will combine aspects of traditional and digital painting together to create something new, fix a composition problem, things like that... ) I am not anti-digital, it just doesn't make me comfortable. I actually want to improve on that, and develop a better habit of not being distracted while sketching on the computer- (another problem is using a computer for long periods of time makes me sometimes develop very bad headaches!) I find Photoshop a beautiful medium if you know what you are doing and your heart is in it.

My favorite topics are bizarre fantasy, surrealism and horror, along with psychedelic/abstract, and stylized portraits of people and animals. Some of my big influences are Gris Grimly, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Camille Pisarro, Max Ernst, Magritte, and Sam Keith.   I would describe my work most of the time being more 'stylized' than hyper-realistic, and although that genre of art is honestly not my big cup of tea, I still want to push myself to be more into realism, not only because of it's focus in the industry, but also because I know a solid realism skill will help strengthen my more loose and whimsical work regardless. ...My art education did often the best they could, but due to a combination of having a large amount of flawed, or very old very senile instructors- (I'm not kidding, one of them gave out only 3 assignments in a whole YEAR and she argued once to my face if I was really 'present' in class...her first introductory speech to us was a 2 hour rant about how dogs are her spirit animal, and all the evils of tofu. No I really shit you not!!) As well also...lazy foolish youthful rebellion on my own part, (which I mostly now regret). I don't think I gained all that much out of it as I ought to have pushed for. So that's why I am here, for 2017 to begin the process of repairing my art. I have been stuck in various 9 to 5s and all in all I don't feel right.

My ability to draw/paint has been around since I was a toddler. I went to study for 2 years in an Art major at State University of Albany and then got my Bachelors of Fine Art in Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology...But I lack confidence a lot of the time and really am unsure of myself and my work, and don't quite know along the spectrum of Quality where my work stands. I like to think my work stands deeply in need of improvement, but it's not 'bad' either. My problem I think is a lack of constant focus and very easy physical fatigue, in all aspects of my life. I at times suffer mild depression/art blocks, as well as not having a very big personal living space to use at hand, nor a very supportive/art enthusiastic family environment back home to nurture my development...every time i ask for feedback, it's either clueless "I DUNNO DONT ASK ME! :D" or unhelpful but well-meaning"YOU'RE BETTER THAN PICASSO"s or most frequently, from my dad, my original artistic influence in first place: "Noone should pay money for this work/You are a good artist but make terrible artwork, you are a waste..." I don't mean to vent my personal BS down here, but yeah, it's difficult to feel confident in myself or motivated to practice without my art school community to support me like it used to. I come upon other artistic professional's work online, and as inspiring as looking at others' work is, the more it makes me also feel dejected and hopeless and never capable of being THAT guy or finding my art niche in life as a career...My intent is to end that mindset and force feeding me some well-earned tough love and push my body and mind to suck it up and produce more streams of work. My anatomy, light and perspective all can stand to be developed stronger, and while I have endless streams of original character and story world ideas, I have drawn them very rarely because I often give up too easily.

My big main intents being here/with my art is this: 1. To cultivate new good friends with talent to teach me more. 2. To bring out my personal stories/visions into reality...I have a lot of stories/desire to build small concepts to big engrossing ones maybe into comics, graphic novels, or just painting series inside me, and I want to not have them just caged and disappear into nothing inside me when I am gone. I want to inspire or move people, or at least amuse and entertain them with my ideas if I can. 3. To help my sister's own personal creative wonderful stories and ideas achieve reality too. 4. I want to bring income into my life with my creative skills. I wish I knew a less vague definition than that but I don't. Dunno yet how or what specifically I want to do, I just wanna figure out what makes me satisfied and helps pays the bills by this point. I don't really believe in 'life destiny', that ultimately if you stick with only only doing 1 and only one kind of thing all your life, you're not living it well enough. I want to explore all kinds of fields of art, and meet all kinds of people. I wanna play and experiment with different mediums, genres, and styles. I wanna broaden my imagination and skill set in all sorts of directions while figuring out what my personal signature' is, if I have one. 4. And finally, I wanna improve my productivity and mood, I think communicating with others just period and other artists looking to improve from so many backgrounds may really make me feel less alone and challenged in a positive healthy way to make other people see my work/help other people out too.

Sorry for all the words, I hope that wasn't too painful.

Hello guys!)
My name is Victor, im 19 and i with the country where all too lazy to learn English (and me too    but i will try to fix it!!)   
Unfortunately, I was lazy, not only in this. About a year ago, I realized that my profession do not like me (I'm on the 3rd course of the Agricultural Faculty) and decided that I wanted to try to make a living with the help of drawing and I have on this is 3 years. Unfortunately for the first year I did very little and my level is too low for any entry in the industry (I would like to draw illustrations or concepts art) But I understand that this is very difficult and you need a lot of time to achieve this.  so I guess the first few years the opportunity to draw interfaces or objects (just for earn money to live, because I really do not want to work in my specialty) 
I hope that this forum and all of you help me overcome my weaknesses and to achieve my goals.   
Thank you for your attention 

Hello folks !
Also, happy new year ! I hope 2017 will be a great year for everybody here.

My name is Maxime, Luven for this forum, and I thought January the first was definitly going to be the day I finally present myself, for it's been two weeks christmas hollydays kept me away of doing anything productive (but I guess it's why it exists).
As you might have guess I am French (baguette!), so you should assume right now that I don't know english, as this assemption will surely get handy (and true) in the future !

I discovered this forum months ago because of some blog post by Noah Bradley, then bookmarked it and promised I would explore this strange place where digital artists use blood and photos of motorbikes to decorate their website. Honestly, now I like it, because it feels over the top and stuff, but by then I wondered if I was on the right place ^^
I know I should not introduce myself on such a note but I thought as veterans of the forum it may be interesting to see how newbies feel it. Don't bite ! I like it now !

So as I said I'm a french guy, 21, studying 2D and 3D with video game as focus, in Belgium. I'm in second year, and while I love it there, i feel like I'm doing a bit of everything (which I get why), and don't get to study skills I'm really interested further in. Like digital painting. So the idea is to do it on my time, make it meet my assignement for school when I can, and keep time to do it when school goes full 3D.

I must say I am really happy to be part of a community again, because I definitly miss it from the time I used to play Minecraft some years ago ! I hope i'll stick to it tho, as it can get tough early on. I hope when I'll get confortable around here I'll be able to give something back to you.
I must also say that I am actually pretty impressed by the people on this forum. I mean, here I see people really (really) getting to work, and it's wonderfull to look at. They have some goals and they do what needed to achieve it, it's crazy to see and it give much motivation. Also the community don't stop at saying "it's great, you're great! Keep doing it", but give some valuable feedback. It's priceless !  So thanks you all.

Hopefull I'll get my sketchbook on soon. I'll post what I've been doing recently, and for the fun and the record, some of the stuff I did before (like my first ever digital painting).
See you soon ! I'll be on Discord.


(I tought the following sounded kind of like my deathline, so I cut it and send it to the bottom :)

My goal long term is to be enough skilled to become freelance illustrator/concept artist, just like everybody else here i guess ^^.
My goal short term is to have a correct portfolio, student-wise, by July, so that I can send it to industry artists to have some feedback. Hopefully i would get some, so I can take the next few month until September-October to make my portfolio better and send it this time to some video game studio (no I will not send it to Blizzard I promess) seeking for internship in early 2018, as it is what the school want us to do during our third year here.

I plan this portfolio to be mostly painting, which it is why i'm here, with a bit of everything, character concept, environnement concept, props concept, illustration, but hopefully only with solid pieces. So I will also keep it short. One thing i've got to do in the next days is decide how many of which I want to do.
But I want also the portfolio to show that I can be decent at 3D, decent-not-insanely-good because I just don't want to be insanely good in 3D, so that I can be valuable the time of my intership in a small studio and maybe later if some studio opportunity shows up. This is where my school assignement enters the game, as I've got to create a sci-fi environment from scratch on Unreal Engine for PC/Xbox one, for June (or august if I fail then).

My daily goal is to be disciplined enough and maintain my routine so that I can accomplish my short goal, without getting crazy. It's about planning stuff and doing it mostly. For now it goes mostly like this :
Everyday I get some time to work for my school, some time to work for me and my short goal, some time to do nothing and some time to sleep. The hours are planned, so they don't change so often but they have some sort of flexibility because life. I plan what I got to do before it is the time to do it, so that I can keep an eye on the overall progression of everything. For as long as school work is 2D and can meet my short goal, i'll consider personal-work time and school-work time to be the same, then when school will go full 3D i'll make sure the two don't interfere. I think it will happen early or mid-February if I meet my school assignement plan.
There's numbers and stuff but it's not made for a presentation

If I can't do it then i'll figure why and make some change. I DON'T WANT to turn crazy or overload myself with work. By chance I've got great, great friends with whom I share the same goal (kinda), so it's definitly easier to keep at it. Maybe some will come here too !
I did it some time before Christmas Hollydays and it felt good. Then I had to go back to France for Christmas and I couldn't keep at it with family around. I go back to Belgium in two days, so I'm happy i can do it again soon.

(I think I'll do a real DEATHLINE in my time, but that's it for now. Thank you if you read it. Have a great year !)

(WARNING: I actually typed a lot here, just wanted to introduce myself is all)
Yo yo yo! I am the African Voodoo Child. I am an aspiring character designer/ character concept... person.

 Alright, I joined this website 6 months ago and I completely glossed over this thread. Whoops. It should of been the first thing on my list to do on this website. Welp, now I'm here with 9 posts on my sketchbook that involves me talking about my struggles while my art flies by with little commentary on it. I also notice that I type a lot more than most people on this website. I dunno, I feel empty when I post art and the caption is just "value study". So expect some words coming from me.

The main thing you are going to notice with me is that most of my stuff are traditional. And by traditional, I mean pencil and ink for like 99% of my work. It's not that I don't want to go digital (in this industry, it's mandatory at this point), it's that I currently have FireAlpaca right now and I'm dying every time I use it. Soon, Photoshop will be mine. For now, I only used the program for studies and ultra dirty value studies. I showed some studies on Women's Anatomy and Dog Skulls on here, so I guess you can find out how I do my thing.

As for my goals. One of my long term goals, is to have a stable life with this art business. That's pretty much everyone's goal on this website but there is more with me. I want to be an artist where companies will ask for my cooperation, find out that I'm busy with other shit, then visibly freak out. Not because I'm a last resort, but because they know I am the perfect person to do the job. I want to be an artist that gets interviews from groups like LevelUp! all over the place. I want to be an artist where I can actually stand side by side by people like Jim Lee and have good-ass dinner with them. I want to be the kind of artist that shouts out smaller artists, indie games, and lesser-known web comics because I know the struggle of getting your creations out there. I want to be the kind of artist that reminds people that art shouldn't be 100% influenced by the industry.  That is what I want to be. (Oh, and I want to open up my own studio)

For dream jobs... I'm not sure actually. My art seems... Cartoon Network level. My style is not exactly... "industry-friendly". What I mean is that most huge companies (video games) are leaning towards the hyper-realism side of character concepts, which is not that fun to me. Doing renders on each dragon scale, each chain on a mail shirt, each blemish on a person's face seems so... bleh. Realism is not exactly my go-to style is what I am saying. But guess who wants that shit?



The big bad video game industry. Blizzard, Besthuda, Naughty-Dog. HUGE companies that makes concepts that requires realistic proportions, anatomy, lighting, literally every single piece of art fundamental you can think of. Even though I LOVE this piece of concept right here (every single piece of art from Witcher 3 looks amazing), I do not see myself doing this for the rest of my life. I will feel disconnected from myself. Because I know I want to put some outlandish shit in my designs. Drama queen, you say? I agree. But like I said above, art should be fun. I would rather work on the next Darkstalker game than the next Uncharted because I know making up designs for new characters in Darkstalkers is going to be ultra fun. Meanwhile, Uncharted is just "make a dude in a shirt and jeans". Shit, I know making designs is work, but making me render normal shirts and pants are a new kind of torture for me, especially for someone who wants to create fantasy and mythology and other unrealistic stuff.

 For more insight on what I want:










1. Character Concept for Darkstalkers
2. Um... I'm not sure but it says it is for Blizzard.
3. Also, not sure but I love the design of the warriors. Also for Blizzard.
4. More concepts for Darkstalkers 
5. Official art of Cyclops in Marvel vs Capcom 2
6. Art for the book "The Edge Chronicles"
7. Official concept for Bayonetta

I see a common thing between all of this, imagination, design, brains coming together to create new things. Creating reimaginings of horror characters for a fighting game, making characters with exaggerated and unusual proportions and faces, incorporating my style on well known characters (which is just fanart but...). This is what I would love to do. But for now, I might have to settle for

I'll deal with it. Just have to brush up on my portraits, value, and material studies. I also have to create a new style, which helps with portfolios right?
(Also, NO DISRESPECT to these games or artists or their style. I sincerely, severely apologize if I came off as dragging them for doing what they do.)


Now some history about me.

I am currently a Junior in high school with zero artsy friends and little connections to other aspiring artists. I'm basically alone on this one. I never considered art until the 8th grade because I was too busy playing video games like it was no ones business. When I started drawing, I found myself creating long running comics and characters that pretty much played out like a Sailor Moon episode. They were literally a bunch of stick figures with square bodies and circular heads. I do not have these comics with me anymore cause I made the poor decision to throw all of it away, now I only have a few illustrations. I swear, if the power went out in my house I would be binge-reading that comic just so I can entertain myself.

I gotten into the 9th grade, still considering art my hobby. I actually wanted to be a chef, because I love food. Then in the middle of my freshman year I was like..... "I do more drawings than actual dinners". I have more fun drawing my own shit than frying up some sausage. It was a gradual process, but I started to draw almost everyday, I even took out my sketchbook instinctively every single class period. And then it just clicked...

I wanted to become an artist.




Two years, going on three is me drawing my damn butt off. I worked on my anatomy and proportions like my life depended on it. I watched artists like Sycra and Proko who helped me get up on my feet in terms of anatomy. After that, I did everything by myself. Finding landmarks and new ways to make 7-8 head human figures efficiently and effectively. No joke, I did this so much, if I created a figure where it was not a perfect seven head figure, I will stress out. I will stop the character, turn to a new page, and study proportions for an hour. I mean that's a good thing, but the sudden anxiety for no reason wasn't. I was KEEN on making everything perfect to the model. "The bottom of the chest is equal to the bottom of the deltoid", "Put other cranium below the original to find the collarbone". I will tell myself this every time I made a human character. Then recently... I just said fuck it (The sketch above illustrates my change in thinking while drawing). I let loose. I didn't really think about the ribcage or pelvis anymore, I just drew.

2016 was the year where I finally started to expand my horizons. I ultimately moved on to animals, different body types, plants, insects, and women. I'm telling you, if I kept on doing my proportion and anatomy studies I would NEVER move on. And I'm not even sure what happened for me to be this way. I'm just gonna say that I finally got bored of drawing men every damn day, better not to think about it I guess.

I joined this site because I need to know how it feels to be in a community. Like I said above, I have zero friends who want to pursue painting and drawing. It's time to be around other people who knows the struggle. Also, me getting critiques is more infrequent than a JonTron video coming out. So now I am reaching out to the internet to help me. I also want to help other artists as well and give encouragement to them. Hopefully, I can start my own community on Facebook or something and do fun challenges and critique each other and pat each other on the backs... Y'know?

That werebunny sketch up there? I want to refine my skills and redo this as a full fledged painting and make it like that illustration involving that green bartender. That is the life for me. Cause if I can draw something that I actually like. Imagine if I can paint this and put it into my portfolio with turnarounds and notes...

Whew. That's it! (Told ya that I type too much). Thank you SO much for reading and keep on working on that dream art job. Bye now.

Hey guys,

I bought one of dave's patreon tutorials an he was talking about that group here. So I'm here...kinda. I'm actually new to art at all, I started to look at it more seriously like 6 months ago. Before that I didn't do much art. It got lost when school, sports and all that kind of crap came into life, and so I abandoned my pencil, the comics I drew and sold to friends and card games I created. and after many years now, I realised that the crap i did in my entire life were not the things I wanted to do for the rest of my life. That said, 6 months ago i decided to take stuff serious, attended the art camp program by noah bradley (to get started at all), bought books and lastly end up here, hoping to push myself more and more and be the best I could possibly get. Okay, enough talked here, I'm super excited for this community and hungry to learn everything possible out there! 

medokin_of_orb is my Instagram name, so you can check some of my stuff out :33

Greetings,

Niko

What's up?  My name is ReAnne and jeez introductions are hard!  I've been studying art on my own for a few years and frankly I'm missing that connection between students and other artists.  I've contemplated reddit art buddy and deviantart (which I do have http://sansreanne.deviantart.com/ ) , but I feel like this place has the values and vibes that I'm looking for.  If you want to be successful you hang with successful people right?  So I hope you guys don't mind!  :)  
Eventually I want to get into illustration.  I usually draw in my sketchbook practicing that draftsmanship and resisting the urge to do chicken scratch.  Digital is hella fun and the colors ohh man are awesome, but there is still a gap between the two and I always get caught up in rendering.  
Anyway I'm looking forward to starting a sketchbook and getting to know everyone.  Thanks for reading.

Hey folks! :)

I'm David your fellow wannabe artist from Germany.
I'm 21 and I've  been trying to get better at art for quite a while now but always struggled with consistency.
This year I started studying Illustration which has been pretty good so far. Although I feel like I make the most progress when I study on my own but then I also tend to isolate myself. :/

Sooo anyway, I hope I can become a Dagger and develop into an amazing artist alongside all of ya!

Cheers!

Hi minna-san!
I am GearBlueLuffy.
Member Of Straw Hat Pirate Crew (Secret Member)

I made an introduction in my new SB here:

http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-8...#pid109189


My main motivation is to scare Brook away and creep Zoro