Cut and Paste Critiques

[Daniel Andrews]

This is a great Thread Bai Fan!

[Dorkthrone]

This is a really good thread.

[Sepulverture]

This is a good thread. I have a slight suggestion for another thread that should be stickied. Etiquette for asking for crits.

I HATE it when someone throws and image into a thread and just says 'critique this'.

It makes it so much easier to help someone if they tell us what they are having trouble with. It's not tremendously hard to go into a thread and point out some mistakes, or something like that but it makes it a lot easier to go into said thread with someone stating 'ok... i've got this far but I think I need some help with the colors/composition/the anatomy doesn't seem quite right/blah blah' and personally I like critiquing these kind of threads where the artist obviously wants to improve the image and has some serious desire to do so.

[Bai Fan]

I actually had another thread like that which wasn't stickied. It was called the art of the critique.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=145590

It kinda died pretty quickly...

[Tesla]

But... many of these tips don't have to work in every piece, isn't it?
Anyway they are very nice ^^

[Chiko]

Thanks for the tidbits. They're exceedingly helpful. Especially the cool light/ warm shadows vise verse tip. Thank You for the post.

[shiroboi]

I think this is a really helpful thread in many ways. However, I would hope that people would at least put these ideas in their own words. I would feel pretty insulted if someone copy and pasted a critique of my work, whether it be relevant or not. Its just a few clicks above people on forums saying "search noob". Kinda takes the human interaction out a bit.

But again, I think many of these critique ideas really address some common concerns and I'll probably use this as a checklist as well. Thanks!

[Sunny]

This really is a great resource to learn. I havent found many yet so thank you so much for taking the time and energy to post what you find! Its my 3rd bookmark now, thats an important one

"Draw what you see, not what you think you see." I heard that somewhere before and its always stuck with me.

[Junpei]

"Don't mix your warms and cools, it creates a muddy look and takes away from the form. {Chagan}"

That's what I thought, but then I read this guys sketchbook and he suggests using warm and cool colors for shading highlight/shadows.

[Bai Fan]

A good rule to go by is warm light, cool shadow... cool light, warm shadow. I think the quote you have there means don't mix warms and cools to make up your colors.

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

"Don't mix your warms and cools, it creates a muddy look and takes away from the form. {Chagan}"

That's what I thought, but then I read this guys sketchbook and he suggests using warm and cool colors for shading highlight/shadows.

Probably should've rephrased that. Yes, there's a range of warm and cool colors in both light and shadow. The muddy look happens when a placed note is too cool or too warm compared to what's around it. If you had a white object in yellow light with bluish shadows, and placed bright blue notes in the light area, you'd get mud, but that doesn't mean you can't have any cools in the light area- against the yellow, a red or orange or lower chroma yellow would count as cool, but against the shadow area it's warm.

...Temperature's such a freaking messy concept .

Edit: Oh, yeah, I'm Chagan btw.

[blrose]

"A warm light source has a cool shadow and a cool light source has a warm one. Showing this in your work will help add depth to the piece."

That's really helpful. I must have not been paying attention in the art classes I took to not remember that.

"Try and study naturalistic lighting setups; it is rare to see a character under a single strong light source, and because of that it makes a characters believability a lot weaker. {Muzzoid}"

How would you set up something like this??

[pull.the.switch]

Wow very much thx for the list . wonderfull list of things you have to pay attention to while painting. Very much thx

[Lhune]

- Whenever you move on to drawing a new subject that you're not familiar with, don't try to go by what you have learned for other subjects, making things up as you go. Instead, start over, practise and study this new subject as if you had no knowledge of anything else before you started.

A good tip perhaps for animal-artists trying to draw people or people-artists trying to draw animals. But it basically applies to everything.

[Bai Fan]

But... many of these tips don't have to work in every piece, isn't it?
Anyway they are very nice ^^

I am sorry that I passed over this the without commenting. I think that is a really good point. I think it is like stylization. You don't have to use correct anatomy, but if you want to have a believable stylization you should at least know correct anatomy so you can deviate from it intentionally.

PS. Great name by the way.

[banuo]

I'm a professionnal storyboard artist.
I hung around in this forum for more or less than a month. I was pretty excited to give the best advice I could 'cause I remember very well those distressing years of learning.

But then I got tired of repeating the same two pieces of advice, namely:

1- Learn to draw. It's important.

2- Do another one. Don't stick to that failed attempt. Draw more, try things.

[sombertwin]

I'm a professionnal storyboard artist.
I hung around in this forum for more or less than a month. I was pretty excited to give the best advice I could 'cause I remember very well those distressing years of learning.

But then I got tired of repeating the same two pieces of advice, namely:

1- Learn to draw. It's important.

2- Do another one. Don't stick to that failed attempt. Draw more, try things.

I am glad you have kept repeating advice. Sometimes I think good advice needs to be repeated at least a zillion times for it finally to hit home. The second point of your advice is the hardest I think. How does one discern a failed attempt? I am not sure why some of us (me) cannot stop when something is not working. If you created it once, you create it better the next time.

So when I read your advice, it was a reminder. I wanted to thank you for not getting too tired to repeat yourself. I am not a story board artist..i do not know what kind of artist I am yet, but I do know good advice when I read it.

Thanks

Chai

[banuo]

I am glad you have kept repeating advice. Sometimes I think good advice needs to be repeated at least a zillion times for it finally to hit home. The second point of your advice is the hardest I think. How does one discern a failed attempt? I am not sure why some of us (me) cannot stop when something is not working. If you created it once, you create it better the next time.

So when I read your advice, it was a reminder. I wanted to thank you for not getting too tired to repeat yourself. I am not a story board artist..i do not know what kind of artist I am yet, but I do know good advice when I read it.

Thanks

Chai

Hi! I'm very touched by your message. I'm really glad I could help someone out there!

What I meant by «do another one» is that you can't nail a concept the first time around. You gotta try lots and lots of different ideas. This is true for both beginners and pros.

Say a professional concept artist has to design a demon.
He's gonna go «Awright... What's my demon going to look like?»
At that point, he's going to do dozens of tries, some only thumbnails, some more elaborate. Out of these dozens of attempts, maybe only one or two are going to be pushed to detailing and rendering.

But when a beginner wants to create a demon, he often does only one sketch and posts it here.
Then he gets criticism and advice with which he retouches and paints over the original design a gazillion times without ever letting go. Without thinking:
«Hey! Maybe my first design was bad and instead of trying to fix it, I should make another one keeping in mind the critique and advice I got here!»

That's what I meant when I wrote Do another one.

[Kiera]

I think this pictures could help almost every second thread in the crit section.



The antidote to panel shading is to work from the big forms to the small forms. This applies to everything, to compositions, to figures, even comic making.

I didn't make this btw, just found it on an imageboard.

[sombertwin]

What I meant by «do another one» is that you can't nail a concept the first time around. You gotta try lots and lots of different ideas. This is true for both beginners and pros.

That's what I meant when I wrote Do another one.

I understood completely what you meant, but your advice is good for all types of artist. Figure drawing and/or character drawing should take numerous attempts. i think even if the first drawing by some off chance the universe has aligned itself for a moment to give you a perfect figure/character/landscape/concept, one should continue to try different ways of seeing. i know I used to try so hard to get it right, that I forgot that there is more than one way to get things right.

The advice for me was timely because I had been stuck in the mud with one idea without even trying to take on a different approach. I was producing decent stuff for the level I am at as an artist, but it was not right and I knew it, but I kept on trying to make it right. When I changed directions everything opened up and the subject I had been working on is near completion. I have not made the sign yet, but the advice is going up in several places in my work area to help me remember.

I just hope you keep on giving your advice. Folks like you are a rare gift. thank you again.

Chai

[Mengel]

My advice: read this when suffering from artist block - if it doesn't tell you directly what you're doing wrong it may give you a boost of confidence to read things you believe you've done correctly.

[wooden mango]

Ooh, this is super helpfull and gives me ideas to incorporate into my own art

Here's one I often say to people, here and elsewhere

Color

Experiment with hue. Don't just add black or white when creating your shading/highlighting colours. Look carefully at references of the items (or something most like the items) that you're colouring and see what other colours are being reflected back at you. It will make the picture more realistic and can also be used to add mood.

[Bai Fan]

I have been away for a while, and dealing with some health issues for a while... but I am back and hopefully will be adding a lot more to this section. The first addition will be to add "Library Lists" to the sections to list the best books people can read to improve in that certain area.

Hope things have been well with you all,
-d

[Lightship69]

I would agree with Kev a discussion on how to critique would be useful, I personnaly am of the opinion that if you have nothing constructive to say about a peice then stay quiet.
Poking holes in someones dream project just for your own self agrandisment definately does not belong here. over 95% of the critiques I have seen here are intended to be beneficial and helpful but there are a few that make me groan inside especially when you go look at thier sketchbook and find either the same low grade tat or worse no sketchbook because they are afraid to post.

Keep it to the point and try to be specific about what it is that you do not like in the image or what you think would improve it, and check back in a day or so just in case the person does not understand what you are getting at in your post.

Lastly many thanks to all that take the time to have a look at my stuff and point me in the right direction.

[rice32]

Great thread.

[AChipps]

I see a lot of Loomis here. It is like seeing those old reading books again in everyone's art.
See Dick run. See Jane play. See spot run.

It has been years since I studied real people, but I knew about Loomis's ideas that everyone has standards. It wasn't everyone has standards, just Loomis. He studied what he thought was the average man in a mirror in the 1920's.
In real life two people the same height can stand side by side and one will have hips up higher than the other one. One will have a bigger head than the other one. One will have broader shoulders than the other one.
After all of my studies the average person is different from everyone else, and only one thing is the same. That is height and arm spread are the same.

If you build a person from that, you will notice when you lower the hip the shoulder need to be wider, and the head needs to be a little bigger. Most big boned people have bigger heads.
I have been told for years there are two kind of people, Big Boned, and Small. It took a while but when I saw it as not fat, but actually big bones, I saw a lot more differences.
I have big carpenter hands, that I thought was a mans hands, but women in India have them too.

If you study from life and try measuring to find a standard you will not find one. What you will find is something real. Witness to joint limits and flexible angles, and a lot of things to tell you what is impossible on sight. Then you see people that is not normal that are double jointed. You learn a lot from life, and that is what you intended to draw.
Not someone version of it.

After all I have learned and somewhat forgotten, you can't make standards that don't exist. Learn from real life. You study each person and every object so you can draw it, then some day you use what you remember to create your own version.

I have studied anatomy from books and named each muscle, but when it came down to drawing the skin I had to start over. I studied every bump, wave crease and fold of skin, and forgot each muscle and bone unless it had effects on the skin. People only bend at the joints, but I didn't need to know how the bones where shaped or even look like if I was only drawing the skin.

[axisis]

I would never use "cut and paste" crits, because I always try put all crits into my own words, Because I feel that it would make the other guy feel that my interest in giving a personal opinoin is somewhat distanced behind the wall of the internet.

What Im saying is that I always try to give critique as If im talking to them in person. I feel that Im engaging more with the other person better.

Also I've seen that some users seem to give some very harsh wakeup calls to new members, From the way they type (almost certainly will be a cut and paste), to me it seems like they are constantly angry throughout their critique as if they're yerning to type: "When will these F$%king new users learn"

But maybe Ive got this whole thing wrong (as Im pretty new too), Perhaps I havent been reading what you guys have been discussing and maybe
"cut and paste" does work on others, It just seems impersonal to me, thats why I wouldnt do it.

Dont get me wrong, I think that being honest and saying exactly what your thinking is a very good way to help someone become a better artist, but I Just like to be as engaging as I can be aswell.

THE END

[denidimochka]

Spend more time on composition, remember the rule of thirds, identify the focal point(s), reference the masters of composition. You can have the best most creative idea in the world but when your layout is working against it the impact is dampened.

[Kakashi_Aisuryu]

This is an amazing thread. I've been trying for years to sketch and draw properly but the only critique I ever got was "oh, that's nice" while inside I knew that the eyes weren't right or the background was too flat but I could never figure out how to change it to make it better.

You've all somehow managed to give little ol' chicken-sh*t me the courage to actually pick up a pencil and paper again...Thanks peeps. ^_^