Erratic Emanations (UPDATE)

[The Sceptical Saint]

Welcome to the initial dump of my erratic art-like emanations.
My goal here is to get alittle less erratic in skill & motivation. I figure part of my motivational issues is lack of confidence, and maybe not challenging myself enough and getting bored. So to kick off a new approach, I decided to have a crack at doing a full illustration. Not just a character floating in space.
This has blown out into a short 2pg Omar comic.(yeah, season 5 of The Wire is on it's way to my mailbox and I needed a fix ).
Also a couple of older "floating character pics" I did for a film studies assignment.
Feel free to make with the crits, tips or suggestions, I need a bit of a kick in the ass

[The Sceptical Saint]

Here's the rough first page of that Omar comic, plus those floating character pics

[Oatestwder]

nice man, i wish i could draw figures, yours are looking pretty sweet! in your comic page i think the arms of your characters look a little odd sometimes, especially those holding guns and the guy leaning on the rail, they look very stiff.

NZ!!! its good to meet a fellow kiwi here finally, keep it up!

[The Sceptical Saint]

Layn' down some rules for myself. I could just keep 'em to myself, but this way I'll feel more of a dick if I break 'em.

1. No floating figures, always have some sort of background.
2. At least 3 dynamic figures for every "standing there like a log" figure.
a) gesture drawings don't count as full figures.
3. at least one, 1 hour session from posemanics every update.
4. Update every 2 days, unless class work gets in the way but no less than
once a week.

If you can think of any more helpful rules I can lay down for myself I'd love to hear 'em.

Cheers Oates, still got away to go yet but I'm swinging by your sb more often to see if I can noodle out how you get those envrioments so good.

Some UFC sketches and gestures to see if I can work the stiffness out of my figures. Plus some expressions from Artnatomy.

[The Sceptical Saint]

A study from a screenshot of Yojimbo, a sketch to nut-out an idea (a routine maintance check onboard a generation ship), gestures to figure out something for Omar pg2, and finally this updates mandatory posemanic gestures.

[HunterKiller_]

Hey bud.
Forum I was talking about is http://www.cgnz.co.nz. It's not really active, but they hold events every now and then.

You've made a good start here. Keep going!

Peace

[The Sceptical Saint]

Dammit, broke the rules already. But now the mid-semester assignment rush is out of the way I have 2 weeks to scotch-tape them back togther. Presenting the stuff I squeezed in over the last week and abit of poor time management biting me in the ass.

*Cheers for the link HK.

[The Sceptical Saint]

Todays specials are: Another Yojimbo frame speedpaint, an initial sketch for Chow-Aladdin, Some hands, and gestures.
Bon Appetite.

[The Sceptical Saint]

Going through one of those phases where I get all Hyper-critical and frustrated. I'm abandoning/deleting/throwing out pretty much everything, or so it feels like.
Anyone got any tips on working through that? Usually this is point just before I stop drawing at all for awhile, and I'd rather not keep doing that.
Well here's what I managed to scrape togther for this post.

[Eric-Anthony]

nice sb so far. i like the first painting in post #7, its kinda cinematic. keep it up

[Mussy]

yea some nice unique stuff here, keep it up and post more

[The Sceptical Saint]

Just got a great crit from CrookedHorn on my Chow piece, thought the info in it is probably useful to other people as well. So I've decided to post it here.
I don't know how to qoute from PMs so I've just copy/pasted it, the paint overs are attatched at the bottom of the post. Hope you lot find it as useful as I did.

CROOKEDHORN SAIDA wonderful bit of advice Aly Fel bestowed upon me a while back was, the best format for the thumbnail image for voting is 600 px wide x 1000 px height. I expanded your image and painted in the empty space to fill out the 600x1000.
After dropping in the golden selection on a separate layer set to color dodge I quickly see that your composition is very good. Cheers to that, for this is definitely one of the most over looked aspects of concept art, and you just about nailed it.

I used some of the base tones you had in your color layer and created an earth tone ground, kind of like toning your canvas before painting in oils. Then we take your grey scale image and set it to hard light layer above the toned layer. eye drop tool some of the colors and fill in the space to fill out the 600x1000.



There were issues with perspective. I dropped down the one point perspective grid using a brush that I found on m@'s brush list....i think if his thread is still up some where there is a download for his brushes. if not whit brachna(spelling?) has the brush in his palette which comes with the download that can be purchased at MassiveBlack's website.

I pushed your background back a bit and added more of a scene. sometimes less is more. it took me a long time to understand that a house can be four strokes of a brush. In this case its a middle eastern bazzarr tent in about....lets say five strokes. this adds a little story to your piece.



OK so now that we have a background blocked in lets take another look at those arabian guards. Adding to the story we will arrange their posture in a more dynamic/agressive way. we add a bazzarr trader to the mix giving out Aladdin's position and now we have drama! Since we dropped the perspective grid we can knock in some shadows to add depth, and it makes it easier(but by no means easy :p ) to paint in the legs and the bazzarr trader's hand pointing down the ally.

I painted over your face, but by no means needed to. that was rendered very very well and I love the expression you captured on it. I needed to paint over it though to get the gesture down for the rest of the body. I moved his left arm to still show movement, as Aladdin as a character was cunning and fast and ready to act, being a thief and all. he could also be holding something, bread, apples, lamps, and so on.

There is something i would like to note. When ever possible, never crop an image at the joints of the body, elbows, knees, wrist, base of the neck, and belly button. This is a compositional no no and literally severs the body part from the scene. the brain sees it as severed. and the image loses ground in the mind and turns into an incomplete image.

now, there are times when this can work, manly when limbs are cut off....thats about it.

[The Sceptical Saint]

ChoW Final (still not entirely happy with it, but it's passable), quick painting of a local landmark, some prelim sketches to a painting I want to do, and posemainics gestures.
Thanks for stopp'n by

[raminafshari]

i am impressed by your drawings i really love your style in comics .

[Crahzz]

I like how you've used the fibonacci rule to analyze your own painting - or to set it up that way - But like I say to a lot more people, Observation drawings!! They really are the basics. Maybe in your case it's not that much of a requirement - but what is in this case is lighting studies. Your images are all a bit flat because the lighting isn't as extreme as it could be to become really interesting. So making some drawings of... idk, apples under a desk light might help you find the extremes a bit more ^^

[The Sceptical Saint]

raminafshari- Thanks
Crahzz - Thanks, but I can't take credit for the analysis that was CrookedHorn giving me a good crit'n, I do try to think about composition though. And you're right about the weak lighting & values - I've been working in B&W so much because I've been trying to work on that. I probably should bite the bullet and do some proper light studies

And here's today's pics: Travis Bickle, and two sketchs on a theme. I might do a few more of those over the next week or so. If you guess the theme you won't get a prize, but you will get a plesant tingly sense of satisfaction.

[Oatestwder]

i turn away and bam! nice man this shit is tight. so jealous of that anatomy.

btw to "make that link show up as a phrase or something" you go: [url=www.whateveryouwant*]insert some random text[/url*] just take out the '*'

[The Sceptical Saint]

Cheers Oates, I was chuffed with how Travis turned. Well except for the hands. It's always the hands, bloody hands. Oh and thanks for the help with the link to phrase conversion.

Now have some spheres/balls to kick off my light studies, and my work towards this weeks CHoW. Now off to watch The Wire (It's here! Yay!)

[The Sceptical Saint]

Bah! Too much line-learning for play I'm in, not enough drawing. Missed the CHoW- Veteran deadline, I'm including the final sketch I did this post but I probably won't come back to it for a bit. So here's a bunch of stuff in varying degrees of finishedness

[The Sceptical Saint]

Quick update of the days output, bunch of characters that spun-off from the backstory I was making up as I worked on the gunslinger-guy from last post.
Hell, lets see if I can keep off being distracted long enough to spin-up enough of them to cover the "characters of intreast" of a frontiers-town

[The Sceptical Saint]

Just about to hit black week for the play I mentioned earlier, 'tween that and class updates may be even more erratic than usual. But here's the latest anyway: Another Yojimbo frame, a fourth character for the western town, and a D&D character of mine

[The Sceptical Saint]

Tried to have a proper stab at the character design process, so here's fifth character for western town ( I really should come up with a name for it, any ideas?) - Cager Douglass, blacksmith & ferrier

[Windmaker]

Hey there! Awesome thread you've got going! Love the variety of studies you do! And also it's great to see all the different expressions and poses you're drawing in your works. Well done!
Keep posting and having fun now

[The Sceptical Saint]

Been having problems with my ISP, hence the lack of posting. I'm gonna post some of what I did over my involuntary break from the interwebbs and use the rest to pad out smaller updates.

Windmaker - cheers, that's one of the things I really wanted to get myself thinking about. I've a tendency towards expressionless/mildly angry floating characters that I've got just about under control now.

[The Sceptical Saint]

Have some of this! : Burn Notice frame, "pretty much done, but possibly part of a bigger image" woman, a speed-painting, and WIP of a medieval version of the punisher (partially based on Tim Bradsheets' cover for the Naked Kill).

[Oatestwder]

looking good man that burn notice frame is freaking awesome! I'd point out the arms on the chick they look seriously weird, one just ends with no hand and the other looks verys distorted, hard to tell whats going on

[The Sceptical Saint]

I've made a bit of an edit on the chick, but I think I might have to do the whole thing over to really fix it, the hands supposed to be behind her head. Is that more readable now?

In other news, I also drew: a Spaceship scrapyard, a very quick frame from Firefly( I kinda gave up on it), a noir meeting, and last of all the comparison on "what the hells going on with her arms" girl.

[The Sceptical Saint]

Big gap, but assignments are out of the way, play's finished, and last exam tomorrow. So I should be getting back to regular SB updates from now on.

First up is a WIP, armour's not finished yet but I like it enough that I'm going to make it into a full illo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza eventually. The rest are a either quasi abandoned sketches that I squeezed in, or an Ear anatomy study.

If anyone's got some tips on rendering armour, feel free to share 'em.

[The Sceptical Saint]

Threw a little colour on to the Don Quixote portrait, sketched out the next stage, experimented a bit with armour rendering and denim texturing.

[XTN]

these are really good mate... cheers for commenting on my stuff by the way.

on your first post, you said "I decided to have a crack at doing a full illustration. Not just a character floating in space". I think that is a really healthy attitude. I see peoples sketchbooks and they're full of little doodle and 'studies' and half finished drawing (including mine) but it's really important to learn how to 'finish' and image. Perseverance is the key to success (to be corny).

I suggest that you take a bit of time to go over some of you older drawing and see what you can do to get them to the next level. Choose one and give your self a critique as if it wasn't yours... check the anatomy, composition etc. This will be a good test to see how much you've learn't and it will teach you self reliance (VERY, VERY IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE FOR CONCEPT ARTISTS)... if you're not sure if the anatomy is off, check out some books on the subject and search the net for photos that closely resemble what you've drawn. There are 2 ways to use refference material... pre and post imaging. Pre imaging is when you look for a photo that suits your need and copy it out right, and post imaging is when you've 'laid' your image out roughly and go about finding photos that helps you fix and render your image.

I quickly drew a rough pose, then I went through my library and found the closest images I could find, an arm from here... a leg from there... you get the picture


Now, to get the most out of any refference libraries, you need to know the fundamentals first... learn your anatomy... every bone, every muscle... once you've got a good under standing of it, the next stage is "turnarounds". You've got your basic turn around... a character with its arms out, standing straight. Then you've got the intermediate "posed" turnarounds - the same as the basic turnarounds but with a 'posed' character (ie. doing something). After that, you've got your Advanced "obtuse" turnarounds, This is were the pivot point is anywhere beyond 90 degrees (essentially, on a weird angle).







And if you're feeling really adventureous... try a Posed Obtuse Turnaround

This final image is what you can do with these turnarounds and refference images... Note that this is not just usefull for "shape and form" but also really handy for rendering and shadow placement.



Hope this helps you out.