so I need help and I want to like this forums

[Lilya]

Here's my 4th try to make a thread. I know I've away for years but I don't remember this place being so hostile to newcomers.

anyway. The thing I need help with is much more solved by a good conversation I think. I want to improve, see? I study graphical design at college and have been involved with art, we had art classes on the starting semesters, but still it isn't the goal of my major to take in deep into digital art. On the other hand I have an assignment for this semester which involves making a short movie, which can be filmed, 3d animated, cartoon, whatever ya name it, I'd like to make a cartoon but i don't quite feel up to the task, because i take so long to do anyhting... I can't even finish one drawing per day, I dont see how I could do 30 frames per second in time for this task :/

my teacher sort of pointed me in the right direction, with exercises and stuff, but everytime I bring her my digital stuff for her to see she longfaces me and makes me go back to pencils and markers. Ever since that i think i added steps to my digital work that mimic steps I learned at school for traditional media, and whenever I'm on paper I just have to make it work like photoshop layers, with light tables and thin sheets. I don't think any of this is bad, but I feel divided and sort of incomplete. I ended up jumping from traditional to digital back and forth and bridging in between.

thing is everything takes so freaking long. I understand that high quality work needs time to be completed, I understand I should expect to spend a long time for a really good and high res and quality piece, but how long is too long? I mean it takes me days sometimes just to be happy with the basic outline of things and start to really work.... and then after weeks and weeks I will notice something is all wrong and realize I have to totally start over. ok maybe I jsut need to keep practicing, but I cant seem to get anything done.

where is the biggest mistake here? in losing the will power to keep going? in using the wrong kind of technique maybe? I mean how long do you guys take to finish something you consider good enough? How do I get past the plateau I've hit here?

just because i need a visual example....



look at that girl. It's my latest. I totally lost the taste for it after putting in over 15h of work, about 3h per day, and realizing the right arm is completely wrong and half the details I added are just bad, as in looking fake or glassy instead of metalish.

So is this going somewhere? am I'm in the "expected" range of timeframe fro this? am I jsut too freaking slow and should find a better/faster way to do things?

[invinciblewombat]

the reason people are being hostile here is you're not absorbing what they're telling you, the reason this looks off is because you don't understand what you're doing yet. you need to study anatomy and color theory, a lot. dont expect to make this picture perfect, you dont have the basics down so you're not going to be able to make this look like you want it to. learn from it, see what your weakness are and study up in those areas. it's a lifelong process and you are not going to see results overnight.

I'm not sure where the rant came from about animation and graphic design, if you want to study painting though you are in the wrong major.

[Lilya]

the "hostile" I mentioned wasnt about ppl's attitudes, which by the way are fine, is about 90% of the stuff I tried to post missing. I think they got caught by moderators, I just wonder why.

[invinciblewombat]

my bad, people are often standofish to new users here, admins hold new threads if the user doesn't have many posts as well, it's an anti spam filter

[Avvatar]

Agreed with Wombat. You are trying to do something that is far above your current skill level. Stick with pencil paper and draw, draw, draw some more, and then draw even more. You get past that plateau by doing studies to understand what you are drawing, not by spending fifteen hours on something that you probably did with no reference. If you say you are spending days just to get a decent outline then you are doing something wrong. Try doing thirty second and one minute gestures. Not just a few, but 50-100 per night.

Also, where did you get the 30 frames per second idea for animation? They run on 24 and then usually shot on 2's so in general you only need 12 drawing per second, and then more or less depending on the action.

[Brazucka]

Yeah brother,

They´re right. It comes with time, patience and it´s not easy to get, because there´s a lot of high expectations and frustration in the process. Work on the basics, like pose, shape, gesture. If you try to make a "blizzard like" image now, it won´t happen. Not because you´re no capable of doing it, but just like me, you can´t do it now.

I´ll try to put this way: would you challenge Anderson Silva on your first day of MMA training? Or even after your first year?

Keep working hard, ok? Kei Acedera told a friend of mine last week: "Don´t be lazy, fight for your dreams!"

Cheers!

[LAG]

You just gotta fight

Echoing those above. Please, put down photoshop and painting and pick up your pencil and paper. You will be much better off if you start a sketch book thread here and start laying a solid foundation for you to build on. It takes some longer than others.

Idiot Apathy's Peer project thread is good: Peer Project

We all want to jump right into the "fun stuff" right away, but you will be a much better artist if you can hold off and develop your drawing skills further before you try to jump ahead. We all need to walk before we can run Best of luck!

[Artfix]

LAG those are awesome links wow!

[Lilya]

thx a lot for the replies guys
this place is still awesome *__*

I have kept sketchbooks since 2007ish, yeah, I havent made proper use of it I guess. So I scanned all of it and chose a few pages to post, the ones with more relevent stuff I guess. thing is... the place where i seem to use the sketchbook the most is in the subway, but it shakes xD

here's my sketchbook link... I've put down dates to it... thing is ... i dont see a tiny bit of improvement there.

[Avvatar]

You are drawing anime and stuff out of your head, that's why. Draw from real life!

[Revidescent]

If you go through your own previous posts (click your username and "find all posts"), your other threads still seem to be there. This one got some good responses from people; I was wondering why you never came back to it...

[Lilya]

yep, and I posted a big answer there with the kinds of exercises I did and stuff and it got kidnapped by moderators it seems. It might show in a few days? I wish I had some way to see what's in queue for approval and what has been rejected. *sigh* I figure how to make the search work though. I have to click to reply to something and then the search link works. ODD.

and my nerdrage post on the support area got a cute reply saying I suck and I shouldn't be here anyway.

I think the links that LAG posted are awesome and yeah I think I might be discouraged by the reasons stated in "you just gotta fight" and there are some exercises in the peer project that I have done so long ago... and others I have never tried before, but should I post my results there? the last entry seem to be from months ago :/

I went quickly thru the mentoring area of the forum. is that something I should try?