SJB's Erstwhile Sketchbook

[SJ Bennighof]

EDIT: Most of that crap is massively out of date. My webcomic is relaunched and active. The link is in my sig. The images in this first post suck, but I'll leave em up for posterity's sake. /EDIT

Okay, guys, I've decided to start a skecthbook. Lemme tell a bit about myself, artistically. I've got a webcomic which is about to be moved to from its Keenspace subdomain and relaunched in a real domain, and at that point I'll start updating it again. Everything in the Keenspace domain, in my sig, is from before I started posting here. In here I'll just post concept art for it and random whatnot. For the first post I just went through my comp and put up verything with any quality to it at all. As such, there's some semblance of a chronological order to this stuff, but not guaranteed by any means. I've posted some of this stuff around CA before, but I thought it best to get all my struff centralized for the sketchbook even if it's gone up before. So. I'm very open the harshest, most direct criticism, so long as it's specific.

[cthomp]

i would use some refrences next time. also maybe study soem basic shapes and form. also maybe look at the texture of some stuff.

[Dan1989]

Lots of potential here. You are off to a good start. I think the best thing you can do to improve is to study from reference and/or life. If you are serious about art I would take a step back from drawing in a cartoon/anime style and focus more on realism. You won't believe how much it will improve your drawing skills. If you haven't checked out http://saveloomis.org yet, you really should.

[SJ Bennighof]

Still haven't quite gotten anime out of my system? Lord knows I've tried, but I do recognize that traces of stuff always stays in. Now, I like the general idea behind my style as of yet, but of course you're talking about stepping back from style altogether and focusing on pure realism, which I can readily agree with. I'll try to get some life drawing up in the next update. Thanks for stopping in!

[SJ Bennighof]

[Sinix]

Life sketches are definitely the way to go.. try some skull studies too, they'll help with stuff like eye placement. Anyway, you're on the right track.

[magicgoo]

Well, I think that you have potential, just like what Dan1989 said.

You have a cartoonish style, so don't be afraid to exaggerate the muscle strokes in the bodies. Be confident about the curves in the shoulders and biceps, and definitely use references from any magazines for accuracy.

"Shape" and "Fitness" are both women's mags, but they show off great muscle tone in the female figures without letting the women get freakish. So pick some mags up at the store, and tell them your gf sent you if they look at you funny

[SJ Bennighof]

Oh, the leg on the first one was just some early concept art on the page that I used.

[character]

sweet dude, good job. keep on drawin =)

[Cookiedough]

Glad you're figuring out the loomis stuff. Keep it up!

[Mindflaw]

Thought I would check out your sketchbook not just arguing with you Seems like you found a good approach to get away from the animestyle If you haven't already checked out the public library for anatomy books I suggest you give that a try.

[SJ Bennighof]

Hey, debate's impersonal.

Yeah, I actually spent the entire day today getting some Loomis. I cannot wait to start looking it over.

Seems like you found a good approach to get away from the animestyle

My approach? I completely stopped watching it for five years. Started again last October.

[Mindflaw]

I meant the approach being getting good anatomy books read them and draw from them thus getting away from the anime style.

Keep the updates flowing and if I think I have something useful to say I will post.

[SJ Bennighof]

This is what I've been working on the past couple of days. The main image was just scanned pencil, and all of the other images were moused up in the GIMP, and all of it including the coding is original. Seeing as how I was learning to do all of this sort of coding as I went, I think I did pretty well on that. But what of the main image? The original scan is here:



I woud have rather waited to do this until after some more Loomis studies, but I had to make progress on the site construction. How did it come out?

[ZapRadon]

Gonna color it?

[SJ Bennighof]

No. I'm really leaning toward sketches for my site headers. I like the effect. At least for now, anyway. Of course, more digital images are going to be aroud the header once it's all done, but yeah, I'm leaving the pencil the way it is.

[SJ Bennighof]

[BlueMech]

If you're actually gunna use that for something, clean up the lines first, don't just invert colours. Another thing I see is you draw alot of tiny little eyes. Like itty bitty! But yeah SJ, keep with the loomis and you'll be great! Now if onyl I could follow my own advice ><

[Dan1989]

Great head studies, I was just doing some of those from the loomis book today, and yours look better than my early ones did! They are harder than they look. Keep up the good work, I'll keep checking you SB

[SJ Bennighof]

Very encouraging to hear, thanks a million for the link in the first place.

[SJ Bennighof]

Bit of animation for use with my comic site's interface:

http://www.paragonsigma.com/navtest

Mouseover. And then off again.

[Mindflaw]

woud have rather waited to do this until after some more Loomis studies, but I had to make progress on the site construction. How did it come out?

If you want to use your sketches in a "finished way" and feel uncertain look for ref pics for the anatomy or get a friend to pose, then you will get the anatomy better which is a good thing even if your style is going to be sketchy and you will learn stuff that way to.

The sketch looks ok to me... just looking at figure... the head might be a little to big and remember that the nipples (using ideal head mesurement, such as Loomis do) in females are more or less lower than in the male figure cause of gravity... males don't have to carry all that fat around unless they are very fat... You might gain some if you study the insertion point of the pecs (breast muscles). The female breast is muscles and above the muscle is the fatty tissue...understand the breast as two merged parts fat and muscle... This means that if a woman would stretch her arms straight up above her head the breast would look a little like tear drops.

keep going

[D Thurman]

Yesterday I was getting goodfeedback from viewers of my skeches but this morning the images were gone from my sketchbook thread.
And I am not allowed to post attachments.
Was I not allowed before and in my zeal failed to recognized that fact?
Or is there another explanation?
I sent a request for help to 1 of the adminisrators this morning
but havn't heard back from yet.
Thanks for any help.
Darrel
D Thurman

[jkior]

Cool stuff. Keep up the Loomis (or any construction) studies, they'll get rid of the problems you have with proportion and placement of features. One thing I noticed was you tend to use a single line weight both inside and outside the figure. There's many points of view on varying line thicknesses, but a good rule of thumb is to have a thick line on the outside and have all or most of the inner lines thinner. Variation is the most important thing, though - that's what will get the viewer's interest.

[SJ Bennighof]

Note that I omitted the heels and enlarged the female to see the direct correlations and differences in the figures of the two genders.

[Cookiedough]

Keep it up! Your proportions look better in the last sketch. Don't get too lazy though, the hands on the lady are way off and her head seems a tad too small.

More sketches please.

[SJ Bennighof]

The male came out better. Probably because I did him second. Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

[SJ Bennighof]

Sketched in pencil, scanned and inverted.

A few more modifications, and this is going up as the "gatekeeper" to my webcomic.

[SJ Bennighof]

This last one really makes me optimistic about posing figures for my webcomic. Motion lines are so useful...

[SJ Bennighof]

That smudge between the vertical cheek ridge and nose is dirt on the scanner, methinks. This looks a bit odd since the internal mannikin lines and the mucles lines are visible, but I wanted to scan one like this for future reference. Hang on and I'll erase the mannkin lines.



I skipped ahead a little bit in doing this, but I just wanted to see how well I could do it. Any glaring mistakes or omissions in the skin definition lines?