Blind contours and other stuff people hate

[Dutchdevil]

Heeh thanks a lot for the comments :)

Also, about the P.O.W, I will attend for it when I have my Wacom, its alot easier to do things with a wacom I noticed, and it will be so much faster !

There seems to be alot of good artist, I remember i once tried to do a comic book page but it was kinda hard, it could be interesting tho

[arttorney]

Yes. It's very hard. That is why I don't make it mandatory.

While we wait for qbertp to get settled after his move, Why don't Dutchdevil and deep_in_food take one angle of the head diagrams they made last time and draw a realistic face with rim lighting. I discussed rim lighting way back on page 1.

Using rim lighting I expect that the form of the various facial parts should be discernible but the picture will be moody. This might be the kind of lighting a close up picture would have in a detective or vampire story.

[Dutchdevil]

Yes. It's very hard. That is why I don't make it mandatory.

While we wait for qbertp to get settled after his move, Why don't Dutchdevil and deep_in_food take one angle of the head diagrams they made last time and draw a realistic face with rim lighting. I discussed rim lighting way back on page 1.

Using rim lighting I expect that the form of the various facial parts should be discernible but the picture will be moody. This might be the kind of lighting a close up picture would have in a detective or vampire story.

woohoo :D I have a image in my mind :D hope i can work it out, probably not tho.

Wish me luck!:D

[deep_in_food]

woohoo why not <3

[qbertp]

Alright I should be able to participate now. Still getting settled but that includes large quantities of free time as I have no job;)

So Arttorney any assignments?

[arttorney]

For qbertp- read posts 237, 239, and 250 of this thread and do the assignment described in #239. This will buy me a little time. Do it by about next Saturday. If you go too fast then toss in that follow up assignment about a face in rim lighting (that the other two guys are supposed to be doing right now).

My transmission blew up out in the middle of Boondocks, Arizona yesterday while I was driving to my interview for City Magistrate of a remote city. Thus not only do I have to continue my "catch as catch can" existence with inadequate assurances of payment and no benefits, I also have to get shuttle and plane tickets back to Pasadena and then mess around on the phone getting the Extended Warranty insurer to deal with this truck problem for me by remote control.

Heaven within my grasp and straight into the abyss in less than half a day. "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God has a sick sense of humor, and when I die I expect to find him laughing."

[Dutchdevil]

For qbertp- read posts 237, 239, and 250 of this thread and do the assignment described in #239. This will buy me a little time. Do it by about next Saturday. If you go too fast then toss in that follow up assignment about a face in rim lighting (that the other two guys are supposed to be doing right now).

My transmission blew up out in the middle of Boondocks, Arizona yesterday while I was driving to my interview for City Magistrate of a remote city. Thus not only do I have to continue my "catch as catch can" existence with inadequate assurances of payment and no benefits, I also have to get shuttle and plane tickets back to Pasadena and then mess around on the phone getting the Extended Warranty insurer to deal with this truck problem for me by remote control.

Heaven within my grasp and straight into the abyss in less than half a day. "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God has a sick sense of humor, and when I die I expect to find him laughing."

aah crap!.. shit happens..

anyway, I have made my order for a Wacom, Graphire4 XL classic, it will arrive wednesday!! :D

[deep_in_food]

The one that feels like ink XD
heh I feel a bit jealous lol XD

[Dutchdevil]

The one that feels like ink XD
heh I feel a bit jealous lol XD

Are you referring to my recently purchased Wacom..?
I hope it feels good, it was not to expensive tho.. nice price to try it out, and I guess I will draw more easily since I will not have to set up my desktop, grabbing paper, pencils ( which i always lose ), and I wont end up in a huge mess of a room:) perhaps a messy folder on the computer xD

[deep_in_food]

yeah I tried my friend's one before :D

[Dutchdevil]

Yeah, so I have made a good purchase :)

It has not arrived yet tho.. it should have -.-.
Came home from work, eager to try my fancy tablet but it was not there :(
They better hurry and deliver it, so I can draw!

[Dutchdevil]

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/gott.jpg

[Dutchdevil]

Here is my panel WIP firstpage;

I TOTALLY SUCK :\

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/10wip.jpg

[arttorney]

I don't think this is bad for a WIP first page. I can see on the big torso that you are still fighting with the scratchy lines sawing back and forth. I am not surprised (about scratchiness) if you are now using a Wacom you are not used to. Don't worry, though, I think you can have this comic in good shape within a month.

[Dutchdevil]

thanks, I have to admit that using a Wacom is way harder then i thought!

[deep_in_food]

It doesn't take too long to get use to it. In the other hand I'm modelling out my map design here. It isn't all good I have to admit though

[Dutchdevil]

Hmm, yeh you might be right.

but i also noticed, that i see so many problems in my anatomy problems which i do not see at a paper sketch, now i see i can not even draw a full character correctly!

[arttorney]

Just keep practicing. Remember all that construction lines stuff we discussed back when you drew George Washington.

Do these construction things and firming up your lines in a layer that you will hide and then "trace" over that with a smooth firm line on the layer people will actually see. This is sort of like inking over your pencil drawing after you get the pencils the way you like them. Eventually I erase off my stray pencil lines, but they are very useful in getting the image to look right in the first place. I can't erase the ink back away if I don't like the first place I put it. One of the nice things about digital layers is that you can erase all your pencils with the click of a hide layer button.

[qbertp]

Here are my heads. I'll be out of town till wednesday so I'll post a couple of actual faces then.


http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/heads1.jpg
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/heads2-1.jpg

[deep_in_food]

Those heads make me think of food somehow. It has some feel of flatness - the head is an eclipse not a circle

Looks like I need to show what kind of progress I have so far lol :D

[Dutchdevil]

Looking good Deep in food.

well, now its my turn to post again :)

heres my first page wip, edited.
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/10copy.jpg

[arttorney]

qbertp- I really like the amount of variation you worked into your tilts and turns. I like the way you are paying good attention to the head foreshortening. Using these techniques you will be able to draw nice realistic heads in all kinds of attitudes, rather than the straight frontal and profile things that most people resort to.

Dutchdevil- It looks better all the time. You can keep trying the lines and using edit/undo on the bad tries until you get your drawings really looking good and then move on to things like shading and coloring.

[Dutchdevil]

I wanted to reff something, and give it some nice lines if i try hard enough.
I am pretty pleased with how it looks however it is not good enough!

Can you help me on the anatomy?
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/help.jpg

[Dutchdevil]

Dropped the girl, for tomorrow, will continue the panel the day after tomorrow.


For now, lets enjoy an Apple?
Well, at least I am pleased! tho, there is some lack of detail but.. I Am Learning! :D
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k192/dutchdevil_2006/appelt.jpg

[arttorney]

These are cool. On the girl, her hip that is away from us rounds out a little bit more. Her arm that is near us is not as long as you did it. Look at where her hand is compared to her bum. The calf that is near us bulges into a muscle getting bigger higher up near the knee. It's so big you can't even really see space between her legs down there. Her breasts go outward in the sense that the nipples would point divergently at about a 45 degree angle. They will form a triangle with the hollow of the throat that kind of looks like an isoscles triangle. Maybe I can get you a diagram by tomorrow.

[deep_in_food]

Detail, only to the point where it will enhance the picture, but still no matter what way I look at it, it's still a nice apple which I can eat :D

[qbertp]

Here are two heads.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/qbertp/heads3.jpg

[arttorney]

I'm sorry to make you guys wait so long for input.

qbertp- I love the facial expressions on your faces. They look archetypical like easter island statues or something. The one on the left shows a very common mistake. People often do not give full expression to the way the back of the skull curves out. Remember that the top half of the skull is a sphere and so it has to round out back there or it will not look real. On the other head, the neck doesn't insert into the head in the right place. It makes him seem to have a giant bull neck that doesn't fit with the relatively narrow shoulders.
354156
Dutchdevil- I did some marking up with blue and there are some notes on the image itself. I wish I was a better figure drawer myself so I could make a beautiful paintover. An important thing to notice is where I drew the line of her behind leg across her in front leg. If you even draw the parts that are behind other parts at first (like she is transparent) it will help you to figure out where to place things. You know that other leg is back there. If you even draw where it goes while it is going behind something you will also be able to see where it shows up when it comes out from behind everything. Therefore when you are in the early pencil stage it will help if you even draw stuff that will later be hidden.

[Aww dammit! you're paintover didn't save properly, Vincent. I didn't forget you. I've got to work now, but I'll work on that figure drawing and get back to you tomorrow.]

deep_in_food- I drew a yellow x where your focal point seems to be on this piece (and it is a good place for a focal point). As I prepare an environment I do not like to leave big areas of relatively flat color out there like the left sky and the foreground. I also like to put little cues in the painting pointing attention back to the focal point. In this case I showed how I might make some more streaks of color in the sky that point back to the focal point and put some little rows of rocks or something in the foreground to point toward the focal point. thus there are things to look at all over the place but they all tell the viewer to return to the focal point. Notice that I also lit the rim of the wall because it is lit from behind. The rim lighting of the wall also creates lines of interest that point toward the focal point.
354157

[Dutchdevil]

Hi all,

I am again dropping out..
The reasons is, that I killed my computer, and am unable to scan and use my wacom :(, i also lost all my files!!

I wanted to create a partition, but it seemed my partition went over the original C:\ main partition.. so it overwriten my windows, and now all is gone.

I use Linux Ubuntu atm, pretty lucky i found that disc somewhere in my messy room.. I only have 2 weeks for the school project, but with all my files gone, I am doomed to fail, and will most likely be unable to go to second class next year if i do not pass!

:( I feel pretty down atm, but if I am lucky I will have a new vista disc friday, if..
and I will most likely use a recovery program, but will have to let my computer on for like 48+ hours ( have experienced this before.. ) so.. I hope I am back in 2 weeks :|

I feel really sorry, finally a wacom, and now I have to let you down again.

btw: writing this stuff down, seems a pretty good way to calm down!


Cya

[arttorney]

Sorry to hear it. Come back when you are ready.

Usually it's Widows that overwrites Linux :( but it sounds like you kind of lost them both.

[Dutchdevil]

well, it was not windows but a partition created by a third party software that overwritten my windows.

I use linux from a bootable disc, so I have not installed linux to avoid further loss.. there are programs wich can recover any data at any time, which i will be using.. totally illegal ofcourse..

But it seems i am going to get some more problems..
I get XP instead of Vista, dont mind it tho.. rather xp! but.. there are no XP drivers for my graphics card which will be a huge problem!

so.. i have just 2 weeks to sort it out -.- hope i will make it in time for my school project, which will be presented for the school director :|

wish me luck!

[deep_in_food]

I'll come back to the comment later :)

[arttorney]

deep-in-food- please also think about which direction you would like to go now. I'd like to give assignments and information you will enjoy and that will be relevant to what you are doing.

For qbertp- an art history assignment in keeping with the portrait related assignment we just had would be to look up John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucien Freud, and Chuck Close. These guys have all achieved success as portrait artists. What kind of things do they have in common? What is different about their approaches? How much of that is driven by the time and society they lived in? You can study them too, deep-in-food if you are interested in this stuff.

[qbertp]

Thanks for the input attorney. I'll get on those artists. I recognize most of the names but couldn't match them to there art if you had a gun to my head. Should be fun.

[deep_in_food]

Well direction wise I don't know, but somehow it's like being stuck. I plan in this holiday if I can have a bit of traveling around where I live and to know more about this place.

This work is not the one I am totally happy about, since time is one gigantic limiting factor here - deadline is today and I only got a day to do it because of my workload.

Known issues here:
- The font, font and font, which is not strong enough. I got that on my last assignment which was ages ago, and since the style is simular, I reused the font lol. I am not good at fixing font related stuff since I seem to be bad at that matter
- The seaweed looks akward
- The fairy I just grabbed it from a screenshot, so as the character, although I interpreted it a little
- lighting on the falling leaves...
- It's really aint that "commercial", and I doubt I'll win that competition. Anyways, the virtual items aren't really that important since I no longer have enough time to play that game
- I know I somehow need to get out of this style :S :S :S

Below is my friend's work, which the pictures are all from the game screenshot/art etc
This one's really "generic"
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1489/bg4xf1.png


This one's a bit different. If I can vote, I will choose this banner
http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/12/31/52/91/sola10.jpg



And finally... my crap xD

[arttorney]

There is a lot to talk about here. I hope I don't sound too mean. I have seen you do way better than this before so I am pretty sure you must have been in a big hurry.

The guy looks kind of weird, like he has a flat face. If both eyes were on the same side I might think it came out of an Egyptian tomb. I think his eye would look better at least a little bit smaller and closer to the nose. You could also make him look more three dimensional by using some shading to show his nose is a separate structure from the rest of his face and perhaps give him some cheekbones. His mouth is very simplified. I have been struggling with mouths myself a little bit this month. Perhaps I'll get a bunch of photos of mouths for us to practice on.

The color scheme is a little bit random. I don't think you really gave much thought to which colors you would use for which things. I think blue is kind of an unusual choice for seaweed and if this is under the sea, then I think brown as a background is also a little unusual. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people mistake this for a desert scene. Seaweed tends to come in reds, greens and browns. Being underwater makes everything look blue green to black.

To the right there is a lot more open space than there is to the left. I think the guy is about where there would be a natural focal point, but I think you might have had him facing into the page instead of out, and had the fairy over on the right about 1/3 of the way from the right edge but smaller like she is in the distance a bit. I know you need someplace to put the words. I would put them over on the left and leave out the flowers. I am not sure what the flowers have to do with the scene, especially if there is seaweed and stuff. Is this in the ocean or out?

About the shadows on the falling leaves, yes you need to decide which way the light is coming from and treat everything in the whole picture the same. If the sun is to the left then the shadows on the leaves and the shadows on people's faces, and the shadows on rocks all are being cast by that same light. If you make them different it will make your picture look weird. I might even have shadows on the letters of the words, like they are made of stone or something. those shadows would have to match all the other shadows, though.

[deep_in_food]

This one's a hard one to reply...

Mouth is always the hardest part for me to get it right, although with practice I got it somehow. And yeah... I guess it will be a good idea to try out some mouth practice.

For colour scheme, with this juggled up colours, it somehow looks more like a kid drawing T.T. You can say that I am doing half cut and paste as well, but when I tried not to paintover stuff, it just stuffed up a little.

For the fairy, you mean if I put her on the right side of the drawing instead of the left side? When I draw the "seaweeds", I didn't really give much thought about the ocean or stuff...

The light is suppose to come from the right hand side, but at the end... omg. I am not happy with the colour of the shadow of the leaves. Perhaps choosing another colour will help the scene.

The point you said about the words is a good point. When it comes to words, its usually when I screw up and get it either too strong or too weak.

I'll modify this drawing tomorrow (or today) and see if I get your points right.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now to the Unreal editor -

Since I am no expert in 3d, I am thinking of some simple shapes on the piece or perhaps modifying the texture to make it look less regular. What you reckon about this?

[deep_in_food]

hm...

[Dutchdevil]

Topic seems a bit dead..

How is everybody?
I am slightly depressed, things dont work the way it should nor they work the way I want it.
Having a solicitation presentation in 2 weeks, and all my files are lost so I do not have anything to show that I am worthy to go to the second class,
even tho I am one of the best students!. Its is killing me.

My computer still is crap, keep getting a Blue screen of Death, but its good enough to draw..

Arttorney, I was hoping you could give me an assignment, one that would blow everyones head off so I can show something worthy.

Could you please give me some?
thanks!