Graff piece WIP

[character]

Hey everybody. Working on this small project and I was wandering if I could get some feedback from the graffiti artists out there. I haven't picked up a can in years (10+) and I never did text before, just characters. I've been studying all kinds of graffiti locally as well as online such as mr wiggles site. This is it's current state. I'm cleaning it up right now in photoshop. I wanna keep it simple since it's a logo and it needs to be legible by anyone, not just graff artists, that's why it aint all crazy. The letters can change but I'm more worried about the colours and all that follows after the clean-up process. Let me know what you think =)

edit: I just read the Critique Center FAQ. I'm not sure if this should get moved to the WIP section or not since the lettering is finished. Just gonna start working on the colours and clean-up now.

Mods: please move if you feel this is out of place, thanks!


http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/001.jpg

[l.e.b]

I dont think if you put it through photoshop its gonna help, if your studying artists then should look at the way the piece holds itself together and stands out. You also need to work from block letters with simple structure and do not do the craggy shit and drippin outlines, the arrow too
do it again, you said you wanted it simple so itd be easier to read as a logo if it read more like a word, dont worry about doing the colours yet

[character]

thanks for the reply man. i showed it to a few people around here at this size:
http://www.polylover.com/temp/002b.jpg

this is the final comp size. it's meant for the phone and so far the max res on phones is 208x208. i added a bg color to make the letters stand out more just for evaluation purposes. can you take another look and let me know what you think? the only comment i heard so far from peeps in the office was that the R kinda looked like a B but that's it. i'm gonna stick with the craggy style cause it's my favorite style out of everything i've seen and it's pretty legible. everyones been able to read it so far. any other comments from you or anyone else?

[madster]

I'd do this in Vector, so it doesn't look so ragged, and I'd still work on that 'R'. To me, it looks like it says, "Pap Game..."

Pretty unbalanced, uneven and rough for a phone ad, though...

~M

[Nils_Carstens]

well atm ur piece iss truely showin what u told us, it's pretty much a stereotype beginner graff piece.

Some things that might help u at the beginnin are, when u do letters try to build em out of curved blocks, pretty much like a bone structure. try to keep the blocks pretty much at the same thickness everywhere.
At ur skill lvl arrows especially as a part of a letter and also those edgy lines should be a big no. its just distractin the letter itself and in ur piece shows again a certain lag of skill.

But then again thinkin about thats its prolly for some crappy cell phone company who just want that stereo type graff it should be ok, just that its yet another piece of bad graff made for companys.

[character]

haha, pap game. so far i've only heard Bap game. thought that was pretty funny. and it's not finished, that's why it looks rough i guess. anyways, here's where i'm at:

almost done tightening up the lineart. messed with the R a bit.
http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/003.jpg

[character]

Dreckster: lol, yeah. i know it's bad. it's actually for the company i work for so we're not crappy! hehe. this is what we're gonna use for now to demo stuff but i will definitely work on some more ideas. i love the stuff that you pointed out! it's very insightful and i really do appreciate it. i'll take that stuff into account for the next batch of sketches that i do after i finish this crappy piece, heh. thanks again! you rule! great critique

[madster]

Now it's looking like an 'A'.

You're gonna have to connect that leg to the main stroke, if you ever expect people to recognize it "clearly" as an 'R'...

~M

[character]

http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/r.jpg

right there? if so, won't it go back to looking like a b? god i hate R's :nohope:

[madster]

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/5115/arrrr0fq.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I'd also suggest ditching the arrow. It's confusing.

~M

[character]

omg you jacked my thread! /waves fist in air
haha, it's all good man. thanks for your comments. first off, here's a modded version going off of madsters critique. the arrow did seem out of place cause it was the only one there. moved the hook over as well to the main stroke:

http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/004.jpg

again, these aren't the final colours. just using a quick gray to make it easier to read for critique

Phetchamphone: that piece is lookin tight. the only thing i can read is the S so i guess mission acclompished! haha. no need to remove the piece. i'd like to see how it turns out actually. hey, maybe we can get a graff thing going on in here and get this thread moved to the WIP section? mods?

and btw Phet, you gonna colour it and everything? i think it'd look cool with some chrome or something. i saw something on http://www.artattack.sk/ but it's in german or something so i can't find the image i wanted to link you that reminds me of this style. anyways, i'm off of work. i'll work on this more tomorrow. thanks again fro the crits all

[CBS]

From a style stand point the top of the "E" at the end of game really bugs me its like it has the coffe shakes compared to the rest of it, way to jagged (on a second look so does the top of the "A" in game). Other than that the "M" in game looks like its giving itself a hug open up the bottom a bit more. Nothing else though, have fun with the colors. I'll check back.

CBS

[character]

CBS: hey cbs, thanks for the reply. i messed around with the 3 letters you mentioned. the E did look out of place.
i think i'm about done with the lineart now. next post will prolly have base colours. here's another update:

http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/005.jpg

[staeryatz]

Character:

Dreckster is right, you need to "carve" your pieces, out of "curved blocks". I would say that your style is way too blocky and jagged. The bone structure comment he said was right on point, as artists tend to curve shapes of the skin between and over the bones when drawing figures. This should also work for word-style grafitti. Connecting your letters can also help style it up a bit, as it gives it a certain flow. Your 'P' kind of looks like a profile view of a saggy titty, I would bring it out a little more, and not point the loop down too much. You may as well center "RAP" above "GAME" horizontally, to give the work as a whole a better shape to it.

Phetchamphone:

Your style is too round, and the word as a whole has no uniform shape. By the looks of it you were intending to make it shaped like that, but the asymmetry of it's shape as whole makes it less appealing to the eye, as different parts of it attact more attention than others (I seem to always look at the left side, as if it weighed more). What you want to be able to do is look at the piece dead center and not have to shift your eyes to one side. I see that you use a few short straight lines that hook into the curves, which is what I do, but I think there's not enough straight lines in your work.

I am by no means a grafitti expert, but I do have a decent feel for "what looks right" or wrong, even in my own work. I've been out of the scene for nearly 7 years, but here is one of my old sketches that may give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Note: this sketch was from a ball point pen (instead of pencil first), so I had no way to erase any mistakes (just cover them up), so it looks pretty dirty...

http://pics.theaodclan.com/evil_graf/sho5.jpg

The above sketch is far from perfect. You can see how the shape on the right side is totally messed up (too flat), making the sketch unbalanced. Even though each letter in the alphabet is shaped and sized differently, they should be adjusted accordingly, so the word as a whole looks like it's shaped properly. It is also a little bit too busy, so maybe it's not a good example after all. My variation of line widths, I think are too extreme, if I'd ever try to do this on a wall. Now you can see that balance in overall shape, in individual line widths, and with curved and straight lines, is very important.

Here's a couple of my better examples for uniform shape:

http://pics.theaodclan.com/evil_graf/sho.jpg

http://pics.theaodclan.com/evil_graf/sho3.jpg

Notice in both of these, that top to bottom, left to right, the word as a whole has a somewhat symmetrical shape. Sorry for hijacking your thread dude, I hope you have learned something by reading my comments.

[character]

staeryatz: dude, that stuff is bad ass! your tips and techniques are definitely well stated and i'll take them to heart on the next two pieces i've gotta do today. the rap game one tho is pretty much done. i can't get too crazy cause it's gotta be legible to everyone, not just people into graffiti or whatever. i just gotta add "The" to this and it's done. i'll post sketches of the next pieces are start soon. thanks again man. i appreciate the awesome feedback. peace out. i wish you had posted all that before i did all this mess, lol

http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/006.jpg


edit: here's the final image. didn't wanna add another post:
http://www.polylover.com/dailysketchbook/rg/007.jpg

[staeryatz]

Excellent job on the fills! Fills for word styles was always my weak point. Good idea to add the extrusion and outline for the depth, it adds a little more to it. I noticed you changed the colours on the final image. The extrusion is now the same colour as part of the fill, which makes it a little more difficult to read. Overall, it looks a lot better than your original sketch.

[character]

staeryatz: Hey, thanks yo. glad you dig it. still not sure what colors i wanna go with. everyone at work seems to like the second one better. i dunno. i'll prolly do a few colour variations if the game actually gets picked up, we'll see. thanks again for stopping by =)

[vigostar]

Hey man.. what those guys said are very true.. But, in all honesty what you should really do is look at different types of fonts.. Just keep in mind that Graff is basically very stylized fonts... You can use many fonts and use them as structure then build from them.. Also when using fonts you'll notice that like they said the curvature is very important... and like regular drawing stay lose... I would have to tend to disagree with keeping everything the same thickness.. maybe as a beginner rule of thumb but, def. not as a general rule to graff....
http://www.mac-graffiti.net/
chekc out that website.. that crew has a nice range of styles from 2d to 3d... Also, depending on what your trying to accomplish simple is sometimes better then trying something complicated... I also agree with losing the arrows... The whole arrow thing is a very played out cliche and even though I have been known to use them I use them very sparringly and usually use them to point at something or make something stand out...

Well, i hope this help you a bit...