A little help

[supermark]

Hey everyone sorry if this is a hurried post.

So I have trouble drawing energy. You know like dragonball z and yu yu hakusho. I have trouble with energy beam,blast,waves,balls, flowing energy,etc.. Any advice or help or how you do it?

I have trouble with drawing people(not real life drawing) from a distance. Like if i try to draw someone from a distance and make them look smaller than they just look dumb and look like stick figures that are very flat. Any advice on drawing people from a distance or when drawing them small. An example is i was drawing a vast dessert yesterday and i had a guy lying on the ground dead but he was from a distance on the paper i think he was about the size of half a inch or a little bigger.it was just a quick draw sketch i did in half a hour.

and what type of light should i get for my desk lamp that will give me good light? the one i have currently is just a replacment and gets very hot and smells like its burning after awhile.or should i get a new lamp. my desk isnt anything fancy.

Sorry for the rushed post.I had something else to ask but it slipped my mind if i think of it ill post it. Gracias Amigos and Happy New Year!

Btw I put this in this thread because for some reason every time I tried to post in another part of the ca forums it wouldnt show up.

[Seedling]

Hi Supermark,
You should get a new desk lamp before the one you've got burns your house down. That, and you might be interested in the link in my sig called "Concept Art 101". Cheers!

[Storyboard Dave]

I agree with Seedling. First off, get a better lamp with some decent color corrected bulbs in it so if you're doing color work, it looks right. More importantly get one that won't potentially be a fire hazard!!!

As far as the drawing of beams, energy & plasma- why not do it like DragonBall Z if you like how that looks? Take a look at comic book artists and see how they handle it. Masters like Jack Kirby drew energy his own way and conversely others like Jim Lee draws it his way. There's really not a correct way of drawing it but it's got to be able to communicate what you had in mind to the viewer.

Drawing people at a distance? Too tiny? I'd be more concerned about the composition of the piece and not the amount of detail & accuracy. If that person is that tiny, how important is he really to the storytelling you're trying to convey in that frame? Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to draw it detail for detail. Prime example is when you draw hair on characters... you don't draw every strand of hair- you draw an indication of hair. We as the viewer understand that concept of "hair". So quit fidgeting with all of that minutia and focus more on what's really important in the piece. More details doesn't necessarily mean a better image.