Second dynamic sketch

[Graive]

I wanna bring this to a final and since the first time I tried this I had a lot of pre-rendering errors that just made the thing impossible to fix, I thought I would post this up now and get some insight.

I wanna bring this to a beautiful finish, and get some really interesting dynamic light to go along with the movement of the poses.

This is a superhero type girl fighting some kinda dredlock cyborg.

[Graive]

Do you guys think there is a perspective problem? Something wrong with anatomy?

I'm thinking her left leg is too far forward for her butt to make any sense. I should probably change that.

Does this scene work well? Can you tell what's going on?

Anything helps.

Thanks

[Havok Reed]

I think i do see a perspective problem with the leg. I think that you are seeing too much of the side of it and not enough of the back. Like its pointing out to the side of her, not in front.

[Graive]

Cool! Thank you Reed.

I'll have a better rendering by tomorrow evening. I really want this to be exciting.

[Nezumi Works]

If you want the redline character jumping at the blueline one, you should be twisting the body a bit. Right now both upper and lower body are aimed off to the left of the blueline character.

[Havok Reed]

Well what Nezumi says is true, but i like how it is right now because it looks like shes going in for a huge upper cut from the side. BAM =b

[Graive]

Right. That's why I have her head turned toward him, however I see what your saying, there's not enough emphasis in her movement toward him.

Maybe just a slight tweak can fix this problem.

Thanks! It's all supremely appreciated.

[Nezumi Works]

Yeah, I don't think it needs to be much. Something like a slight twist so the shoulders are following the head or something.

[Venger]

To my mind, I think you need to rethink the blue line guy.
Compositionally he's stopping the flow of the action (think capitol 'T')
I'm also thinking her leg is raised a little high (ok I know she's flying but it looks uncomfortably and unnaturally high.)
I'd move her down so her head isn't in his crotch (its also creating tangents too)
Just a few thoughts.

[Graive]

Thank you Venger. I totally agree. Sometimes it just takes someone like you to come along and state the obvious. XD

Perhaps I can tweak his pose a bit more to better accommodate the composition as well as fix the anatomical issues with the girl. Yeah... didn't think about the crotch thing... haha

Good eye.

[Sticks]

I agree with... whoever said the thing about twisting the red body a bit. Right now it looks as if the red one is about to take flight and the blue guy just jumped out of the way.

[Graive]

Cool. Well I've worked on it a bit since that last one but I don't want to post anything until I get all the major fixes in. It looks like I'm going to be ultra super busy these next 2 days so I'll have something by Thursday.

Thanks!

[Graive]

Cool. Well I've worked on it a bit since that last one but I don't want to post anything until I get all the major fixes in. It looks like I'm going to be ultra super busy these next 2 days so I'll have something by Thursday.

Thanks!

[Graive]

Small update.

This is from earlier in the week.

I'll work tonight and post something else up. But I moved the leg over a bit, and started rendering clothing/hair and face. Hopefully the shoulder and leg look more correct now.

I'm also thinking of drawing him in perspective as well, head and chest much closer with legs in the background. That should fix the tangency and maybe make this more interesting.

[Sticks]

...I don't really see much of a difference concerning the body positioning.

[zwarrior]

Clean up your lines first. Its hard to give a crit when we cant read what lines you're sticking with, only you know. so start getting rid of the sketch stuff

[Graive]

Thank you Zwarrior. It's true, I tend to throw up my sloppy mess, knowing what I see but I forget that others don't have a clue.

I changed the pose of the enemy, I think it's more interesting now for sure. I also tightened some shapes and rendered some areas minimally. I'm too tired to go on, so I thought I would post this recent change.


Thanks again for the input.

[zwarrior]

Thnks, its a bit clear now. I decided to critique the woman's figure, and was considering doing the other character, but I think you should have a go and try to critique yourself with that one, in a similar manner that I did this character, you might find your own faults faster.

so I traced it to have a better look at the form without the rendering stuff in the way. I suggest doing that whenever you're not too sure of something. Mistakes are best revealed in linework.

She has 6 fingers on her right hand, not sure if that was on purpose as a part of the story or not.

It was hard to read since its half in shadow, but her butt seems dislocated. And while at it, I pointed out the other parts of her body that also seemed deformed

and also you can leave the position of her body like that, it doesnt have to go the direction of the guy, sure. But the way her head is right now, she's not staring at him. (sure her face could be at an angle and just have her eyes look to the side, but since we're seeing her from behind, its hard to convince us of that. It would make more sense if the face shifted.) You can tell the direction of where the head is angled because of the lower jaw. if you can see the entire side of her lower jaw, than you're looking at the side of her head... even if you dislocate her ear (note, the ear should be right above where the lower jaw ends).



The way her arms are going, the muscles of her back are compressed. It might not seem like that matters since you're drawing clothes, but the folds of the clothes are affected by the push and pulls of the body's muscles.



Tried to show you a quick wip on how to draw feet. especially at the angle you were going for. Start with basic representational shapes first before trying to render the form of something.

Im still a student myself, so consider my own figure with a grain of salt. Here's my process of how I tried to break it down and find what seemed to me a more natural pose.



Also things I didnt get to adress are the foldes of her sleeves. And it might make an interesting composition, but why is her cape swooshing on the opposite direction that gravity would normally pull it (down)? And lastly, for now, her hair looks like hay. hope this was of some help.

[Graive]

AHA! So the mighty duth kick me in the pants! Thank you so much ZWarrior. There are many things that I know, including the drapery, that I for some reason, neglect to think about when designing these things out. I think my process is very weak, as can be seen from above. Copying from reference or drawing from life is easy for me, but once I have to start inventing, especially light, my brain goes on overload. Thus you get interesting things like 6 fingers! Haha

Your reply helps a lot not only to fix my mistakes, but to help me think about how to prevent those problems from occurring in any other work I start. So I really really appreciate it. The feet are something I never really took time to draw or study, unlike hands which I tend to draw very often, so thank you very much for your little tutorial.

There are also a lot of places I notice myself hesitating. Like the butt, or the arm, or the foot, where I know something is wrong, and I might even know what's wrong, but I don't give myself the time or the confidence to change them accordingly. So in that regard I apologize for having to have you do so much work in fixing a lot of mistakes that I too had seen. I would have rather had you fix more design or perspective based mistakes.

Well with that I will work to correct it and won't post again till I think that I've fixed all my errors, not relying on you guys to fix them for me.

Thanks again!

[zwarrior]

haha its fine, it wasnt so much work, and i learn a lot from critiquing other work, so I do it to help myself too.

On the design and perspective... well I wanted to fix only the technical problems of the figure, but if you want me to evaluate the piece as a whole. I cant tell you what design would work best for your goal, only you know that, but I can show you the steps to tackling design and perspective.


1a. Before you start any work, make many thumbnails of what you're thinking about doing. Try different positions, like "does it work best centered or could i move it to the side, how's the size, would it be more effective if it was larger."



1b. Also during thumbnails, try different angles of portraying the scene. instead of a front view, how would it look in a top bird-view? And play around with colors (if you plan on coloring it), to imagine what the final piece might look like. That's it for design.

2. Perspective. There's 1 point perspective, 2 point, and 3 point, etc. I will stick to one point because its more basic. But I really recommend getting a book on it, that will teach you both basic and advanced techniques of perspective.



Look up the definition of those words to fully understand them more. you start with the horizon line, then focal point, perspective guidlines and then the shapes that will always be proportionally correct for as long as they stick to the guidlines. Here's a tutorial vid showing a different method than how I start:



Here's another one that's a little bit more complex. Its showing how to add stairs, different floor levels, and figures.



Ok. now that you know how to add one figure, to add multiple ones that are parallel to one another, you have to always remember that wherever the horizon line intersects them, that part of their body will always level with one another no matter how far or close they are. [theoretically; for as long as they are of average similar height, on the same equal flat ground]



In the example on the left, the horizon line is their viewpoint. no matter how far they're spaced out, their eyes will always level with one another, that's how to draw a crowd on a similar plane.

As for the example on the right. this time it isnt their eyes. The horizon line will always be the level of the viewer's eye (the one looking at the drawing, can also be called the "camera"), but not necessarily the characters'. In that example, the horizon line intercests with their feet, right below the ankle. So no matter where they are in the image, all characters' feet will be visible (theoretically, for as long as they're doing the same thing and on the same flat surface) See on the far right, the leg is wrong. For us to be able to see that leg, the surface would either have to be spherical or that person is coming up from stairs below the flat surface everyone else is on.

As for foreshortening, easy. Just follow the examples I gave above. You start with one-point perspective, draw shapes in and then draw a form around it. In this example I drew an arm. Any part of the figure can be broken down into shapes.

[Graive]

Well I really appreciate the time you're putting onto this critique. I really needed to think about the development stage more in general. My last piece that I posted here I had posted way late into the game, having already rendered almost everything and thought it worked well. When I got the critique I pretty much realized it had to be completely redone, losing ~30 hours of work. So I'm very happy with how this is coming out now that I have a standard for working.

I had been doing thumbnails and then blowing them up, drawing over them with tracing paper, then scanning em in to paint on, which worked really well, but I haven't tried anything with these little "quicky" sketches. My photoshop drawing skills are lax when compared to real pencils.

Below is an example of my last critiqued piece:

[Graive]

Here is an update. Ive got it this far, now Ive decided that I don't want her in a cape and long sleeve shirt anymore, and I think her neck is all wrong, so I printed it out and I'm drawing over it in pencil to fix it. I think I'm gonna go with a sexy top with midriff. Lol

[Graive]

Ooook! I fixed the girl and am ready to start work to finishing this thing! (I know it's been pretty bumpy from the start)

This was a great lesson in how to start my work, and I'm going to start following some guidelines too before I post any critique items in the forums.

I also decided, as I was working through this image, to make the female character into someone I had invented way back when I was younger. I used to have a whole story and was writing an entire novel but never felt good enough at writing or drawing to tell the story. Now I think I have a bit more experience in both fields, so I'm going to start creating these images with my characters and story in mind. That should definitely help when it comes to deciding on the elements to use in my the work.

Thanks a ton guys, and here's the piece I'll be working from now.

[Michael Mattesi]

I would step back before stepping forward. The first step in illustration is knowing what you are trying to say. Is the guy in the top third more powerful? that is what the design is saying at the moment...that the woman is the under dog because of her location on the page. make sure that the location of objects on the page is doing what you want them to relative to the story you are telling.

Then look at how the general direction of each character is working in the layout. How do they interact? I drew some arrows to present what is happening right now. The woman is somewhat leading us off the page. It seems as though you need the dark figure to stop and redirect this into the design better. The #1 comp on the right shows what is happening now. #2 is a potential solution. The other comps show how simply you can design before getting into all the details.

Also, her head lands right on his crotch right now...be aware of the location of objects in space and on the flat 2 dimensional plane of the page.

Personally Graive, I love how rough you are...I would stay there till you solve any challenges you feel you are having. They will not get hidden with great details.

[Graive]

Thank you, Michael. Haha every time I think I'm ready to move forward, I find myself having to go backwards. Part of it is that I didn't do this with a thumbnail as I usually do, and I hadn't worked out any alternatives. This started out just playing in photoshop, as you can see in the earlier drawings, and decided I liked it.

Now I'm anxious, since I have very little work completed to date, and with school nearing it's end I really need to build a potential portfolio...

But that's how it goes! I'm glad I posted this here before going into detail like I had done with previous WIPs, it's really showing me where my weaknesses lie.

SO, I think I'll work on the cyber trooper dude, since I think he looks really static right now. Tweak his angle, change a few things fix the crotch thing and add a little more zest to it. THEN! Lol I'll post and see what you all think.

Its fine that she seems weaker, since she's a secondary character and the story works heavily around the idea that the main characters aren't truly strong till much later in the story. So in this case, it works perfectly.

[Michael Mattesi]

all the best, looking forward to its progress.