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November 25th, 2006 |
The hatchling took 20 minutes to draw and came out well.
The adult took one and a half hours to draw and came out odd.
What happened was I had no idea how to implement the adult in this scene until I was literally finished with the hatchling. I started drawing the adult without fully composing the skeleton and considering angles and proportion. The result was something that looked... off.
Drawing a scene without laying it out first is suicide.
I managed to eke the adult around behind the hatchling, but the process took way too long to be comfortable. What I should have done was skeletonize both characters before doing the anatomical work and then draw both characters at the same time.
Anyway, I think I got the point across with this picture. That first flight is always scary for the little ones. :( |
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| Comments |
| Name |
Time |
| Stickman |
November 26th, 2006 |
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Emotion! I love it. Not only do the dragons look pretty, your picture tells a story and makes the viewer feel something more than "hey, pretty."
I've got two things.
1) The two figures seem to blend together. This seems to be occuring with a lot of your pictures. Not just multi-figured pictures that overlap, but single figure pictures where limbs overlap. I immediately think of two ways to fix this problem.
A. Vary line thickness.
To really make something pop -- like this picture, except if the two dragons were more distantly seperated -- make the line at least twice as thick for the foreground figure. Just beware of the side effect of it making him have more visual weight, and expect to have to compensate to make the rearward figure draw the eye a bit more.
If the case is just a closer arm and a further arm, you can still vary the line weight/thickness and get the same effect. But don't make it stand out so people notice it. The infinite contrast threshold is two times each dimension, so less than two times as thick should make it much less noticable yet still cause the depth illusion.
B. Add value, or force atmospheric perspective
You did that one once, and it really lessened the problem. [url] If the contrast between the foreground and background was greater it would have worked even better. There's still a little confusion in it to me.
2) If you wanted, you could have taken the emotion in this picture a step further. Diagonal create drama. Drop the back half of the adult lower, and increase the forward dip of the kid. Make an X shape with them to conflict them.
As it is now, it's great. The emotions of both are communicated quickly, clearly, and easily. |
| reply to this comment |
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| Name |
Time |
| Ember |
November 26th, 2006 |
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I love depth. I have a painting for a desktop picture that makes me believe I can reach my hand through the monitor and manipulate the subjects within. Sometimes I'll come across a painting or a picture that feels so deep that depending on the altitude and angle it features, I feel like I'm teetering thousands of feet in the air.
I really ought to shade these more, but that really takes a lot of time. I'm really using these drawings as a way to ease into a lifestyle where drawing pictures is an everyday normal thing. So what I'm really doing is drawing as much scene as I can in a limited time span. This picture was a travesty in the sense that not only did it take more time than the others, but it features less stuff in it than the others which took much less time.
I really can't emphasize enough how downright hard it is to add signifigant parts to a scene after a good chunk of it is done. It's really disorienting to try drawing a skeleton concept in the same scene as a finished subject, especially if any part of that new thing is behind or in front of that subject. It was difficult even though I'm not afraid to draw guide lines for something right through a finished character. The finished character's lines were very distracting.
Also, I really ought to start drawing everything smaller so I can play with real composition. I'll play with that on my next sketch. Heck, I'll start it shortly. |
| reply to this comment |
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| Name |
Time |
| Stickman |
November 26th, 2006 |
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Since you're planning on going to DigiPen, I'll tell you a secret. Strike the word "shade" from your vocabulary or face ostracism. You will replace it with a number of other words, depending on the context. Here they are:
Value. Any kind of "shading" on the picture is called "adding value." Not the monitary kind, the darkness kind.
Local Value. The opposite, or rather the base of a luminance value. This is the value of the object in pure ambient light.
Luminance Value. This is the value that is caused by light interacting with the object. (Note that either "luminence" with an E, or "luminance" with an A is proper.)
That being said, what kind of "shading" were you talking about? The forced atmospheric perspective kind, the local value kind, or the luminance value kind? |
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