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December 28th, 2006 |
yes, this is my character so no stealing please!
The words at the bottom say:
Kicker Cutleg, born and raised in the Hycea System, a tribal war cheif as well as a captain in the Donkaisian militia, he is the first Hycean to grow gills on a desert planet. He made the first aquatical strike force but was disbanded after mutagenic waste altered his men. |
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| Comments |
| Name |
Time |
| Stickman |
December 29th, 2006 |
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First thing I'd like to say is that you did a wonderful thing with the spines coming out (his "hair"). As they move up the surface of the head, the ellipses that they come out of get flatter, giving it a real sense of the surface curving. Was that intentional? Because if it wasn't, it's a great thing that you should pick up and start doing on purpose! I would even go so far as to recommend you exaggerate that even more.
Second, the perspective from his head (eye area) to the end of his nose seems off. The nose seems to curve towards us. I notice I never seen "construction lines" (guidelines used to help establish the figure, see the human figure in Phoenix's work: [url] ) in your pictures and I'd like to quickly run over six ways to start a picture.
1. Perimeter first. If I'm seeing it right, I think this is generally how you start your pictures. You draw the outside edge of the whole thing, then fill in the parts inbetween. One of the drawbacks of this method is that it tends to flatten things out. The cross-contours you use really fight that, though, so that's not too much of a problem for you. (Also, this is a great method to use when you're trying to draw something as a flat surface)
2. Scanning. This is generally done when drawing from observation. You pick a spot and draw it in the "final detail" of the drawing, then continue scanning outwards, completing each section as you go alone. Like you draw someone's ear and get it all shaded up nice, then you draw the section around their ear, then you get the eye, the nose, the mouth, the chin, and "finish" each section as you move alone. The advantage is that you have a finished drawing for whenever they get up and move. The disadvantage is that things sometimes don't line up right unless you're really careful.
3. Scattergun. You really have to see this method to know how it works. It honestly looks just like someone is scribbling on the page until they start to get finished and the picture emerges. The general principle is that your eye is moving many times a section to look over a surface (look at something and notice how your eye moves). Use your hand to follow your eye, and you end up with a scattergun technique. It really carries emotion with it, but it looks like a mess.
4. Structural. Ever see an artist hold out their thumb or pencil to measure something before going back to the picture? They're using an element of the structural method in their pictures. You "sight" things and measure them, and mark down the distances between important points before you ever start drawing. The good is that it results in very accurate pictures to what you're seeing. The bad is that it takes a long time, and it's very "left brained" (and drawing is a right brain activity).
5. Value pattern. This is also called Lights and Shadows, Value Field, Lights and Darks, or whatever. To use this, you focus on the dark and/or light parts of the picture and simply draw the shadows. The good part is that you really get a sense of lighting into the picture. The bad part is that it's sometimes hard to get a read on the actual figures, everything tends to blend into one form.
6. Geometric Primitives. When you reduce the object to simple shapes, it lets you play with perspective more. A sphere for a head, a pyramid or a barrel for a chest, clinders for arms, stuff like that. It's really good for perspective work, but it kills a lot of detail in an object when you simplify it that much.
So two things: First, these are only starting points. Where you go after you finish these determines how the final product really looks, but when you start with these you'll end up with some element of the good and bad of them.
Second, you can mix and match things. There's a type of starting method called "gesture drawing" which essentially uses structural and scattergun mixed together.
You could have avoided the perspective glitch where the nose seems like it's pointing at us more than the back of the head is by starting out with something like geometric primitives and working from there. |
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