Cyndadile's Art

[Cyndadile]

I've been getting more into art lately, so I figured I'd try a couple of Topaz gym leaders, Froy and Torri. This is my first attempt (they are hand-drawn, I'm terrible at computer art):

I'm going to try to make them better. I'm finding it difficult to draw based on models that already have pretty concrete images. Any suggestions?
(In general, I find that I can draw decent heads and bodies or good legs and feet, but never both. I'm not quite sure why.)

[ImmunityBow]

One thing I generally find helpful is after you finish sketching out the general shapes of the bodies is to go over all the outlines with a pencil or if you're feeling fancy some kind of fineliner or pen which helps smooth out all the lines. Try to go over each line with one line, rather than making lots of short little lines as in sketches.

If you're having trouble drawing based off of things that are already well defined, just take a note of the kind of clothes they wear and body types they have and pretend you're drawing someone completely new, just with the same clothes and hair. I actually have troubles drawing without any sort of reference at all (though I'm getting better) and I know that most professional artists usually do a lot of research and get a bunch of reference pieces, not to simply copy but just to see how the world works. How limbs join together, how fabric folds and such.

Another suggestion I can make is to first draw the person naked, taking note of the form. That way you can figure out how long the arms need to be, how large the hips of a girl will be (this is I find the primary thing that can identify a girl, not breasts in fact. Not knowing this is why a lot of guys tend to overemphasize the breasts in their drawings of women.) And then that way you can just draw the clothes on, and you'll be able to better understand what parts of the body are keeping the clothes up and where the fabric should be hanging. Your drawings have inspired me to try drawing for Topaz again! I realize it's something I can do during those one hours breaks I have between classes and I just found out that the library has a scanner. So let's keep trying together :3

Or actually in retrospect, maybe I can try to digitally colour in your drawings. I'm liking the idea more and more...

[Cyndadile]

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to do a few more versions, and I'll post when I think I have something a bit more concrete.

[Cyndadile]

Supersized! I decided to make them bigger, so there was more room for detail.
Froy:

I'm having a lot of trouble with Froy's hair and sunglasses, and I think that I need to work on scale for the arms and legs. I think I'm making his hair too spiky. Also, the angle of his body is giving me trouble with making his arms proportional to each other.

Torri:

Torri is giving me trouble because of her dress. It's hard to make her legs look normal. I had them in a perfectly natural position, but her knees were bent and when the dress was added they looked like they wouldn't actually attach to her waist. I'm also having trouble making her hair look like it is flowing.

And, I decided to try a Topaz Pokemon, too:

Edit: Am I the only one who thinks Torri's dress is a bit... short/immodest for a gym leader?

[ImmunityBow]

That's already a vast improvement. Great job on nailing some of the curves of the body (Froy's butt looks particularly well-drawn, heh). I think your problem with the hair and sunglasses is: you need to draw what they look like, not what you think they should look like. Imagine yourself wearing sunglasses. Where do the glasses touch your face (usually along the bridge of the nose, and maybe your cheeks?) As such they should be resting on that part of Froy's face. Generally there's a fair amount of space between the two eyepieces too, since there's space between people's eyes. As for the hair, Froy naturally has very difficult hair to draw, but try to imagine the roots of the hair as attached to the scalp. I think you're further along than you think, it's then just a matter of treating hair less as clumps but as individual pieces that you have to create impressionistically.

As for the proportions, Froy's legs seem just a bit too long and thin. The thighs should be by far the largest limb on his body, and his calf should be larger than his forearm. The arms are actually fine in proportion to the legs as they are now, but would need to be shortened if you shortened the legs. For making them proportional to one another, just extend his left arm (our right) out a bit more to make it longer and it should be fine, I think.

As for Tori, you might want to give some thought as to why each bit of fabric is moving as it is moving. Her upper body is fairly static, which makes it strange that her dress looks like she's just been running backwards for a bit. For the hair maybe you could taper it off towards the bottom rather than flaring it out. That's usually how girl's hair is cut, it's layered and tapers off along their back. Maybe giving her legs some muscle definition (rounding them a bit instead of making them so straight) would help with the strange look. If you want immodest dress, look at the RSE Ghost E4. Or Misty.

And yay Brontogon I love the tree.

[Cyndadile]

I made some improvements I think. To be honest, I traced some things that I didn't want to change, like facial features and most of Torri's torso (I'm especially fond of Torri's mouth, in a totally not-weird way).
I gave Froy some flame-shaped "bling," because it seemed like a good idea at the time. I worked on his sunglasses, but I still need to improve on his hair. I think his neck might be to long and/or his head too big.
I made a significant change to the end of Torri's hair, gave some curve to her calves (although I just noticed that her back leg is bigger than her front one), and gave her some water-drop earrings so she wouldn't feel left out.
Also, I shortened Torri's dress in spite of the fact that I had previously brought up the issue of immodesty. The reason: the angle of her legs made more sense if you can see her knees. (This was the issue with the dress on the previous version; her legs were originally bent in a way that the dress would have flown as it does, but I moved them.)
I have made no changes to Brontogon yet.
Froy:

Torri:

Why is it that, despite the fact that she has a much more simple form, Torri is causing me as much trouble as Froy?

[ImmunityBow]

It does seem that either the neck is too long or the head is too small for both of them. The improvements keep coming though. Torri is starting to get a little off-balanced though, her legs are a little too far forward.

[Cyndadile]

I'll work on that, but first I'm going to try and draw other people, get some more practice in, and maybe give another shot at Brntogon or a different Topaz pokemon.
Would there be any complaints if I tried to come up with a few ideas for Tristan (that's the Light leader, right?)?
I might switch to non-lined paper, but the lined paper is more accessible for me.

[ImmunityBow]

I had some ideas for Tristan too, but go ahead, no complaints at all. Considering our progress recently, your ideas are very much appreciated.

[Cyndadile]

Update: So far all of my ideas for Tristan are poor. How do you portray "light"?
I've worked on Froy, one step forward, two steps back; I was able to improve some aspects, but others decreased. I'm going to wait to post more until I figure out to combine the best parts.
Torri is even less progressive; I'm not really sure that I have the ability to improve on her at this point.
Brontogon: made a newer version, I think its an improvement. Can't scan it now, though.
I'm going to have to wait out a few tests before embarking on this further. It would be awesome if someone could give this thread a bump in, say, two weeks if I haven't posted in that time, to remind me about it.

[ImmunityBow]

Okay then.

My idea for Tristan is that he would be the archetypal white/divine knight. Golden hair, a sword, pure white clothing, maybe even robes.

[Cyndadile]

Anyone have any idea how to do this without making it look ugly?

I used Photoshop (it came pre-installed on GLaDOS). I also obviously have MS Paint, if that's a better option for this kind of work.

[NyteFyre]

Try enlarging the head a little, and making the legs a little thinner. Or you could try making a stick figure skeleton on a layer, and building her around it?

[Cyndadile]

Well, I liked the sketch in this post, but I failed to make it work out in the digital version.

[NyteFyre]

A lot of times, that's just how it goes. Keep at it. For now, I'd forgo the color until you're happy with the outline. As well, to make this a bit easier, I'd suggest putting the outline and color on separate layers so that they don't interfere with one another.

As well, have you tried looking up shading tutorials? They can help a lot.

[ImmunityBow]

One big thing you can do is use the brush tool instead of the pencil tool for the outline. The anti-aliasing really really helps. Just keep the outline on a separate layer over top so it doesn't interfere with the colouring. I often zoom in at least 800% when outlining, sometimes 1600% for tricky parts. You can vary the brush size too.

[Cyndadile]

Stayed up late making picture of cat, now I'm too tired to go to bed. Woo hoo.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...4/Chloreon.png

[ImmunityBow]

Is it WIP? If not if you resize it down about 50% your outline will look a lot cleaner. Otherwise the proportions look correct, very cat-like. Kind of a more prowl-y face of Chloreon.

[Cyndadile]

Yeah, I'm planning on smoothing out the lines a bit, and I might try adding shading at some point. As for the cat-like proportions, I totally cheated there and did a little tracing. Should've mentioned that in the original post.

Whenever I do another, I'm going to do it completely from scratch (although I might use a reference image). Right now I'm just getting a feel for how to use my laptop's mouse pad to draw.

[Chronicler]

Not half bad at all. Like you said, smoothing things out with the lines is definitely something that needs to be done. The only thing I have to say about the actual design is to bring the back left leg all the way around. The way it is now, it looks like the tail is coming out of the leg instead of coming from behind it, like it should be. But yeah, my two cents, keep up the good work!

[Cyndadile]

Thanks for the feedback! I probably wouldn't have noticed that thing about the tail.

[Cyndadile]

Recently came into a little free time and a tablet, so I freshened Chloreon up a bit:

Do any of you use any sort of tablet to draw? I've been using Adobe Ideas on my iPad, but I'm looking into any better programs for drawing.

[ImmunityBow]

Nicely done! Looks very clean now. Most artists (not all though, the legendary Phoenixsong uses a trackpad) use some kind of Wacom-brand tablet. They're scaled basically in order of price: Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq.

I have a Bamboo and it's pretty nice. Kind of small but really cheap and gets the job done. I've seen it as cheap as $60 but it can go to $100
Intuos is much bigger and a bit more sensitive, something like $300-400.
Cintiq has the nice capability of being a screen as well as a tablet so you can see what you're drawing and you don't have that disconnect, but it's exorbitantly expensive ($1500 I think? Could be more). Some companies are coming out with cheaper alternatives which are more comparable to Intuos price levels.

[Silver]

It's really good, but something about the ear to the left is bugging me...

[ImmunityBow]

It's quite a bit longer.

[Cyndadile]

Thanks! I'll work on matching the ears, that shouldn't be much trouble.

I'm sticking with my iPad for now, mainly because I don't have enough disposable income to get anything else yet. I may look into something like that in the future.

Pheonixsong is even more amazing than I thought; a trackpad is pretty rough to do art on.