Flay's Pencil Flailings: Bentomology [NSFW/NSF56K]

Toji Suzuhara

The figure drawings have improved pretty steadily in the last month. Especially the proportions.

Whatever you're doing, keep doing, because it's working.

Flay

Thanks! That's really encouraging to hear. It's difficult for me to see the difference in proportion clearly, but I do feel like I'm starting to understand three-dimensional form a bit better.

Angel_of_Bacon

Flay wrote: »

I gave up on this one when I realised I was making things worse rather than better:

This sorta depends on the quality of the paper you're drawing on/the size you drew it at/the sharpness of your pencils, but if possible I think you might want to take this sketch a bit further, because you're really starting to get some solid stuff going on with it- it really just needs some rendering time to really make it work.

What I'd specifically look at is refining some of your edges to help the reading of form. For example, making sure that the outline of cast shadows (such as the head on to the neck/shoulders, and arm onto the body) are defined with crisp, hard edges, and taking areas where the form rolls away from the light gradually, such as on the ribcage, are defined with softer edges. Also, darkening up some of the terminators (where the shadow is the deepest, where the primary light has completely fallen away and the reflected light hasn't kicked in yet) could help the form pop a bit more.

I took some time to do a draw-over to show what I mean (I didn't do enough work on the legs but you get the idea.) Given, this is photoshop so I had the advantage of being able to blow it up and using as tiny a brush as I wanted, and you may be limited by what you're drawing with (a soft pencil like a 2b tends to blunt more easily and pick up the rough texture of the paper more than a harder pencil does), the paper texture/quality, and the size of the picture- so what I'm getting at may be more applicable to future work than to this one specifically.



Zoom-in detail in case it's hard to see how I would go about this with pencil strokes (forgive the wonkiness of some of the hatching, my wacom coordination isn't all that good, but should give you some idea of how I'd about it, (presuming I was going for a look where the strokes give way to the tonality at viewing distance, rather than one where the hatching is more explicit like Greuze's work.))

Spoiler:

Flay

Bacon continues to give the best crits. :^:

Rendering is probably what I'm worst at, but I'll keep developing it with that in mind.


Some more pages:

Flay

Here's what I'm currently working on for university:



Nowhere near finished, but you get the idea.

Flay

Another something for university:



I haven't had a great deal of time for figure drawing in the past week or so, but i do have some more uni stuff I hope to post when I get around to it.

Flay

Flay

Ack this took longer than it should have:

john-briner-art

I can see improvements in you're illustrations and I think you're doing a great job. Hope to see more from you.

Flay

john-briner-art wrote: »

I can see improvements in you're illustrations and I think you're doing a great job. Hope to see more from you.

Thanks very much! I'll keep working to improve.

I was out on a photoshoot for most of today, but I managed to get started on this:



This is pretty much my first environment drawing ever so I'm covering a lot of new territory.


EDIT: Page three ho!

Flay

Update!



I think I'll say I'm done with this. It could certainly use more refinement, but I have a lot of work I need to do before the deadline.

Nappuccino

I'm sure you've seen my comment in on this in facebook. But i thought of one other thing to add/change- the right most set of windows. They make the front of the building non-symmentrical because they extend much father than the left most windows... they too have the wrong perspective as it would be more of a downward line from right to left

m3nace

I read the windows to the left as stopping about the same length from the edge as the ones to the right, seeing as if you follow edge of the building from the top and down it would look right. I think there's another building behind which color's kinda flow together with the Hudsucker building.
If that's the case the two buildings need to be separated more in shade.

winter_combat_knight

Looks cool. very Batman TAS.
I prefer the sense of scale in the original version rather than the update. The update looks like a 'regular' city building, but in the original, my mind kinda filled in the blanks and i imagined a massive tower overlooking a new york cityish skyline.

Flay

Cheers guys.

I'll have to double check the perspective, but the windows on the left are meant to be very close to the edge of that protruding part of the building. I'll have to make that more clear, as m3nace suggested. It isn't actually another building that's behind, it's a part of the same building, mirroring that part you see in the rightmost bit of the composition.

@WCK: I'd like to do something much more out there, but I'm meant to be responding to a script/brief which calls for something a little more conventional. Shame.

tynic

Flay wrote: »

Cheers guys.

I'll have to double check the perspective, but the windows on the left are meant to be very close to the edge of that protruding part of the building. I'll have to make that more clear, as m3nace suggested. It isn't actually another building that's behind, it's a part of the same building, mirroring that part you see in the rightmost bit of the composition.

@WCK: I'd like to do something much more out there, but I'm meant to be responding to a script/brief which calls for something a little more conventional. Shame.

Initially I thought it looked mostly solid, but the line along the bottom edge of the clockface and the text seemed really warped. So I downloaded to check some perspective lines, and there do appear to be a number of more subtle issues which are adding up.




Some of these lines may not be accurate, especially around the left edge of the building, since it was kind of hard to get a read on what was going where - but this might be part of the problem, ie even if the perspective there is ok, it's not reading well because of values blending or something.

Flay

Okay, I'll do my best to fix those up.

In the meantime, I'm trying to deal with my third magazine cover. I wanted to attempt something different, but I don't feel like this is working, at least not yet:



Any suggestions as to how I could spruce this up a little? I've got a mental block and can't think of anything. :?

EDIT: I might ask the photo thread about how to go about colour correction, because I do a pretty crappy job of it.

Nappuccino

Maybe try making the edges of the bottom photo blur around the crisp edge of the overlayed photo? That might help make the different levels pop a bit more.

Also, the upside down triangle just makes me thing the center image is upside down, which i don't think was your intent.

Also maybe the two top edges of the triangle could touche the ring of the circle (or perhaps even cross over it into the square picture?

Flay

Hmm... I've tried a number of different layouts, including the ones you suggested. I don't think adjustments are going to fix the problem of the layout not really working as a whole; I'll try approaching the same idea from a different angle.

Nappuccino

Maybe try some pictures with very very distinct colors/ textures ? As it is now, the three center photos are very similar.

Flay

I tried a heap of different layouts and went on another photoshoot, and I still couldn't seem to get this one right. It feels incredibly hackneyed, and the layout just isn't working, but I don't really have much choice at this point other than to submit what I have. I hate it when this happens.



I did my best to make the three photos stand out from each other a bit more, not sure if I succeeded.

Nappuccino

Its more successful than the previous version i think, but i'm definiately not a fan of the triangle's placement.

Flay

Could you explain? I've done my best to improve it, but really only have two options for a layout (this and the one I posted above):



I've gotten rid of the lines that were connecting with the triangle's corners and moved it down a little bit, and also adjusted the colours.

Nappuccino

I feel like having the triangle upright makes the image very bottom heavy and i think that if you're going to have one angle poking through the circle you should have at least two if not all.

However, i do think the design looks much better with just 3 images instead of the 4.

I wish I had some better abilities to mess around with the image a bit

Flay

I'm still doing things, here's some stuff from today:





Trying to work out magazine layouts. Speaking of which, Napp, this is what the covers turned out like:







Hopefully I addressed some of those problems you mentioned.

Paradise

Cool design work. I'm liking the focus on simple geometry.

Spoiler:

Quick note: the Hudsucker piece is nice, but it needs more of this:

Spoiler:

Nappuccino

like the final cover- seems to have solved most of the issues i had with it in the little time frame/ assets you could use. Good work!

Flay

@Paradise: Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

@Napp: Thanks for all the advice!


Workin' on this some more:




I also figured I'd try another figure drawing from imagination, half an hour time limit.

Spoiler:

Still not great, but hopefully there's a bit of improvement.

DeeLock

Love where the design is going, clear visual storytelling in an interesting way. I love the type placement in the body text and the way the arrows mimic a brain.

The shape of the head may be a bit too ambiguous however and need to be defined a bit more to come across on the first read. I would try moving it over a bit and bringing the nose out further. A minor critique for a beautiful design.

Flay

Agreed. Perhaps having some overlapping lines near the nose and ears would help make things clearer too. I don't think you'd be able to see the eyes from that angle though, which is a shame. Thanks!

Paradise

Flay wrote: »

@Paradise: Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

:lol:

Flay

A figure study:



Probably around three or four hours (I'm quite slow). I've only just realised the head's too small, unfortunately.

Reference

tapeslinger

I think if you add a few more wisps of hair and angle the shadow under the chin, it might not be that noticeable. It's a really nice sketch!

Flay

I could give that a shot, I need to bump up the contrast too I think. Thanks!

I'm still working on this layout





I'm almost done with the first spread, but the second one (unfinished) just isn't working. I'm okay with the general layout of the text, but the imagery isn't that great. Critiques?

Flay

Uni semester is over, now I have time to do my own stuff again yaaay!

I've been studying the anatomy of the head recently, I figured I'd test what I've learned by doing a few sketches from imagination:

Spoiler:

DirtyDirtyVagrant

Your proportions are a little off. You're placing the brow (and the rest of the face) just a bit too low on the head.

Flay

Ack, now I can't unsee it. Thanks for the crit!

(Also looking at these again, the guy on the right is creeping me out.)

Flay

Did a couple of things for the Digixal thread in SE++, might as well post them here:

tapeslinger

is that a zebraccoon?

Flay

Supposed to be digital raccoon, imitating DE?AD's style from this thread.