I wore a hat. People were like, 'hey, hat.'

I didn't realize I was making everyone hate me as a person in the process.

Nowadays I don't wear the hat. I dress fairly anonymously, using clothes I've had since college or I bought at Target. Thermals, cargo pants, jeans. Nothing I'd describe as "bad", nothing as I'd describe as "nice".

I didn't realize I was making everyone hate me as a person in the process.

I thought everyone else had better things to do with their lives than give two shits about my non-existent fashion sense.

Before going into the lighting, it'd be helpful to know what exactly you're going for- a realistic painted head (generally what I jump to whenever anyone brings up "anatomy")? Or a more stylized/anime head (where the "anatomy" is really just a design rather than something based purely on facts)?

If it's the former, there's a lot be said about the structure/anatomy and proportions going on; if it's the latter, the issue becomes less one of anatomy, and more with making sure that the arbitrary structure of the head appears to follow an internal logic with the construction and lighting (which often will go at odds to a more 'realistic' lighting scheme- it's easy to take an attractive stylized drawing and make it grotesque looking simply by applying purely realistic principles of form and value to it, because it can throw it into uncanny valley pretty quickly if not tempered.)

If this is the same head as the one in your thread, it feels like you're trying to take something originally stylized in structure and attempting to make it more realistic after the fact- which is often a losing proposition for the aforementioned reason. Choose one or the other, but make it clear which one- it'll be much easier for us to help you without feeling we're giving you bum advice that way. (Probably won't be able to go further on the issues tonight since it's 3:40am here, though...)

One thing I would suggest regardless though, is that in this and in your thread, you've got an issue with the eyes- specifically, with the area between the upper eyelid and the eyebrow, and the bridge of the nose area. I think it'd really be worth your time to do some studies of the eye examples in the Vanderpoel book "The Human Figure" ( as seen here: http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2007/05/vanderpoel-on-eyes.html ), because it really sorts out how to boil down a really complex area into a solid and logical, but also graceful and simple way.

Looks pretty good overall- if you're still being bugged by bits of measurements being off, now would be a good time to make a tracing of the original plate on tracing paper and lay it over what you've done, so you can see black and white what's off, and draw some conclusions about what it was you forgot to measure.

The biggest thing that leaps out to me is you're exaggerating the darkness of the values on the fingers, creating a kind of jaggedy read with some of your shading. I also suspect that in trying to get your shadow pattern shapes correct, in places you've kind of lost sight of what it it you're actually trying to depict, form-wise.

For example, look at the index and middle fingers on the ref. Though rendered with a lot of subtlety, you can still tease out that on the middle and last finger bones, the artist is still thinking in terms of major planes; they are simplified into box shapes; there's a side plane, and a front plane to them. (Imagine a line running from the side edge of the fingernail up to the corner of the knuckle, and you'll see what I mean.) In your copy, in trying to get the more obvious, darker shading of the knuckles correct, you've forgotten what the basic form of the object is about, and left those broader planes more or less flatly shaded. It's really subtle, but it's essential to making the illusion of form work.

Another example would be the pinky, which as you mentioned looks a bit fuzzy. If you were to take a piece of tracing paper and draw the outline there, and then try to draw in the part of the finger that's currently being obscured by the ring finger (keeping in mind these fingers have a delicate taper to them and are not big knobby strongman hands), you'd notice that it's a bit too wide in that third knuckle area; you've put in an angle at the knuckle there that's a bit too acute, bowing it outwards. The work you've put into the shadow shapes is good, they just aren't pulling their weight because that construction's a bit off. You could probably use the Liquify tool in PS and mush it in a bit, and suddenly what was "fuzzy" would all of a sudden come good.

Sure, you can come to that same conclusion just through brute force measuring of the ref, but even though you're "just" copying a reference, it is helpful to attack drawing problems from multiple angles, as you would if drawing from a model or from imagination.

But other than that, good job on sticking with this; I know it seems like a lot of time to put in, but it's definitely going to pay off for you in spades if you keep with it. It's very encouraging to see. :^:


Some stuff that might be redundant to what you already know/have been told:
Judging by the torn out paper you're working on, I assume you're just working with standard sketchbook paper? I might suggest going forward with a higher grade paper with a finer texture, since you seem to be getting a bit of roughness in your shading. You might also have trouble achieving the very soft shading and have trouble erasing substantially on rougher paper. (I've never done Bargue drawing in an instructed class so I don't have any specific recommendations- (maybe @lyrium has some suggestions, since she did all those cast drawings?) but I would think something like smooth bristol would be, if not exactly the best choice, at least slightly better.)

I dunno if KevinDee ever gave his notes to you, but this is what's in the book, in case he didn't:
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueNotes.jpg
(Go buy the book so this comes across as an effective ad and not just copyright infringement plz).

Also I don't know if your ref included the angular layout, which is really handy. (Couldn't tell because you were already on to shading when you posted it the first time.)
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/info/bargueHand.jpg

I don't know what companies your professors were working for, but it absolutely is not the norm in the video game industry at least.
Any company cheap enough to try to pull that kind of shit isn't going to attract anyone worth hiring.

Godfather wrote: »

Nappuccino wrote: »

Godfather wrote: »

Nappuccino wrote: »

Godfather wrote: »

Creative Cloud is so much better than buying the product outright. It was the only way I could even afford to start learning these programs, and it pretty much encourages legal means of downloading compared to outright theft when just one of your products cost $300+

In unrelated news, i'm an uncle now, hooray!

Spoiler:

But if renting it is going to cost way more money down the line, it makes better sense to save up now and purchase once.

It's akin to the whole "you can have one piece of candy now or 20 pieces in 20 min" only the candy is money and you can spend it on hookers.

If you're working in most fields of the digital media arts, it's company policy to do mandatory upgrades.

This is a good thing they're doing (regarding the cloud).

So . . . you use the up-to-date programs at work and then your personal ones at home for personal things. I'm not seeing why you have to update your personal stuff for a job. The job should cover the cost if that's the case.

Hahahahahahahaha

Uh, Napp is correct? (Assuming "job" here is an actual staff position and not a freelance gig for the company. Even then, I've been able to invoice companies for the cost of PS upgrades because of compatibility reasons- given, the cost not a hugely significant compared to the cost of the work as a whole (couple months of contract work), but it's not totally unreasonable thing to charge a client if you can give a good reason it is necessary.)

Also, companies really aren't that keen to upgrade to the latest and greatest software right away, in my experience.
Beyond just the cost of doing so, new versions come with new bugs and can and will break internal tools very often (especially when it comes to stuff like export tools for 3d engines), so companies (if they have any sense) will often not upgrade until they can test all their tools and make sure it won't break anything. They do eventually upgrade, but often because older versions won't get the same level of enterprise-level customer service more than anything.

That's one thing that kind of bothers me about this- if they're moving to a rolling, constantly updating model with the software, that's going to be a major pain in the ass for a lot of people, because it means instead of risking having things break once a year or so, now shit will be breaking constantly. (Though I suppose it'd be more of a problem if Autodesk adopted this model than Adobe. Adobe's products have already been fucked for years anyway YEAH I'M LOOKING AT YOU FLASH.)