Lots of [random] stuff

nakirush

Hey guys,

I've been a long time reader of PA, and a lurker on the forums for the past couple of weeks. This is going to be my first post here, and it's rather long.. so please bear with me.

I consider myself to be an intermediate artist who hopes to one day work as a concept artist in the game or film industries. I'm currently nineteen years old and I've been teaching myself through books, websites, DVDs, etc. since I was twelve. I made the mistake of learning anime first and I picked up a lot of bad habits from that, this is something I still struggle with today.

Anyway, enough about me. Here are some sketches-

A random male-


A female eleven head-


A male human head-


An action pose-


A costume design-


Finished pieces-

Strange vector art-


My very first digital painting-


Heslo, my character from SWG in a pirate costume (also my second digital painting)-


Winter and Spring-


A broom design I used as an example in my never-ending quest for flying Warlock mounts-


The epic version of said flying mount-


A valley I had to design for my GM application to Heroes Journey-


A quick monster design-


Adult Link-


My friends character from SWG, made as a birthday present-


Zesib, my character from Vanguard-


Hourglass, a mage design for a friends comic-


And last, but certainly not least, Trogdor-

MagicToaster

You're pretty good.

Just what I'd expect from the man with the same code as the Boss.

Stupid Mr Whoopsie Name

You are definitely on the right path, the only problem I see is that most of your poses are too static. It looks like everyone is posing for an old Sears catalog. Be more bold, mix it up, make things dynamic!

nakirush

Thanks for the great comments guys, I really appreciate it!

couch-potato

Lookin' pretty snazzy there, few errors here and there - but hey, what artist is without fault every now and then? Only real advice is to make your character poses more fluid, and they're looking a bit parallel, which can grow tiresome to look at. Push some curves against straight lines, never settle for two lines going in the same direction. Look at your forearm or your shins in the mirror, are they completely parallel? This problem should easily go away with some more practice from life drawings. Keep it up.

nakirush

Thanks for the advice! Do you think I should do my posing in a mirror and draw from that?

Tucanwarrior13

I agree with the static comment, esp. on the "action pose''

But over all I really like your style. Kind of a toon meets realism with some cool ideas.

beelow

Concept art? Your character designs are stiff, and the designs are a bit too minimalistic. I think that you should do some drawing from life, no alot of it. You also need to work on color theory, composition, lighting, mood setting, design, perspective, anatomy, proportion. I assume that you have the right idea doing character, creatures, environments, props, etc. You have to showcase that your versatile and that you can adjust to what assignment that you are given. The theories I have mentioned above play its importance in when your designing and creating interesting character, creatures, environments. etc. Style should not be your main thing that your going to showcase right now. Let that develop itself. Really push doing studies from life: figure studies, environments, creatures, vehicles and tools that you see in everyday life. Whatever is there you draw it. Draw from photos, imagination, use ref for imaginative stuff, work without ref, a mixture of things will get you there. Rely on your studies to get better with what designs you create. Design is very important in creating anything. Anything that will boost your understanding how to develop believable anything should be you mission. You will be expected to execute and problem solve and dish off sweet ass concept art to 3d modelers or other guys that need them as a basis to drive vision and also to inspire. Your work may also be used for print and promotion, books etc. So your work must be presentable. Look at some of the games cases that you see on shelves, game mags, Graphic novels, Magic Cards, Art of Star Wars book to see where you need to be. Work on it, draw every damn day; it will be a long road dude believe me. I am going trough it; it's an adventure. I can offer links to Andrew loomis books if you need them. Look at Keith Thompson's work, Dermont Powers, Ryan Church's work, you know what I will give you this link: http://www.turtleart.net/artists.php . This a list of concept artists, a huge list. This is your competition dude and you need to do what they are able to do. Once you have learned those things I mentioned above, style will be your own, and you will have to bring something new to the table. These are things that you can work on, you have a long way to go, I am not going to sugarcoat anything. Work hard and draw everyday! I like that vector one, that is good use of shapes. Good luck. also if you want that loomis book, I can send it to ya. Or you can come over to Conceptart.org and bug me for them, I go under the same alias over there. Pm me. I strongly suggest that you start a profile over there and grow with us over there as well. You will have the luxury of getting a wealth of info there. Most of the questions you will ask, will pretty much be answered, if not there is plenty of pros and good students of art there as well, and myself. Good luck dude! XD

nakirush

Thanks for the replies, guys! That link is great. I like that you mentioned Ryan Church, I just finished watching his DVDs from Gnomon; he's definitely an amazing artist.

My account on ConceptArt.org is the same as here, but I haven't had a chance to really figure out the new profile system since they updated to 3.0.

Thanks again for the advice, I really appreciate it!

beelow

If I haven't already mentioned, learn the tools and make it work for you. Don't let it work for you. You won't anything that way. As I have mentioned in my previous post, work on foundation. Your trying to build a house. A house needs a foundation. Build off of that. Do want those loomis books at all? They are the best thing that I have ran across. It is definitely more in depth than what Ryan church will give you, and it is definitely worth the read and worth your time. You get to kill me if it is a waste of your time. Promise. The things loomis says alone makes sense, a lot of sense. Glad you didn't take my feedback hard dude. Good spirit! Good luck!XD

nakirush

The Loomis books would be great, Beelow! I appreciate it

beelow

http://acid.noobgrinder.com/Loomis/ Here they are. I have different of my own. But you need a bit torrent software to download the file. Its much faster to download that. If you want that I will send you the link for it. You will have to download the Bit torrent software yourself, though. I gave you these, because there is a possibilty that you have Winrar software to collect these puppies, or you can download the the zipped folder and unzip it when you get the files. It takes the longest, but again having these books are well worth it. Cgtalk and conceptart have them. But keep it on a hush hush.

benz0rs

No crits from me. I like your coloring style. It looks very.. soft.

nakirush

Thanks again, guys!

Ash

The only thing I would add is that Trogdor needs more consummate V's.

NightDragon

Aside from the crits already given...and anatomy, color theory, etc...I'd say your colorwork needs a lot more contrast. Desaturate your colored images (especially the "Creator's Vale" thing) and check your contrast. Compare to actual black-and-white photography...or hell, just desaturate actual photographs. You'll find that you're stuck doing midtones quite a lot...and your glittery jewelry stuff especially needs more contrast. Metal is hard to do properly. It tends to have a full range of value, both dark shadow and bright highlights, as it is highly reflective. Don't be afraid to use references.





Look at that last photograph - see how the metal acts differently with the light as compred to, say, the fabric on the other guy? Their skin? etc? You seem to be coloring everything like it was some matte fabric with dull lighting. Got some metal object in there? Prove it. Make it look metallic.

nakirush

Thanks for the crits and suggestions, NightDragon!

beelow

Hack at it a bit at a time though, nakirush. Texture and color and contrast should be the least of your worries. Setting a good composition getting good design first are more important than texture, Nightdragon. I had to learn that the hard way. If design and composition are poor, it won't matter how realistically you can paint, it will look really bad. I have read upon it and most pro say that is what you want to go after design and composition first before you get into doing texture and rendering. But, those are cool tips to remember though.

Oh another book that I recommend to you, nakirush, The Skillful Huntsman(Designstudiopress.com), and go ahead and get that D' artiste Concept Art book(ballisticpublishing.com). Alla Prima Everything I know about Painting is another good book for painting. Its traditional, but Richard Schmid has some really good points on drawing. Burne Hogarthe's book, Dynamic Anatomy, is good as well.;-)

NightDragon

beelow wrote: »

Hack at it a bit at a time though, nakirush. Texture and color and contrast should be the least of your worries. Setting a good composition getting good design first are more important than texture, Nightdragon. I had to learn that the hard way. If design and composition are poor, it won't matter how realistically you can paint, it will look really bad. I have read upon it and most pro say that is what you want to go after design and composition first before you get into doing texture and rendering. But, those are cool tips to remember though.

While I can agree that composition and good design are very important, I really, really don't agree with the idea that texture, color and contrast are the least of anybody's worries. For the purpose of improving your art skills, yeah, color may not necessarily be important in the beginning...you don't really need to work in color ever, but doing it properly, and doing it well, adds a great deal to a picture..........texture helps discern hair from skin, cloth from hair, metal from cloth, etc. You could get away with not having any texture in a picture, but it wouldn't look very good at all. The only way you'd be able to get away with no texture in a drawing would be if the subject doesn't really have any deviation of texture (a bald, nude, young figure?)...or if you did a line drawing and scrapped shading alltogether. No color? No texture? I guess I can understand those.......but no contrast? That, I think, is pretty essential. Again, you could forego contrast by just doing a line drawing (as long as the lines contrast well enough with the paper, ha!) but I think contrast is definately up there in importance. No matter how well somebody's made a picture design-wise or composition-wise, if there's no contrast [and, in the case of a picture requiring texture and having none, and making everything look flat and "papery", no texture], the drawing will still look bad. It's the combination of design, composition, contrast, and texture (if "required", which it typically is, at least for the work presented in this thread) that lead to "good pictures". I think the problem with a lot of people is that they start out working with color and over-rendering when they still have issues like composition and anatomy going on. I imagine that's what the "pro's" are talking about. Color isn't essential, again, but people can learn color while learning things like design and composition. I completely disagree with the idea that color/texture/contrast should be overlooked until the design and composition are addressed.

For the majority of the work posted in this thread, though, there isn't even a background, and it's just a character, or a head. I don't personally feel like composition is a huge issue in those, because they're like cropped studies, or character designs. Composition may be an issue in some of the other pieces, yes, along with design...but for the majority of the work here, the overlying issue (save for things like anatomy and other such things already mentioned, many of which you mentioned) was color, contrast, and texture. I understand that these are not the only issues with the pictures, but they seemed to be the only issues that nobody had really mentioned...and they are issues that are very apparent.

By not mentioning design and composition, I didn't mean to imply that they weren't important. I just decided to critique the color/texture/contrast because yes, it IS still important, and nobody had mentioned it. Why bother posting something which is just a summary of all prior comments? I thought I'd post something he hadn't been critiqued on, yet.

*breath!*

Not meaning to be argumentative or anything, I just like to add my two cents.