Ive been fooled! I thought this was a Gibs thread when I clicked it!
Then I've succeeded in my grand scheme. I never wanted advice, I only wished to pose as Gibs...
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
1. Buy a book on Grid Layout - Grid Systems by Kimberly Elam would be my suggestion.
2. Your line length needs to be shorter - either make the font larger or the margins larger or use columns. You can't have 20+ words on a line, it's unreadable.
3. You need bigger margins - everything looks squeezed on.
4. Those new headers you're working on look really bad. You have a fussy font on a fussy background and just adding an ugly thick outline isn't going to fix that. If you really like the font, go with the font or visa-versa with the background.
5. Having said all that, you've obviously got a clue, you just need to slog through that whole "getting better" stage.
1. Buy a book on Grid Layout - Grid Systems by Kimberly Elam would be my suggestion.
You're probably right, since I know nothing about "grids" in this context. I'll look into it.
2. Your line length needs to be shorter - either make the font larger or the margins larger or use columns. You can't have 20+ words on a line, it's unreadable.
I get the column thing, but I don't think bigger fonts would be necessary, since I'm using a standard size. I'd worry more about it if I was shooting out for a larger, pickier audience. Again, I'll talk with my staff about it, I'm not sure if people would like seeing everything in columns. Since I'm working with a lot of poetry and fiction, I thought it would be better to constrain everything else to columns.
3. You need bigger margins - everything looks squeezed on.
That crossed my mind, but I wasn't sure. I kept everything smaller than the pre-made margins that InDesign puts on every page, so I thought it would be fine.
4. Those new headers you're working on look really bad. You have a fussy font on a fussy background and just adding an ugly thick outline isn't going to fix that. If you really like the font, go with the font or visa-versa with the background.
Would lightening and bringing down the contrast in the background make it better? I'm not just going to throw words at the top of the page with plain rectangles, since fitting the headers with the magazine theme is one of the things I've kept with. I'm also really attached to those backgrounds, but I don't want to tack a plain font over them. I guess I'm just not sure how to fix this other than abandoning all decorations and not even putting headers.
5. Having said all that, you've obviously got a clue, you just need to slog through that whole "getting better" stage.
Thank you for all the advice. That's definitely why I asked about it (getting better and all). Sorry if I seem to contradict you or anything, I'm just not sure in some cases how to fix a problem, or whether or not problems are a big deal.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
2. Bigger fonts aren't necessary, they're just one of the three ways you can get your lines shorter. If you have larger margins or columns you'll fix that.
4. Ok, I happen to have a similar texture used in our xmas cards last year, here's one way you could alter it;
Here's the original texture
I added an icy border round the two edges that won't be at the page edge, to make the transition into a white page less jarring.
I'm assuming yours is going to be greyscale rather than colour so I've changed it to Black and white.
I removed the top layer of snowflakes as the lines on them are two crisp and would make reading the text difficult. You may not be able to do that but you could just blur your texture instead.
I've also made the texture darker as I'm using white text. As my background is very busy I'm using a thick clean, san-serif font to make sure it's highly visible.
Alternatively, one way to use a more elaborate font would be to blur the snowflakes more - the eye is naturally drawn to areas of sharp focus.
How's that? That was the original contrast and lightness of the background. Blurring it just eliminates the snowflakes from really being seen at all. Unless anyone else has some advice, I'm done with this for now. I'll post up the new magazine when it's done to see if I did things any better.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
I've drawn another creature thing, and a few sketches of some others. I'm trying to finish this, and I already see a lot of the problems (the eyes, and a lot of the shading). I'm looking for any crits that you could give. I'll probably color this since I'm finally getting my tablet stylus for christmas, just need to order it. I'm hoping to improve a lot when I finally get that.
I'll let you guess what this was all inspired by.
You can see the original sketch on this page.
Also, I'll still take advice on just about anything in this thread. Oh yeah, I fixed the infamous penis-apple (no one around here said it, but quite a few people thought it wasn't an apple) quite a while ago, and never updated it. Just a random little thing there.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
I don't do very good finished work...I wish I had more motivation to get better and work on drawing from life and all that jazz. Plus I don't have time. What ever. Also, this link leads to a thread in my weird little forum (that I don't let anyone post in and just exists to show friends my art) where I've listed all my art from over the past year. There's a lot of stuff missing, but oh well. I might fix that later. It's all old stuff anyways. Oh yeah, maximum nsf56k on that. Lots of pictures.
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
I'm looking for advice on some website layout that I'm doing for my school. I'm wondering if this looks good. The links in that drop down from the buttons don't work, so don't bother. Thanks.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
I appoligize, Sublimus, for not taking your idea to heart. I enjoyed the scroll-over flashyness. I'm not trying to whore out a school website or anything, just looking for advice on the layout and any ideas anyone else may have. It's not finished, but we had to get this up. I'm going to add to this post in an hour, cause right now I have to run and take a bus so have at it!
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
So, I haven't done any real art in months, and that link above can basically explain why. No, not because I've been working on that website, because of school. BUT, I have found a sneaky way to do art, you see! How? Lab illustrations! Yes, all my friends yell at me, saying "Stop that, you're just a perfectionist, trying to be better than me? Nyeah, nyeah see, nyeah!"
...kind of like that. Not to say that I'm good at art or anything, that's just what they say to me. Anyways, here they are, from a grasshopper dissection lab and pig dissection lab. Sorry, all the fancy labels aren't here because they're in MS Office. Also, sorry for V-Scroll, they're tall.
External Anatomy of Grasshopper (tee hee, it moves!):
Fetal Pig Digestive & Respiratory Systems:
Fetal Pig Reproductive & Excretory Systems:
Fetal Pig Circulatory System:
The pig ones were really last minute, like we had 5 weeks to do them (3 part lab), but I did them all in the last two days. Woo for late night work...like right now. Crap, time for sleep.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Hello again. So I wanted to draw something because all the art here and at CA.org inspired me. I don't remember why I chose to do it this way, I just kind of did, but I went and found a face on GIS and went to draw it. On the image in photoshop I gray-scaled it and then started putting circles/line/rectangles and a whole bunch of guidelines to reference where everything was. Then I copied all these to my paper. Finally I started drawing. I wanted everything to actually look right for once.
This is the reference (in color)
So here it is. Right now I have a lot of really rough "hatching" and scribbling for shading, but all the elements are on the page. In gray-scale all the shading is really soft and hard to see, and then the chin/mouth area is irritating because of all the stubble, so I stopped working on it for now. I already noticed that the hairline isn't right, and I fixed that.
I'll update when I work on it again. I'll probably finish up the shading and then clean it up and smooth it out.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Well, I just got my tablet, but haven't done that much because of work. I started by working on this coloring I did a will ago, I just did the legs. (Not my line work!)
Then I did this stupid rocks. Made me realize I'm not as far ahead as I thought.
Then I started this, I might finish it. H-scroll!
And then I did this last night/today. It was supposed to be a white raven or crow, totally messed up the beak. And then the colors got too soft and white, and I didn't want to deal with trying to fix it so I turned it into some sort of snow finch. Top to bottom oldest to newest.
No, I didn't end up finishing the portrait above, but I hope that better things will be coming (though that was pretty darn swell if I say so my self).
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
The post-count to page-view ratio of this thread is just a little off...
Well, I don't have much to show except AoB's advice for someone else has helped me immensely. I took the ninja picture and added white and black to figure out where lighting should be, because I really screwed up. I went straight for details before defining a light source when I started this last year. Perhaps now it will be much easier.
This is lighting without any kind of gradient, and the gray is back-lighting/glow from specific elements (seen or unseen).
So I'm looking for advice on how accurate you think this is. The light source is towards the viewer, in the area of the white ball. The perspective of the arrows is a vague attempt to more greatly define it. I'm Far less certain of the green character then the other two. I'm not sure how much of his back would be lit, and I was planning on having much of it back-lit.
Keep in mind, this is done over the purple guy's original shading, so that's visible. I realize it kind of looks like his finger is the light source, but it's not supposed to be. It's complicated because there's a lot of light sources: glowing symbols/fingers/eyes on all of them (colored like their colors), dim city lights from behind (yellow), light from in front of them (red-orange), light from both sides of the bridge (dim red), and light from under the bridge illuminating the rocks (green).
Though I didn't draw this, I think it should be good practice. If I start over using this then I'll probably get rid of the lines as I color it.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Why did you make the lightsource a nondescriminate point in space with no apparent means of actually producing light? That dot is in the middle of nowhere.
Why did you make the lightsource a nondescriminate point in space with no apparent means of actually producing light? That dot is in the middle of nowhere.
???
It's in front of them, as in the viewer can't see it. If you put your finger a few inches in front of your monitor where the dot is, that's where it would be. Anyways...good to know it's not terrible...
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Yes, I do necro post just for the sake of having a consistent dumping ground. Haha, this thread is a year old.
Anyways, here is an finished update on a picture that can be seen above. I only did it for a school magazine cover. I do have a few other things I could scan, but I am so tired, so I'll just put this up for now and perhaps I will remember the other stuff later. I have to say that for finishing it at one in the morning I did fairly well.
I now know that drawing from a gray-scale reference is not an issue for me. Now to reach a point where I can produce something like this from my head.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Is there a reason you took such a flat looking photo to draw from? There's barely any variation, especially in B&W, aside from the mouth/eye/nose obviously.
I was bored and just looking for a random face to sketch, I actually didn't plan on doing it detailed at all. Then I started using a ruler and spending a bunch of time on it so I just stopped. The only reason I finished it was because I needed a cover. Anyways, the choice of reference was just random.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
i love that grasshopper
it's totally something straight out of one of those interactive cds that comes with bio textbooks (that you end up paying an additional 50$ for)
drawing from photos is hard to begin with, but photos with psycho lighting like that is just going to frustrate you.
typically what i've been doing since good ol' Halifax doesn't offer life drawing, is look up model photographers on devart
i have actually found some excellent excellent references for doing figure drawings/faces...boobies, all that fun stuff
i can link some later on if you want
some of it's pretty damn nsfw though
Man, I probably need some help. This is what I've got so far on a cover for our school yearbook.
It's due tomorrow morning, though it was technically due yesterday on the CD containing the rest of the yearbook, but I totally underestimated how much I had left to do with that damned thing. I am terrible at figuring out how long something is going to take. I just spent three and a half hours just on the flat colors for this. That's a little ridiculous, isn't it? I don't freaking know if I'm going to be able to finish this in time. I took as many shortcuts as I could when doing this, but it still took this long! The lines aren't mine, I had a friend do them.
In the fourth corner there's going to be a bunch of other stuff that relates to inside jokes and school events, and there's going to be inside jokes on the spines of the books. We're a performing arts school which does 2 plays a school year as well as other theater stuff, which offers the IB diploma, and every year we have like 4 international trips, and we have 10 exchange students. Hence the globe and theater corners.
I plan on rendering it to the best of my ability, but I don't know if that will be an option or possible in the next 8 hours.
It's times like these that I REALLY wish I wasn't a perfectionist, and I could work a lot faster and as skillfully as some of the people around here. Basically, trying to do as well as I can, but as fast as I can. Will update later...any advice?
[edit] Huh...this looks way more saturated on this monitor than the other one.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Well, I finished it. I've learned a valuable lesson on being a total perfectionist and having to give up even when something doesn't meet my standards. I know I'm capable of making this way better, but there were so many little parts, and I was taking a really long time to render things, so...yeah. I also overestimated my artistic ability, and assumed I was capable of doing things that I'm not (also, there's the fact that I was friggin' exhausted and stressed out and wasn't thinking about what I was doing very much). There's a lot that was going to go on there that I didn't have time to draw. Last night was like a nightmare; I never could imagine being so stressed out and disappointed over something like this. I was up until 5 AM doing it.
I did the lines for the last corner. My friend did the lines for the other object separately, and I put them together in the composition. I was really happy with how I rendered the donut and the cheese in the bottom corner, and I tried to apply the same technique to everything else, but it ended up being really difficult on the bigger objects (especially the globe...ha). And as you can see, I didn't even get to the books (my friend told me not to worry about them, so I didn't).
So, given that I know most of the faults of this, I guess there isn't much to ask for in way of critique. I'd love to change it an make it better, but as it is the yearbook company hasn't even responded as to whether or not it's okay I turned this in late, and I kind of just want to be done with it.
Anyways, I guess I'm just sharing it. I think I'll update with all my other recent arts in the near future.
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
No, I still don't have anything finished, but I really like to keep all my stuff in one thread. I have some sketches I've done here at CSSSA (four-week creative writing program at CalArts), during class and in my free time. I also have a bunch of stuff I want to scan that's at home, so I won't have it available for another two weeks. I wonder if they have scanners around at Columbia...
Sorry for the lines...D:. And this computer won't let me change the thread title, !
First thing I drew here
Inspired by some graffiti in the sublevel (basement where graffiti is allowed)
Uhm...
I'm trying to develop some sort of style
And I've been messing around with letters a lot lately:
So I started an alphabet, and then decided to use it for a company logo (KaliCorps)
But the 'K' was really hard to fit into the style
And here is what I have so far. I don't like the 'L', and I need to do the letters individually and then put them together digitally, but first I need to make them flow well together, right? And I messed up the top fork of the 'K' here
And lastly, here's a WIP I really should try to finish so that I can prove to myself that I actually can draw something cool like the rest of you. It's a bug/alien thing, the detailed part is and upright torso, and then it's going to have a centipede-like rear that is stretching out behind it (if you can tell at all)
srsizzy on
BRO LET ME GET REAL WITH YOU AND SAY THAT MY FINGERS ARE PREPPED AND HOT LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN TO BRING RADICAL BEATS SO SMOOTH THE SHIT WILL BE MEDICINAL-GRADE TRIPNASTY MAKING ALL BRAINWAVES ROLL ON THE SURFACE OF A BALLS-FEISTY NEURAL RAINBOW CRACKA-LACKIN' YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE HERE-NOW SPACE-TIME SITUATION THAT ALL OF LIFE BE JAMMED UP IN THROUGH THE UNIVERSAL FLOW BEATS
Posts
2. Your line length needs to be shorter - either make the font larger or the margins larger or use columns. You can't have 20+ words on a line, it's unreadable.
3. You need bigger margins - everything looks squeezed on.
4. Those new headers you're working on look really bad. You have a fussy font on a fussy background and just adding an ugly thick outline isn't going to fix that. If you really like the font, go with the font or visa-versa with the background.
5. Having said all that, you've obviously got a clue, you just need to slog through that whole "getting better" stage.
I get the column thing, but I don't think bigger fonts would be necessary, since I'm using a standard size. I'd worry more about it if I was shooting out for a larger, pickier audience. Again, I'll talk with my staff about it, I'm not sure if people would like seeing everything in columns. Since I'm working with a lot of poetry and fiction, I thought it would be better to constrain everything else to columns.
That crossed my mind, but I wasn't sure. I kept everything smaller than the pre-made margins that InDesign puts on every page, so I thought it would be fine.
Would lightening and bringing down the contrast in the background make it better? I'm not just going to throw words at the top of the page with plain rectangles, since fitting the headers with the magazine theme is one of the things I've kept with. I'm also really attached to those backgrounds, but I don't want to tack a plain font over them. I guess I'm just not sure how to fix this other than abandoning all decorations and not even putting headers.
Thank you for all the advice. That's definitely why I asked about it (getting better and all). Sorry if I seem to contradict you or anything, I'm just not sure in some cases how to fix a problem, or whether or not problems are a big deal.
4. Ok, I happen to have a similar texture used in our xmas cards last year, here's one way you could alter it;
Here's the original texture
I added an icy border round the two edges that won't be at the page edge, to make the transition into a white page less jarring.
I'm assuming yours is going to be greyscale rather than colour so I've changed it to Black and white.
I removed the top layer of snowflakes as the lines on them are two crisp and would make reading the text difficult. You may not be able to do that but you could just blur your texture instead.
I've also made the texture darker as I'm using white text. As my background is very busy I'm using a thick clean, san-serif font to make sure it's highly visible.
Alternatively, one way to use a more elaborate font would be to blur the snowflakes more - the eye is naturally drawn to areas of sharp focus.
Hope that helps.
How's that? That was the original contrast and lightness of the background. Blurring it just eliminates the snowflakes from really being seen at all. Unless anyone else has some advice, I'm done with this for now. I'll post up the new magazine when it's done to see if I did things any better.
I'll let you guess what this was all inspired by.
You can see the original sketch on this page.
Also, I'll still take advice on just about anything in this thread. Oh yeah, I fixed the infamous penis-apple (no one around here said it, but quite a few people thought it wasn't an apple) quite a while ago, and never updated it. Just a random little thing there.
I don't do very good finished work...I wish I had more motivation to get better and work on drawing from life and all that jazz. Plus I don't have time. What ever. Also, this link leads to a thread in my weird little forum (that I don't let anyone post in and just exists to show friends my art) where I've listed all my art from over the past year. There's a lot of stuff missing, but oh well. I might fix that later. It's all old stuff anyways. Oh yeah, maximum nsf56k on that. Lots of pictures.
*cough*crap*cough*
I appoligize, Sublimus, for not taking your idea to heart. I enjoyed the scroll-over flashyness. I'm not trying to whore out a school website or anything, just looking for advice on the layout and any ideas anyone else may have. It's not finished, but we had to get this up. I'm going to add to this post in an hour, cause right now I have to run and take a bus so have at it!
...kind of like that. Not to say that I'm good at art or anything, that's just what they say to me. Anyways, here they are, from a grasshopper dissection lab and pig dissection lab. Sorry, all the fancy labels aren't here because they're in MS Office. Also, sorry for V-Scroll, they're tall.
External Anatomy of Grasshopper (tee hee, it moves!):
Fetal Pig Digestive & Respiratory Systems:
Fetal Pig Reproductive & Excretory Systems:
Fetal Pig Circulatory System:
The pig ones were really last minute, like we had 5 weeks to do them (3 part lab), but I did them all in the last two days. Woo for late night work...like right now. Crap, time for sleep.
This is the reference (in color)
So here it is. Right now I have a lot of really rough "hatching" and scribbling for shading, but all the elements are on the page. In gray-scale all the shading is really soft and hard to see, and then the chin/mouth area is irritating because of all the stubble, so I stopped working on it for now. I already noticed that the hairline isn't right, and I fixed that.
I'll update when I work on it again. I'll probably finish up the shading and then clean it up and smooth it out.
Well, I just got my tablet, but haven't done that much because of work. I started by working on this coloring I did a will ago, I just did the legs. (Not my line work!)
Then I did this stupid rocks. Made me realize I'm not as far ahead as I thought.
Then I started this, I might finish it. H-scroll!
And then I did this last night/today. It was supposed to be a white raven or crow, totally messed up the beak. And then the colors got too soft and white, and I didn't want to deal with trying to fix it so I turned it into some sort of snow finch. Top to bottom oldest to newest.
No, I didn't end up finishing the portrait above, but I hope that better things will be coming (though that was pretty darn swell if I say so my self).
Well, I don't have much to show except AoB's advice for someone else has helped me immensely. I took the ninja picture and added white and black to figure out where lighting should be, because I really screwed up. I went straight for details before defining a light source when I started this last year. Perhaps now it will be much easier.
This is lighting without any kind of gradient, and the gray is back-lighting/glow from specific elements (seen or unseen).
So I'm looking for advice on how accurate you think this is. The light source is towards the viewer, in the area of the white ball. The perspective of the arrows is a vague attempt to more greatly define it. I'm Far less certain of the green character then the other two. I'm not sure how much of his back would be lit, and I was planning on having much of it back-lit.
Keep in mind, this is done over the purple guy's original shading, so that's visible. I realize it kind of looks like his finger is the light source, but it's not supposed to be. It's complicated because there's a lot of light sources: glowing symbols/fingers/eyes on all of them (colored like their colors), dim city lights from behind (yellow), light from in front of them (red-orange), light from both sides of the bridge (dim red), and light from under the bridge illuminating the rocks (green).
Though I didn't draw this, I think it should be good practice. If I start over using this then I'll probably get rid of the lines as I color it.
Why did you make the lightsource a nondescriminate point in space with no apparent means of actually producing light? That dot is in the middle of nowhere.
It's in front of them, as in the viewer can't see it. If you put your finger a few inches in front of your monitor where the dot is, that's where it would be. Anyways...good to know it's not terrible...
Anyways, here is an finished update on a picture that can be seen above. I only did it for a school magazine cover. I do have a few other things I could scan, but I am so tired, so I'll just put this up for now and perhaps I will remember the other stuff later. I have to say that for finishing it at one in the morning I did fairly well.
I now know that drawing from a gray-scale reference is not an issue for me. Now to reach a point where I can produce something like this from my head.
it's totally something straight out of one of those interactive cds that comes with bio textbooks (that you end up paying an additional 50$ for)
drawing from photos is hard to begin with, but photos with psycho lighting like that is just going to frustrate you.
typically what i've been doing since good ol' Halifax doesn't offer life drawing, is look up model photographers on devart
i have actually found some excellent excellent references for doing figure drawings/faces...boobies, all that fun stuff
i can link some later on if you want
some of it's pretty damn nsfw though
:winky:
It's due tomorrow morning, though it was technically due yesterday on the CD containing the rest of the yearbook, but I totally underestimated how much I had left to do with that damned thing. I am terrible at figuring out how long something is going to take. I just spent three and a half hours just on the flat colors for this. That's a little ridiculous, isn't it? I don't freaking know if I'm going to be able to finish this in time. I took as many shortcuts as I could when doing this, but it still took this long! The lines aren't mine, I had a friend do them.
In the fourth corner there's going to be a bunch of other stuff that relates to inside jokes and school events, and there's going to be inside jokes on the spines of the books. We're a performing arts school which does 2 plays a school year as well as other theater stuff, which offers the IB diploma, and every year we have like 4 international trips, and we have 10 exchange students. Hence the globe and theater corners.
I plan on rendering it to the best of my ability, but I don't know if that will be an option or possible in the next 8 hours.
It's times like these that I REALLY wish I wasn't a perfectionist, and I could work a lot faster and as skillfully as some of the people around here. Basically, trying to do as well as I can, but as fast as I can. Will update later...any advice?
[edit] Huh...this looks way more saturated on this monitor than the other one.
I did the lines for the last corner. My friend did the lines for the other object separately, and I put them together in the composition. I was really happy with how I rendered the donut and the cheese in the bottom corner, and I tried to apply the same technique to everything else, but it ended up being really difficult on the bigger objects (especially the globe...ha). And as you can see, I didn't even get to the books (my friend told me not to worry about them, so I didn't).
So, given that I know most of the faults of this, I guess there isn't much to ask for in way of critique. I'd love to change it an make it better, but as it is the yearbook company hasn't even responded as to whether or not it's okay I turned this in late, and I kind of just want to be done with it.
Anyways, I guess I'm just sharing it. I think I'll update with all my other recent arts in the near future.
Sorry for the lines...D:. And this computer won't let me change the thread title,
First thing I drew here
Inspired by some graffiti in the sublevel (basement where graffiti is allowed)
Uhm...
I'm trying to develop some sort of style
And I've been messing around with letters a lot lately:
So I started an alphabet, and then decided to use it for a company logo (KaliCorps)
But the 'K' was really hard to fit into the style
And here is what I have so far. I don't like the 'L', and I need to do the letters individually and then put them together digitally, but first I need to make them flow well together, right? And I messed up the top fork of the 'K' here
And lastly, here's a WIP I really should try to finish so that I can prove to myself that I actually can draw something cool like the rest of you. It's a bug/alien thing, the detailed part is and upright torso, and then it's going to have a centipede-like rear that is stretching out behind it (if you can tell at all)