Heap-o-Poj - New things on page 3

Poj

Hello friends.

A buddy of mine has been pushing me to join the AC for quite some time, and registration is open again so I'm finally here. Hooray! I've been following along for a while now, but this is my first post. There are quite a few familiar faces here, I see, so that's awesome already.

Anyway, here's some of my most recent/relevant stuff. I'd love feedback!

Finished stuff:

An episode of my webcomic (turned into link because it's kind of irrelevant now)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/kgreenseth/015-1.jpg

A cheeseburger painting (oils), because I really love cheeseburgers. Kind of low-res, need to take a better photo of it someday.



Notebook stuff:

Some dandelions:


More Plants:


Crazy fish from this dream I had one time:


Vaguely phallic plant thing:



Random assorted character art (Spoiler'd because there's a lot of it):

Preview:

My favorite original character duo, Fresia and Ted:


Two different incarnations of Fresia:





Some other characters:
"Denyto" for an art forum:


Some 80s chick:


Self portrait?

Thanks for visiting!

NibCrom

That fish piece is rad.

Stupid Mr Whoopsie Name

Yeah your notebook stuff is fantastic! It makes it hard to believe the cartooning stuff is also yours.

Poj

Thanks guys!

The cartooning stuff is kind of a work in progress. I used to do semi-cartoony pen and ink stuff, and somewhere along the line my work kind of split off in two different directions. I'm still pretty new at the whole digital thing, and my means of progression are a sort of limited right now due to the fact that I don't have a lot of tools to work with. Still, I'm gonna keep truckin.

Buckwolfe

Wow. The life drawings in the sketchbooks are fucking outstanding. I'm really digging on the quality of the images, and the way the text balances the whole thing out. The only thing I can say is that you should do more of them. Many, many more.

NightDragon

I leik deez

Poj

Ask and ye shall receive:



Most of the notebook drawings were drawn while I was in school, in class. I liked to sit in the back row.

One of my favorites:


I have oodles of these sitting around, so I can post more later, too. Sadly, one of my notebooks (the one with the peacock fish in it) has gone missing, so I can't post much more from that one.

NibCrom

I'm really jealous of your realistic drawings. I wish I could draw like that. Is it mostly practice? Drawing from real life?

winter_combat_knight

You should be doing illustrations for high school science text books. Those plants/fish ones are freaking sweet!

Poj

winter_combat_knight wrote: »

You should be doing illustrations for high school science text books.

Oh man, I would love to do this.

As for the real life/practice thing, these are nearly all straight out of my head. There are some architectural references in a few drawings due to the fact that I was probably looking at architectural slides when I doodled them, but I don't usually have any references nearby when I draw in my notebook. The finished pieces are a little different (I did google up some pictures before I started that dandelion drawing up there, for example), but I never copy anything directly from life.

Here's something else, just for fun:

Rankenphile

the last one is nice, but looks very flat

RubberAC

More fast food oils please

Loomdun

I was spacing out with my eyes aiming in opposite directions, and then I realized that your biggest weakness is your understanding of how light works on objects is, something that usually helps this is using a egg and drawing down the shadows, a lot, I forget the names. Where am I?!? Who are you? Such pretty art....

Mustang

Man your hatching is fucking phenomenal.

earthwormadam

yay poj

Endless_Serpents

Your hamburger oils are fantastic, as is the notebook work, it makes me almost want to get knee deep into some real art. Almost. Well done and keep it up foreverrr...r.

Poj

I'm always happy to hear these sorts of things. Thanks folks!

How do you guys feel about the digital/cartoony stuff? I really appreciate all the feedback on the line drawings, but I'd definitely consider that style "better-developed" than my comic/digital work. My means are a little limited right now only because I'm using mostly free software to make everything, but I would still appreciate any tips or tricks anyone might have.

Here's some more random digital art to refresh your memory. Not one of my favorite ones, but at least it has a setting:


(My characters Fresia the crazy sledder and Ted the inventor).

RubberAC

Loomdun wrote: »

I was spacing out with my eyes aiming in opposite directions, and then I realized that your biggest weakness is your understanding of how light works on objects is, something that usually helps this is using a egg and drawing down the shadows, a lot, I forget the names. Where am I?!? Who are you? Such pretty art....

I'm.. not really sure where this comes from
his shading and hatching is one of his strongest points

Your normal work is leaps and bounds above your cartoon work
like, superman leaps. Or Incredible Hulk leaps
On an imaginary scale of Rad

Poj

Since most of these were just drawn on the fly, I tend to worry more about just conveying depth than actually trying to make the light source appear accurate. I should try the egg thing, though, since that sounds promising.

I'll have to keep attempting to bump my digital stuff up that imaginary scale of rad.

Here's some more low-res fast food oils, by the way. I really need to get this stuff re-photographed!

Loomdun

RubberAC wrote: »

Loomdun wrote: »

I was spacing out with my eyes aiming in opposite directions, and then I realized that your biggest weakness is your understanding of how light works on objects is, something that usually helps this is using a egg and drawing down the shadows, a lot, I forget the names. Where am I?!? Who are you? Such pretty art....

I'm.. not really sure where this comes from
his shading and hatching is one of his strongest points

Your normal work is leaps and bounds above your cartoon work
like, superman leaps. Or Incredible Hulk leaps
On an imaginary scale of Rad

Her/His hatching is very strong, I said nothing about that, the shading is made up, and how its made up and shaded there is only two shadows being applied, highlight and.. I think its called core shadow, theres 4, god my memory with names is terrible or is it 3 + the Cast shadow... I cant even think of the names

edit: no wait.. I think theres 6, reflective light, highlight, core shadow, cast shadow, um, I cant recall the other twoooo0000

beavotron

those pen drawings are fantastic!
really nice work

Poj

I've been thinking a lot about crosshatching ever since you guys mentioned it, and so this is a preview of something I'm working on for another site. I tried to combine the two styles, and this is the first time I feel like I've had any degree of success:



Any feedback is greatly appreciated, of course.

"She," by the way, not like it matters or anything.

Food

That's looking much nicer. I especially like the fly. Have you tried drawing people in that style yet?

JohnTWM

Poj wrote: »

"She," by the way, not like it matters or anything.

Professionally? No. But for lonely boys on the internet it's always a thrill :P
Also, I agree that your penwork is really great. The cartooning stuff seems to lack the attention to structure that the other drawings have though. Like in the horse one,the horse on the left is clearly leaning to our left in a really awkward way. I think if you lay down your forms a little stronger before you get underway cartooning so that the structure is better, your finished stuff will be much improved.
EDIT: Oh, I just noticed this. Maybe im just a perv, but the engines(?) on your plane look like boobies.

Poj

JohnTWM wrote: »

Maybe im just a perv, but the engines(?) on your plane look like boobies.

They do kind of, don't they?

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'm working on 6 full pages in this fancy new "style," and so far I'm not liking any quite as well as the sample I posted already. Oh well. I will post some more samples as soon as all of the pages are done.

I am going to be drawing people, but they look about the same as they did before.

Poj

Hokay, I'm recovering from a nasty bout of tonsillitis but I have a little new art to show. Heeeere we go. I am posting first a few pages of a comic I just finished. I know a few people who frequent the AC have probably seen them already, so I'm just going to preview the first page and then link the last two. It's a new style for me, my first (real) attempt to merge crosshatching and comics. I'm a lot happier with the first page than the other two, and I'm not posting them with text because the text on the real version was dreadfully rushed and fever-induced. Anyway, here we go:



Page 2:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/kgreenseth/fair2-2.png

Page 3:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/kgreenseth/fair3copy.png

Also, here's a character sheet for a DA tournament I'm going to enter. The character design (image, personality) is pretty closely based on myself (note: girl).

crawdaddio

A couple of reasons I think your other two pages might be less successful (at least, in the humble opinion of a guy who can't draw nearly as well): it seems like, particularly in the third page, the hatching gets a lot busier, in a way that ceases to contribute to the definition of form, and so becomes kind of gratuitous. Most of the hatching in the other two pages were with black, which works out pretty well, and I think you kind of got carried away, and maybe a bit more careless, employing the color hatching in the third; now, don't get me wrong, I think the color hatching is a great idea (especially with the way it works in the first page)--I just think you have to be a lot more careful with the way color works to create form; there's a lot of pretty advanced color theory stuff, which I see you using to great effect, but which I think can be pushed or polished a bit more.

Overall, though, I really like these, especially the colorfulness of them; I don't know if anything there will be helpful, or isn't coming out of my ass, but hopefully there's a grain of something in it.

Poj

That's very helpful, actually. I've heard some of the same criticism already without any insight into how to actually fix it, so hearing a little more organized argument on it is refreshing. I had a certain rhythm going on the first one that I was unable to recreate on future pages, but hopefully it'll get better with practice. I'm going to try and keep it up because I feel like I might be onto something neat, if I can make it work.

Unrelated: How do folks feel about the technique on character sheet I posted (especially the frontal view)? I haven't done a whole lot of digital painting recently, so I'd love to hear feedback. Pummel me with it, if you have to.

earthwormadam

I really like your coloring but I think shading in various colors instead of black would be a big improvement. It just makes your linework look kinda smudgy.

TheBog

How very squidbunny.

Poj

Some new stuff:



Separately-shaded character art from that page:


Quick character sketch for a comic I'm working on:


Nothing else overly noteworthy right now, but I'm sure there will be more soon.

Edited for ridiculous image sizes and cheesiness.

earthwormadam

The feet on the dino don't seem right. Kinda like they're not planted in place, or supporting any of the weight from the body.

Still though her 'tude totally makes up for these shortcomings.

Poj

You're right, the feet are kind of weird. I had this idea of trying to make her claws resemble high heels, and I think I need to play around with the concept a little more before it makes sense on paper.

Poj

Here's another new concept for the dinosaur comic thing I'm working on. It's all digital, but I was finally FINALLY able to kind of combine my crosshatching with my digital art in a way that sort of works. I think.



In color:

Funguy McAids

Your cross-hatching is awe-inspiring. Your lines are pretty much perfectly places with nice and even stroking. I think I could study your drawings in order to improve my own.

However your comics really look amateur and lacking of any interesting style or quality. I'm sure you can do better do to how well you draw with pencil. Maybe you should try something in a more unique style than flat cartoon characters. The goth girl looks a lot better but still looks incredibly generic and unintersting.

Also the humour in the comic on page 1 is well....crap. Sorry.

Poj

Most of the "flat" drawings are old, with the exclusion of the goth girl. The dinosaur I just posted represents the direction I'd like to go with future work, comics and otherwise. I'm glad to hear the cross-hatching is working.

In defense of the 3-panel comic with the bad humor, that strip is pretty personal and a lot of the situations are intended to be more "endearing" than funny. Still, you have a point. I am glad I tried the web comic thing, but coming up with a quick, original joke on a dime was tough. That strip may not last a whole lot longer.

In other news, here's another drawing I just did:



It's one of my first attempts at night lighting. It's a work in progress, but it's super late and I need to get some distance from it before I start again. I don't think the lighting is working.

Radar6590

I think, because of your cross hatching-linear style, you're way too afraid to go dark with your colors. For the most part, cross hatching is good for black and white stuff, but when translated to color, falls short.

The reason? It's the same as shading to black, as opposed to using vibrant dark colors like deep navy blues and violets, and then they hinder your ability to successfully add backlighting and really determine the value of different parts of the character. In color, the darkest dark of a lighter object may not even be anywhere near the lightest light of a near-black one. But when everything goes to black, it all kind of evens out.

Now, believe me, I love linear stuff. I don't cross hatch the same way (I tend more to use directional lines to define form), but I have my share of linear pieces. And yours look good as lineart. But it just doesn't work in grayscale or color because the space in between the lines defines the value, so it's combining two elements doing the same job.

So, my advice to you, since you're working digitally, would be to work the cross hatching in on a seperate layer, and leave it for the B&W. But then when you go to color it, just turn that layer off.

Other notes would be that you might want to actually study anatomy. Hands and the like. You've got a good grasp of foreshortening and even composition, but it doesn't do anything if your poses look wrong.

Poj

Thanks for the advice, I think I may turn down my ink layer really low (if not completely off) on future drawings in which I plan to use color. Since I am going to want my dinosaur comic to be just black and white, I shouldn't run into the color/crosshatch problem much at all. I think you're right about anatomy, too. Improving in that regard is kind of an ongoing goal of mine.

Here's some more dinosaurs:

Iruka

You can hatch with color too. Its alot like working with pastels, you just have to be willing to paint over your black hatches.

Angel_of_Bacon

earthwormadam wrote: »

Still though her 'tude totally makes up for these shortcomings.

Ugh!

Radar6590

Angel_of_Bacon wrote: »

earthwormadam wrote: »

Still though her 'tude totally makes up for these shortcomings.

Ugh!

I rofl'd.

On a more relevant note; Iruka's right. I didn't even think of that. And it would be a lot like pastels.

I love pastels