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Jesus. Up on the Oliphant. Cuttin down muffuggahz

1246

Posts

  • ChicoBlueChicoBlue Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    You should play with different layer settings to see what they do. Just flip through them and adjust the opacity and experiment.

    There are some brushes:

    Here that try to mimic some pencil/charcoal and whatnot textures.

    Here that have perspective grid brushes that are pretty swell.

    And here are some brushes that I've been using lately.

    ChicoBlue on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    glitch.jpg


    Perspective is off in a few places :(

    I had a background, but not enough time to render it better than it was.

    I don't feel like this is any more developed than my other drawing, just in color :( IDK what else to do.

    ninjai on
  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    If you're serious about improving, do more life studies. Push yourself into areas that you're uncomfortable about. Don't know much about anatomy? Buy and anatomy book and practice, practice, practice. Do observational studies. Do master studies. Do pages and pages of gesture drawings. Keep at it!

    NibCrom on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Goddam it. :(

    It always comes back to that. !!

    I got the books from the questions thread, been neglecting to work on them the last few days... cuz they're fuckin boring...

    ninjai on
  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Find a book you're excited about. I used to have anatomy book that I hated, and I never got anywhere with it. You have to love the material.

    NibCrom on
  • ObilexObilex Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Ninjai! Loving all of the progress you've been showing here. Just looking through your thread, it seems like you are falling victim to the blank canvas, where you have a general idea of what you want to paint, but other than that you get stuck. A good solution to this is to just make new layers, mess up your canvas with color and values and textures, and blend them on top. You would be suprised how many new ideas this will give you, (like noticing a certain brush stroke looks like a building and then expanding on that.) And if something looks wrong, delete the whole layer! The beauty of working digital is the fact that you can experiment so much and nothing is final unless you want it to be!

    Keep up the good work bud, and keep doing those life studies :]

    Obilex on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Obilex wrote: »
    Ninjai! Loving all of the progress you've been showing here.
    Keep up the good work bud, and keep doing those life studies :]

    YAY!!! Thanks Obi!!! You're my only hope.... XD

    Srsly everyone, thanks so much for the comments! Very encouraging!!!




    Anyway, here's stuff from yesterday :)


    lifedrawing.jpg

    NSFW?
    figurestudesongoing.jpg

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    zedward.jpg

    A zombie. Zed word is a reference from Sean of the Dead


    NSFW


    These took me 2 hours. I'm sad it took me that long to do something seemingly so simple :/
    figurestudesongoing2.jpg

    ninjai on
  • DeeLockDeeLock Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Get back to using pencil and paper. This digital media is just hindering you and once you learn how to adequately depict the human form on paper with the simplest of materials you can then move on to doing it in paint/digital/watercolors/markers and so on.

    Give yourself a time limit, 2 hours is way too long for this sort of exercise. Try achieve the same result in 10 minutes time. Set up a timer and stop when it goes off. Try to get the whole figure in there and focus on making the proportions correct. There's a lot of books and resources out there to help you do this.

    DeeLock on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    DeeLock wrote: »
    Get back to using pencil and paper. This digital media is just hindering you and once you learn how to adequately depict the human form on paper with the simplest of materials you can then move on to doing it in paint/digital/watercolors/markers and so on.

    Give yourself a time limit, 2 hours is way too long for this sort of exercise. Try achieve the same result in 10 minutes time. Set up a timer and stop when it goes off. Try to get the whole figure in there and focus on making the proportions correct. There's a lot of books and resources out there to help you do this.

    As much as I don't want to do this, I'll give it a shot. There's an egg timer at the PX, I'll grab one of those and practice a bit. Thanks for the suggestion D!

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    So I was at work for way longer than expected yesterday, so I didn't get around to what you suggested D, I will do that next time I get a chance to sit down. Been a bizzy week. Speaking of, since I only had 15 minutes yesterday here's what I came up with.


    smokingpsa.jpg


    fan.jpg
    Astorite wrote: »
    I'll also agree that lighting seems to be one of the big issues you have. I'd say that basic forms/structure are something you would want to work on too. I saw that sphere you did a couple of pages back, and think that's a good idea, but take it to the next level. Find something like an orange, apple, and a box, put them somewhere with some directional light like a desk lamp, and then draw it all from different angles. Paint them as well. That alone will help a lot.

    Cool progress, though. The mask guy is pretty groovy.


    So I went back to reread some of the comments in this thread to see if I'm learning, I had forgotten you said this even though it was just a few days ago :( Something else I will get right on when I have a moment.

    Tonight I HAVE to finish that joker I was working on. The guy commissioning me is leaving soon.

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Long week. Was a little tired, so I skipped practicing and went straight for something fun.


    This is my go to guy for drawing something fun, but he was boring before, nothing going on but a few cables and belts.

    Add some armor, somre more cables, a poofy jacket, and here's what you get.

    Did 2 versions of this guy, one looked way bulky. I uploaded both for your review.



    That video bitch really pissed me off yesterday, so ...

    dude2o.jpg
    dude.jpg


    Here's the comission. I just couldn't get it the way I wanted it, so I just called it done :( I'm so lazy.
    jokerl.jpg

    Gaw... that bottle looks way more fucked up now... and I can't stop starting at it... WAI!!!!????

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    So the last few weeks have been amped, crazy bizzy and haven't really had time for much.

    I got my team into watching the venture brothers, all of them but one (cuz I only have one copy to lend out at a time :o) so they wanted to portray each of them as characters from venture bros, and most of them fit seemingly well (except the guy who hasn't seen it yet. Can't figure out which character he should be)

    So here's a quick sketch I did. Maybe an hour.

    team22wip.jpg

    Things that need fixed, Doc is too short, the forearms for brock and 21 aren't working, I need a refrence for the "go team venture" pose. So if anyone knows an episode off hand that has that in it...

    If you're into V Bro.'s and haven't seen season 4, do it now. Season 4 part 2 is now on DVD in case you weren't aware.

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Wow, thanks for all the views. Thats a lot.

    Working on this a little bit last night.

    team222.jpg

    ninjai on
  • melting_dollmelting_doll Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I think a lot of this would work better if you staggered them a bit more. Also, it doesn't look as though you've completely planned out the picture... Just because Hank and Dean are in front of Brock and 21, doesn't mean you shouldn't or wouldn't profit from sketching out their entire bodies. With the way it's looking, you're gonna drive yourself right into tangent city. Try to lay out all forms and poses first, THEN try to clean up the lines.


    Brock also looks way smaller, thus looks further into the background than 21. Not sure if that was intentional..?

    melting_doll on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I had the poses on another layer, but forgot to add 21 and brocks bodies :o, and I can't seem to make anything work for hank...

    I still don't know what tangents are.

    ninjai on
  • The_Glad_HatterThe_Glad_Hatter One Sly Fox Underneath a Groovy HatRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    tangents are when, on your flat drawing, lines appear to be touching/ aligning, when in real 3D life there could be quite some distance between them.
    So yes, "but what if i actually see it like this and the lines actually line up in my life-drawing", then you'd probably have to ask yourself if you're going for accuracy or "readability".

    Because when lines appear to be touching, the viewer can often interpret them to be in the same plane. And you want to avoid this when you're trying to put somebody in a background.

    So basically you usually have stuff either overlap, or NOT touch eachother, but avoid stuff just barely touching eachother.

    The_Glad_Hatter on
  • squidbunnysquidbunny Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    tangents.jpg

    squidbunny on
    header_image_sm.jpg
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Wow, I've gotten 1100 views just this week. When I bumped it I only had 5900...

    Sweet! Thanks guys!!!

    What I have done so far.
    team2222.jpg

    WIP
    team222.jpg

    Things that need fixed but probably won't be
    Doc looks like a t rex
    Docs shirt looks retarded, and his torso is too big
    He's too tall
    Hanks nose looks jacked up
    His right eyebrow is waaay too big
    Hanks elevated arm looks stupid
    his eyes seem buggy

    Other things

    ninjai on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Are they supposed to be doing the V-sign on top of the docs head? If it's supposed to be in front, I feel that's a bad composition, covering up most of one of the main character's face in the center of the frame.

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Yeah that is the intent. I don't like that its covering his face either, maybe if he is hunching more? I liked it before I started adding things. :(

    Maybe if he's hunching more? he has a sort of posture problem... idk, is there some way to fix it at this point?

    ninjai on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Maybe if you restructed the whole thing to be a triangle composition, moving Doc down and then 21 and Brock on either side of the boys at the bottom, maybe with a bigger element in the front bottom like the X-1 or something.

    Something like this, maybe:
    venture-triangle.jpg

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I'm sure that style of composition would work out better, but the peice I'm doing is supposed to be more of like a family photo, or slice of lifey kind of thing, but centered on the Doc.

    Also, all I have to do to achieve the triangle comp is place a character above the others. It would appear to me the major issue is obstructing docs face.

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    ninjaiftw.jpg

    So I saw the challenge and immediately started doing thumbnails. After 30 or 40 wasted post it notes, this is my rough idea

    Gonna get crackin later :D

    edit: So I did get crackin, Its got a very pen brush kind of swooshyness, like asian drawings, but I have no fuckin clue how to do text :P

    Anyhoser, I forgot my thumb drive, or I'd upload it.

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Here's a scribble from yesterday, trying to show my cyberpunk dude in an action scene. Its is part of a 2 page story that I want to do, this is the opening panel.
    This was just a quick jot to put it on paper so I don't forget, SIP
    actionguysej.jpg

    What I'm working on for the challenge, I fail at design :(
    ninjailogo.jpg

    Click to see another version of the ninja drawing, plus a bonus scribble
    ninjai2.jpg


    na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na fat man
    fatmand.jpg

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I haven't gotten to draw in a few days. Here's some office scribbles.

    goofyw.jpg
    harryg.jpg
    gandalfj.png

    ninjai on
  • farbekriegfarbekrieg Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Just want to mention im enjoying your posts, particularly your bag end drawing, and anything venture related. Too often i stop in say to myself damn that rocks to myself and never pass that along.

    farbekrieg on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Nice I like that bag-end drawing too. I've been doing a lot of tolkien drawings too lately.

    m3nace on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Farb, m3nace, thanks both of you guys. Nearly every time I post I think to myself, "Am I doing anything, is anyone even looking at this." Thanks so much for the compliments, it means the world to me!

    I forced myself to sit down and draw last night, I was so tired... I was up waaay past my bedtime.
    IDK what Harry's emblem looks like so I just scribbled it in.
    frodo.jpg
    harrypotteryy.jpg


    Did an update to the quick and the dead. Thats the first panel in a 2 page comic. I have the first page paneled out and working on the panels individually.
    actionguysej.jpg

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    So eh, someone just commissioned me to do a banner for a Starcraft 2 stream. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what these are:
    Whilst watching a replay, there is a replay timer on the lower right hand corner of the screen to control the replay. Good casters will cover up the replay timer so you don't know how long the game is.
    (As to not spoil it while watching. )

    So I did a quick doodle.

    aegspace.jpg

    Which brings me to a question. Over the last few days (with the design your name contest), I realise more and more I know nothing about the design part of this stuff. Fonts/textures/anything aside from lines and blobs of color.

    I dont have a fuckin clue :(


    Here's a bonus scribble from work yesterday.
    frodoalso.png

    edit: And another one from today!
    scaneg.png

    BOTP
    ninjai wrote: »
    Farb, m3nace, thanks both of you guys. Nearly every time I post I think to myself, "Am I doing anything, is anyone even looking at this." Thanks so much for the compliments, it means the world to me!

    I forced myself to sit down and draw last night, I was so tired... I was up waaay past my bedtime.
    IDK what Harry's emblem looks like so I just scribbled it in.
    frodo.jpg
    harrypotteryy.jpg


    Did an update to the quick and the dead. Thats the first panel in a 2 page comic. I have the first page paneled out and working on the panels individually.
    actionguysej.jpg

    ninjai on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Page 1
    page1pd.jpg

    I don't plan on making any changes to this, but if you have critiques PLEASE lend them to me. 4 I AM NUB and this is my first comic type thing. I'll have page 2 up in a bit, but will be going on RnR soon so it may not be done for a minute.


    So, here's the thing I was working on yesterday. I got the shape I was looking for and began "painting" and sampling colors from the origingal. The thing is, when I sampled areas the colors were WAAAY OFF and looked NOTHING like they appeared, turning my guy into a goddamn fingerpaint mess.

    I have no idea what I'm doing or how to do it. I tried playing with the different layer types yesterday and it seems like "color" and "overlay" do the same fuckin thing, I can't figure out how to place color over something without messing with the transparency which jacks the image up later... i just don't know. I don't understand...


    Maybe when I take painting this coming semester I'll get some type of handle on actually painting and figure out how to do this mess.

    Spoilered for terrible.
    idontfukinge.jpg

    ninjai on
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited May 2011
    Without any Idea as to where those two dudes are, it sorta seems like they are standing 5 feet from each other loading their weapons. Establishing shots are pretty important to comic story telling. I would really recommend Scott Mccloud's books on the matter. Understanding and Making Comics are verbose books, but they are a pretty easy read and will give you all the rules and tricks of comics.

    Iruka on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Yep.
    An establishing shot would clear a lot of confusion. But it seems to me you're going for some fast paced dynamism here and that panel 3 and 4 are just breaking with it. If you could add some more interesting angles to panel 3 and 4 you could always postpone the establishing shot to the next page (depending on what is going to happen on the next page of course).

    Though I'm guessing (seeing as far as you want it to be 2 pages) there's some sort of element of surprise that we're not supposed to see until we flip the page, I'd keep the establishing shot on page 1... Then again, this in medias res thing seems (to me) to work far better without an establishing shot in this particular case....

    Mainly I just see a problem with panel 3/4 because it breaks the flow I'd say.
    What was your idea with panel 3 and 4? (the following are just suggestions, you might very well have a better solution)
    Overview of the situation?: establishing shot in the beginning so it doesn't break the pace.
    Some kind of slo-mo inspired action?: maybe something like a shot from behind the guy on the left, frog perspective and a skewed angle and the other guy in the background
    Some kind of fast paced thing?: closeup

    m3nace on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    3/4 I had super problems with and had no idea how to communicate while I was drawing it. I suppose behind the back of the guy in panel 1 with guy # 2 in the distance...

    I'll have to mess with it some more

    And the element of suprise thing. Yeah :P


    @iruka, yeah it is en route to my house. I just couldn't wait to get started :/


    ...this actually gives me a really cool idea. hmmmmm

    ninjai on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Intriguing.

    m3nace on
  • ninjaininjai Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    bonesaw.jpg

    I did this in sharpie, cuz my good pens are still in afghanistan. and the scanner i have BLOWS, so I had to scan in .bmp so it didn't look super faded.

    anything super stupid standing out?

    My anatomy is terrible, and I'm pretty sure penis' don't have elbows...


    or fists :D

    ninjai on
  • Arden CaneloArden Canelo Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Macho man's dick has/had both those things. It's the first thing they'll find when they do the autopsy. Also your comic made me laugh slightly, good job. I was going to say Boner-saw's ready! But the idea of a boner-saw frankly scares me.

    Arden Canelo on
  • SiegfriedSiegfried Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    I like it, only critique would be show more of the "dick-arm." It kinda gets lost between the towel bunch and the weight.

    Siegfried on
    Portfolio // Twitter // Behance // Tumblr
    Kochikens wrote:
    My fav is when I can get my kiss on with other dudes.
  • Spectre-xSpectre-x Rating: AWESOME YESRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Some problems I have with your comics:

    They're really tiny. They're very small and you draw things very small so it's hard to tell what's going on because everything's so very, very tiny.

    Your drawings are also very murky and scratchy, with inconsistently-drawn characters. You don't really know how to use contrast between light and dark, so it's hard to tell what's going on because it's hard to tell what the shape of anything is. All of your comics that I have seen so far are like some magic eye thing. I have to look at them and turn my head a bit and squint and focus and unfocus at random intervals to try and figure out what's going on.

    And it's too bad that you don't plan on making any changes to that Quick & the Dead thing, because it is almost completely indecipherable at the moment. As Iruka said, they look like they're five feet apart. What's the guy's arm doing in panel four? Turning into a feather duster? Exploding? Vibrating at supersonic speeds? What's he doing with it in the last panel? Is that even how you use a gun or are you inventing a series of actions based on things you have half-remembered from westerns where people use guns that function in a completely different manner? Is the guy who threw the grenade the same guy as the one with the shotgun? Because we need a magnifying glass to tell if this is the case. Other than a grin and a scratch of about three pixels in size there is no way to tell if they are the same guy whatsoever.

    What's the grenade doing there? Why was it thrown? If it's to try and kill the first guy, why isn't he diving out of the way instead of drawing his gun, or raising his semiautomatic which he has to cock for some reason to shoot the guy with the shotgun which he also has to cock even though the real shotgun it resembles most is also a semiautomatic? Nothing about the comic makes sense. Hell, the guys seem to even be moving at drastically different speeds.

    We can't even tell what they're doing because, again, it's too dark, tiny and messy to properly make out anyone's actions on the page. The guy's hands in the final panel are also wildly different sizes. There's no real flow to people's actions, they look like they're posing for a painting or something. They're not even posing in the middle of actions, but they look like they're posing in between seperate actions. The eyes don't flow naturally from panel to panel, it's hard to tell that they're supposed to be part of a narrative besides the fact that they're on the same page. So it's that, plus your comics have no real internal logic that I can figure out.

    I'm sorry, but these are just a huge, indecipherable mess. You need to work on cohesion within the page, cleaning up your stuff so we can tell what's going on, consistensy, flow, gestures, basically everything. Have you read Making Comics yet? By Scott McCloud? I know Understanding Comics was a revelation for you, but Making Comics would benefit you even more, on account of how it deals with all of the many, many issues that plague your comics at the moment.

    Finally, I'm baffled by the joke in your Randy Savage comic. I just can't seem to wrap my head around it. Is it the fact that he takes viagra at all? That's not much of a joke. Is it the way viagra is portrayed? Okay, but then you don't need the last panel and you could put in a panel somewhere earlier to provide us with better build-up. Is it the fact that he can only last for three minutes? But he just took viagra. Is it the joke that he can only last for three minutes despite having taken viagra? It's just incredibly confusing. It's like you're trying out all kinds of different elements from all kinds of different possible jokes, but none of these elements really reinforce each other or even have anything to do with each other besides the basic premise of "viagra".

    Spectre-x on
  • SiegfriedSiegfried Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Spex, I believe the joke in the Randy Savage comic is a reference to the Spiderman movie. Mr. Savage plays the wrestler "Bonesaw" in the beginning and says, "Bonesaw is ready!!" and "I've got you for 3 minutes of playtime~"

    EDIT:
    BONESAW IS READY

    Siegfried on
    Portfolio // Twitter // Behance // Tumblr
    Kochikens wrote:
    My fav is when I can get my kiss on with other dudes.
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