I think her heads a little big here. Same with the girl on the last one you posted. Something feels proportionally off.
Thanks for the comment. I should probably explain what this is. These are for a magazine feature that is a diary, with illustrations drawn by the fictional characters that are children. Malky is 19, Meir is around 12 or 13, Faigy is 9 or 10, and Miri is 5 or 6. Obviously I don't want to make them look exactly like they would if drawn by children of those ages, because it would not be of publishable quality and you'd probably not be able to tell what's going on in Miri's drawings. So I draw in a more simplified, cartoony style, except for Malky. Proper proportions and/or perspective are not important, only clarity is.
As for the Faigy illustration, which is the one where she's coloring on the walls, she is flashing back to when she was a younger girl, so I drew her with a larger head and eyes to make it obvious she is younger.
even with the context (I actually remembered that from earlier in the thread) there's something about it that still just looks super weird to me, Maybe the skinny arms in combination with the head or something, I just am not getting that child proportion read from it. It may not be all that important for you to change for this drawing, but I thought I'd throw the crit out there anyway.
even with the context (I actually remembered that from earlier in the thread) there's something about it that still just looks super weird to me, Maybe the skinny arms in combination with the head or something, I just am not getting that child proportion read from it. It may not be all that important for you to change for this drawing, but I thought I'd throw the crit out there anyway.
Okay, that's cool. I totally appreciate the comment, either way. Here's something where proportions actually do matter though, so feel free to rip this apart:
Not sure if I'm going to keep doing these digitally because it took forever to finish. Normally these illustrations take about three or four hours at the most each week, but this one took about as long as a comic page to finish. I might need more practice to get quicker.
This is for a story-poem running in Ami Magazine. There will be 8 illustrations total but this is the first one in progress. Just kinda figuring out the look of the illustrations so I can keep them consistent.
I dunno if I mentioned it here already, but the comic pitch pages I showed here a few months ago got accepted by Alterna Comics. So I'll be working on that starting in March.
Since Mario is rewriting the scripts for Corktown and I'm redrawing all the pages we've already finished (only six pages, but some of them were drawn as long as three years ago and I can do better now), I decided to redesign the characters.
First up is Torrie, the main character. She was killed shortly before the start of the first issue, so she's a ghost all the way through the book. I wanted to make it obvious which characters are ghosts and which are alive, so I decided to do something similar to the ghosts in the comic Locke & Key. Since the comic is in grayscale, there are two versions, one for the covers and the other for interiors.
I also wanted to redesign Torrie a little bit to look more like her inspiration (Ally Walker) and because I've gotten comments on the pages we've done so far that she looks like Agent Scully. So this is me trying to pull a little bit away from the Gillian Anderson look and back towards Ally Walker. She has different hair and a longer face.
I find the rabbits to be on the strange side, but I cant really form a critique that is technical, rather than a whole slew of personal opinions on aesthetics and design choices. I'm not really sure if you'd be into that kind of input on your work or not? Basically, I would be talking from a largely personal standpoint, but I don't really want to spend a long time typing up anything if it wouldn't interest you.
I find the rabbits to be on the strange side, but I cant really form a critique that is technical, rather than a whole slew of personal opinions on aesthetics and design choices. I'm not really sure if you'd be into that kind of input on your work or not? Basically, I would be talking from a largely personal standpoint, but I don't really want to spend a long time typing up anything if it wouldn't interest you.
I don't really like the rabbits that much either, but that's what they asked for and they liked what I delivered. I wanted to do actual rabbits (like the original version I did) but they wanted them more human-like and wearing clothes. I was swamped with work and only getting paid $150 for all eight rabbit illustrations, so I ended up doing most of them the night before deadline. I would have done better with more time and more money, but oh well.
Its too bad about the client, its a weird choice but there's not much to be done there.
My actual crit has more to do with the shapes and volume of the characters. You have a pretty hard edged, old-school comic book style, which looks great with your heavy inks on your pages. With the rabbits, your shapes feel inconsistent and overly complex. You're going for a level of cute and cartoony, and that usually lends itself to clean and structurally sound characters. The facial features (Especially the mouth area) just never feels like its the same shape.
To illustrate:
So, obviously form is something you understand, because your normal comics aren't poorly constructed. This is sort of where some of the personal aesthetics come into play, because I made a conscious choice to round out/ thicken the ear to make it more cartoony, and even out the muzzle for a more unified shape. Some of it maybe growing pains from just starting to work digitally, and you should play around with your brush settings, or maybe try Paint Tool Sai or Manga Studio if you are going to primarily ink and not really paint.
Thanks, I appreciate the critique. I am new to this whole digital thing, but one thing I've never been good at is drawing well under a tight deadline. When my stuff is rushed it looks awful. This is primarily why the rabbits stuff looks inconsistent; I was learning a new method, working in a style I wasn't comfortable in, and also trying to finish 4 illustrations in a single night.
The Torrie design above was also done digitally, but I took my time and I'm happy with how it turned out.
How are Manga Studio or Paint Tool Sai better than Photoshop for digital inking? I've been playing around with inking in Photoshop and I like it for the most part, it just seems that in order to get good line weights you have to draw a line quickly and do it over and over until it looks right. If you try to take your time and draw a line slowly it'll look all crooked and jagged. I'm basically looking to cut down my production time on comic pages, since I have this four-issue miniseries I have to finish now and doing everything old-school might not be the best plan when trying to pencil and ink 24 pages on a monthly schedule.
Paint Tool Sai and Manga Studio have algorithms that are just a little better suited for inking, you can set your brush auto correct curves and adjust the intensity, sort of in between raster and vector. Manga studio may have a trial, its also relatively cheap compared to most software and is worth a shot.
What sort of tablet do you have? I'm hoping its a medium sized Wacom? Super small tablets suck for inks, too, you just cant get a stroke off. That being said, the sad truth is that you will probably never get as good as a line as you do with your traditional inks, even if you went to a full cintiq. I opt to mostly paint with the tablet because I feel it is better suited for "Pushing paint" and making shapes that way, than trying to make clean lines.
Paint Tool Sai and Manga Studio have algorithms that are just a little better suited for inking, you can set your brush auto correct curves and adjust the intensity, sort of in between raster and vector. Manga studio may have a trial, its also relatively cheap compared to most software and is worth a shot.
What sort of tablet do you have? I'm hoping its a medium sized Wacom? Super small tablets suck for inks, too, you just cant get a stroke off. That being said, the sad truth is that you will probably never get as good as a line as you do with your traditional inks, even if you went to a full cintiq. I opt to mostly paint with the tablet because I feel it is better suited for "Pushing paint" and making shapes that way, than trying to make clean lines.
I have a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. It's on the small size but I'm used to using it, and larger tablets are expensive.
I'll check out the Manga Studio trial and see if I like it.
I'm trying to spend an hour each day finishing up the coloring for this issue and putting them on the website. The full issue is already finished but just the coloring needs to be done.
Here are pages 13 and 14, and page 15 in progress.
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And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
I think her heads a little big here. Same with the girl on the last one you posted. Something feels proportionally off.
Thanks for the comment. I should probably explain what this is. These are for a magazine feature that is a diary, with illustrations drawn by the fictional characters that are children. Malky is 19, Meir is around 12 or 13, Faigy is 9 or 10, and Miri is 5 or 6. Obviously I don't want to make them look exactly like they would if drawn by children of those ages, because it would not be of publishable quality and you'd probably not be able to tell what's going on in Miri's drawings. So I draw in a more simplified, cartoony style, except for Malky. Proper proportions and/or perspective are not important, only clarity is.
As for the Faigy illustration, which is the one where she's coloring on the walls, she is flashing back to when she was a younger girl, so I drew her with a larger head and eyes to make it obvious she is younger.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
Okay, that's cool. I totally appreciate the comment, either way. Here's something where proportions actually do matter though, so feel free to rip this apart:
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
Not sure if I'm going to keep doing these digitally because it took forever to finish. Normally these illustrations take about three or four hours at the most each week, but this one took about as long as a comic page to finish. I might need more practice to get quicker.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
Since Mario is rewriting the scripts for Corktown and I'm redrawing all the pages we've already finished (only six pages, but some of them were drawn as long as three years ago and I can do better now), I decided to redesign the characters.
First up is Torrie, the main character. She was killed shortly before the start of the first issue, so she's a ghost all the way through the book. I wanted to make it obvious which characters are ghosts and which are alive, so I decided to do something similar to the ghosts in the comic Locke & Key. Since the comic is in grayscale, there are two versions, one for the covers and the other for interiors.
I also wanted to redesign Torrie a little bit to look more like her inspiration (Ally Walker) and because I've gotten comments on the pages we've done so far that she looks like Agent Scully. So this is me trying to pull a little bit away from the Gillian Anderson look and back towards Ally Walker. She has different hair and a longer face.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
I don't really like the rabbits that much either, but that's what they asked for and they liked what I delivered. I wanted to do actual rabbits (like the original version I did) but they wanted them more human-like and wearing clothes. I was swamped with work and only getting paid $150 for all eight rabbit illustrations, so I ended up doing most of them the night before deadline. I would have done better with more time and more money, but oh well.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
My actual crit has more to do with the shapes and volume of the characters. You have a pretty hard edged, old-school comic book style, which looks great with your heavy inks on your pages. With the rabbits, your shapes feel inconsistent and overly complex. You're going for a level of cute and cartoony, and that usually lends itself to clean and structurally sound characters. The facial features (Especially the mouth area) just never feels like its the same shape.
To illustrate:
So, obviously form is something you understand, because your normal comics aren't poorly constructed. This is sort of where some of the personal aesthetics come into play, because I made a conscious choice to round out/ thicken the ear to make it more cartoony, and even out the muzzle for a more unified shape. Some of it maybe growing pains from just starting to work digitally, and you should play around with your brush settings, or maybe try Paint Tool Sai or Manga Studio if you are going to primarily ink and not really paint.
The Torrie design above was also done digitally, but I took my time and I'm happy with how it turned out.
How are Manga Studio or Paint Tool Sai better than Photoshop for digital inking? I've been playing around with inking in Photoshop and I like it for the most part, it just seems that in order to get good line weights you have to draw a line quickly and do it over and over until it looks right. If you try to take your time and draw a line slowly it'll look all crooked and jagged. I'm basically looking to cut down my production time on comic pages, since I have this four-issue miniseries I have to finish now and doing everything old-school might not be the best plan when trying to pencil and ink 24 pages on a monthly schedule.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
What sort of tablet do you have? I'm hoping its a medium sized Wacom? Super small tablets suck for inks, too, you just cant get a stroke off. That being said, the sad truth is that you will probably never get as good as a line as you do with your traditional inks, even if you went to a full cintiq. I opt to mostly paint with the tablet because I feel it is better suited for "Pushing paint" and making shapes that way, than trying to make clean lines.
I have a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. It's on the small size but I'm used to using it, and larger tablets are expensive.
I'll check out the Manga Studio trial and see if I like it.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
Not yet. To be honest I forgot, but maybe for the new week's illustrations I'll download Manga Studio and do some messing around.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist
Here are pages 13 and 14, and page 15 in progress.
And then I have a deviantART here: http://scottewen.deviantart.com
And I tweet: http://www.twitter.com/scottewenartist