So something I've wanted to do for a while is really really simplify my art. Obviously I've got my stupid detailed ink drawings and I actually want to get more detailed in that regard, but I want to dip my toes into sequential art and I would like to spend as little time as I can on any individual characters.
Turns out it's hard! I'm not 100% sure if it's a lack of some fundamental anatomy knowledge, or a lack of inherent style that I just need to tune in to, or a combination of both. Probably both. I definitely prefer the more "realistic" style of characters but I'm trying to find a balance between accurate and loose and simple. Tough stuff.
Style adaptability is a whole skill unto itself, so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about it if you're finding it difficult- it probably seems difficult just because it is difficult. It takes time and practice to build that mental machine in your brain that converts 'default brain drawing thoughts' into 'non-default style executions'. Even people like animators who have to adapt to new styles all the time will need some time drawing in a new style before they really nail it, even when they get the luxury of character/style sheets that break down the design rules explicitly. And since you're also designing the style on top of just being able to draw in it competently, that's another bundle of difficult issues to deal with.
You might find it useful to try to break the issue down as if you were a team of people working on a project, rather than just you by yourself- so you can focus on visual problem solving needed, rather than getting trapped in a "I can't do this, what's wrong with me???" ego spiral.
(spoilered because I don't know if things are really at a point where this would be the best solution, it's just a thought you might use if you think it'd be helpful. Also because I get into some broader stuff that I think might be helpful to others as a general statement, and maybe don't apply to you personally. If you read it and wonder, "why does AoB assume I'm so emo about things??", it's because I'm not talking about you personally (talking more about myself, really).)
So for example, you've got You#1: the Client You. Client has an idea for a story- it's either spooky or wacky or moody or horny or whatever. Wants it out in X amount of time.
Then you've got You#2: the Art Director You. Art Director needs to take the Client's list of criteria that need to be fulfilled and figure out how to satisfy all of them to the best of their ability- so they'll take that list (write said list down on paper so it exists tangibly, and not as an every mutating mass in your brain that is impossible to scope). Art Director has to pitch their ideas on how to solve the issues to the client- so, "hi Client, here's a sheet of different references from different artists, here's what we're thinking of cribbing from and why, here's what we're explicitly not doing and why. Client, you're not giving us time to do Brian Hitch details. You want dynamic superhero stuff, we've got time for maybe a Bruce Timm of Ben Caldwell kinda thing. You want some horror moodiness, we're thinking something Mike Mignola-esque. No we don't have the time for a Bernie Wrightson thing- we know the mood is there but the schedule isn't. I know you love the exaggerated expressions of Calvin and Hobbes personally, but it doesn't fit with the project- if we're doing a Mike Mignola sorta thing that's gonna be more composition based and not wacky expressions based like C&H is, so we're gonna push back on that." etc. etc.
Once Art Director you and Client You have had their arguments and back and forths, you should have a sheet of references, marked up with notes about what you want to use and not use and why. Then Art Director You can go have a convo with You#3, Production Artist You.
Production Artist You takes that packet of stuff from AD You, and starts working on how to execute it. Draws up a test panel, a test character design. Starts working out what elements in that packet are and aren't working when all glommed together. Starts figuring out what specific problems Production Artist needs to practice and solve now that they've got a solid basis from which to work- for example, you brought up that you might lack "fundamental anatomy knowledge", which I have no idea whether that's true or not, and you don't seem to know either. Depending on what you're going for, the issues might be something completely different, and you're just falsely perceiving "gotta get better at anatomy' as a panacea, because your goals for the project aren't clearly defined enough (it could be, but it could also be unproductive general "artist freaking out because they're not the BEST at EVERYTHING YET, WOE IS ME" thinking). If Art Director You and Client You has determined the best solution for the project is something that looks a lot like The Amazing World of Gumball, doing painstaking studies of cervical vertebrae is not going to help you that much- you'd be better off spending time practicing silhouette design and expressiveness to get there. Production Artist doesn't have time to solve problems that aren't really problems, Production Artist has a job to do, and wants to be efficient about it so Production Artist doesn't have to work on the weekend to get it done. So that skillshare class, maybe it's what you need and maybe it's not for this project- can't say until it's known what problems you need to solve.
Now, spending a few days in a 3-way roleplay argument with yourself might seem like a waste of time, but compartmentalizing these issues may be a helpful way to keep your mind focused on problems that have solutions. (Like a lot of my advice, this is advice aimed squarely at myself really. If I spent a lot more of my brainpower on problems that have solutions like, "how do I master this kind of linework?", and a lot less on non-problems that don't really actually have direct actionable solutions like, "WHYYYYYYYY DO I SUCKKKKKKKKKKK SO BADDDDDDD", I'd be a lot happier, more productive and do better work.
I'm actually a lot better at anatomy than I give myself credit for for the most part. But I also don't practice enough! I need to find a way to incorporate more figure and anatomy drawing into my day to day. It's less the actual anatomy so much as it is the ability to take that anatomy and then pose it interestingly and not have everybody I draw be "3/4's angle and looking slightly down." I feel like that's where my lack of practice really comes into account.
I'd I ever get to a point where I'm actually comfortable enough (or hell, have the time) to work on something I really like the idea of going at it from a production standpoint. I need to write things down and look for style guides to try and work off of.
It sounds like your issue you're trying to solve then is explicitly not one of anatomy- it's posing and acting.
It may seem like I'm being pedantic by separating these out, but you'll have a lot harder time trying to find good ways to approach those issues if you just burrow into your anatomy books and assume memorizing the insertions and origins of the latissimus dorsi is going to somehow solve those issues (this is what I was talking about when I said people think of 'get better at anatomy' as a panacea).
It won't, you have to look elsewhere for advice on those topics. For that, you'd probably be better off looking for gesture/acting books/videos/exercises geared towards animators*, and when drawing from ref being very choosy about what ref you're using (a lot of "art poses" references are very pretty and good for a lot of things, but a lot of those poses are pretty unnatural in terms of conveying what an actual human being acts like, and fairly bad at conveying a lot of the range of human emotion. Great stuff for making a painting at a gallery- not so good at, for example, figuring out what pose to use for a panel where a character is desperately trying to stifle a brewing fart during their big date.
For that- posing for situations- you've gotta work from ref of people behaving naturally in the world, or using reference from films, or you acting out in front of a mirror or a cameraphone, to really get down how people move and act (if you've got a good view of a park or a bus stop or something, you can draw real people in candid poses as well, but I know nobody goes outside these days). For exercising this stuff you're gonna get more from 30 sec-2 min gesture drawings and doing basic figure construction practice over them than real deep-dive anatomy studies. Take a pose and draw it from a different perspective from the ref, rotating it in your mind so you're practicing solidifying the figure as a 3d construction, rather than just copying the 2d information you get from the ref. Take a ref pose and exaggerate it, to see how much clearer you can make the intended emotion of the pose read compared to the ref (useful even if you're being realistic- I've got a great book on Normal Rockwell's paintings compared against the photo reference he worked from, and you'd be surprised how much exaggerating he did to get the readability across even when he was working 'realistically'). Choose an existing character design, write up a bunch of flashcards with different poses/emotions on them ("furious", "heartbroken", "eating a sundae", "trying to figure out if they just ran over a raccoon with their car while they were distracted", etc.), set a repeating 1 minute timer and see if you can get that character in a pose that conveys that card's idea in that time, then repeat with all the other cards in the deck. Or try to do 5-50 different poses based on the same emotion, forcing yourself to not just settle for the most generic posing and acting choices, but having to work to see how many different ways the same emotion can be conveyed, and how they'll all subtly alter how the character comes across.
Another good practice is what you already want to do- sequential art. It may seem to go against my previous point, but there is a certain value in just throwing yourself into something whole-hog and then sorting it out later.
If you have a situation and characters that you know the personality of that you're excited about conveying, that can do a lot for your motivation beyond just doing emotionless technical practice in a void of context, in the hope that one day this will manifest all that 'confidence' that everyone else seems to have (but largely don't, in actual fact. It just seems that way because they do stuff that they like in spite of what deficiencies they have, which may or may not be perceptible to anyone else).
Something you might consider is taking your project ambition and approaching it as practice**- you've got a script/story/idea, blitz it out as thumbs as fast as you possibly can- stick figures, freehanding panels, balloons with temp dialogue, etc. Doesn't have to be comprehensible to anyone but you. Then, go to bed.
Tomorrow, or whenever else you have time to get back to it- drag out those thumbs- they'll be bad! New exercise: Take those thumbs, redraw it with every pose amped up 300% from the original version- see how far, how clear, how crazy you can push it. Still just loose and barely coherent gesture drawings, but that's fine- because the point is to get that posing and acting practice in. Then, go to bed again. Next time, dust off all this stuff again, now that you've got your 'initial disappointment' version with your too-constrained poses, and your 'way too far' version, you'll probably have a pretty decent idea of where in the middle you need to land to get the results you want, what you'd actually feel would be worth committing the time to doing actual polished drawings for. I don't know your usual drawing process so maybe this sort of iteration is already something you do, (from your thread most of what I know of your process is 'wow, this must take a long time and a lot of patient, painstaking work), so taking on this new sort of caffeine-fueled sweat-dripping of the forehead maniac rushjob approach I'm suggesting may or may not be a pretty different experience from what you're used to. Might not be an approach you'd want to stick with forever, but you might find it an interesting experiment to try out for a bit and see if it helps you get you closer to where you want to be going.
*the books I'm familiar with here are Force: Life Drawing for Animators, the Drawn to Life books by Walt Stanchfield, and Acting for Animators which I haven't read in like 20 years so I don't remember too much about it, but that's where I got the flashcard pose exercise from so at least one thing stuck with me from it. Probably as good or equivalent resources out there on the ol' internet or on Youtube or something, but I'll leave that for someone else to recommend those since I don't feel like sifting throw a trillion videos right now looking for the gold. :razz:
**you ever see the end fight from the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals, where Jackie starts turning a losing fight around by approaching it as a practice sparring session and having fun with it? It's a good mindset to learn from (and also that fight scene rules, if anyone hasn't seen it go watch it).
I’m in a bit of a rut right now, and feeling kinda frustrated. I’m trying to get through a Draw a Box lesson, and got sent back to re-do a bunch of it. It’s pretty tedious, and recently I’ve been feeling like nothing I’m doing is coming out right. Wiggly ellipses, curvy lines, bad perspective estimation. Blech.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I would recommend interspersing other practice into your routine. Treat the Draw A Box exercises as warm ups. It takes a stupidly long time to improve manual dexterity; I had zero success with "grinding" it. IMO, line dexterity emerges out of the desire to draw a thing correctly. Ellipses and boxes in free floating voids are mostly just to get my shoulder warm.
Yeah, I don't know how the Draw A Box lessons are set up, but it feels like the sort of thing that in an art college scenario, would be one class in a semester, alongside other classes where you'd be focusing on other things- so you'd get less burned out because you'd be getting more variety, you wouldn't be putting all your art ego into one basket, so to speak.
I kinda assume the case is you're probably not full-time studenting a bunch of online courses simultaneously- so I could imagine if the one lesson you're doing is consists solely of this useful, but kinda dry, repetitive stuff, it'd be wearing and also feel more discouraging when you hit a plateau at that single thing you're doing.
It'd be kinda like, yeah if you can maintain a diet of just kale, beans and lentils with no cheating, and an exercise routine of doing like an hour of planks a day, you'd probably get in good shape that way- but I don't think many people would actually recommend that, because it'd be so miserable and monotonous that very few people would be willing to stick with it long term.
Thanks for the advice Gavindel and Bacon, I went ahead and worked in some of the beginning Proko figure drawing exercises and already feel my will to live draw creeping back. Using DAB as a warm-up to more interesting exercises is something I hadn't considered, I'll definitely give that a shot!
I don't think anyone really 'wants' to be able to draw free-floating boxes with correctly perspective-estimated cylinders nestled inside them, but I definitely want to learn how to draw people. It helps when the actual goal is easily recognizable in the exercise.
I think with your understanding and skill you will be able to get good mileage out of Moderndayjames's channel now, he's really technical and should have things you are interested in learning or doing https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernDayJames/videos
The perspective series is very informative and can help to fill in some gaps with the course you are doing now
Anyone recommend me a good car to draw, I've failed miserably the couple of times I've tried but it have been a couple of years so I kinda want to tackle it again
Anyone recommend me a good car to draw, I've failed miserably the couple of times I've tried but it have been a couple of years so I kinda want to tackle it again
What kind of challenge are you looking for? If you're looking for something that might be forgiving to draw because it's already fairly cartoonish, something like the bulbous shapes of the original Fiat 500 might work.
If you're looking for perspective practice, starting with something with simple flat shapes like the DeLorean or the Cybertruck might be a good way to keep things simple at first, so you can focus on getting the solidity down, before moving on to cars with more curves and details.
If you're just looking for people to throw out their personal dream garage suggestions, I've always liked the Nissan Figaro, C3 Corvettes and the Jaguar XJ220.
The Fiat 500 and DeLorean seems like they would be great for studies of my current level, thanks for the suggestion! I have a lot of problems tackling the proportions and curves last time, took forever too. Hopefully I would be able to finish one properly this time, it's in one of my bucket list
Gonna see if i can dig out any of my past attempts, I remember being overwhelmed by the massive amount of construction lines trying to use Scott Robertson's method
If you google Soviet Cars or Eastern Bloc Cars you can find some nice, boxy models like the VAZ-2101 that are pretty good for perspective practice
Speaking of eastern bloc cars, if you draw a Tatra 603 as is, that's probably a great way to deceive most people that you must be a very creative concept artist for coming up with this weird, 1960's alternate universe car.
Thanks for the cars everyone, I think I will try to add vehicles and other mechanical stuff to the things I draw to increase my visual library
I found my previous attempts, it was from 3 years ago and I am dying of embarrassment from how bad I actually was, can't believe that I actually submitted it in a class for review. If I remember correctly I was given a week to draw 3 types of planes and cars, didn't manage to finish it. The instructor was really disappointed which I can fully understand now.
Oh man digging through more of my files during that time period I feel a little sick. I know I was bad, but not this bad holy crap
I checked with DMAC and got the okay to post this.
A friend of mine is looking to commission somebody (actual PAID work) who specializes in FFT style art. Busts/full figures, etc. The whole noseless look with a high fantasy flair.
I'm posting here to help expand his search because I know many forumers are talented. At the very least, maybe someone knows somebody who draws in that style and we can point them at my friend.
He's a Twitch Streamer, and this is mainly going to be profile page stuff. No emotes or overlays or anything complicated.
If you can help, or know someone who can, feel free to send me a message.
Hey folks I am still struggling with remembering anatomy enough to be able to construct them without using any references
Does anyone have a foolproof method to drill it into my numbskull, I kept watching Proko's lessons and also drawing them and taking notes but they are just not sticking in my head no matter how hard I try
I know it's easier to use references but I just want to be able to do it in my lifetime as a personal goal I guess
Hey folks I am still struggling with remembering anatomy enough to be able to construct them without using any references
Does anyone have a foolproof method to drill it into my numbskull, I kept watching Proko's lessons and also drawing them and taking notes but they are just not sticking in my head no matter how hard I try
I know it's easier to use references but I just want to be able to do it in my lifetime as a personal goal I guess
Personally, it's a matter of keeping a bunch of different bits of anatomical data in my head, combined with different methods of constructing the body. Stuff like the breastbone being about the length of a collarbone and the bottom of the breastbone to the bottom of the ribs being the length of the collarbone. Or that there's roughly a hand width between the bottom of the ribs ant the top of the hips. I also use LO/UI(lower outer, upper inner) to remember the relative position of the ankle bones. There are various construction methods, like mannequinization of the limbs or drawing hip and shoulder triangles. That's where you draw triangles from the center of the collar line to the ends of the hips and vice-versa, curving as needed. The goal is to have a diamond in the center that feels even and use that as a scaffold to build your anatomy. Helps when you're drawing dynamic poses with strong contrapose. Then there's stuff like the bean or the Force method. There are a ton of ways to simplify the body and build any kind of pose you want. You just need to experiment and find what works best for you in any given situation.
I just found this guy's YouTube and it's seemingly one of the more helpful "How to Draw" channels I've seen. Swapping to boxes almost immediately made some figure drawing issues I had way less of an issue and makes more sense to me than ovals and circles.
So I figured I'd drop it in here incase anybody else is interested.
Hey dumb question for fellow Clip Studio Users: Is there a way to save a color palette for a particular project? I haven't had luck googling this, so I've resorted to having a document with my chosen colors which I 'color pick' from. Which is... not exactly efficient.
So who is Ethan Becker, why is he in my YouTube reccomendations and is he really the massive dick ass all his thumbnails indicate or is that his shtick?
So who is Ethan Becker, why is he in my YouTube reccomendations and is he really the massive dick ass all his thumbnails indicate or is that his shtick?
Cause if it's a shtick it's a real shitty shtick.
I've watched like one of his videos, I think he's some kind of animation guy.
From what I can tell yeah there might be some decent ideas to consider in there, but it's buried under a lot of grating schtick and HOT TAKE clickbait titles- which is something that I'm sure plays well with the YouTube algorithm numbers game, but I found pretty irritating to watch.
Really sick of the fact that to get traction on YouTube/social media, it seems one must strongly overstate one's opinions to the point where you wonder how it is all these people manage to function in society, when they seem to be on the verge of starting a knife fight over anything and everything.
His shtick used to be something along the lines of stereotypical American redneck from television/games (I guess?) who tells you how the world really is with broken cigarette in a really in your face way. Don't know if that's still his thing but I gave up telling youtube that videos like that aren't interesting and just ban the channels now. So much better. Just nuke it.
I prefer chill art youtubers like Kenzo, Borodante/BoroCG, Stephen Bauman or people like Feng Zhu. Occasionally listen to the draftsmen podcast but not that keen on it when they record them all at once like at the start of season 2. Felt like they were just trying to batter them out in a day or two. The ones they recorded recently have been better. None of those are as popular as stuff like Brecker or Anime Cleavage Girl channels though with the exception of Proko. Youtube kinda sucks.
I wouldn't say his channel is toxic either, it's just very youtube and I'm not into that sort of thing anymore. My tolerance for certain types of popular video content has changed a lot this year.
Maybe it's getting old. I used to be able to work or study to anything but now I have to listen to very chill music like psychill or binaural beats if I want to get anything done. Or silence. That's boring though. If it's at all vocal or high energy it's like why even bother it's not getting done.
See that's what I figured was probably happening but also why go through all the trouble of making such off putting thumbnails that make people unfamiliar with your stuff actively not want to watch your stuff?
Like, I get the clickbaitey "trick people into watching these videos by setting up expectations and then subverting them" but boy it just seems tiring and kinda gross. Maybe I am not the target audience.
Also, please never ever draw like me its a horrible way to go about things learn from my foolishness children learn and beware
Ethan Becker is fine, I am pretty sure you folks would get along well with him
His channel is not toxic
I don't think anyone said or implied his channel was toxic? Just that they personally find his channel content annoying to watch. Not the same thing.
(Once again, going back to an annoyance I have with the internet: even if you don't do the strongly stated HOT TAKE thing, other people will extrapolate the most extreme possible of interpretation of one's words on your behalf. ie: Prompt: "Hey, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, but you know that's just me". Response: "IT'S REALLY FUCKED UP THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ORGANIZE PEOPLE TO THROW ROCKS AT PEPSI EMPLOYEES IN THEIR PARKING LOT").
There are plenty of people making books and tv shows and movies and art and music whose work I don't like, that I'm sure are perfectly fine people in real life. I get the dude is playing a character, it's just not a performance I particularly want to watch. I would assume if I met him in real life he'd probably not be in schtick mode and we could have a normal conversation like normal humans with no hard feelings.
Draw stuff!
Need reference.
Better go collect some.
Hmm, might need some backgrounds too.
Oh, that's a really nice piece, who's the artist?
Damn, look at this profile, this guy's legit. I wonder how he trained...
Yeah the ref thing is... yeah. I try to collect references before. Like plan out for the week and collect a bunch for like an hour one day of the week if needed but it takes ages to organise them. It doesn't seem like there's an easy way to do that. For now I'm just bunging stuff in a PureRef or Pinterest board.
Today it was Mushrooms & Fungi. There's some cool looking fungi. There's also some *terrifying* fungi. Really wish there was a way to unsee Aseroe Rubra (Starfish Fungus)!
I use it to follow and share art with my mutual art friends. I wanna look at their art?
Oh look! There's a new post by wait what the hell the feed refreshed and its a never ending scroll of shit I don't follow and not a single post by anybody I do follow can be found? That cool thing by my friend I got a glimpse of before the page refreshed? Gone forever unless I manually look them up.
What a piece of shit app. I wish there was an alternative that wasn't owned by like, the Russian government.
I primarily use Instagram on my browser with an ad-blocker on and I only see posts by people I follow. It basically removes the algorithm unless you click on a little explore tab.
It wasn't until I recently looked at the proper Instagram app that I realized how people actually found new people to follow on Instagram.
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Style adaptability is a whole skill unto itself, so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about it if you're finding it difficult- it probably seems difficult just because it is difficult. It takes time and practice to build that mental machine in your brain that converts 'default brain drawing thoughts' into 'non-default style executions'. Even people like animators who have to adapt to new styles all the time will need some time drawing in a new style before they really nail it, even when they get the luxury of character/style sheets that break down the design rules explicitly. And since you're also designing the style on top of just being able to draw in it competently, that's another bundle of difficult issues to deal with.
You might find it useful to try to break the issue down as if you were a team of people working on a project, rather than just you by yourself- so you can focus on visual problem solving needed, rather than getting trapped in a "I can't do this, what's wrong with me???" ego spiral.
(spoilered because I don't know if things are really at a point where this would be the best solution, it's just a thought you might use if you think it'd be helpful. Also because I get into some broader stuff that I think might be helpful to others as a general statement, and maybe don't apply to you personally. If you read it and wonder, "why does AoB assume I'm so emo about things??", it's because I'm not talking about you personally (talking more about myself, really).)
Then you've got You#2: the Art Director You. Art Director needs to take the Client's list of criteria that need to be fulfilled and figure out how to satisfy all of them to the best of their ability- so they'll take that list (write said list down on paper so it exists tangibly, and not as an every mutating mass in your brain that is impossible to scope). Art Director has to pitch their ideas on how to solve the issues to the client- so, "hi Client, here's a sheet of different references from different artists, here's what we're thinking of cribbing from and why, here's what we're explicitly not doing and why. Client, you're not giving us time to do Brian Hitch details. You want dynamic superhero stuff, we've got time for maybe a Bruce Timm of Ben Caldwell kinda thing. You want some horror moodiness, we're thinking something Mike Mignola-esque. No we don't have the time for a Bernie Wrightson thing- we know the mood is there but the schedule isn't. I know you love the exaggerated expressions of Calvin and Hobbes personally, but it doesn't fit with the project- if we're doing a Mike Mignola sorta thing that's gonna be more composition based and not wacky expressions based like C&H is, so we're gonna push back on that." etc. etc.
Once Art Director you and Client You have had their arguments and back and forths, you should have a sheet of references, marked up with notes about what you want to use and not use and why. Then Art Director You can go have a convo with You#3, Production Artist You.
Production Artist You takes that packet of stuff from AD You, and starts working on how to execute it. Draws up a test panel, a test character design. Starts working out what elements in that packet are and aren't working when all glommed together. Starts figuring out what specific problems Production Artist needs to practice and solve now that they've got a solid basis from which to work- for example, you brought up that you might lack "fundamental anatomy knowledge", which I have no idea whether that's true or not, and you don't seem to know either. Depending on what you're going for, the issues might be something completely different, and you're just falsely perceiving "gotta get better at anatomy' as a panacea, because your goals for the project aren't clearly defined enough (it could be, but it could also be unproductive general "artist freaking out because they're not the BEST at EVERYTHING YET, WOE IS ME" thinking). If Art Director You and Client You has determined the best solution for the project is something that looks a lot like The Amazing World of Gumball, doing painstaking studies of cervical vertebrae is not going to help you that much- you'd be better off spending time practicing silhouette design and expressiveness to get there. Production Artist doesn't have time to solve problems that aren't really problems, Production Artist has a job to do, and wants to be efficient about it so Production Artist doesn't have to work on the weekend to get it done. So that skillshare class, maybe it's what you need and maybe it's not for this project- can't say until it's known what problems you need to solve.
Now, spending a few days in a 3-way roleplay argument with yourself might seem like a waste of time, but compartmentalizing these issues may be a helpful way to keep your mind focused on problems that have solutions. (Like a lot of my advice, this is advice aimed squarely at myself really. If I spent a lot more of my brainpower on problems that have solutions like, "how do I master this kind of linework?", and a lot less on non-problems that don't really actually have direct actionable solutions like, "WHYYYYYYYY DO I SUCKKKKKKKKKKK SO BADDDDDDD", I'd be a lot happier, more productive and do better work.
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I'd I ever get to a point where I'm actually comfortable enough (or hell, have the time) to work on something I really like the idea of going at it from a production standpoint. I need to write things down and look for style guides to try and work off of.
It may seem like I'm being pedantic by separating these out, but you'll have a lot harder time trying to find good ways to approach those issues if you just burrow into your anatomy books and assume memorizing the insertions and origins of the latissimus dorsi is going to somehow solve those issues (this is what I was talking about when I said people think of 'get better at anatomy' as a panacea).
It won't, you have to look elsewhere for advice on those topics. For that, you'd probably be better off looking for gesture/acting books/videos/exercises geared towards animators*, and when drawing from ref being very choosy about what ref you're using (a lot of "art poses" references are very pretty and good for a lot of things, but a lot of those poses are pretty unnatural in terms of conveying what an actual human being acts like, and fairly bad at conveying a lot of the range of human emotion. Great stuff for making a painting at a gallery- not so good at, for example, figuring out what pose to use for a panel where a character is desperately trying to stifle a brewing fart during their big date.
For that- posing for situations- you've gotta work from ref of people behaving naturally in the world, or using reference from films, or you acting out in front of a mirror or a cameraphone, to really get down how people move and act (if you've got a good view of a park or a bus stop or something, you can draw real people in candid poses as well, but I know nobody goes outside these days). For exercising this stuff you're gonna get more from 30 sec-2 min gesture drawings and doing basic figure construction practice over them than real deep-dive anatomy studies. Take a pose and draw it from a different perspective from the ref, rotating it in your mind so you're practicing solidifying the figure as a 3d construction, rather than just copying the 2d information you get from the ref. Take a ref pose and exaggerate it, to see how much clearer you can make the intended emotion of the pose read compared to the ref (useful even if you're being realistic- I've got a great book on Normal Rockwell's paintings compared against the photo reference he worked from, and you'd be surprised how much exaggerating he did to get the readability across even when he was working 'realistically'). Choose an existing character design, write up a bunch of flashcards with different poses/emotions on them ("furious", "heartbroken", "eating a sundae", "trying to figure out if they just ran over a raccoon with their car while they were distracted", etc.), set a repeating 1 minute timer and see if you can get that character in a pose that conveys that card's idea in that time, then repeat with all the other cards in the deck. Or try to do 5-50 different poses based on the same emotion, forcing yourself to not just settle for the most generic posing and acting choices, but having to work to see how many different ways the same emotion can be conveyed, and how they'll all subtly alter how the character comes across.
Another good practice is what you already want to do- sequential art. It may seem to go against my previous point, but there is a certain value in just throwing yourself into something whole-hog and then sorting it out later.
If you have a situation and characters that you know the personality of that you're excited about conveying, that can do a lot for your motivation beyond just doing emotionless technical practice in a void of context, in the hope that one day this will manifest all that 'confidence' that everyone else seems to have (but largely don't, in actual fact. It just seems that way because they do stuff that they like in spite of what deficiencies they have, which may or may not be perceptible to anyone else).
Something you might consider is taking your project ambition and approaching it as practice**- you've got a script/story/idea, blitz it out as thumbs as fast as you possibly can- stick figures, freehanding panels, balloons with temp dialogue, etc. Doesn't have to be comprehensible to anyone but you. Then, go to bed.
Tomorrow, or whenever else you have time to get back to it- drag out those thumbs- they'll be bad! New exercise: Take those thumbs, redraw it with every pose amped up 300% from the original version- see how far, how clear, how crazy you can push it. Still just loose and barely coherent gesture drawings, but that's fine- because the point is to get that posing and acting practice in. Then, go to bed again. Next time, dust off all this stuff again, now that you've got your 'initial disappointment' version with your too-constrained poses, and your 'way too far' version, you'll probably have a pretty decent idea of where in the middle you need to land to get the results you want, what you'd actually feel would be worth committing the time to doing actual polished drawings for. I don't know your usual drawing process so maybe this sort of iteration is already something you do, (from your thread most of what I know of your process is 'wow, this must take a long time and a lot of patient, painstaking work), so taking on this new sort of caffeine-fueled sweat-dripping of the forehead maniac rushjob approach I'm suggesting may or may not be a pretty different experience from what you're used to. Might not be an approach you'd want to stick with forever, but you might find it an interesting experiment to try out for a bit and see if it helps you get you closer to where you want to be going.
*the books I'm familiar with here are Force: Life Drawing for Animators, the Drawn to Life books by Walt Stanchfield, and Acting for Animators which I haven't read in like 20 years so I don't remember too much about it, but that's where I got the flashcard pose exercise from so at least one thing stuck with me from it. Probably as good or equivalent resources out there on the ol' internet or on Youtube or something, but I'll leave that for someone else to recommend those since I don't feel like sifting throw a trillion videos right now looking for the gold. :razz:
**you ever see the end fight from the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals, where Jackie starts turning a losing fight around by approaching it as a practice sparring session and having fun with it? It's a good mindset to learn from (and also that fight scene rules, if anyone hasn't seen it go watch it).
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I kinda assume the case is you're probably not full-time studenting a bunch of online courses simultaneously- so I could imagine if the one lesson you're doing is consists solely of this useful, but kinda dry, repetitive stuff, it'd be wearing and also feel more discouraging when you hit a plateau at that single thing you're doing.
It'd be kinda like, yeah if you can maintain a diet of just kale, beans and lentils with no cheating, and an exercise routine of doing like an hour of planks a day, you'd probably get in good shape that way- but I don't think many people would actually recommend that, because it'd be so miserable and monotonous that very few people would be willing to stick with it long term.
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I don't think anyone really 'wants' to be able to draw free-floating boxes with correctly perspective-estimated cylinders nestled inside them, but I definitely want to learn how to draw people. It helps when the actual goal is easily recognizable in the exercise.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernDayJames/videos
The perspective series is very informative and can help to fill in some gaps with the course you are doing now
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What kind of challenge are you looking for? If you're looking for something that might be forgiving to draw because it's already fairly cartoonish, something like the bulbous shapes of the original Fiat 500 might work.
If you're looking for perspective practice, starting with something with simple flat shapes like the DeLorean or the Cybertruck might be a good way to keep things simple at first, so you can focus on getting the solidity down, before moving on to cars with more curves and details.
If you're just looking for people to throw out their personal dream garage suggestions, I've always liked the Nissan Figaro, C3 Corvettes and the Jaguar XJ220.
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Gonna see if i can dig out any of my past attempts, I remember being overwhelmed by the massive amount of construction lines trying to use Scott Robertson's method
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Speaking of eastern bloc cars, if you draw a Tatra 603 as is, that's probably a great way to deceive most people that you must be a very creative concept artist for coming up with this weird, 1960's alternate universe car.
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I found my previous attempts, it was from 3 years ago and I am dying of embarrassment from how bad I actually was, can't believe that I actually submitted it in a class for review. If I remember correctly I was given a week to draw 3 types of planes and cars, didn't manage to finish it. The instructor was really disappointed which I can fully understand now.
Oh man digging through more of my files during that time period I feel a little sick. I know I was bad, but not this bad holy crap
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I checked with DMAC and got the okay to post this.
A friend of mine is looking to commission somebody (actual PAID work) who specializes in FFT style art. Busts/full figures, etc. The whole noseless look with a high fantasy flair.
I'm posting here to help expand his search because I know many forumers are talented. At the very least, maybe someone knows somebody who draws in that style and we can point them at my friend.
He's a Twitch Streamer, and this is mainly going to be profile page stuff. No emotes or overlays or anything complicated.
If you can help, or know someone who can, feel free to send me a message.
Thanks everyone!
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Does anyone have a foolproof method to drill it into my numbskull, I kept watching Proko's lessons and also drawing them and taking notes but they are just not sticking in my head no matter how hard I try
I know it's easier to use references but I just want to be able to do it in my lifetime as a personal goal I guess
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Personally, it's a matter of keeping a bunch of different bits of anatomical data in my head, combined with different methods of constructing the body. Stuff like the breastbone being about the length of a collarbone and the bottom of the breastbone to the bottom of the ribs being the length of the collarbone. Or that there's roughly a hand width between the bottom of the ribs ant the top of the hips. I also use LO/UI(lower outer, upper inner) to remember the relative position of the ankle bones. There are various construction methods, like mannequinization of the limbs or drawing hip and shoulder triangles. That's where you draw triangles from the center of the collar line to the ends of the hips and vice-versa, curving as needed. The goal is to have a diamond in the center that feels even and use that as a scaffold to build your anatomy. Helps when you're drawing dynamic poses with strong contrapose. Then there's stuff like the bean or the Force method. There are a ton of ways to simplify the body and build any kind of pose you want. You just need to experiment and find what works best for you in any given situation.
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So I figured I'd drop it in here incase anybody else is interested.
I hope this is what you are looking for
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Cause if it's a shtick it's a real shitty shtick.
I've watched like one of his videos, I think he's some kind of animation guy.
From what I can tell yeah there might be some decent ideas to consider in there, but it's buried under a lot of grating schtick and HOT TAKE clickbait titles- which is something that I'm sure plays well with the YouTube algorithm numbers game, but I found pretty irritating to watch.
Really sick of the fact that to get traction on YouTube/social media, it seems one must strongly overstate one's opinions to the point where you wonder how it is all these people manage to function in society, when they seem to be on the verge of starting a knife fight over anything and everything.
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I prefer chill art youtubers like Kenzo, Borodante/BoroCG, Stephen Bauman or people like Feng Zhu. Occasionally listen to the draftsmen podcast but not that keen on it when they record them all at once like at the start of season 2. Felt like they were just trying to batter them out in a day or two. The ones they recorded recently have been better. None of those are as popular as stuff like Brecker or Anime Cleavage Girl channels though with the exception of Proko. Youtube kinda sucks.
His channel is not toxic
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Maybe it's getting old. I used to be able to work or study to anything but now I have to listen to very chill music like psychill or binaural beats if I want to get anything done. Or silence. That's boring though. If it's at all vocal or high energy it's like why even bother it's not getting done.
Please, don't draw like Juggernut folks, never ever draw like Juggernut!
Actually he's a great artist please draw like Juggernut
Generally that's how a Ethan Becker video do I guess
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Like, I get the clickbaitey "trick people into watching these videos by setting up expectations and then subverting them" but boy it just seems tiring and kinda gross. Maybe I am not the target audience.
Also, please never ever draw like me its a horrible way to go about things learn from my foolishness children learn and beware
I don't think anyone said or implied his channel was toxic? Just that they personally find his channel content annoying to watch. Not the same thing.
(Once again, going back to an annoyance I have with the internet: even if you don't do the strongly stated HOT TAKE thing, other people will extrapolate the most extreme possible of interpretation of one's words on your behalf. ie: Prompt: "Hey, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, but you know that's just me". Response: "IT'S REALLY FUCKED UP THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ORGANIZE PEOPLE TO THROW ROCKS AT PEPSI EMPLOYEES IN THEIR PARKING LOT").
There are plenty of people making books and tv shows and movies and art and music whose work I don't like, that I'm sure are perfectly fine people in real life. I get the dude is playing a character, it's just not a performance I particularly want to watch. I would assume if I met him in real life he'd probably not be in schtick mode and we could have a normal conversation like normal humans with no hard feelings.
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Also brain: No!
Draw stuff!
Need reference.
Better go collect some.
Hmm, might need some backgrounds too.
Oh, that's a really nice piece, who's the artist?
Damn, look at this profile, this guy's legit. I wonder how he trained...
Today it was Mushrooms & Fungi. There's some cool looking fungi. There's also some *terrifying* fungi. Really wish there was a way to unsee Aseroe Rubra (Starfish Fungus)!
I use it to follow and share art with my mutual art friends. I wanna look at their art?
Oh look! There's a new post by wait what the hell the feed refreshed and its a never ending scroll of shit I don't follow and not a single post by anybody I do follow can be found? That cool thing by my friend I got a glimpse of before the page refreshed? Gone forever unless I manually look them up.
What a piece of shit app. I wish there was an alternative that wasn't owned by like, the Russian government.
It wasn't until I recently looked at the proper Instagram app that I realized how people actually found new people to follow on Instagram.