As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Gardeners of War

Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
edited January 2007 in Artist's Corner
This is a collaboration between myself and a friend. He writes and I draw.

I guess I won't say much right off, except that I'm experimenting with coming up with my own simple "cartoon/comic" style. So the art is going to change and hopefully improve as I try to develop that style.

More background info to be found here.

gow1.jpg



















gow2.jpg

























gow3.jpg


More to come!

Kaptain H on

Posts

  • BearcatBearcat Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    I think Gears of War surpasses some world record in being so parodied in such a small amount of time.

    Edit:
    I thought it was pretty funnay by the way.
    Especially that last frame.

    Bearcat on
  • JCMJCM Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Hmm,, future ideas for more Gears of Wars parodies (that rhyme too!)

    Beers of War
    Cheers of War
    Deers of War
    Peers of War
    Piers of War
    Queers of War
    Rears of War (*ugh*)
    SEARS of War
    Spheres of War
    Tears of War
    Years of War

    Now on the strips, great colours man, nice concept, Viva pinata meets Gears, although I´d change the name to reflect Viva Pinata being there too

    JCM on
  • MagicToasterMagicToaster JapanRegistered User regular
    edited January 2007
    I grow tiered of these.

    MagicToaster on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    I grow tiered of these.

    Embwyelrosnbuts.jpg



    In all seriousness, though, I have to agree. I don't really think this is so different a concept that it requires its own topic, either.

    Coloring looks really messy (I like the squiggly lines in the shrubs, though, in the last page...nowhere else)...but everything else looks kinda "meh". The values also seem pretty similar - the water, sand, foliage, skin, ground, sky, etc...it's all virtually the same value. Try darkening things up a bit in plces - go for contrast.

    NightDragon on
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Thank you for your comments, I'll keep them in mind as I continue the comic.
    As for the comment that the concept is tired, I don't agree.

    Kaptain H on
  • paulwindpaulwind Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
  • core tacticcore tactic Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Try to get the eyes focused on everyone.

    core tactic on
    6700ab2ed7bb6f9876150c388a78a011.png
  • Kewop DecamKewop Decam Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    paulwind wrote:

    That second link was him actually

    Kewop Decam on
    pasigfa7.jpg
  • MaximasXXZMaximasXXZ Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    You really need to put more effort into these things. Photoshop doesn't make you a better artist, if you took out all the textures and colors here you'd have a pretty poor example of perspective, lineweight, and anatomy. Like really, work on your art. And please stop making Gears of War parodies.

    MaximasXXZ on
    zombiegirl8ki.gif
    TL_Sigblock.jpg
    PSN: MaximasXXZ XBOX Live: SneakyMcSnipe
  • MagicToasterMagicToaster JapanRegistered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Kaptain H wrote:
    As for the comment that the concept is tired, I don't agree.

    Do you know why good TV ads get canceled? Because ppl grow bored of them, even if they are excellent ads. Notice how 6 out of 10 posts discuss the repetitiveness of your concept... these are your viewers telling you the concept is stale.

    MagicToaster on
  • core tacticcore tactic Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Someone do Guilty Gears of War or so help me god I'll do it myself.


    And no one wants to see that, I'm only skilled in pencil.

    It wouldn't be pretty in pencil.

    core tactic on
    6700ab2ed7bb6f9876150c388a78a011.png
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    paulwind wrote:

    What I see is that besides me, one other person did one parody picture. So no, the idea isn't stale in my opinion. What is stale though is every time I post a Gears thing (of which this is only my fourth posting, and second Gears parody posting), someone thinks they are clever by listing a ton of alternate possible Whatever of War concepts. As for Gears, I suspect I'll be doing a bit more since I'm still playing it.

    But do I think you are all off-base? Absolutely not. I'm struggling to find my cartooning style, and I think you guys could help me because most of you have a pretty good sense for art. That said, your criticism still sucks.

    Maybe some of you should review the rules and guidelines on critiques again. When I first found this place, I thought they were some of the best I've ever seen for an art forum, which is why I signed up, and why I'm disappointed that they are largely ignored. Telling me that my proportions, anatomy, perspective, composition, coloring or whatever generalized attribute isn't helpful unless you are more specific. Yeah yeah, you think the whole thing sucks and there's too many to list in one post. But in less time than it takes you to respond to this post with further generalized negativity that take up 3 paragraphs, you could give me just one specific example of what is bad and/or how to improve it.
    By the way, it's also in your guidelines to tell someone what you like about said art before going into your criticism. I don't think that part is necessary for me. But in art criticism and life in general, this technique opens up the listener to anything you have to say. I'll even give you an example of how it works: see the above sentence where I said that not all of you were off-base? Made you put down the pitchfork just a little bit, didn't it? Basic social skills.

    And thank you to core tactic and Nightdrago for your helpful remarks.

    Kaptain H on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    First off, you're being rather insulting. Do not tell us to "read our own guidelines". If you had lurked and read the critiques given here, you would have understood the type of critiques you'd generally be recieving. Not recieving the über-specific crits you've looked for? Some that you may have seen in other threads? Read on to learn why.
    Telling me that my proportions, anatomy, perspective, composition, coloring or whatever generalized attribute isn't helpful unless you are more specific.

    2003-10-9-kid-drawing.jpg

    Tell me. If you were to look at this (let's pretend it was drawn by somebody who was, say, 15 years old)...and they asked you for critiques....what would you say?

    Would you say "the arms, the legs, the face, the fingers, the hands, the elbows, the knees, the feet, the legs, the eyes, the mouth, the hair needs work"? Or would you just say, "you should really work on your anatomy?"

    katelynbbackyardwildlife.jpg

    Would you say "the sun, the sun rays, the cloud, the bird's wings, the bird's beak, the butterfly wings, the butterfly body, the butterfly antennae, the flower petals, the flower stalk, the center of the flower, the grass, the tree leaves, the tree bark, the nest, the eggs, the bird's feet aren't the correct color"? Or would you just say, "you should really work on your color?"

    ON THE OTHER HAND.


    final.jpg

    "The hairline looks slightly off - the line where his hair meets his forehead is too sharp, try softening that up. The values look a little off - specifically along his jawline - his beard there is extremely dark, but the rest of his beard is relatively light. etc etc etc."


    The reason why the last picture got the most specific critiques because for the majority of the work, everything looks relatively decent, and correct, more or less.

    The problem with critiquing your work like that is that there is SO MUCH WRONG WITH IT, you need BASIC, SIMPLE CRITIQUES THAT COVER ALL YOUR ISSUES. Furthermore, you are giving us comic book pages. Not a single image, but dozens of images in a single page. Dozens of images that ALL HAVE the SAME, BASIC ISSUES:

    anatomy
    color
    perspective
    composition

    et cetera

    We are not "cutting you out of some good critiques". The reason why they are not specific is because frankly, your work is not good enough to ellicit specific critiques - we would be naming every single characteristic about your comic. Nobody has the time or the energy or the patience to deal with your holier-than-thou attitude and list off every goddamn problem with your comic, especially when they know that there's a high chance you're going to brush it off in the end - I have already seen this in your previous posts. Yes, you've said "I'll think about it" sometimes, but overall you just seem to be disregarding the best critiques your getting, which are the ALL-INLCUSIVE critiques, which, again, are:

    anatomy
    color
    perspective
    composition

    et cetera

    I actually once went through somebody's comic page and picked out every-single-thing they did that was wrong/needed adjustment/fixing/etc...and it must have been a few thousand characters. And he didn't even use color. And he only posted one page (from what I recall).

    I really do not feel like doing this for you, because I will literally have to right an entire paragraph for EACH PANEL so the critiques are specific enough for you to even bother looking at them. If your faces are horrible, we are going to tell you so. If every aspect of every part of all your faces needs work, we will say simply, "work on your facial anatomy". Only, you need to work on everything.

    Put down your caviar-on-rye for one second, step off your velvet ass-cushion, sit yourself down with a pencil and draw until you fucking bleed. I don't know what else to tell you - we've all been trying to tell you "you need to work on a hell of a lot. Almost everything." ...but you have refused to listen, stating that The Princess needs really specific critiques or else the critiques aren't worth shit to The Princess.

    When I gave you a critique above, it was a single, simple, somewhat-specific critique...but as I've said earlier, I could have easily given you at least have a dozen critiques per image. I just didn't have the time or energy to do that. There's just so much wrong in each panel that you can improve. I mean no - on the grand scale of things, you're not a very bad artist. You just need a lot of refinement in your work - just like everybody else. It's just that at the stage you're at now, you really do [again] need to work on bettering some basic traits of your artwork.

    If you seriously need critiques that are that specific, pick up a book on anatomy. Study a photograph. Drag a color photo into photoshop and use the eyedropper to pick out colors - find out what things really look like. Find out how things reflect light. It's just a matter of observing.

    You still want to post "____ of War" art? Fine, nobody's going to stop you. We're probably going to complain now and then, perhaps more as it goes on...but if you're going to post your work and ask for critiques, listen to the critiques your given. What do you do with an all-inclusive critique? Study the basics. Read tutorials. Somebody say your color is off? Look up "color theory" on google. Look up tutorials. Go to the library. We don't really need to take you by the hand and be any more specific than that. You're a big boy. You know where things are. Go find them. Just look both ways before crossing the street. I really don't think we're giving you general critiques to be assholes, or because we're lazy. We're giving them to you because we think if you studied those principles wholly your art would be a hell of a lot better. It is, honestly, a better even more "thorough" critique to give you, in this case, than it would be to list one thing that is wrong in a comic that contains -for example purposes - 100 things.


    -edit-
    Don't try to call me a hypocrit if this comes off as being insulting. The only reason I'm being harsh with you is because you've been kind of insulting, yourself, and that kind of pisses me off. I don't like being insulting, I don't like being insulted, and I don't like being pissed off. Please just understand why I've written this the way I have.
    -/edit-
    [/disclaimer]

    NightDragon on
  • SublimusSublimus Artist. nowhereRegistered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Everything I meant by my previous comment, but actually written out.

    Thank you, ma' lady.

    Sublimus on
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Don't try to call me a hypocrit if this comes off as being insulting.

    Well, you are being insulting. But i'll give you this, at least I'm being insulted this time by someone who is good at art!

    Kaptain H on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Kaptain H wrote:
    Don't try to call me a hypocrit if this comes off as being insulting.

    Well, you are being insulting. But i'll give you this, at least I'm being insulted this time by someone who good at art!

    Alright, I've calmed down now. I'm sorry for being insulting. I honestly don't like doing that - my consience eats me a little bit, even if I think the person deserved it, and even if they were insulting me...which I felt you were, however indirectly (all for one, one for all!).

    In any case, I hope you read and understood the rest of my post, and will seriously consider what I said.
    Sublimus wrote:
    Everything I meant by my previous comment, but actually written out.

    Thank you, ma' lady.

    ^___________________________________________________^

    NightDragon on
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    In any case, I hope you read and understood the rest of my post, and will seriously consider what I said.

    Same here.

    Kaptain H on
  • ShiboeShiboe Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    The coloring is decent enough on the last two panels, but the linework looks rather childesh on a good 9/10ths of the comic. Aside from a lack of detail, simple things like appendage size, random muscle placement, eye alignment, and overall symetry really drag it down. Additionally, there's alot of missing depth, and the scenery/background on the ones with percieved effort is pretty bad.

    Most of all though, just seeing more x of war things is highly cringable. One is a paradoy, two is a ripoff, three+ is downright annoying. If your going to do multiple takes on this gears thing, I would suggest maybe doing a one panel per idea thing, where the theme could then be "how many cheezy gear ripoffs I can think off." If your going to make a serious and lengthy attempt at each one, it's gonna get old very, very fast (as in already old).

    Shiboe on
  • Lewis RiceLewis Rice Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    (let's pretend it was drawn by somebody who was, say, 15 years old)

    I take offence to that.

    Also, Kaptain H. I want to know how you got that gritiness to the second frame and third frame. You know? The kind of old film reel typeness?

    Lewis Rice on
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    The lack of detail is intentional because I tend to draw things with too much detail, and I'm trying to get away from that and try to find a new and simple cartoon style. But since i'm experimenting, I agree that it's a mess in alot of respects. I see what you mean especially about the symmetry and muscle placement problems. I don't know, trying to keep it simple probably translated to being quick and sloppy with anatomy. That and I obviously still suck at stylizing and caricaturizing anatomy.
    And backgrounds have always been my downfall, even when I'm in realistic drawing mode.

    Thanks for commenting.

    Kaptain H on
  • Lewis RiceLewis Rice Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    ANWSER ME OR FACE MY WRAITH!!!! GRAAAAA!!!!! :)

    Lewis Rice on
  • Kaptain HKaptain H Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    I think it shows poor photoshop skills if people can instantly peg what filter or technique I used, so I usually layer method on top of method to such a point that I couldn't even adequately remember or explain what I did. I used filters, brushes, and layers. That's the best I can do for you.

    Kaptain H on
  • MaydayMayday Cutting edge goblin tech Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Funnyness: I LedOL.

    Concept: I don't mind. I could play "dark fantasy" games forever, even though the worlds aren't too original, I don't mind this here thing either. The funny is what matters to me.

    Art: Somewhat confusing, as it presents different skill level on different frames. Anyway, yes, Captain: you just need to practice from life/ study an anatomy book, as it is the only sensible way. Asking us to give specific anatomy crits on every picture you draw is a bit too much. Besides, a gigantic amount of practice never hurt anyone.

    Oh yeah, and I like the colours.

    Mayday on
  • AxelrodAxelrod Registered User new member
    edited January 2007
    Heh...hah.

    I lol'd at the end...first GoW spoof I've seen...

    Axelrod on
    nfsmwsigge4.png
  • GafotoGafoto Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Axelrod wrote:
    first GoW spoof I've seen...

    do you live under a rock?

    Gafoto on
    sierracrest.jpg
  • core tacticcore tactic Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Axelrod wrote:
    Heh...hah.

    I lol'd at the end...first GoW spoof I've seen...
    Go read VGcats for the love of god.

    core tactic on
    6700ab2ed7bb6f9876150c388a78a011.png
  • TimTheSlothTimTheSloth Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    I wouldn't say the anatomy etc. needs to be more detailed... just more correct. Anyway it's kinda funny, good job!

    TimTheSloth on
    redtidesig1.jpg
  • Aaron LeeAaron Lee Registered User regular
    edited January 2007
    Since there's a lot to critique on, and a lot of people have mentioned anatomy, I'll make a few comment on the coloring.

    At first glance, the coloring isn't bad, and your use of textures does help add the to grittiness of the story. The problem that's sticking out to me the most is the very obvious use of generic photoshop brushes. Take the first panel of the first page as a primary example. The brush strokes use to create the light reflection down the center of the water just looks like sloppy photoshop brush strokes using white with low opacity. Where the strokes overlap, the opacity is doubled and so on. See, this is a pretty blatant photoshop problem. Real paints and such wouldn't really do this. I realize there's strong appeal to digital coloring and it presents a unique look that real paints can't duplicate (and vice versa). However, the effect in both mediums is the same, to create the illusion of depth and color, and most of your coloring isn't doing this. When I look at the coloring, the brush strokes scream at me because they aren't lending to the quality or believability of the piece.

    I would do some research on techniques using flats and cuts to try and alleviate these brush stroke problems (and yes, to me they are problems). First though, and I can't stress this enough, is to practice color management and applications. No matter how good the technique is, it won't amount to anything of the colors don't represent reality. That's not to say it has to be complicated. Cell shading is simplicity in it's finest form, and yet a believable color scheme must still be used to create the needed atmosphere being portrayed. You're close sometimes, but other things are way off. Again, using the first panel of the first page. The setting is a sunset over the ocean. The sunlight is the primary source of the colors we see, and those colors change depending on the hue that the sun is giving off. Obviously during a sunset the hue is orange, which your partially represent. However, things like the island and the water don't represent this. the green is way to green on the island. If you take that green, and add more of an orange hue to it, then you'll get a better idea of the color plants would look in that sunlight. The water has some oranges, but not in the way it would truly be represented. The sun att hat angle would be reflecting extreme amounts of light, leading to pure white reflection on most the surface of the water. The rest would largely reflect the color of the sky with possible hint of blue. If you were looking straight down at the water it'd be different, but right now you're facing the sun and it's implications.

    You wanted indepth critiques and hopefully I've provided that. It would take pages to critique it all, so use my examples from the first panel as a good basis for the overall coloring issues. Honestly, you're doing alright with it, but you have to take it to the next level to escape the "generic" feel that it inevitably gives off.

    Aaron Lee on
  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    edited January 2007
    "Queers of War" has immense potential.

    MegaMan001 on
    I am in the business of saving lives.
Sign In or Register to comment.