Trigger Doodle

[Blues]

quintquint said:

Fine, fine... I'm aware of the movie Tron, but to be fair, you could name just about any computer program Tron, be it male or female.

perhaps this picture will be more to your liking?

[/td][/tr][/table]

as usual, the background's not mousedrawn, the rest of it pretty much is. I like this one a bit better. Got a kinda cartoony look about it, or at least that's what I get from it.

I really will do just about anything to avoid studying for finals.. >_<

[/quote]


Hmm... It looks very classic Mega Man style. I do like this better, too. Both of them are great, anyway, though. Yuna looks grumpy. She should cheer up!

And, you should really stop procrastinating for finals. I mean, they're finals!

[Pitch]

The Classic thing you mentioned is probably her shoes, which I really really feel bad about, because I stole that idea from someone and - curse me - I can't seem to remember who it was. It's an awesome idea, so yeah.. credit to whoever I saw do that before for that. I don't really think she looks all that grumpy.. it started out as a ^_^ expression, but I put the eyes in because it felt like something was missing. I tried making her face into a smile, but that seemed a bit awkward.

Finals are really a joke, I don't know why I get so worried about 'em each year.

[Blues]

quintquint said:

The Classic thing you mentioned is probably her shoes, which I really really feel bad about, because I stole that idea from someone and - curse me - I can't seem to remember who it was. It's an awesome idea, so yeah.. credit to whoever I saw do that before for that. I don't really think she looks all that grumpy.. it started out as a ^_^ expression, but I put the eyes in because it felt like something was missing. I tried making her face into a smile, but that seemed a bit awkward.

Finals are really a joke, I don't know why I get so worried about 'em each year.

How could you have stolen it? Anyone who draws Mega Man like
that draws his shoes (Feet?) like that, but I'm not going to argue more than I should.

I don't really think she looks all that grumpy.. it started out as a ^_^ expression, but I put the eyes in because it felt like something was missing. I tried making her face into a smile, but that seemed a bit awkward.

Hmmm, then, I guess that if you start drawing a ^_^, then add eyes, then add a smile, then erase a smile, you get a grumpy look! :')

...Aren't you happy your thread wasen't ignored?

[Pitch]

The classic look for Yuna I mean. That's not my idea, I typically went for what her shoes looked like in game. Looks d***ed awkward too. This look's a lot easier, and I think it looks really nifty.. I really oughta draw up my Yuna Battle Body.. maybe some other time.

Again I don't really see grumpy in that at all. It looks like a kinda standard look to me. I can't really fix what I don't see.

As for it not being ignored.. we pretty much just traded off responses. Better than nothing but yeah...

[Blues]

quintquint said:

The classic look for Yuna I mean. That's not my idea, I typically went for what her shoes looked like in game. Looks d***ed awkward too. This look's a lot easier, and I think it looks really nifty.. I really oughta draw up my Yuna Battle Body.. maybe some other time.

Again I don't really see grumpy in that at all. It looks like a kinda standard look to me. I can't really fix what I don't see.

As for it not being ignored.. we pretty much just traded off responses. Better than nothing but yeah...

You don't need to fix her expression, it's fine as it is! It's okay that she's grumpy! That sounds interesting, this "Battle Yuna"...I'd like to see that someday!

[Pitch]

Yuna's Battle Form is an idea that's existed in my mind for about a year now. I've tried to sprite it and failed, and I can't seem to translate it into a pencil and paper drawing. I don't know if I'll be able to get it down in Paint, but it would certainly be interesting to get everyone's reponse on that.

[Blues]

quintquint said:

Yuna's Battle Form is an idea that's existed in my mind for about a year now. I've tried to sprite it and failed, and I can't seem to translate it into a pencil and paper drawing. I don't know if I'll be able to get it down in Paint, but it would certainly be interesting to get everyone's reponse on that.

If mouse drawing dosen't work, you could also try 3D modelling.

[Pitch]

I've tried 3d Modelling and I can guarantee you I'll become a professional artist before I become even a mediocre 3D Modeller. The only chance you'll ever have of seeing anything of mine as a 3D Model is if I find a 3D Modeller who takes requests - which from what I'd assume, they typically don't; not for free anyway.

[Santa Melty]

Have a heart. I had to read all of that.

And I even did some research for examples I can refer to. I am the anti-ignore.

TIME TO BE HELPFUL!!! *sips tea*



Now, I notice that your coloring jobs look pretty lazy. You’ve got the shadowing, yes, but despite the multiple shades, in many places it looks as though you just swiped the brush across and moved on, rather than try to make it look like actual shading. That light bit on Yuna’s front shoe in the second image, for example. The same was true with that Jedi image you posted previously. The shading quite clearly breached your outline at several points, but it doesn’t look as though any effort was made to try to clean it up. Now, I’m not sure how MS Paint works, since I haven’t bothered with it for several years, but if the program can’t be used to make simple changes like that, I wouldn’t bother with it at all. If you have Paint Shop Pro, I’d suggest practicing with that.

That is my complaint. The style I mind less than the coloring. I like smooth line art, but I’ve seen grand images done in this kind of scribbled manner, and I can imagine it must have been difficult trying to get her figure right with a mouse. In the first image, she has good poise. It looks as though she’s sitting on her legs, though it is hard to tell whether it is that or if she is just standing. I like the idea that she might be sitting on her legs; the way the dress juts out in front near the bottom gives that sort of impression. Blues seems to have had a problem with the eyes, but I happen to think they were the best part. Pupils are certainly not needed. If anything, the lack-of-pupils looks seems to be getting more popular these days. I can’t name any fan artist specifically, but if you look at art from people like Takehito Harada, who will probably be best known around here as the artist for Nippon Ichi games Disgaea and Phantom Brave, you’ll notice that it can compliment certain styles very well. Normally the cutesy kind, yes, but not limited to. You can see some of his work here, if you like:

members3.jcom.home.ne.jp/u1h/cg/cg.htm

Most of them are of that blue-haired mascot, but there are many gems in that collection. A good shading job or a nice iris can easily account for the missing pupils. Anyway, as for that one that you did add pupils to, you made the black come down at an angle. It should go straight down the middle, and slightly thicker at the center. A softer brush might help, but I guess the hardness does keep the look consistent. The chin is also a bit off. Anatomy isn’t my area, but just going by looks, I’d move it to the left a smidgen. That should make it look more centered.

The second image with her standing is larger, so it becomes more necessary to be careful with the coloring, as errors are more noticeable. I haven’t seen any of the Zero or Classic game art, but I do like the way you did the eyes. Long and thin is more Legendsesque. The mouth is a little awkward, maybe because it is the only perfectly straight line. The hair seems to have come out well, but I’m gonna complain about the coloring again. The darker shade is nice enough, but the highlights on the top of the hair look round and rough. I can’t really say how you might try to improve that, since people have different opinions on what might look better, but I prefer it when those shades are honed down to a point at the ends, to make it look sharper.

I have done a 30-second edit job on the matter.

i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/mltmlt22/Yuna.jpg

Of course, just changing those two points doesn’t do much to the overall picture, but I like picking at details. Still, I find that doing such things is an easy and cheap way to make stuff look cleaner.

The shoes are nice. Yuna's feet were always odd. Her long legs seem to curve directly into the form of the shoes. Like the eyes, it's something that seems to work better with cuter designs for some reason. Aw well. There is this one fellow I saw once while browsing DeviantArt. Bleedman was his name. Pretty popular guy, I believe. If you look at some of his character designs, he drew feet like that all of the time. You seem to have gotten it well enough, but I think he'd be a good person to look up for some possibly pliable examples for feet. His gallery is thither.

bleedman.deviantart.com

The shadow you made in the background I like. Gives it an almost three-dimensional look. I assume that the area on the side of her face that the sideburns go around is the ear. If it is, you should put something on it to distinguish it, since it just looks like an extension of her face as it is now. Even if you just add a little “6”, like they do with these guys.

www.familie-maat.nl/images/fairly-oddparents-klikplaat.gif

The ear on the first image is also a bit high, now that I look at it. Ears normally peak at about the center of the eye and come down to around the nose.



That be all I have, for now.


P.S.-- 3-D modeling is murder. Three dimensions is just one too many for me as well.

[Pitch]

Ah, and you'll have to forgive me, because I typed up a reply, then midway through bumped the Back button on my mouse and lost everything I'd typed. >_< I'll try to do it from memory.

EDIT: After almost losing the post again due to being logged out and trying to preview, I'm now going to write this post in Notepad like I should've done from square one.

Now, I notice that your coloring jobs look pretty lazy. You’ve got the shadowing, yes, but despite the multiple shades, in many places it looks as though you just swiped the brush across and moved on, rather than try to make it look like actual shading. That light bit on Yuna’s front shoe in the second image, for example. The same was true with that Jedi image you posted previously. The shading quite clearly breached your outline at several points, but it doesn’t look as though any effort was made to try to clean it up. Now, I’m not sure how MS Paint works, since I haven’t bothered with it for several years, but if the program can’t be used to make simple changes like that, I wouldn’t bother with it at all. If you have Paint Shop Pro, I’d suggest practicing with that.

I actually did do the coloring in Paint Shop Pro... I thought I'd mentioned it. Drawn in Paint, colored in Paint Shop Pro. Probably could've colored in Paint, but that'd be a pain, because I could really only probably manage to work with two "layers".

The coloring job I'll admit was a bit lot lazy on my part. There's no real excuse for that either. I could bs about it and tell you that I'm "learning", which would for the most part be true, but also for the most part be bs, so perhaps not. It was laziness, lack of patience, whichever you like. I've always been a bit "nyaaah" on the concept though, and honestly this is better than a lot of my other stuff I've tried. Again, pure bs, but I have gotten a bit more comfortable with the program after doing this picture, not that that affects the image in any way. I've got no excuse.. I did this picture while I was avoiding studying for finals; it's a product of laziness really.

That is my complaint. The style I mind less than the coloring. I like smooth line art, but I’ve seen grand images done in this kind of scribbled manner, and I can imagine it must have been difficult trying to get her figure right with a mouse. In the first image, she has good poise. It looks as though she’s sitting on her legs, though it is hard to tell whether it is that or if she is just standing. I like the idea that she might be sitting on her legs; the way the dress juts out in front near the bottom gives that sort of impression. Blues seems to have had a problem with the eyes, but I happen to think they were the best part. Pupils are certainly not needed. If anything, the lack-of-pupils looks seems to be getting more popular these days. I can’t name any fan artist specifically, but if you look at art from people like Takehito Harada, who will probably be best known around here as the artist for Nippon Ichi games Disgaea and Phantom Brave, you’ll notice that it can compliment certain styles very well. Normally the cutesy kind, yes, but not limited to. You can see some of his work here, if you like:

members3.jcom.home.ne.jp/u1h/cg/cg.htm

On the subject of line art.. all I can really say about line art is that I'm really bad at it. The smooth kind anyway. I think I did an okay job with this scribbly look here, certainly not the best, but you can - for the most part - tell what everything is. That's all I can say really. I genuinely dislike doing line art. It's a painful process, might be easier if I had a tablet or something, but those things are wicked expensive. I can't typically even do smooth straight-lined works with pencil and paper either, if you saw the sketch of the Jedi picture I posted there, you'd see it had that "swipe, swipe, swipe" type look about it. Any of those old Chibis too.

Even when it comes down to just outlining those lines though, it's always a pain for some reason. I haven't found an effective way to do that with a mouse. I tried Paint's bezier curve type dealy way back with the chibis, I actually went insane using a Point-To-Point line on the Jedi picture... if there's a better way to go about that, please tell me. I'm quite sick of those headaches at this point, though, which is why I felt a bit more comfortable using this method. I'm kinda hoping I can just get better at it this way, instead of going back to that hellish headache of straight smooth lines. This was a lot more enjoyable(and, in my most humble opinion, looks a bit better than my other line-art cg'd pictures).

I guess all I could say about line art wasn't really that I'm just really bad at it.

See, the thing about her legs in the first picture is... well you know what, yeah, just go about believing she's sitting on them.

...

...

...fine!

Yeah, I got really lazy with that. Because I don't like drawing her legs, especially when I'm not going with the style I went with in picture #2. She has no legs. I didn't even bother to put them in. Like many other things, something always seems 'off' about them, I can't describe it, but my drawing legs coming out of her dress never looks right. Again, product of laziness. I'm glad you liked the eyes though. I'm thinking maybe I should've gone with a soft shading with those though, just because. Might've looked bad though, considering I GIF'd both of these. I'm really partial to that style of eyes though, I'm not even sure why. I see it every so often in anime pictures or in manga, there's a certain depth to them that's mesmerizing in its own way..

Most of them are of that blue-haired mascot, but there are many gems in that collection. A good shading job or a nice iris can easily account for the missing pupils. Anyway, as for that one that you did add pupils to, you made the black come down at an angle. It should go straight down the middle, and slightly thicker at the center. A softer brush might help, but I guess the hardness does keep the look consistent. The chin is also a bit off. Anatomy isn’t my area, but just going by looks, I’d move it to the left a smidgen. That should make it look more centered.

The second image with her standing is larger, so it becomes more necessary to be careful with the coloring, as errors are more noticeable. I haven’t seen any of the Zero or Classic game art, but I do like the way you did the eyes. Long and thin is more Legendsesque. The mouth is a little awkward, maybe because it is the only perfectly straight line. The hair seems to have come out well, but I’m gonna complain about the coloring again. The darker shade is nice enough, but the highlights on the top of the hair look round and rough. I can’t really say how you might try to improve that, since people have different opinions on what might look better, but I prefer it when those shades are honed down to a point at the ends, to make it look sharper.

I have done a 30-second edit job on the matter.

i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/mltmlt22/Yuna.jpg

Of course, just changing those two points doesn’t do much to the overall picture, but I like picking at details. Still, I find that doing such things is an easy and cheap way to make stuff look cleaner.

The picture with the pupil was a few lazy slashes about both eyes with the pencil tool, I didn't mean for either of those quick edits to really be taken seriously, because I really didn't like the way they made the picture look. Too "failed attempt at conforming to typical style". ><

Chin's always something I goof up on. I really just didn't notice it when I drew the picture, I'll probably fix it if I feel like goin back and touching that one up. I'm more inclined to work on the other one first though.

And, back to that second picture, again, it was all just laziness on my part. No excuse, and I'll probably end up touching it up sometime(though given tonight's nearly gone and tomorrow's the last day of the three-day weekend, I'll probably have to get on studying and I have finals the other four days so it'll probably be shelved for next weekend, by which time I may or may not remember. Someone oughta PM me Saturday or something reminding me. ^^;

The Classic style reference is in the shoes. Because they're drawn, just by how I conceive them, I suppose, like MegaMan/Protoman/Bass/Roll/etc's. Big, clunky, metallic-y, boot-like shoes, instead of Yuna's sexy, figure-conforming footwear - which, sexy as it may be, I prefer the former in the more cartoony pictures, and it's a helluva lot easier to draw.. It's also not quite a chibi - ala Powered Up style, but there's a certain lack of proportion about it, in a kinda cartoony way, that seems to say "I am a tiny version of myself" without being a Chibi. The Zero bit is simply the eyes, though that applies to the first picture, not the second.

The eyes in the second are a particular favorite style of mine. I remember seeing it in simple styles of drawing when I was younger. And even now, today, in animation, and other such drawing it's sometimes used to convey simple emotion. Legends-style is kinda like that, but with the iris/pupil more offset to the inside, and the white.. whatever area that is present. The mouth is something I noticed too, but again back to the simple-ness point - that being why it's a straight line - I'm not really sure what to do with it, other than maybe going over it a few times so it'll match the rest. It stands out a bit, but I don't really think it's that much of a problem, per se, as just something you notice.

As for the hair, I certainly do see your point, and seeing how those little edits really did make the image overall look better, I'm much more enthused about going back and cleaning everything up, though I'm really not sure how and what to do exactly, because I still am pretty new at this, but I'm bs-ing again. I'll see what I can do about that and post an edit sometime. Just those two points may not have changed much, but the rest of them ought to, eh. I can see what you mean, and I'll work on it.

The shoes are nice. Yuna's feet were always odd. Her long legs seem to curve directly into the form of the shoes. Like the eyes, it's something that seems to work better with cuter designs for some reason. Aw well. There is this one fellow I saw once while browsing DeviantArt. Bleedman was his name. Pretty popular guy, I believe. If you look at some of his character designs, he drew feet like that all of the time. You seem to have gotten it well enough, but I think he'd be a good person to look up for some possibly pliable examples for feet. His gallery is thither.

bleedman.deviantart.com

I actually just joined DeviantART today, so I'll be sure to check that fellow's work out. Not much else to say there. I agree though, Yuna's get-up is a bit of a pain to get down. ...*blink* can we both just pretend I didn't say that? I do like the more comical looks on her though.

The shadow you made in the background I like. Gives it an almost three-dimensional look. I assume that the area on the side of her face that the sideburns go around is the ear. If it is, you should put something on it to distinguish it, since it just looks like an extension of her face as it is now. Even if you just add a little “6”, like they do with these guys.

www.familie-maat.nl/images/fairly-oddparents-klikplaat.gif

The ear on the first image is also a bit high, now that I look at it. Ears normally peak at about the center of the eye and come down to around the nose.

The background shadow is pretty much no work on my part. I made sure to save the layered image by itself, Copy Merged the whole thing, and used the effect, when preparing the image to post here. It was a last-minute, two-second thing, just done for the effect, which you noticed. I deserve no credit for it, but I'm glad you appreciated the nice touch there.

I probably should put detail into the ear, it's really just something I never think about. If you were to look back at all those chibis, the Jedi pic, and whatever else I may've done, there's never any detail whatsoever on the ears. I suppose I can perceive that as an ear, simply because I'm so used to myself drawing them that way, but I'll see if I can't fix that.

As for the ear in pic#1, that really is off, and honestly, I just didn't see it. If I end up going back to work on that picture, I'll be sure to fix it.

That be all I have, for now.


P.S.-- 3-D modeling is murder. Three dimensions is just one too many for me as well.

And with that said, that's all I have for now.

P.S. -- That it is... it's pretty confusing. Very powerful program though, but yeah... you don't just start using something that powerful without some sort of training or study.

EDIT: UPDATE!

well you're either reading this or replying right now I'm guessing, but I spent a little while going over it and fixing whatever little errors I could find and overall trying to clean it up. There's a lot more I can do, but it's 2AM, I need sleep, because tomorrow I got a lot of work ahead of me.

I tried to fix up some of the shading, and I cleaned up a lot of bleed-through. I think I'll do more next weekend.

[Santa Melty]

o.o

*removes eye, rubs it on jacket, and replaces into eye socket*

o.o

THEY JUDGED THE CAPTION CONTEST ALREADY!?! I OUGHT TO GIVE THOSE FILTERS A GOOD WORKOUT, I OUGHT TO!!!

Well, I’ll show them I will! I’m just going to take the effort I was going to put into that drivel, and put it into this drivel.

*orders two subordinates to fight to the death and turns to response window*



HAVE AT THEE, PITCH.

Ah, and you'll have to forgive me, because I typed up a reply, then midway through bumped the Back button on my mouse and lost everything I'd typed. >_< I'll try to do it from memory.

EDIT: After almost losing the post again due to being logged out and trying to preview, I'm now going to write this post in Notepad like I should've done from square one.

I thought you'd have learned your lesson after the same thing happened back in the RP.

Well... *scratches head*

Let us move on, then.

I actually did do the coloring in Paint Shop Pro... I thought I'd mentioned it. Drawn in Paint, colored in Paint Shop Pro. Probably could've colored in Paint, but that'd be a pain, because I could really only probably manage to work with two "layers".

The coloring job I'll admit was a bit lot lazy on my part. There's no real excuse for that either. I could bs about it and tell you that I'm "learning", which would for the most part be true, but also for the most part be bs, so perhaps not. It was laziness, lack of patience, whichever you like. I've always been a bit "nyaaah" on the concept though, and honestly this is better than a lot of my other stuff I've tried. Again, pure bs, but I have gotten a bit more comfortable with the program after doing this picture, not that that affects the image in any way. I've got no excuse.. I did this picture while I was avoiding studying for finals; it's a product of laziness really.

Ah, I must have missed that. Then that is even worst. I though you were working in Paint, but it is a much simpler task in Paint Shop Pro.

However, I am still of the opinion that you are greatly downplaying your own abilities. Even disregarding the fact that you seem to actually know what you are talking about when it comes to layers and proportions and coloring and et cetera, every deformity and error I can find seems to be nothing more than a result of either minute quantities of laziness or minor negligences that eventually mold into one great mound of... eh... laziness and negligence. Lazigence. Negliziness. I’m sure that if you were to invest some time into doing a serious picture, you’d notice these things for yourself, and would thus be able to fix them. I can see them, and I only gots me good eye, so someone like you should have little problem.

On the subject of line art.. all I can really say about line art is that I'm really bad at it. The smooth kind anyway. I think I did an okay job with this scribbly look here, certainly not the best, but you can - for the most part - tell what everything is. That's all I can say really. I genuinely dislike doing line art. It's a painful process, might be easier if I had a tablet or something, but those things are wicked expensive. I can't typically even do smooth straight-lined works with pencil and paper either, if you saw the sketch of the Jedi picture I posted there, you'd see it had that "swipe, swipe, swipe" type look about it. Any of those old Chibis too.

Even when it comes down to just outlining those lines though, it's always a pain for some reason. I haven't found an effective way to do that with a mouse. I tried Paint's bezier curve type dealy way back with the chibis, I actually went insane using a Point-To-Point line on the Jedi picture... if there's a better way to go about that, please tell me. I'm quite sick of those headaches at this point, though, which is why I felt a bit more comfortable using this method. I'm kinda hoping I can just get better at it this way, instead of going back to that hellish headache of straight smooth lines. This was a lot more enjoyable(and, in my most humble opinion, looks a bit better than my other line-art cg'd pictures).

Meh. I’ve yet to meet someone who enjoys doing lineart. The definition of tedium work. Especially if you’re trying to smooth it out from a sketch. Having to draw something twice is no fun.

As far as advice with line art goes, the method I used to do all of my old work (The stuff on my thread. I don’t believe I need to call it my ‘old work’. I need to get cracking on new stuff) was to draw the picture out by hand, trace it over on some tracing paper with an extremely fine pen, then scan the traced picture in and clean it as needed. This, I would not recommend. Out of every possible lineart method, I am convinced that I chose the most tedious, ineffectual, crippled and mutated one. It practically required you to draw the same image three times before being able to color it. In the end, it was smooth enough, but merely mediocre visually.

I must recommend the pen tool. I’m not sure if they have that in Paint Shop Pro, but it is one of the main tools in Photoshop, and despite having had the program for so long, I’ve just recently discovered its uses. I’m still a novice with it, but already I’ve improved my lineart a great deal. It is not quick, necessarily, but it is quicker.

The eyes in the second are a particular favorite style of mine. I remember seeing it in simple styles of drawing when I was younger. And even now, today, in animation, and other such drawing it's sometimes used to convey simple emotion. Legends-style is kinda like that, but with the iris/pupil more offset to the inside, and the white.. whatever area that is present. The mouth is something I noticed too, but again back to the simple-ness point - that being why it's a straight line - I'm not really sure what to do with it, other than maybe going over it a few times so it'll match the rest. It stands out a bit, but I don't really think it's that much of a problem, per se, as just something you notice.

Cornea, I believe it is called.

Simplicity is a good place to start. Still, one must learn that mere simplicity rarely makes a good image. My experience (Alright, not really experience. I’m far too pedestrian to claim to have experience. Let’s say observations. Yes.) dictates that though a good picture may be made from simplistic ideas, the visuals are not always as simplistic as they first appear. There is a certain amount of detail that must be put into the simplicity in order to convey the idea of simplicity.

I had a couple of images in mind that I could use as an example, but I’ve no idea where it was that I saw them. It is probably for the best anyway. Whatever vague level of articulacy I possess tends to waver by this hour. I doubt I could write any good explanation at the moment.

But, moving to the actual point, anything sticking out that isn’t supposed to stick out is a problem. People will sometimes use things like differences in style to draw attention to a single thing, but when there is no meaning behind it, such as when attention is drawn needlessly to a mouth, the image can look awkward. Yes, I would fix such a thing in future pictures. Like whatever it was I explained about the shading earlier, it is one of those small things that can improve the picture as a whole, if ever so slightly.

As for the hair, I certainly do see your point, and seeing how those little edits really did make the image overall look better, I'm much more enthused about going back and cleaning everything up, though I'm really not sure how and what to do exactly, because I still am pretty new at this, but I'm bs-ing again. I'll see what I can do about that and post an edit sometime. Just those two points may not have changed much, but the rest of them ought to, eh. I can see what you mean, and I'll work on it.

Enthused? Well, I’ve not seen you use that word when referring to drawing before. Best of luck with that.

I actually just joined DeviantART today, so I'll be sure to check that fellow's work out. Not much else to say there. I agree though, Yuna's get-up is a bit of a pain to get down. ...*blink* can we both just pretend I didn't say that? I do like the more comical looks on her though.

*retrieves 20-dollar bill Pitch is holding up*

Say what?

If you are looking for people worth looking at on that site, I happen to have a few anime-style artists I could recommend. There are more, but I don’t actually keep track of this stuff, so I’ve lost most of them.

Taeshilh— Neat drawings. She uses a very basic style, nothing very fancy about it. Draws comics too, though the inside jokes are numerous. Despite the simple style, she is very masterful at depicting emotions. You mentioned something like that, so perhaps you might have a look at her. She may have something similar to what you mean.

JohnSu— Aside from being one of the greatest Flash animators I’ve ever come across, his drawings are very professional. Nothing much else I can say, except perhaps that he’s one of the only good male anime artists I’ve found on DeviantArt.

Fatal-mantis85— A CGer. I haven’t looked him up in a while, but I think that dragons were his specialty. Not really an anime artist, but his coloring jobs are worth looking at. Many are simple enough for one with some background in coloring to grasp how he did his effects, yet they are certainly good enough to impress. His skill would at least match Fab’s, I’d say.

Bixby— One of the best colorers I’ve been able to find. The actual drawings are pretty good, though I’ve never been partial to that style of chibis. What really stands out is the coloring. It is extremely unconventional, and professionally clean. I highly recommend looking at her gallery.

The background shadow is pretty much no work on my part. I made sure to save the layered image by itself, Copy Merged the whole thing, and used the effect, when preparing the image to post here. It was a last-minute, two-second thing, just done for the effect, which you noticed. I deserve no credit for it, but I'm glad you appreciated the nice touch there.

I probably should put detail into the ear, it's really just something I never think about. If you were to look back at all those chibis, the Jedi pic, and whatever else I may've done, there's never any detail whatsoever on the ears. I suppose I can perceive that as an ear, simply because I'm so used to myself drawing them that way, but I'll see if I can't fix that.

As for the ear in pic#1, that really is off, and honestly, I just didn't see it. If I end up going back to work on that picture, I'll be sure to fix it.

Indeed, I appreciate the final touch. I expected that you did something like that making the shadow, but it was still a good move. Reasonable to below-reasonable effort meets functionality. It is my golden rule.

A simple ear is actually very easy to do. The curve of that little flap on the outside of the ear loosely follows an “E” or “C” pattern in most anime drawings I’ve seen. I went back onto DeviantArt to see if I could dig up an example, but this is the best I could get.

By the way, why is it that EVERY OTHER CHILD THERE SEEMS TO FEEL THE NEED TO GIVE ANYTHING ANATOMICALLY SIMILAR TO A HUMAN THE EARS OF A CAT!?! Good lord, I’m going to need a dictionary and thesaurus before I go on about that one. Or at least a good rhyme dictionary.

www.deviantart.com/view/39770/
www.deviantart.com/deviation/10867039/

Some examples of ears. There are simpler means to go by, buy I can’t find anything at the moment.

As for going back to fix things, I would not recommend it. If you feel strongly about that particular image or put too much effort into it to let it be ruined by such a thing, go ahead. However, I think it’d be easier to simply learn from your mistakes and go on to drawing a new image. Errors are sometimes more beneficial as tidbits of wisdom than as an hour or two of redrawing or cleanup.


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well you're either reading this or replying right now I'm guessing, but I spent a little while going over it and fixing whatever little errors I could find and overall trying to clean it up. There's a lot more I can do, but it's 2AM, I need sleep, because tomorrow I got a lot of work ahead of me.

Actually, I was reading that, writing a response, searching for images, eating, and watching television simultaneously, so I didn’t expect to be finished with it any time soon. If you were waiting up for a post from me, I apologize.

I see some of the changed you made. It still needs work, but it is a step forward. It looks as though you’re getting the idea. Of course, the idea is only half of it. But tell me, do you really want to try to clean this one up rather than move on to a new picture? o.o

Well, whatever you say. Here, take a look at this handsome fellow.

www.team-rocket.nl/jameswebsite.jpg

The hair is what is important here. I’m no expert, but perhaps I can teach you something anyway. Teach what? Well, to be annoyed by the same small stuff that annoys me, at the least. Then we can sit around murmuring back and forth under our breath for hours about the things we dislike. Which will be the same thing. It will be grand.

Anyway, you have three shades, but you need to know where to put them. The two ponytails seem to be shaped oddly because of the shading. Something similar happened with one of Gesselshaftgirl’s drawings in fact, though I’m not sure if I mentioned it.

img.photobucket.com/albums/v375/Polly-Monk/Bola-CG-Finished.gif

The armor ended up looking somewhat square where is should have been round because of the hard-edged coloring. On the legs, for example, could be perfectly hexagonal, the way the light falls on it. There needed to be some evidence of curvature; somewhere that you can see the light or shadowing bending around the leg/arm/what be it so that you can tell it is round.

In the case of the hair, there is something like that, since the light on the top of the ponytails curves around to the back, but it is not enough. In this case, it looks round where it should look cylindrical. Here is another 30-second example.

i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/mltmlt22/Yuna2.jpg

So it’s not that great, but I’m trying to get a point across. Compare Yuna’s ponytails in your drawing to the blue-hair lad. In truth, I suppose the light could fall either way, but I see the second way used far more, maybe because it is easier to distinguish the curve. Or perhaps it is so that there is not too much blunt contrast between the shadow and the highlight. Or maybe it’s because the hair is oily.

Fine, so I’m not sure why, but it seems to be how it works. It might help if you could make the light shine around the ponytails rather than on top of it, as in my fine clipart demonstration. In fact, an even better example of how light might curve around the head instead of falling on the top:

www.legends-station.com/mml2/officialart/sera01.jpg


As for the top of her head, the shape of the hair looks more like Tron’s than Yuna’s.

www.legends-station.com/motb/officialart/tron1.jpg

They shaded it differently on her art, but the way that you make Yuna’s shades alternate between light and dark makes it look as though her hair is alternating between high and low points (the high points creating she shadow on the lower points, as well as the highlights on the side that the light source is on). Again, I had a very good example of what I mean, but can’t remember where to find it.

Assuming that that is what you were going for, you’ll probably need to spike the hair at the back of her head at the points where the hair peaks, in order to justify the shading. Where the hair is light and dark should be the places where the hair is rising (thus catching the light) and falling (thus being blocked from the light). I’m not sure if you know what I mean, so I’ll try to dig up an example and get back to you on that later.


You know this post has taken me nearly 3 hours to put together? I just love all of you too much.

*chucks dagger at the group photo on the opposite wall*

[Pitch]

Ah, and you'll have to forgive me, because I typed up a reply, then midway through bumped the Back button on my mouse and lost everything I'd typed. >_< I'll try to do it from memory.

EDIT: After almost losing the post again due to being logged out and trying to preview, I'm now going to write this post in Notepad like I should've done from square one.

I thought you'd have learned your lesson after the same thing happened back in the RP.

Well... *scratches head*

Let us move on, then.

I hadn't originally planned to reply to every little bit you said, but when I decided that that would be just lazy, I figured I'd better do so. It slipped my mind to switch to Notepad at that point. Remembering what I typed was easy enough so I didn't consider it much afterward.

Ah, I must have missed that. Then that is even worst. I though you were working in Paint, but it is a much simpler task in Paint Shop Pro.

However, I am still of the opinion that you are greatly downplaying your own abilities. Even disregarding the fact that you seem to actually know what you are talking about when it comes to layers and proportions and coloring and et cetera, every deformity and error I can find seems to be nothing more than a result of either minute quantities of laziness or minor negligences that eventually mold into one great mound of... eh... laziness and negligence. Lazigence. Negliziness. I’m sure that if you were to invest some time into doing a serious picture, you’d notice these things for yourself, and would thus be able to fix them. I can see them, and I only gots me good eye, so someone like you should have little problem.

You wouldn't believe the simple things I learned about Paint Shop Pro in these last two pictures, and quite honestly, I don't want to tell you. =P

I have a basic idea of how to use the program, but it'll typically take me a lot longer to pull off things people know how to do in seconds. Proportions I'd really say I don't know actually; it's why I like the cartoony style, because who gives a damn, it's a cartoon. If you want an idea of how stupid I can be when it comes to proportions... oh where is she..? Ahah!

One of my favorite pixel-arted things I've done, really. This here would've been version 1, I don't believe I posted that here. Oh, no, wait, yes I did. Huh... I thought I'd posted it on other places and fixed it up a little before I went about posting it here. Ah well. Bottom line, though I originally didn't see anything wrong with that there. It turned out a bit better after someone pointed out the glaring flaws to me. But shoot, I probably wouldn't have considered that myself, even with my two good eyes. It's actually kind of funny in a way. Here, her legs are obviously much too short, among other things but said other things don't matter in my story - not too long after that, my last really good sprite got verbally thrashed because the legs were too long. Gotta hit both extremes before ya find the middle ground in my case, I guess.

While I don't believe I mentioned my negligence in my last post, I'm almost certain I hit the laziness note at least three times. I can see the screw-ups, but typically my trying to fix them doesn't work out well. And, as mentioned, a lot of things I just don't notice.

Meh. I’ve yet to meet someone who enjoys doing lineart. The definition of tedium work. Especially if you’re trying to smooth it out from a sketch. Having to draw something twice is no fun.

As far as advice with line art goes, the method I used to do all of my old work (The stuff on my thread. I don’t believe I need to call it my ‘old work’. I need to get cracking on new stuff) was to draw the picture out by hand, trace it over on some tracing paper with an extremely fine pen, then scan the traced picture in and clean it as needed. This, I would not recommend. Out of every possible lineart method, I am convinced that I chose the most tedious, ineffectual, crippled and mutated one. It practically required you to draw the same image three times before being able to color it. In the end, it was smooth enough, but merely mediocre visually.

I must recommend the pen tool. I’m not sure if they have that in Paint Shop Pro, but it is one of the main tools in Photoshop, and despite having had the program for so long, I’ve just recently discovered its uses. I’m still a novice with it, but already I’ve improved my lineart a great deal. It is not quick, necessarily, but it is quicker.

Ermm... *tries to remember a picture by mltmlt22* You did one for the holidays thing right? I thought that looked pretty good. @_@

I considered your first method there, and... I don't know how to say this without being a jackass, but man.. That's how I thought people did that before I knew what 'CG' meant. I actually have tried that, but after the initial headache, I just decided there had to be a better way. I've probably yet to find one, but either way.

I happen to have Photoshop as well - though I hardly ever use it. I think I've used this Pen tool you speak of, but I can hardly think of a way thay would help outlining.. perhaps I'm mistaken, I'll have to check that out, then.

Cornea, I believe it is called.

Isn't there a "Retina" involved somewhere too? >_<

Simplicity is a good place to start. Still, one must learn that mere simplicity rarely makes a good image. My experience (Alright, not really experience. I’m far too pedestrian to claim to have experience. Let’s say observations. Yes.) dictates that though a good picture may be made from simplistic ideas, the visuals are not always as simplistic as they first appear. There is a certain amount of detail that must be put into the simplicity in order to convey the idea of simplicity.

I had a couple of images in mind that I could use as an example, but I’ve no idea where it was that I saw them. It is probably for the best anyway. Whatever vague level of articulacy I possess tends to waver by this hour. I doubt I could write any good explanation at the moment.

But, moving to the actual point, anything sticking out that isn’t supposed to stick out is a problem. People will sometimes use things like differences in style to draw attention to a single thing, but when there is no meaning behind it, such as when attention is drawn needlessly to a mouth, the image can look awkward. Yes, I would fix such a thing in future pictures. Like whatever it was I explained about the shading earlier, it is one of those small things that can improve the picture as a whole, if ever so slightly.

I've played the laziness card so much, by now you must have figured out it's the only one in my hand. But I'll keep that in mind, Simplicity ≠ Laziness. I'm not sure if that bit about the mouth was a direct shot at the one in my picture there, but again I'm really not quite sure what to do with that. I thickened the line in my second stab at it, beyond that I'm not sure what to do - apart from going back and making every line in the picture straight which would probably take me as much time as I've put into the entire picture itself and then some. Not really that much time, to be sure, but with 13 hours left in the day I really don't even have that to spare.

Enthused? Well, I’ve not seen you use that word when referring to drawing before. Best of luck with that.

I was rather enthused with those Chibis, though I don't believe I mentioned it. Never did finish that picture though...

*retrieves 20-dollar bill Pitch is holding up*

Say what?

If you are looking for people worth looking at on that site, I happen to have a few anime-style artists I could recommend. There are more, but I don’t actually keep track of this stuff, so I’ve lost most of them.

Taeshilh— Neat drawings. She uses a very basic style, nothing very fancy about it. Draws comics too, though the inside jokes are numerous. Despite the simple style, she is very masterful at depicting emotions. You mentioned something like that, so perhaps you might have a look at her. She may have something similar to what you mean.

JohnSu— Aside from being one of the greatest Flash animators I’ve ever come across, his drawings are very professional. Nothing much else I can say, except perhaps that he’s one of the only good male anime artists I’ve found on DeviantArt.

Fatal-mantis85— A CGer. I haven’t looked him up in a while, but I think that dragons were his specialty. Not really an anime artist, but his coloring jobs are worth looking at. Many are simple enough for one with some background in coloring to grasp how he did his effects, yet they are certainly good enough to impress. His skill would at least match Fab’s, I’d say.

Bixby— One of the best colorers I’ve been able to find. The actual drawings are pretty good, though I’ve never been partial to that style of chibis. What really stands out is the coloring. It is extremely unconventional, and professionally clean. I highly recommend looking at her gallery.

I don't really know what to say to that, other than I'll be sure to check those out, so.. yeah.

Indeed, I appreciate the final touch. I expected that you did something like that making the shadow, but it was still a good move. Reasonable to below-reasonable effort meets functionality. It is my golden rule.

I have an idea of how to do the shadow manually, but it was just a final touch, just for posting the picture publicly. I probably should've done so differently, but that's okay.

A simple ear is actually very easy to do. The curve of that little flap on the outside of the ear loosely follows an “E” or “C” pattern in most anime drawings I’ve seen. I went back onto DeviantArt to see if I could dig up an example, but this is the best I could get.

By the way, why is it that EVERY OTHER CHILD THERE SEEMS TO FEEL THE NEED TO GIVE ANYTHING ANATOMICALLY SIMILAR TO A HUMAN THE EARS OF A CAT!?! Good lord, I’m going to need a dictionary and thesaurus before I go on about that one. Or at least a good rhyme dictionary.

www.deviantart.com/view/39770/
www.deviantart.com/deviation/10867039/

Some examples of ears. There are simpler means to go by, buy I can’t find anything at the moment.

Yeah, I have an idea of how an ear should look, I just rarely bother to think about it. Come to think of it, actually, I didn't draw a nose either. I'm not sure why that is, a nose is a simple enough line, but for some reason it makes a picture - any picture - look strange to me.

As for going back to fix things, I would not recommend it. If you feel strongly about that particular image or put too much effort into it to let it be ruined by such a thing, go ahead. However, I think it’d be easier to simply learn from your mistakes and go on to drawing a new image. Errors are sometimes more beneficial as tidbits of wisdom than as an hour or two of redrawing or cleanup.

Ermm.. too late?

Nah, I really oughta clean that one up anyway. I think maybe I can polish it up, make it look a bit cleaner and all that. I only really put a bit of time into the one I already did - well, about an hour. I actually have my idea for another picture, but like any future updates to this one, that's gonna have to wait a while.

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well you're either reading this or replying right now I'm guessing, but I spent a little while going over it and fixing whatever little errors I could find and overall trying to clean it up. There's a lot more I can do, but it's 2AM, I need sleep, because tomorrow I got a lot of work ahead of me.

Actually, I was reading that, writing a response, searching for images, eating, and watching television simultaneously, so I didn’t expect to be finished with it any time soon. If you were waiting up for a post from me, I apologize.

I wasn't really waiting for a response, but I wasn't sure if you'd notice my update to the post if you were reading it.

I see some of the changed you made. It still needs work, but it is a step forward. It looks as though you’re getting the idea. Of course, the idea is only half of it. But tell me, do you really want to try to clean this one up rather than move on to a new picture? o.o

What can I say? It's Yuna. I doubt I'll get much more out of just starting another picture, anyway.

The hair is what is important here. I’m no expert, but perhaps I can teach you something anyway. Teach what? Well, to be annoyed by the same small stuff that annoys me, at the least. Then we can sit around murmuring back and forth under our breath for hours about the things we dislike. Which will be the same thing. It will be grand.

Anyway, you have three shades, but you need to know where to put them. The two ponytails seem to be shaped oddly because of the shading. Something similar happened with one of Gesselshaftgirl’s drawings in fact, though I’m not sure if I mentioned it.

img.photobucket.com/albums/v375/Polly-Monk/Bola-CG-Finished.gif

The armor ended up looking somewhat square where is should have been round because of the hard-edged coloring. On the legs, for example, could be perfectly hexagonal, the way the light falls on it. There needed to be some evidence of curvature; somewhere that you can see the light or shadowing bending around the leg/arm/what be it so that you can tell it is round.

In the case of the hair, there is something like that, since the light on the top of the ponytails curves around to the back, but it is not enough. In this case, it looks round where it should look cylindrical. Here is another 30-second example.

i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/mltmlt22/Yuna2.jpg

So it’s not that great, but I’m trying to get a point across. Compare Yuna’s ponytails in your drawing to the blue-hair lad. In truth, I suppose the light could fall either way, but I see the second way used far more, maybe because it is easier to distinguish the curve. Or perhaps it is so that there is not too much blunt contrast between the shadow and the highlight. Or maybe it’s because the hair is oily.

I can see what you mean, but I'm not really sure how to put it into effect. I could pull a Capcom, and just make the pigtails those horribly ugly flat things, but lazy as I may be, I don't think I'm quite that lazy. I'm still not sure though.

I tried to make the shading on the pigtails match the curve of the line I drew them with. I'm not really sure how else to go about that.

Fine, so I’m not sure why, but it seems to be how it works. It might help if you could make the light shine around the ponytails rather than on top of it, as in my fine clipart demonstration. In fact, an even better example of how light might curve around the head instead of falling on the top:

www.legends-station.com/mml2/officialart/sera01.jpg

As for the top of her head, the shape of the hair looks more like Tron’s than Yuna’s.

www.legends-station.com/motb/officialart/tron1.jpg

They shaded it differently on her art, but the way that you make Yuna’s shades alternate between light and dark makes it look as though her hair is alternating between high and low points (the high points creating she shadow on the lower points, as well as the highlights on the side that the light source is on). Again, I had a very good example of what I mean, but can’t remember where to find it.

Assuming that that is what you were going for, you’ll probably need to spike the hair at the back of her head at the points where the hair peaks, in order to justify the shading. Where the hair is light and dark should be the places where the hair is rising (thus catching the light) and falling (thus being blocked from the light). I’m not sure if you know what I mean, so I’ll try to dig up an example and get back to you on that later.

Well, Sera's hair is, at least I consider it to be, a bit thinner than Yuna's. Because, while Sera's seems to sit rather flat on her head, Yuna's kinda poofs out. You can kinda see that in my avatar, eh. But while we're posting art.

legends-station.com/mml2/officialart/yuna01.jpg

It's kinda thick like Tron's, but it's not really spiky(probably because she's not wearing a headband). I'm not really sure, I oughta put more detail in the shading and then maybe it would look better.

You know this post has taken me nearly 3 hours to put together? I just love all of you too much.

*chucks dagger at the group photo on the opposite wall*

Makes me feel kinda bad this one only took an hour and a half...

..anyway, I probably won't reply to this topic again today, because it really is about time I got on that studying for finals stuff. So yeah.

[Blues]

Blues seems to have had a problem with the eyes, but I happen to think they were the best part. Pupils are certainly not needed.

Well, originally, that wasn't what I wanted to say about the eyes. Originally, I wanted only to talk about the white around the eyes, but then Pitch started to confuse me with all his talk about pupils and shines and whatnot.

[Pitch]

AHEM!

It's okay. The eyes aren't supposed to be red with a little white, but I'm sure you know that.

At that point in time the only white in the eyes was the shine, and if I led the topic into the wrong direction it was because you threw that "n't" in there.

You're really under no obligation to read any of that conversation goin on between mltmlt22 and me, though it might help if you were to bring something up about the picture that's already been covered. Could save face there, I suppose, but not completely necessary. Besides, reading the posts takes all of five minutes, if that. It's all relative though, typical posts are read within a minute. It's replying that's the nasty part, though. Way to avoid that.

[Blues]

quintquint said:

AHEM!

It's okay. The eyes aren't supposed to be red with a little white, but I'm sure you know that.

At that point in time the only white in the eyes was the shine, and if I led the topic into the wrong direction it was because you threw that "n't" in there.

I meant as in not with a little white, with a lot of white around the edges.

Yay for obvious excuses.