Death to the Undead

[ShadeJackrabbit]

Another piece of art I did. This one was drawn then scanned in. Personally I think it's one of my best pieces. (link) (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60011364/)
Tell me what you think, but please make constructive criticism. (Just saying "it sux, hahaha you're so terrible" doesn't help in any way.

[Radium]

It's definitely much better than your mouse-drawn work. I have a few pointers regarding composition and anatomy, though...

First of all, using gradients for backgrounds is something you don't want to make a habit of (even if it got me through AP Studio Art). However, drawing attention to the right places is something you'll continue to be challenged by. The solution? You need to create a dichotomy of some sort, the best methods being between light and dark or thin and thick. For instance, the one with a gradient background manages to draw attention to the fighter better because the background is darker and characters are, in most places, lighter. The dungeon background does not work as well, however, because the background is the same color and line width as the foreground, making it all blend together and appear confusing.
In short, you made a good choice recognizing the dungeon background didn't work, but rather than replacing it with a gradient entirely you should consider lightening or darkening the dungeon background.
Though, if you're going to cut out the background, make sure you don't miss any places. There's still some "paper" between the arrows on the fighter's shield.

Anyway, as far as anatomy goes, a can point out some major problems with the skeletons (though for the most part, they are just things skeleton-experts will notice). For instance, only the far left one actually has a chin; the rest of them all have their teeth go right to the bottom of their jaw. Also, you forgot to give them sternums (the place the ribs connect in front). Also, keep in mind that the femur and humerus are single bones, while you have them drawn as doubles. The reason forearms and lower legs have two bones is so that wrists and ankles can twist.

The most major thing that needs work, though, is proportions (specifically legs in regards to torso). The length from the hips to the toes is supposed to be about equal to the length from the hips to the top of the head. In other words, if you cut someone in half at the hips, both halves would be the same height. A surprising number of beginning artists mess this up, so you're in good company (though when I was your age I simply covered it up by only drawing Lego people, who have disproportionally short legs).

[ShadeJackrabbit]

Thanks Radium. I'll try to touch it up a bit, maybe turn down the brightness of the background. I'll also look for those parts that I forgot to remove.

Yes, I know the skeletons don't have proper anatomy, but they get the point across quite well anyways. Just a side note: Which skeleton do you like the most? Personally it's the smashed one for me. Thanks for the pointers on which bones are split though...

Darn proportions. I always screw them up somehow. I'll work on it.

[Strato]

Hmm, what strikes out to me most of all are things like proportions and stuff that pretty much any given beginner artist makes mistakes on. However, this is way better than your mouse-drawn stuff, so I'm very pleased that you've submitted pencil work.

To begin, proportions. If you want to get technical about things, this'll be a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_proportions However, I do NOT recommend drawing with a print out of this thing in hand. You should instead skim over it, lock a few interesting details in your brain, and draw things as you naturally see them. You'll end up practicing your intuition more and things will be easier in the long run. Look at and study Vitruvian Man (ignore the (-)(-)(-)(-)(-)), and you'll see how big things are in relation to eachother.

As far as your skeletons go, they're inacurate as Rad said. Study the skeleton struture, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Skelett-Mensch-drawing.jpg , draw it once or twice, and you'll be a master. It's really not overly important. If you don't care, then don't draw skeletons.

The only thing that I really see you needing work in is the skull. The hero guy has a completely circular face. The skull works a lot differently than that, so I'd say focus on that for right now. On that note, fingers too. He's got none =(

Other notable things, his back is facing us yes? Well how in the world did he manage to slice somebody behind himself and bring it around in front in such a clean motion? It's exceedingly unnatural looking. Especially with that grip

http://chaos.foxmage.com/Strato/DrawingCrap/Critstuff/gripies.JPG

For future references, those shields go on the forearm and not the elbow. Otherwise, the person wouldn't be able to bend their arm. Also on the arm that you can see the muscles, you forgot my good ol' friend the deltoid!

That's as far as that goes. To summerize :

Study the skeletal system, particularly the skull.
Study proportions. Learning construction can and will help. If you're already doing that, then great.
Posing, such as not having him slice enemies from behind and weird grips.

[ShadeJackrabbit]

I know the pose is odd, but I tried to get across the fact that he was quickly turning while slashing with the movement notifiers (wind turbulence lines, whatever you want to call them) but I guess it didn't turn out right. I tried getting the right pose but this was the best I could do. (Hey, I was using myself as the model for the pose.) And the pose actually did work if the slash followed through.

By the way, here's the final version: (comments please) link (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60011364/)

[Stijn]

I am sort of puzzled by the dude in the center. Where are his shoes? At a first glance it looks like he has skeletal knees sticking out of his shorts, because of the skeleton standing right in front of (or well, behind, if you look from the character's perspective) of him. His shield also looks way too small to be of any use (and it should not be at the elbow, but Strato already pointed that out). It also has quite a lot of arrows sticking in it while there are no bows to be seen, but that might of course have some other explanation. It might've been a good idea to add a dead archer skeleton though.

The perspective of the floor in the final version is also quite wrong. The lines on the floor seem to go in semi-random directions instead of towards one central point, which makes the floor look odd and extremely steep, in turn making the skeletons in the back look way bigger than they are supposed to be. You might want to read a bit on perspective (I bet there are plenty of tutorials to be found on google) because perspective (or lack thereof, rather) done wrong can make a drawing look a lot worse.

As a last point, the necklace/amulet of the Dude in the Middle is very different in drawing style from the rest, making it stand out and appear quite ugly. It almost looks like you added it later with paint or something, which is a valid technique but requires some skill to pull off correctly. As for now, I'd stay with handdrawn-only or digital-only, and leave hybrids for later :P

[ShadeJackrabbit]

Actually, it was hand drawn, but I had to draw it on layer (paper) 3 to add it in, and then I had trouble adding the rest of layer 3 in... It got complicated.