Yeah, I didn't expect me to be here either, but I made a few things that my brother and friends liked so I thought I might as well show it here.

Here is a bit of a backstory, otherwise you wont understand a thing.

My brother and I used to play a game where we tried to make a story by talking to each other about it. At the beginning we were pretty much just little kids so it didn't evolve beyond the point of "Then he got his gun and they fought and he won the end." for a while. But as the years went along we developed it into (what I think) is a pretty darn good story with some colorful characters. I never have been taught anything about drawing really outside of 3rd grade art class so I practiced simply by redrawing and observing other people's works until I made a style I liked. I recently decided for no reason to illustrate the character that are in our stories (I wont really write the story though, I hardly remember half of it and we were always arguing so the plot is pretty much non-existant). I dont really like coloring or anything so pencil sketches is as far as I will go.

Here is 2 of our villans right now, I will probably make the rest of them later as soon as I learn how to draw a human face that doesn't look freaking weird:


Supreme Commander of the Glorious Army, High Legate of the Imperium, Forger of the Empire and 3 times Regional Spelling Bee Champion, Reginald Fluffykins: This guy was reaaally different when we first concieved him when we were inspired by Jazz Jackrabbit, but I think I like the way he finally turned out after all these years. He is a megalomaniacal bunny (He is the only anthromorphized animal in the book besides the Fish) that controls a fairly large empire bent on conquering the entire planet. He is very intelligent and generally cynical of everyone around him, but at some sensitive moments he acts less like a Dictator and more like a fluffy bunny. He isn't really evil because when we concieved him we had the belief that villans just had cooler clothing, better equipment and had a more foreign accent than the good guys instead of doing anything actally wrong; and later we never really wanted him to be evil at all (though he still gets to be our villan anyways). He is generally called "Reggie", but sometimes he is called "Fluffy" by Agent Blook, much to his anger.



Agent Blook: Agent Blook is inspired by the Splinter Cell games. He used to be a silent and evil secret agent type guy, but later we changed his character to be more... huggable (Obseve his adorable... goggles). From "way back" he was Reginald's friend always stuck out for him. Even though Reginald often mocks and demeans Blook they are both good friends and stick out for each other. (In retrospect these guys are less of villans than the good guys are) When Reginald rose to power and made his empire, Blook became his personal bodyguard and best (and only) Black-Ops agent. Blookis extremely professional on the job and is the best fighter in our stories, but he is also a dimwit. He has the mentality of a child, doing childish things such as trying to impress Reginald by showing him a picture, pastry or doomsday weapon he made himself. He talks like a toddler and also is easily distracted by candy and cartoons. (which is pretty much how the good guys always defeat him. We weren't really creative when it comes to schemes, unless they were evil schemes)


I will try to make the rest of the our characters later. Coming up next: A fairly usless disco dancer, a overconfident soldier, a desert explorer who is out of touch with reality, an annoying fish and a very, very smelly triangle of cheese.

I really like the rabbit commander. Looks like he has that military background.

My brother and I used to play a game where we tried to make a story by talking to each other about it. At the beginning we were pretty much just little kids so it didn't evolve beyond the point of "Then he got his gun and they fought and he won the end." for a while. But as the years went along we developed it into (what I think) is a pretty darn good story with some colorful characters.

That sounds exactly like how my Rabbit world (See sig) was formed. I guess we all have our own unique tales

Hi, I'm Radium and I'm an everything critic (ignore my sig, I actually can draw well). I read people's stories, look at people's art, and watch people's animations, and then tell them everything they did wrong and how to fix it. Also, I can fly and shoot lasers out of my eyes and turn invisible.

Anyway!

You're not off to a bad start at all, stylistically; studying other people's art was probably a good move. The first design has a nice amount of personality and the facial structure is pretty good - especially since you look to be easily able to draw it from both a front and 3/4 view.

Something to keep note of, though, is where the neck attaches to the head. A lot of beginning artists seem to have problems with this. Necks attach towards the back of the head, not right in the center. Look at this random side-view picture off Google, for example:

The back of the guy's head flows right into his neck while in front his jaw sticks out, and the "hinge" of the jaw is about in the middle of his neck. In both your pictures, you place the character's chin directly over their neck and have their jaw hinge back behind their neck entirely.

Below the head, the drawing gets a lot less structured and more rigid looking, mainly due to strange proportions. A lot of artists will plot out a drawing first with a rough stick figure or lightly sketch the character with some basic shapes before darkening it in to help get the anatomy right. This can also help you make poses much more interesting and have a lot more overall personality; look at this example of what I mean from PolyKarbon's male figure tutorial:

The "forward leaning" stature in this example makes the character look much more loose and animated, as though you can easily imagine them moving.
It also demonstrates something else you need to keep in mind: arm length. Human (and I guess bipedal hare) arms, if at the character's side, reach down to just below their hips (see above stick figure). If Reginald's arms were at his side, they'd go all the way down to his knees, meaning they look too long.

Oh, and a more minor criticism about the first picture: I presume the face where he's saying "I told you to never call me fluffy" is supposed to look angry, and gritted teeth are a good way to go. However, the side of his mouth is too high, making his expression very smile-like.

In both pictures, you're having trouble drawing feet. You've given them a kind of foot shape, but they're still flat looking and sometimes different sizes. Like I said, constructing drawings out with basic shapes and lines ahead of time can help a lot. Here's a drawing where someone broke a foot into thee basic shapes, showing a good way to do it.
However, something else you might want to consider is doing some random observational practice. Try drawing your own foot, even if it's just a quick sketch on a notebook margin. Learning to copy contours and shapes of objects by looking at them (or, later, imagining them) improves drawing an unbelievable amount.

On the last picture, something I want to point out is that drawing lumpy looking lines on a character's arms does not pass as muscles. Rather, it's more important to focus on the shape the muscles give to the body; even though you drew in some lines to suggest Blook had muscles, his limbs are just as tube-shaped as Fluffykins'.
It takes a while to get used to where muscles are, but the main thing you should probably pay attention to at this point is where they make limbs get thinner and thicker. This sketch shows most of the important muscles pretty well, and how they wrap around each other. The important things to understand about muscles is (1) that they weave around one another in specific ways and (2) they move limbs by pulling, so when an arm is bent - especially lifting something heavy - they'll bulge a bit more. If you want to know a bit about how muscles specifically pertain to cartooning I highly recommend the book "Action! Cartooning" (Google it if you want more info) as it specifically talks about how to simplify the portrayal of muscles and stuff so it doesn't look more complicated than the rest of the drawing.

Anyway, the only other thing I have to say is that you should try experimenting with other, more complicated poses. They can be a lot more fun than front views and you'll learn a lot from it. Good luck with learning to draw and I look forward to (criticizing) the next batch.

Wow, thanks a ton for that huge amount of tips Radium! This drawing stuff is a bit harder than I first imagined. It will probably be a long while before I get something I am pleased with, though. I guess I am going to first try to redraw Reginald and Blook better next instead of doing other characters for a while, maybe also in a better pose.

EDIT: Holy crap this stuff is really tricky. I'm trying all the new techniques you showed me Radium, but I think I need to practice a bit more (like his arm, even after erasing and redrawing like 20 times I couldn't make it look like it fit). I don't thnk this sketch I made is much of an improvment (and it took me more than an hour to make!), so I'm going to put off making the rest of the sketches of the characters until I practice a little more on this...

What is up with blooks hands? O.o
And practice writing. realy. its helpful.

He is wearing oven mittens! If the Supreme Commander's personal aide got hurt by a hot muffin, the rest of the secret agents would NEVER let him live it down. (and since he is the only actual agent, he made sock puppets to replace them) And yeah, I know my handwriting sucks, but with computers nowadays all you need to know is how to type well, and by typing well, I mean bad internet slang kthx.

The dialogue in the new one made me laugh, so you succeeded there =P.

The main problem with it seems to be how you're showing 3D objects. Since I hadn't drawn anything in ages , I decided to do this in comic form:

I love you.

WoW radium. You should be a art teacher!

What. The. Hell.

Picture if you will, me at a luminescent screen. I'm reading some adventures in art technique and such with my favorite nonanimate pal Stick Figure Radium. He's an everyman sort of teacher,a person every one can relate too because quite simply: Everyone can draw stick figures. If we can draw him, surely we can also aspire to the concepts he presents! He later shows up in the strip wearing a mighty cool suit, and I can accept it because he obviously isn't poor if he has his own comic series. Next he appears as a robot looking thing, and I mean hey, who doesn't love robots? I'll tell you who- Nazis. Thats why they lost the war.

But then all of a sudden to bring his lessonal adventure to a conclusion our hero shows up as this:

You know what that speech bubble says to me? It says "I've lost all of my indie and street cred, then sold out to the Man and will later lip sync in my next comic which will have advertisements for Crayola and Prisma every other panel. Also: Observational drawing."

I luuurve you now.