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Radium

JCF Éminence Grise

Joined: Jul 2002

Posts: 12,275

Radium is an asset to this forum

Jun 4, 2005, 12:24 PM
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Ello, small child. If I have not introduced myself, my name is Radium, and I'm the local everything critic, and owner of http://www.foxmage.com, a website with no actual content (storage, mostly). I try my best to give insightful constructive criticism to help people improve, and insightful destructive criticism to amuse myself. I will now commense my detailed analysis of your four submitted drawings, in order to see if you redeem yourself for that unrhyming piece of poetry you posed in the Comedy Cafe. Heck, to see if you can redeem yourself for posting in the Comedy Cafe in the first place.
Allow me to start my process with the first piece of your work, the one that depicts two people either kissing or crying on eachother or whatever. I don't care what they're doing, in fact. At your level, I'm mostly here to critique digital things and anatomy.
First off, a lesson in digital art: floodfill is a privelage, not a right. A common misconception by new artists is that they can scan in a sketch, reduce it to two colors, and floodfill away. Don't do this. It gives you ugly, blocky lines with white spaces in them. Work around this. If you have a tablet, color things in manually (usually on a multiply layer) instead of using the floodfill. If you don't have a tablet, learn to floodfill antialiased lines. How to do this really depends on the software you're using.
Now, let's talk about shading. Your figures look flat. There's no depth to them. To correct this, shade! Highlight parts of the hair (ridiculously so, this is anime!). It will give your characters depth, and make them look better. Especially add some reflection on that tear. Make it shiny. Shiny things are powerful and special. Also, don't put a black outline around the white reflective thingies on her eyes. It ruins the shinyness.
Anyway, on to anatomy. First of all, the girl's mouth is way too low. Go find a picture of a human skull (or, examine the one below). Note the chin part. She needs this. Also, your hair seems random. Go find someone with hair, and draw it. Hair is complicated and takes work to master, but it's not just random lines. Work on eye and ear positioning, too.

Anyway, now on to the happy winged gal. Let's start with a lesson in wings. Those are bad wings. What you intended them to look like depends on what sort of wings they were supposed to be.

This is a bird wing. It has three joints, two of which are important. Note how it has feathers, and they fan out on the last portion.

These are insect wings. They usually come in fours. I never studied into these much, but they are probably something closer to what you are looking for. Note the oval shape, and four-ness.
Now, the most important part: body structure. First of all, she's way too thin. Her hips should be at least as wide as her shoulders, especially with her arms raised like that. Also, you might want to try planning out the basic form before you draw the character. They will end up a lot more realistic that way. Her arms are too thin, also.
Anyway, next I'll critique this tied up guy. His neck should connect to the middle of his head, not the left side. And it looks like you tried shading this one. It's a good start, but if you shade something you can't pick-and-choose what parts to shade.
His face in general seems a bit off. It's hard to tell what part is his face. I also wouldn't put outlines around the kiss marks; it puts too much emphasis on them. In general, outlines go on 45 degree or greater angles.
Aaaand lastly, this dancing girl. Her right arm is longer, her right breast is larger, and her right eye is higher. Her other eye is a bit too far to the side, also. Again, the thing with the hips. The lines on this one look smoother, though, like you drew it larger and scaled it down. Good job on that.

So, I ran out of things to say. Someone else continue.
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<i>"This picture shows me that the gray bird man is just a bully and picks on smaller birds. Just because he has no friends and takes it out on others smaller than him to look good. I can see in the parrats eyes that it does however have a understanding of the gray bird man and is upset about getting cut."</i> - Speeza on cartoon birds.