Messages

3946

Manga Drawing Workshop / Re: Manga Drawing Workshop - Mecha ( Basic )

« on: May 18, 2009, 02:34:11 PM »

I dare not defame such a beautiful piece of equipment.

Edit: Did someone say "It's Morphing Time!"?



Again with the big heads... sheesh. >.<

3947

Welcome Center / Re: Hi....

« on: May 18, 2009, 01:54:22 PM »

As a fellow newbie to this forum as well, I welcome you! =)

3948

Welcome Center / Re: This is Serious Business

« on: May 18, 2009, 01:52:08 PM »

@Tim

I am a huge fan of mecha playing even the non-English versions of Super Robot Wars simply be remembering character patterns although I won't go so far as to draw mecha. That's more of a "leave it to the pros" kinda thing for me.

And for those of you interested, here are pics of the seahorses. =)





The brighter one is a female and the darker one is male.

@Mantis

You think quality bettas are hard to find? Try finding a seahorse that survives for more than a week. Key tip for anyone interested in keeping them: Go captive bred! They're more expensive but actually survive.

3949

Tips and Tutorials / A Brief Intro to CLAMP

« on: May 17, 2009, 03:54:06 PM »

This tutorial is meant to be a continuous project as I continue my studies in art. The reason I have chosen CLAMP to be my subject is because it breaks away from my goal of drawing realistic pencil sketches and takes me into a word of what art truly is; going beyond the realm of reality and exaggerating qualities we find beautiful.



As you can see with the above image, CLAMP specializes in stylizing vertically stretched attributes as the main distinguishing attribute of their characters. It is important to remember that CLAMP is a manga circle where members have equally distributed power so although some standards to their artwork apply, there are vast differences amongst the artists. Also, CLAMP has been able to remain one of the top art groups in Japan because of their ability to be flexible and change with the times. Just compare Card Captors to X/1999 and then Code Geass. Although the artbooks are similar stylistically, they continue to improve their work and appeal to the old and new generation of manga and anime fans.



I will begin this tutorial by fist lightly touching on the body structure.  The above image is a general body comparison of a CLAMP style (left) and a normal manga style (right). A word that I would use to describe CLAMP’s style versus other conventional manga styles is “elegant.” Keeping the heights of the characters similar, you can see that a CLAMP style uses a smaller head compared to the body. This can be viewed in two schools of thought when studying their artwork: the body is elongated or the head is made smaller and the body is narrowed vertically. The way I tend to approach the overall body is with the elongated body aspect. In their most recent works such as Tsubasa Chronicles and Code Geass, it seems that the trend is to not only increase the length of the arms and legs but also elongating the torso even more.



Now that we have a very basic understanding of how CLAMP draws the body, I will now go into the head. Using the above drawing as an example, the two heads on top are CLAMP styles and the one on the bottom is a conventional style. By using the pre-rendered circles, I build the basic structure of the face by including cheek and jaw lines. As these features vary from character to character, I will focus on the defining differences that CLAMP uses. If you look at the two on top, you can see that the line signifying placement of the mouth is slightly curved downward. Althouh very subtle, this causes the mouth to drop below the normal mouth line shown near the top of the jaw line in the bottom picture. So what does this mean? Because the mouth line has been dropped, the line signifying where the nose will be is also dropped to match the length of the bottom of the face to the mouth (Seen more clearly in the top right drawing). This in turn drops the guidelines for the eyes which drops the ears lower as well. In all, the face is skewed slightly downward leaving a larger “forehead” area where the hair takes up more volume.



This is an example of what the face should somewhat look like. Notice how the placement of the eyes is lower than when the eye guideline is placed in the center of the circle used to represent the upper skull. When I have more time after class this week, I will also do different profiles for the head as well as facial features. Feel free to comment and post your own attempts here.

Enjoy!

3950

Manga Drawing Workshop / Re: Manga Drawing Workshop - Edward Elric ( Fullmetal Alchemist )

« on: May 17, 2009, 01:42:41 PM »

Well, the only real comment I had was for you, Hasith. Chill out on the paper, man. It didn't do anything to you. 

3951

Welcome Center / Re: This is Serious Business

« on: May 17, 2009, 01:39:27 PM »

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

The anime I like are numerous but include Guyver, Zeorhymer, most Gundams, Welcome to the NHK, Evangelion, Ninja Scroll, the first Macross arc and the movie, Bubblegum Crisis series, Record of Lodoss War, X, Card Captors Sakura, Code Geass, Ancient Land of Y's, Fushigi Yugi, Blade of the Immortal, Haibane Renmai, Hataraki Man, Ah My Goddess, Elfen Lied, Cromartie High School, Ichigo Mashimaro, Kannagi, Spice and Wolf, the Tenchi series except Tokyo, Hajime no Ippo, Afro Samurai, Doug (Just seeing if you're still awake on this one), Shugo Chara (Yes, a grown man can like this show too), Kamen no Maid Guy, Full Moon wo Saga*censored*e, Beck, almost all Studio Ghibli movies, Ghost in the Shell, Tower of Druaga, Clannad, Hikaru no Go, and Shigofumi amongst many other things.

Might I mention that I've also watched all of Evangelion through 37 times since summer 2001 not including the random episodes I caught on TV or at friends' houses.

3952

Starter Gallery / Re: Sai's Sketchbook

« on: May 17, 2009, 01:29:00 PM »

I do see the differences and the improvements do wonders. I do have some artbooks but they're all manga style and as you've mentiond I am going for realistic art with pencil. I thank you for the link and will be putting them to use over the next week.

Right now, as I copy the artworks, I'm searching for ways on my own to draw certain features as I feel fit. From what you can see between the first and second drawings, I was focusing on drawing the nose and lips to be more realistic. It was a method to develop my own style before calling on the techniques of others. My skills right now are relying on the basic outlining techniques to draw a basic form and to add to that form. You can still see a few of the artifacts left over from the initial outlining.

3953

Manga Drawing Workshop / Re: Workshop Requests

« on: May 17, 2009, 01:16:23 PM »

Here's a request!



Sara Irine from Ragnarok! (This is for the hell I went through drawing Edward.) xD

3954

Manga Drawing Workshop / Re: Manga Drawing Workshop - Edward Elric ( Fullmetal Alchemist )

« on: May 17, 2009, 01:04:12 PM »

Sheesh, the proportions in this one are not what I'm used to. >.<

3955

break Room / Re: Lambo's "Trying to be Cache" FAIL

« on: May 17, 2009, 12:01:44 PM »

If this is fail... >.>

*throws his sketchbook with hundreds of pencils into the incinerator*

A good laugh indeed, my friend. =)

3956

Manga Art Gallery / Re: Requiem: A Hymn to Another World Characters

« on: May 17, 2009, 11:57:49 AM »

I'm just lovin' the level of detail you put into this. This character has a lot of potential for cosplay photoshoots if you get it off the ground. =)

3957

Starter Gallery / Re: Sai's Sketchbook

« on: May 17, 2009, 11:32:16 AM »

Counting today, it's the fourth day that I have really tried drawing since the 6th grade. I stopped drawing at that time because I broke my right wrist in a kick boxing match and was unable to smoothly control the movement of my hand. I picked up other hobbies instead because of  this and just recently began attempts to rehabilitate my wrist which is turning out to go well. =)

3958

Welcome Center / This is Serious Business

« on: May 17, 2009, 11:27:30 AM »

Alright, so maybe it isn't so serious and it may not actually be business. My English name is Scott but who likes that? So common right? You can call me Sai which is a better romanization of my middle name Xay (You can probably guess I get annoyed when people call me Zay but hey, you should see my last name...). I found the forum through Manga Raider on facebook when an invite was sent out yesterday and decided it might be a good time since I have recently gotten back into drawing after nearly 10 years of inactivity. I am a hobbyist writer winning a few local awards for short fiction and even less for poetry during my high school days.

I am a fan of many things beyond manga and anime going into different categories of movies and Asian drama as well. Listing anime would be pointless because I've seen so many but a few manga that remain in my mind are Ragnarok, Salad Days, I''s, most things by CLAMP, Hikaru no Go, Psychic Academy, and BLAME. As you can see, I read a pretty good range of manga from high school romance and board games to mythical and magical battles. Being a future businessman, I feel it is important to have a good variety of skills at my disposal but many of the hobbies I have began before college. I have been kick boxing since the age of 4 learning a variety of other martial arts over the years. Other hobbies include cooking, eating, writing, avoiding reading, midday naps, guitar and piano, salt water fish tanks (<3 my seahorses), and picking up other small hobbies.

My educational background and plans are 2 years in Computer Science as a programmer but I left school for a year to make a huge transition in the interest of becoming a businessman. A large reason for the change was the acceptability of my application to Temple University Japan where I plan to finish my Bachelor's in Business Management and Finance and enter law school while finishing my MBA. My ultimate goal is to become a foreign liaison for companies in the US and Japan wishing to trade with one another.

Yorushiku onegaishimasu!

3959

Starter Gallery / Re: Sai's Sketchbook

« on: May 17, 2009, 10:59:05 AM »

I see, I must have missed the workshop section because there are so many sections to this forum. It looks interesting so I might give it a go when I have the time.

3960

Starter Gallery / Re: Sai's Sketchbook

« on: May 17, 2009, 02:33:48 AM »

I'm not sure what you mean by workshop.