@KatDeMilo ahaha thanks for the coment
@Lego the rest of this post is dedicated to you lol
wow you kinda went all out on my thread ahaha
this sort of 'flow' is letting the obstacles be and moving on to something else unrelated but similar so that you still have forward momentum.
Now that I think about it, that's very much like a river would do. A river will always flow downhill but work around the obstacles in its way. Act like a river - very kungfu wisdom there.
It looks simple and appeals to the eyes, but actually behind that is a buttload of work that was done to be able to execute that simplicity.
True I'm starting to appreaciate other artists' sketchy styles now a lot more. I spent ages trying to figure out how they could draw something so sketchily but still make it look good, and basically a massive amount of skill and experience is the reason. I'm still working towards that :P
Tracing has always been something I defend and will absolutely add to my regimens again.
It definitely has its place and is quite useful at helping you to gauge certain aspects of your skill. In other words, if you can trace (but not draw as an original) something successfully then you have the coordination, it's just the knowledge that's the issue.
I feel these are not quite the art styles for you. The folds and details of the second image definitely and the expressive kawaii of the first, but not... Quite...
Hmmmm those two were not from my epic collection but they are close to the sort of work I'd like to produce. I'm still quite vague about my exact style at the moment.
I'd love to see anything you think would suit me better.
I honestly wish I stopped practicing and just went at my projects, but in my current slump and crisis I want to at least have an idea of my workflow in some sense to be able to commit to something. It annoys me but I am a bit too chaotic in my choices.
I'm starting to lean towards my projects and regimes being the same thing, especially with writing it will start to manifest itself as practice one-shot chapters, but in themselves, they would be no different from projects, but they're still for practice. It's always a hard one when you're on the learning curve to know how much time to balance between regimes and projects.
By the way, have you noticed how freeer one is with making poses when you DON'T have a 3d mannequin?
Hmmmm since I dont have a figurine I can't say, but with practice I have found I can sketch poses very freely without any references, so I probably agree.
And yes when you aren't copying something you do have that extra level of freedom to change proportions and stuff, although I find that quite difficult and my work will always be a very similar consistency between each set of figures.
Not only has your fashion become super cool, you're having your characters hold more stuff and/or really stand in space and environments. You're levelling dude.
Many thanks. I'm still working on a fashion workflow but I have a higher range of generic outfits I can play with now. And yes putting props in my characters hands is almost a must these days otherwise I'm drawing wayyyy too generic stuff.
I've read half of Rave Master, gotta get back to finishing that. Pretty good story.
and even at the highest levels of manga, cross-hatching done right looks so much better than the most 3d looking textures in my opinion.
I think I lean towards more "traditional" hatching rather than throwing textures and stuff down, partly because it's something I would also be able to do with ballpoint, but also in the long run I think it's faster to use the same pen to add texture than to flick through a clip-art library of textures to find the one you want. At the end of the day it's a different art style, so both are good in their own right.
You not only learn to respect the amount of effort required in making a background but have a realistic estimate of any future illustrations or comics you want to make.
Bingo on the estimation point. I'm thinking that I can use tracing to build up a lot of "easy" experience to improve my speed and consistency for future projects and original artwork.
I have a healthy understanding that 6 panels is the optimal 'medium' pace. 3 is action packed. '7' is also, funny enough, action packed.
I think panel count is one of those things that doesnt really matter if you use them well. There are so many different panelling styles and camera angles that pretty much anything works, bizzarely.
Holy freaking wowwwwwwwwww I wish I could draw like this. Like literally this would be an achieved life goal of mine to have this level of comicking
Ahaha thanks very much. I'm also pretty content with this level of quality, I'm going to be going ahead with this quality for a few manga projects while I build up other comic skills and then bump the quality up as I gain more skills.
I think you could definitely get just as good if not better. It's almost 100% workflow and quality control stages that help to increase the quality. Oh that makes me want to do a step by step manga page animation.
and lo, it is made. By the time I reached the end stage it took 6 months from the first sketch. Also the first stage has more detail, actually in my new manga workflow I entirely skip the first sketchy step shown in the animation.
I'm pretty sure detail-wise you've sketched up to at least my half way point for manga, and in individual sketches you've been able to draw at a higher quality, so it's just tying all these skills together. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that isn't shown in the animation, such as figure cleanup and proportion checking. Around 30 iterations over 6 stages from beginning to end, about the same as my normal illustrations tbh.
Man I definitely haven't paid attention to your progress in a while haha. I'm super jealous and want to reach these heights.
Ahaha thanks :P
The best generic advice I can give is to build up your own problem solving ability, which has been the biggest help to me as I can solve issues at any level, be it my skills or workflow, methods or thought processes.
The best advice I can give for you personally is to every now and then produce a piece at your highest level, take as many hours as you need for it (but still have a limit of some sort) and really put yourself out to finish it. That will help you to see more ways in which you can learn. An alternative to that is to take a previous piece and try and improve it. For both, draw the guidelines carefully and do lots of double checking.
I think you spend too much time on low level sketches and quick sketches, which you are already quite good at I think, but you don't finish off any of your work and so you're missing out on learning how to improve the proportions and quality of your pieces.
Okay I definitely need to graph my life in general.
Like any tool, statistics are useful but they can be hard to use effectively to help you improve. I mostly use time spent drawing as a general measure of how productive I have been, but there is always a risk that I miss other underlying issues that the statistics don't show.
Proud of you, suuper.
*sheds tears of joy*
Teach meeeeeeeeeeee. (Except I suspect it's something that only really works for you personally. And I want to find my own in the end.)
I definitely endorse finding your own method because only you know what will work exactly for you.
If I were to tell you what works for me it would take a whole 2 A4 pages because I was logging all the different emotions and phases I was experiencing as I was trying to crack the final layer of the zone and that's how much I wrote.
In the simplest form I just
massively psych myself up as quickly as possible.
In part I shed off any form of negativity and doubt about my art, I fill my mind with useful art related thoughts such as awareness of proportions and concept prompts, and keep a positive attitude.
I know that sounds pretty bizzare but it's based on multiple analyses of what is in my mind in good periods of drawing, and trying to recreate those states. I basically force a manual override of my mental state into one that is more conducive to drawing. It's the fine tuning of the exact state to create a "zone" that has taken the time, and it's still not the ultimate form yet.
So whatever psyches you up will vary. In my case it's a tiny collection of my absolute favourite songs (mostly anime ahaha)
With practice you can "power up" much more effectively and with a higher chance of success. My success rate used to be around 20% but it's closer to 90% now which is ridiculously awesome. It's basically a mental crowbar at this point.
But even being in a high power state has its limits. Without your art skill and experience, visual library and so on, you're just a steamroller without a driver.
RE: YOU FINALLY INKING THE PAGES I WAS ALREADY BLOWN AWAY BY
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE
Ahaha many thanks :P
Oh wait, the time travelling story had nothing to do with the student selection hahaha. Botched that one up.
To be honest I did have overlapping thoughts when I did these pages, so although they are officially unrelated they
could both be part of a larger story :P
I sort of feel the gesture has been lost?
Ahhh perhaps I wasn't too clear on that, the sketches are not the same concept, the later one isn't meant to be an improvement of the earlier one. It's just two similar unrelated sketches to show the difference in line quality.
-You've added not only backgrounds, held- objects but also other characters and them interacting with eachother. And judging from the numbers in record time too. Dude. Hooowwwww hahaha.
Partly the drop in line quality made it easier to sketch more complex ideas, but also just a result of constantly trying to reach that ability. I still have off days when it comes to making cool ideas.
My favs are
....
You pretty much mentioned all of them lol
To be honest almost all of them are my favourites too :P
I had a very good day for that set.
Mirror girl seriously deserves some recommendation. This alone deserves as much props as the level up in your sequential art. You've mixed all aspects from dimensionality, expression, storytelling and kawaii in one image. NICE.
Thanks, that's my top favourite along with the twins. I can't say I'll get as consistently good as that for a while, partly because I'm just practising core proportions and not putting a massive focus on amazing concepts at the moment.
Shibari gal. She is my favourite. No I feel sorry for her. Ahem too smexy. But noo. But yeessss. But nooooo. But yessssssssssssssss. ((This comment will delete itself in 24 hours))
ahem.
thanks.
:P
Means less time spent on WIP stage, means same result with awesome finish.
Yes that's exactly the direction I'm trying to move towards. It's still hit and miss, but generally more hit these days.
Duuuuude how much have you been drawing haha.
LOTS ahaha :P
well I have 2 "art days" a week in which I draw for about 10-12 hours each day, and about 4-6 hours a day the rest of the week. I average about 6.5 hours a day assuming I hit 100% of my targets (I have a specific target for each weekday depending on my circumstances), which is still hard for an entire month.
Nice that you're working at different expressions too.
Yeah it's not a major focus but it's too good an opportunity to pass up trying out lots of expressions.
the expressions sell all of their hairstyles for some reason haha.
To some extent I am adding hairstyles that suit the expressions so curious you should say that :P
And yes I too love progression GIFs, so satisfying :P
Overall it sounds like ther'll alwas be a complicated shifting of priorities to achieve your main projects, but I feel you've significantly reduced the amount of micro-decisions that you have to make for certain things. You've sort of 'risen above' certain considerations and now you have even more brainspace to tackle your time-consuming projects. The need for patience and quality is still there, but you've shed some scales for sure (IMO A LOT of scales) I need to reach this state.
That is so true, that really sums up well what has been happening with me lately. A lot of moving things around, and definitely reduced the time micro-managing it. Lately I'm more just sledgehammering the problems now with a massive amount of time instead.
Yes. Definitely do this. Without even drawing a new illustration, posting your progress GIFs and explaining how you've personally levelled up as an artist in a long form text with images will at least gaurantee you a buncha likes, an opportunity for collaboration and a couple of subscribers.
I keep telling myself I will do this but it's just time that I lose from drawing that I dont want to lose at the moment. But I'm thinking if my productivity keeps up then I can set aside a specific block of time for managing my public profiles and stuff like that. I'm glad to hear you think I've got a change.
Look up SrGrafo by the way.
Ah yeah seen plenty of his comics, quite an interesting story and also interesting to find out he's also a programmer/artist combo.
YOU IMPROVED THE IMPROVED
Ahaha I find it a lot easier to work in stages for this reason, it makes it so much clearer how to improve an artwork when you have clearly defined stages that you are working with. It's sort of the core reason why my WIP work is going so well.
Nice, nice. And damn that's a large amount of time addition, but knowing how you'll go these images will turn out quite awesome (They're already by my standards awesome but yeah you do you hehe. Can't wait to see the other iterations)
Yeah I was a bit annoyed by the time jump. But there's a huge difference between casually sketching an idea, and actually finding the final lines for it as an illustration. I'm betting I can boost the speed after a few more sets. This stage is still finding a new balance since I improved it a while back, and I didn't really pay enough attention to increasing the accuracy of my proportions to the next level. I thought that like 5% error was OK but really as I improve I should be working to about 0.1% margin of error. I only realised how much more accurate I needed to draw after realising how to be more precise with my lines so it's a constant learning curve.
HOLY YESSSSS SUUPER-SAN TEACH ME HOW TO DRAW LIKE YOU
Ahaha you are too kind in your praise, I'm just a massive learner still :P
most of my skill is in my mindset and methods, not really in any art ability (yet), so really just spend a ton of time drawing and you'll improve along your own path just as much.
Props dude. Keep at it.
Thanks, I definitely will now. As I've gained in skill I've also found my motivation and determination to get good have also increased, so It's starting to enter the final snowball stage (I hope :P)
and once again, a wall of text is born :P
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