MangaRaiders Artist Marathon Workshop Signup

[a]

-removed-

[devola]

I'm in.

[Aimyraude]

I'm in!!! I can't wait to do this workshop!

[Flames]

I'm bringing the heat.

[eukocar]

Sign me in!

[S8N]

I'm in.

[a]

Small reminder that Devola will be posting the Art thread tomorrow 10am CST.

[devola]

Goooooooooooooood morning!
To everybody participating in the art marathon, the signup thread will now be used to provide updates and reminders to our schedule as we begin the workshop!

To anyone still on the fence about participating, do not worry you can still do so at any time! If you do join just be aware of the dead lines and the schedule that we will be following. While there will be some wiggle room, we don't want to back pedal too much.

First things first, thank you to everybody that will be participating! Let's start with some information about format and posting before we jump into the first topic of week 1.

ALL NEW INFORMATION AND UPDATES/REMINDERS ABOUT DEADLINES WILL BE POSTED IN THIS THREAD FROM THIS POINT ON!

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REVIEWS
We will be using this thread to post your reviews and critiques of each other's artwork. Please use this format to review someone's work.

(Name of the Artist) + (Name of their art piece)
-Copy and paste their stated goals here-

Spoiler

-art goes here-
-review goes here-

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ART SUBMISSIONS

Please submit your artwork to this thread: http://forums.mangaraiders.com/index.php/topic,18580.0.html

A reminder to everyone participating to post in the art thread before submission date with a thread stating your desired goals and outcomes for this week's illustration. Try and do this prior to the submission date.

Please use this format or something similar when submitting artwork:

(Name of your illustration)
State your goals:

Spoiler

-Illustration goes here-

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SCHEDULE

And now a reminder of deadlines and how we will be handling them.
Each illustration will be given 2 days worth of time for completion. Each topic will last 1 week. There will be 2 illustration challenges per week and 1 day of rest before we move onto the next challenge.

The schedule will be as follows starting today:
Monday 10AM CST -First Illustration Start Date-
Wednesday 10AM CST -First Illustration Submission Date-
Thursday 10AM CST -Second Illustration Start Date-
Saturday 10AM CST -Second Illustration Submission Date-
Sunday is a free day
Please review and critique at least 1 illustration before Monday 10AM CST the following week

Monday 10AM CST the following week -We begin topic 2 and the first illustration for this topic begins again-
From this point on the schedule repeats for a total of 8 weeks and 8 topics.

You are only required to submit 1 illustration per week though we encourage you to try and do the standard 2 illustrations we have planned for each weekly topic. The reason for this is that many of us have 9 to 5 jobs and school, life can get in the way. If you feel 2 illustrations per week is unmanageable, it is absolutely fine to only submit 1!

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TOPIC 1: ROMANCE

Our first art topic for this week will be romance! You can choose to draw any subject so long as the theme is related to romance in some way! Be it a passionate encounter between two love struck individuals or a romantic seaside Italian city, it is up to you to interpret the theme of romance! Don't forget to explain how your artwork is related to the theme in the art thread!

- Remember that ANY subject and ANY level of completion is acceptable so long as you CLEARLY STATE that as your goal in your art thread! This is for your benefit after all! Try to challenge yourself! -

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MISCELLANEOUS

Deadlines:
While there are deadlines as stated above in the section about schedules, these are NOT hard deadlines. It is completely understandable that some submissions will fall behind and move around the given deadlines due to timezones, life and any number of reasons.

As a result I only encourage you to try and stay within the deadline as much as you can but do not worry if you cannot post something before 10AM CST on any given day. It is perfectly OK to make a post later, but try your best to make sure the post is made within the same week as the related topic.

Copyright:
As always, anything and everything you create belongs to you alone. I nor any other participant or workshop organizer claim any right to anything you create.

Goals:
The goal of this workshop is to get artists drawing and get illustrations cranked out and completed. For intermediate artists this can be a good way to engage with other artists and get that proverbial fire burning underneath your ass and work within a deadline. You can also use this as an opportunity to create portfolio pieces.

For new/beginner artists, this is a great chance to get reviews from your peers and experience working under a deadline. It's also an excellent opportunity to get drawing!

Dropping out:
No hard feelings if you feel the need to discontinue! This workshop is for the benefit of the participants and that alone is the only purpose. If you feel the workshop/marathon is no longer working for you, feel free to drop out! I only ask that you send a PM to either myself or TheSlamJam to inform of us of it, no need to give a reason.

Communications:
For an ideal feedback and information environment I encourage all participants and anyone thinking about joining the marathon to hop on over to the unofficial MR Discord! There will be a channel for all workshop participants to ask for information. You will also get direct access to the workshop organizers so you can ask for information at any time.

https://discord.gg/29yaC39

Workshop organizers are currently: Myself (Devola) and TheSlamJam, you can contact either of us for information

Critiques/Reviews:
Please follow standard guidelines for art critiques and reviews. We encourage all reviewers/critics to do go as an depth as you feel you can. Remember that the critique should be for the benefit of the artist! Try to include at least 1 positive aspect of the illustration in question when reviewing the work and encourage the artist to continue drawing! If you have absolutely nothing positive to say about the work, then I encourage you to find a different piece to review.

Please try and find someone who's illustration has not yet been reviewed and review it. We want everyone to benefit from this exercise!
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Thank you all for taking the time to read through this and good luck to all the participants! There may be the potential for a future collaboration with the Manga Raiders Writer's Workshop! As always, any new information will be posted here!

[Crystal (BobbyjoeX)]

late join and may be a little Delayed :/

[devola]

REMINDER TO ALL WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

Our first deadline is coming up! Don't forget that the soft deadline is 10AM CST on Wednesday August 30th. Remember that you do NOT have to submit your artwork right at 10AM CST however we encourage you to submit your work ASAP!

All participants who will be attempting Illustration 2 for this week's topic MUST have their first illustration submitted before the starting day for Illustration 2! The latest date is 10AM CST on Thursday, August 31st.

Anybody who will not be participating in Illustration for topic 2 can relax! You guys have until the end of Illustration 2's period to submit your artwork! The time for that will be 10AM CST on Saturday, August 2nd.

All participants can begin reviewing/critiquing work as soon as the work is uploaded! As a reminder to all participants, please submit at least 1 review before the end of the first week and try and ensure all member's work gets some critique! Remember that this thread is the thread we will be using for reviews, so when your reviews are ready to submit you can submit them right away! If you plan on reviewing multiple works on the same topic week, please update your thread instead of posting new ones so we can minimize the clutter!

Great work to all participants, I've seen you guys work hard on Discord and I want to congratulate all of you on your first illustrations! Let's get some much needed rest before we dive into Illustration 2 for this week! Remember the topic remains the same and the start date is Thursday 10AM CST.

[a]

-removed-

[Flames]

Critique for Devola's Week 1 illustration:

Spoiler

Critique:

First of all, I love the whole pieces angle and buildings as it really gives a good depth into the town. I really like the way you   implanted people walking up the bridges and and balcony's in the distance which makes it all the more lively. It defiantly gives me a seaside port town, if that makes any sense.

I personally do not see many problems, but I do feel like there is one small quirk that's a bit weird and its how the long haired girl is attaching herself to the beam. I think, if shes pretty high up for which it seems it would be a bit difficult to holed onto something while looking in the direction of the sun one handing the top seems a bit too much imo. or if she is the hand should appear at the top a bit grabbing the edge. Or at least have her arm wrap around the beam itself. The beam too, looks too smooth so that would be a bit difficult to hold onto so maybe a rougher wooden structure would have been better to show this? I know the footing is supposed to help support her weight but again, an entire weight with the beam would cause slipping. Since she has her back turned, it would make more sense if she was closer to the beam and had the other arm wrapped around it. Trying to weigh yourself off that while leaning weight in the direction she's looking would be a bit hard.

This is really small, and I honestly dont think there's a problem either at a large scale. Its super nitpicky, but analyzing it, its the one trait that is a bit odd to me. It looks great anyway though man.

[shishi02]

slam's art

critique

Your art is pretty cool, your style reminds me of Hercules Disney movie. The sketchy bits makes your art unique in a sense that I don't considered it as anime. Good color choices, it made her look like an angel indeed.

I won't question the very narrow figure, but there is something that I want to point out. The eyes on the front face figure and the other sketches are not the same eyes. The simplify of the eyes maybe the factor of this but yea if it's a finished product, you can fixed the eyes easily to slanted shape.

My favorite of this piece is her sitting down. It was a difficult pose to me but this pic pose was delivered well.

[Crystal (BobbyjoeX)]

Flames

Spoiler

work on your backgrounds and line consistency

[devola]

Slammer Jammer's Art

Spoiler

Critique:

Spoiler

Honestly don't have much to say that could help a whole lot other than some small things to try and improve on! First off I'd like to say your stylization is on point. I feel like I could recognize your work right away pretty easily. That being said, it leads to the first point of critique. In your original artwork I feel that your abstraction of form is strong enough that you can start to forgo details.

This is a pretty nebulous thing to try and explain correctly but basically what I mean is: Your style has strong form and your command of gestures lets you imply a lot of details without actually having to draw them. Instead of adding details which sort of ends up cluttering your image, you can try reducing them in key areas and using other subtler techniques to help your viewers use their brains to make sense of your pictures. This is how abstraction works, the actual brain thing they are doing is called closure. A good example is how you can still tell what I am typing even if I drop all the vowels in my words. Lke ths, ts stll rdbl jst dffclt. This same idea applies to art.

The point of doing this is simplifying your style will let you draw with more confidence and it helps a lot with strengthening your key points of stylization. It makes you think about what makes your art uniquely yours.

The next point of criticism I can give you is not so much an error but something to help with line weight. It's very difficult to see because it's somewhat subtle, but pay attention to the areas I pointed out with the red arrows. Basically all I did was add a bit of extra thick lines to areas of tension around the body. In general I would suggest using thicker lines overall and thinner lines where the body softens and curves. This is done to give some depth to the line art and variation in line width helps make an image feel more energetic.

You'll especially begin to notice this when you start setting scenes for your characters, the lines for characters and for backgrounds have to be distinct in order for you characters to pop out a bit when they are in a complex scene.

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S8N's Art

Spoiler

Critique:

Spoiler

Wow, what a trip huh? First of all, I'd like to say I'm absolutely stunned how much you've progressed in the past few weeks. Starting off with never using a tablet, to being barely able to draw circles, then to drawing hands and now to this. The amount of improvements you've made is astounding!

Now on to the piece itself. The perspective is a complex one, there is a lot of foreshortening that needs to happen to make this perspective work. But before we dive into perspective lets go over some easier techniques that can make a more immediate change.

The first technique would be confidence in lines. This is something that will come over time, but specifically try and keep in mind width. Don't be afraid to experiment with larger line widths! You might actually find it easier to create shapes and help draw out your character bases by using larger lines.

Now let's talk perspective. Setting a vanishing point, eye line and using a grid or axis to gauge where you are will help a lot with setting up scenes like this one. This is a shockingly good attempt, especially considering you did all this without those but those lines do more than just help you place a picture, they will help with tricky perspectives when drawing character's bodies. Remember that the point of those guide lines is to help your brain think in 3D to make sense of a 2D screen producing 3D images.

The last piece of criticism I can offer would be to flip your canvas as you draw to try and ensure a balanced view point on your characters. Some people call this the artist's slant, I call it a side bias but we all tend to favor drawing one way when we first start. Doing this can help keep any biases that might slip under the radar otherwise, in check.

Overall, congratulations on a job very well done. Not only did you manage to convey a complex pose, you also set a background AND colored it! (Coloring and shading is it's own topic lmao) Great work!

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Bobby's art

Spoiler

Critique

Spoiler

Excellent work on handling a tricky facial perspective!  I absolutely love the textures you used on the clothing and on the guitar. Those are some fine details and they really add to the picture! The only criticism I can really give you is to not be intimidated by things that are tricky or difficult to do. You nailed the facial perspective but I noticed the hands on the character are cut off (and I know you have issues with hands). Keep trying and keep failing, it's honestly the fastest way to get better. Take what you love about your style and run with it, experiment and make it bigger and better!

On some smaller details that I felt could use some attention: The guitar/ukelele is missing frets, the little bars that separate the guitar's neck. I'm a bit of a guitar freak, which is the only reason I am pointing this out. Something else that may help if you want to try it...

Your characters have very defined chins at the moment due to the angle you are working with. Consider not having a line define their jaw line when drawing heads tilted upwards. You can actually get away with a lot by just shading the chin. It may help with consistency when drawing heads in perspective. Either way, fantastic work Bobby, keep it up!