Suuper's Artworks & Illustrations

[Suuper-san]

Finished a request on my request thread.
It's meant to be a guy, by the way :P

click to enlarge


also here is the step by step. I used a lot of layers this time round, especially at the lower detail end, which takes less time per iteration.

also click to enlarge

Spoiler

[Hati]

Wow! You're getting really good. Especially the detail on the wrinkles in the clothes. I love looking at your art Suuper-San ^^. Keep doing it.

[Suuper-san]

@Hati thanks! I need to do more studies for sure but I do feel that I'm getting better :P

latest: a comission for Devola:



Since I haven't done a lineart regime yet I'm still a bit unsure of how to do my linearts but every now and then I get into a rhythm.
Also this one and the last one, I've been using much darker colours than normal, so I'm getting a bit of a wider experience with colours.

[Walter B]

That guy with the scale looks real cool! Great attire. And I loved seeing the step by step process.

[Suuper-san]

thanks!
I love seeing step by steps too :P
Whenever I feel that I can't draw, I look at my progression animations, and I see that I always start with a crude sketch and improve it, so any sketch can be made good with enough time and effort :P

[legomaestro]

do feel like I have leveled up, but also my observational ability has also improved, and I can see, once again, how much work is ahead of me and where my skill is failing. It's a never ending cycle of improving your drawing skill, and then improving your observational skill to see where you can improve your drawing skill even more.

That's how it always is. It should be frustrating, but it is actually a very good and natural thing. Looking forward to your next round of improvements, and to say this in advance: Congratulations, suuper!

This has certainly produced some nice artworks along with some mixed quality artworks, but almost every one by far, was better than the original sketch which I was working with, so it has definitely been worth it. It really goes to show that a drawing can be improved and detail and quality can be added very consistently.

- I hadn't been paying attention at how good some of your artworks turned out as a result of this suuper. I've seen a lot of awesome stuff, and the best thing is that it has incrementally improved. Props man!

Because I haven't inked artworks in ages, and my quality has improved a lot since I last inked, it was difficult to tell how much detail to put into this stage of my illustrations. This was partly a problem in trying to reduce time spent on each sketch, but not skimping on the quality so that I shoot myself in the foot for the lineart stage. I also noticed that I was adding a lot more details consistently for things that I have never added before, like hems, stitching, folds in the nearly right places, so it felt like I was developing a style of how much detail I put in as well.

- if there is anything that I (or anyone) could say is that your clothing work has improved by huge amounts. So good! Seriously man you could legit just focus on making fashion figures and finde a niche for commissions on that front, but I think you can go all the way and make some really good manga so aim for that instead!

An idea though... What if you started making clothes? muhuhahahaha. I'd never ask myself to do that, but hey, a person can learn anything, and the outfits you design would make me nosebleed and/or drool if I saw them irl, so think about it theoretically...

A couple of times I found myself not being able to work on my sketches because I was starting to get serious about them, which doesn't help productivity. For the most part, practice has been able to help keep this feeling at bay for the most part, and constantly telling myself that these sketches don't matter, they are sacrificial for my improvement (I can always redraw a favourite sketch better at another time anyway, so nothing is lost by working on them)

That's so, so damn true. I think a 100% of my artblock and writers block comes from the fact that I take my work seriously. Seriously I have some really fun ideas I honestly just wish I just put in words for, but because they became too important to me they are not even drawn or written yet. I feel like this is the only struggle an artist writer has. Of course if you're a pro and have been doing this a while you have other reasons not to write/draw something... maybe it'll have a bad impact... maybe it won't make money, but seeing as we are not quite there yet I think we should be a bit more forgiving about our developing stages and works...

Being of higher quality, this stage of cleaning/resolving sketches did take much longer per piece than the finishing-sketch stage - an average of 8.5 minutes per piece compared to 3 minutes per piece. I mean, I'm working at such a pace that really those numbers are really tiny, but it hammers home that "time put in = quality got out". I imagine that this works both ways, trying to get a higher quality takes more time, but taking more time results in a higher quality. I'll be testing this with my masterpiece illustrations which I have planned to do soon, and see what quality results when a disproportionately large amount of time is spent on one sketch.

- This is not what I wanted to hear, but it makes so much sense. I simply spend too little time on my drawings, and am actually scared of actually timing them. The only thing that I can promise to do is to make some sort of iterative regimen as well to improve on old works and see if the quality significantly improves or not (as pessimistic as I am, I think the answer will be a resounding yes: I definitely need to spend more time on my drawings)

I was really impacted by the death of my nan, obviously, and this did affect my productivity for several weeks after. I found a break in pace by colouring some sketches helped to relax and to get my feelings in order and re-balance my schedule and motivation. Everyone deals with grief differently so I can't say it'll work for everyone, or even myself in the future, but really you have to do what's right for you, even if it means stopping drawing or whatever until you recover.

Totally understandeable suuper. And I mean that in every sense of the word. I think we forget sometimes in the awesomeness of being online and having an internetsona that emotional events, no matter how deep and tragic don't seem to be a 'valid' reason for anything. (Or maybe that's just me) So no, dude, with all honesty, with as much empathy I can show through a keyboard I'm actually proud that you could continue a regimen after something. Taking a break is not a crime. In fact it's recommended.

When I went on holiday, I did a lot of very-core study, balancing proportions and getting guidelines straight level and symmetrical, and when I came back, I found that my overall quality had increased by a notch or two, enough that the sketches almost felt like linearts in their consistency and quality. So it's good to make sure that your base skills, drawing lines and circles etc, are good, otherwise your drawings that rest on these skills will not be as good as they could be.

- Holy shyte what tutorials did you use. I need this! I'm in the middle of my regimen and I'm super scared that I'm missing out on the basic goal of proportions being correct. Tell meeee

Halfway through the regime, I improved my workflow to allow for a higher quality illustration to be produced. this meant using more layers and redrawing the body so that I could remove the overall figure sketch underneath. As always, efficiency is a key skill to have, and looking for ways to improve your workflow will help to make sure you're not wasting your time, and producing good quality work.

- This is the best argument for continuous drawing / regimens / iterative drawing i've ever heard. I am still actually ironically enough so focused on finished products and/or illustrations (even though 1. I am sketchy as heck and 2. I don't finish as many projects as I should and actually DO like the idea of many sketches) that I am paralyzed when it comes to drawing simple things... At the very least ashamed of the process. I think that really learning how to draw your straight standing stickman is OK so long as you learn about proportions somewhere along the line. It's fine to only draw that same kawaii looking girl so long as you are comfortable with her picking up a cup of coffee in a manga page. Drawing again and again, learning and streamlining your process until you reach mastery - if not at least familiarity - is the goal of all artists.

I found that drawing all the different details (i.e. face, clothes,body) on different layers had a couple of advantages. It meant that I could save all the initial figure sketches to use later for body practice, so I got free sketches to work with, as well as meaning that I could say draw the hair, over the top of the clothes or face, and then erase anything that was wrong without erasing part of the clothing that I have drawn previously. From what I have seen, a lot of artists do split their work up into different layers for different reasons, and this certainly helped me. Colouring is an obvious area that uses multiple layers as well.

I saw this in your YT tutorial and understood this well enough. Word.

Working in bulk is still a great thing, but the only disadvantage, if you can call it that, is that when working on a set, it takes a long while to complete all of them, and until then, all of them are incomplete. So you need a large block of time to work in this manner, or save your work and carry on the next day. I have been doing the latter more often, to make use of smaller gaps of time in my day, but every time I start up again, the first sketch I do always takes longer than the rest as I'm still warming up. So it's best not to break it into lots of small sessions as that defeats the purpose of working in bulk, to streamline things.

- Hmmm... Could you somehow elaborate on this? Like you have 100 WIPs to finish... So you finish 5 in bulk in one sitting or more? Do you consider a bulk a bulk regardless of if you finish it on the spot or not?

Spoiler

Something that was annoying me was that I sometimes found myself unable to draw what I wanted, like I couldn't fix up the face how I wanted, or the hair etc. I think it would have been nice to have a few more studies mixed in with my regime, to boost my skill, but really I'm working with old sketches that have errors in them anyway, and so in a way, I just want to get rid of them by finishing them off as quickly as possible. That's probably not the best way to look at it, but the whole reason I'm in this mess is because I NEVER finished ANY artwork for 8 years, and so built up an immense backlog that should never have existed, in my opinion.

- I suspect this is the only drawback of the regimen (but also where my praise comes from the most) - you are working with the 'errors' of your past. Because you want to be faithful to them they will improve, but not by a lot.

However there is a dimension of an artist that can see the stick figures of their 4 year old son and turn it into an amazing anatomically correct aesthetically brilliant thing with only the fewest of hints. At that extreme level, no matter what source material one recieves something phenomenal can come of it

But you are still in training (and really far ahead. In fact you could go pro now if you want but yeah) and are a bit more careful when it comes to pimping out your drawings.

All I can say is that I understand the frustration, but honestly, you can already work at commission level, and I am TOTALLY with you 100% that you can improve and be even better, but never forget you're good enough suuper.

Overall this regime has taken 5 months to finish, which was a lot longer than my initial plan of about 2 months. A bunch of things have gone wrong, some out of my control, others were my fault, and so I just shrug on this one. I've gained a bunch of sketches and improved in skill (I hope), so I'll take my losses with my gains.

365 WIPs turned into finished linearts suuper. Even one a day would've been something great. You've worked, you've taken breaks and done all sorts of stuff in between. Time well spent, and you should be proud

Hands and feet are something that are just a real pain to draw because they are pretty complex, but I think I'm getting better overall. I did do a lot more erasing when a hand wasn't right and tried to draw it again, so I got the feeling of working out the form and whatnot a bit better. The feet though were mostly not so great, because I have a serious lack of studies in that area.

- I'm not that scared of hands anymore (even though they still look pretty bad when I neglect to pay attention). Feet are my new beef now haha.

Some stats for this regime:
Total time spent - 51 hours
Sets of images (pages) - 38
Start to finish - 5th May to 9th Oct

YESSS stats

I have a weird workshop idea on counting that will be relevant to this in a bit, but I just calculated if I read academic texts for 10 minutes every day for a year It'd take 54 hours of my life. A small sacrifice for something so useful...

It didn't really take very long in terms of actual time spent to do this, but I have been spending time doing other stuff, such as my programming hobbies and other artworks unrelated to this regime, which made the regime last longer than it should as well.

My next "regime" is to finish off my requests on my request thread. I'm not sure what quality I'll work to, but really I want to blitz though them at nearly one a day if I can. I'm starting to use regime synonymously with project and task now haha

I'm tackling one project or regime at a time to completion and really focusing on it to get that streamlining effect and get stuff done. I'm also avoiding doing too many studies for the time being, because that can be a never ending stream of copying and trying to figure stuff out, without producing any actual work for it. In the future I'll be doing studies a lot more related to the pieces I am working on.

Thanks for listening and hopefully my insights might be somewhat useful to someone :P

Thank you so much for the insights, suuper. I'm stealing some knowledge here. All I know is that I have the same need to finish off projects but not take too much time on studies and regimens and the like because I want to make new work eventually.

For now finishing my WIPs is important enough for the wait. I'm seriously thinking it'll take 2 years until I'm home free haha.


Many cheers and congrats for finishing again!

[Suuper-san]

Thanks!
Yes I can't say I feel too frustrated although I naturally want to improve really quickly. It does take its time in that regard.

The iterative design process (TM) is seriously awesome, and I'm annoyed that I didn't notice it sooner, but really it's something that is more suited to digital artwork than traditional, so It's not a surprise I didn't realise it when I've been drawing in ballpoint for wayy longer than digital. I've been properly drawing digitally for just over 3 years now (the last year of which I have been doing iterative so it's not that much lost time)

your clothing work has improved by huge amounts

Thanks! To be honest I haven't done nearly as much clothing studies as I should have done, so really the quality increase is just because of working at a higher quality level for my sketches.

As for fashion design in art - yes I have considered this as a possible outlet for my illustrations and most likely i will at some point have a fashion regime. (that's why I have been saving all my figure sketches - to use as clothing practice)

As for making clothes in real life - funny you should mention that as I do have making my own cosplay costumes on the agenda. Did you know I can sew? I've actually made my mum a few items of clothing that she wears out, so I'm pretty confident in my clothes making abilities XD Generally the only thing stopping me is lack of good quality materials, and not enough of a good design to want to spend time actually making it haha

Of course if you're a pro and have been doing this a while you have other reasons not to write/draw something... maybe it'll have a bad impact... maybe it won't make money, but seeing as we are not quite there yet I think we should be a bit more forgiving about our developing stages and works...

I think this is where an iterative design process comes into it's own - the first iteration you relax and produce varied ideas, then the second iteration you go along professionally and pick the ideas that are suitable for making money.

This is not what I wanted to hear, but it makes so much sense. I simply spend too little time on my drawings, and am actually scared of actually timing them. The only thing that I can promise to do is to make some sort of iterative regimen as well to improve on old works and see if the quality significantly improves or not (as pessimistic as I am, I think the answer will be a resounding yes: I definitely need to spend more time on my drawings)

I also agree that I didn't want to hear it haha
I completely recommend an iterative regimen.
What has helped me is to have certain levels/quality that I am aiming at for each iteration, so it's not just an "improving sketches" regimen, it's a "moving an X quality sketch to a Y quality sketch" regimen.
At the moment I have 4 levels of art:
-completely unfinished and horribly badly proportioned sketches
-the idea is complete and the proportions are alright, but the details are severely lacking
-the proportions are improved and the details are added, but the quality is sketchy (the regime I have just completed)
-The details are improved and the quality is lineart, solid and stable
New sketches mostly get sorted into the first 2 categories, and after an iteration I sort the newly created sketches into the appropriate folders. Sometimes a sketch doesn't quite make it to the next stage, although lately that's quite rare as I have a solid idea of what I'm doing. I only work on one stage at a time when working in bulk.

I'm actually proud that you could continue a regimen after something

Thanks :)
This is why I love MR

Holy shyte what tutorials did you use. I need this!

None at all haha
http://forums.mangaraiders.com/index.php/topic,4319.msg301347.html#msg301347
This is my holiday sketch dump post, especially the first 1/3, you see a lot of circles and lines, and repetitive face shapes, jaw lines, figure drawings and so on. I did a lot of paper flipping and holding it backward to the light to see if it looked ok, to make sure that I could recognize my own slant in my drawing and just keep repeating until I didn't need to check - I knew it was good or bad when I drew it, and eventually I knew to draw it right he first time. So mostly coordination.
I'll need to repeat this in the future when my habits get bad again.
It helps to think like this:
I've drawn a straight line "but is it realllly straight????"
I've drawn a circle "But is it realllly a circle???"
I've drawn two arms "Are they reallly the same length????"
Really proportions boil down to "is this line as long/short/straight/curved as it should be?". The question is do you or I know what it should be?......

It's fine to only draw that same kawaii looking girl so long as you are comfortable with her picking up a cup of coffee in a manga page.

This is painful to think about XD
This really is the level we should be aiming at - repeatability.
And yes a lot of manga is "normal" stuff happening. I'm thinking that I'm starting to lean more towards "illustration" than manga pages, partly because I want to draw epicly beautiful and awesome all the time, and drawing someone having an expositional conversation in a manga doesn't quite cut it for me. That being said, perhaps that is the challenge, to make something mundane seem awesome.

- Hmmm... Could you somehow elaborate on this? Like you have 100 WIPs to finish... So you finish 5 in bulk in one sitting or more? Do you consider a bulk a bulk regardless of if you finish it on the spot or not?

When I wrote this I thought "noone is going to understand this" haha

Ok I'll explain in the spoiler

Spoiler

I've got 100 sketches I want to improve
I pick 4 sketches, A,B,C,D - to work on as a set - this is the "bulk", not the 100.
I always work to a full grid of images, so often 4x3 or 4x5 , that sort of thing. the longer the task, the less images I work with (so colouring sketches only uses 2x2 or 2x3)
I put them all into one large image and open them in GIMP (just like in my colouring video)
I then sketch in this order, on a new layer/layers:

A-figure
B-figure
C-figure
D-figure

I'm building up a rhythm and so I'm working faster "per sketch" than if I was doing just the one sketch.

A-face
B-face
C-face
D-face
A-clothes
B-clothes

let's say I take a break here - none of the sketches are complete - they are all half complete.

C-clothes

but because of my break, I have slowed down and I am now speeding up again. (this is the downside I mentioned, but speeding back up happens quickly so it's a minimal downside and is still better than working on images one by one)

D-clothes
A-details
B-details
C-details
D-details
A-hair
B-hair
C-hair
D-hair
A-body redraw

only at this point is the first image, A, actually finished!

B-body redraw
C-body redraw
D-body redraw

now all the sketches are finished and I save them.
but until the last stage is complete, all the sketches are not complete and so the work up until that point is still an investment - I haven't got any finished sketches until very near the end of the batch.
(note that they are not finished illustrations, but just one stage improved. They will need more finishing later.)
Like in my colouring video - until I FINALLY draw the shadow for each one, the sketches are not finished, even though I might have spent an hour or more working on them up to that point.

I think rather than calling it bulk, batch is a more appropriate word, although I've been calling it bulk this whole time. For me as long as I'm working on multiple images, it doesnt matter if it takes several sessions, it's still bulk/batch to me. It's the method that defines it for me. Having 100 WIPs that I want to improve isn't bulk if I work on them one at a time.

you are working with the 'errors' of your past

Especially as I have been working with sketches drawn years ago, not just months, the errors are wayyy larger and so I ended up over-engineering my iterative methods (which is now ueful for getting a higher quality sketch)

However there is a dimension of an artist that can see the stick figures of their 4 year old son and turn it into an amazing anatomically correct aesthetically brilliant thing with only the fewest of hints. At that extreme level, no matter what source material one receives something phenomenal can come of it

I totally agree with this, and I'm leaning much more toward this than before. Originally I just wanted to finish my sketches as they were, with the errors, just finish them quickly and that was that - but I started to want to make them better and work at my best level, so there's a mix of qualities in my sketches now as some have errors that I permitted, and some have errors that I fixed.

never forget you're good enough suuper.

haha thanks. I think I overthink things way too much so I want to be really prepared to take on commissions.

365 WIPs turned into finished linearts suuper. Even one a day would've been something great. You've worked, you've taken breaks and done all sorts of stuff in between. Time well spent, and you should be proud

Thanks, I do indeed feel proud, and I can't wait to work with those sketches to finally finish them.
One point of interest is that these are not actually linearts - they are the stage before linearts. I've got a lineart regime on my list coming up soon after my requests are finished. So I'm aiming to get the quality even higher.

YESSS stats

"Unfortunately" statistics are the love of my life and so I now cannnot draw without timing my work. Fortunately being a programmer has enabled me to make little timing/sorting apps that suit my needs perfectly, and I can change them as I see fit, which is what I am currently working on now to improve my workflow again haha
I'm working on being able to make use of smaller amounts of time in my schedule to do structured drawing, not just doodles.
Saving and keeping a track of half finished pages of drawings is something I am trying to automate, as well as being able to quickly jump into drawing rather than opening lots of things, navigating to my reference etc. I just want a one-click "continue from save point" XD

I think it'll take me at least a year to get most of my old WIPs out of the way and start working on new stuff, but even so my art is improving on the way so it's not wasted time by any means.

And I'm sure the same will be true of your projects and so on, it's training for the "big one", and you'll gain lots of useful skills, workflows, mthods etc along the way.

PS it's half term and so I'm on holiday with my family, so I wont be around next week

[Suuper-san]

I'm back from my quick trip away :P
I drew while I was away, so here's a sketch dump.
couple of interesting things mixed in that relate to some future projects as well.
nothing really of interest though haha

Spoiler

In the bottom left of the image below, I tried to come up with lots of different ideas for dress/top straps. The overall concept is to think of lots of different ideas for a very specific outfit parts and then pick and chose from my range of ideas to produce a really nice outfit, that might have been hard to design if I just tried to make a nice outfit on its own.




In the following images, I tried to draw a figure in a perspective box, to try and make sure that the figure is drawn correctly, and especially that their feet are properly touching the floor and that the balance of the figure is good. I'll need to do a lot more of these for practice I think.






I don't know about you guys but I really like these figures, they came out really nice.

I also came up with a way of doing smaller sessions of drawing but remaining focused on studies/gestures/sketches etc. We'll see how it plays out in the next few weeks.
Basically I keep a bunch of GIMP files for pages of different genres and open one up and do a few sketches and then save it again. But a bit more organised.

[legomaestro]

Welcome back

The feet touching the floor thing and the straps - those are really subtle but super important stuff to look into. Great studies. And yeaup those figures really look good. I like how you're really framing them in 3d boxes (I know you do that a lot but it looks like you've really grinded at it here).

The first two pages are amazing. I just love the expressions. You've levelled up a bit there man

[legomaestro]

I forgot to mention, I'd made a list about which one of your recleaned WIPs I liked. Here's the list now

57, 60 ,66, 72, 73, 87, 95, 97, 101, 109, 114, 116, 125, 129, 134, 138, 139, 143, 151, 153, 155, 158, 159, 161, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 189, 191-193, 196, 199, 200, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208-212, 217, 231, 232, 239-242, 301, 306, 311,312, 326, 328, 329-332, 337-340, 349-356, 358-362

[Suuper-san]

thanks
subtle but important stuff is important :P
I have drawn figures in boxes on and off over the years but it's a seriously useful way to keep your guidelines in place. I'm thinking a 1000 figures in box regime is in order somewhere along the line.
and thanks for the favourite list. looking through them, you liked a very different bunch to the ones I liked. I tended towards the ones that were cute or accurate, but you've picked a lot of the diverse ideas ones.

I've upgraded my programs again and I've got lots of ideas in the bag, but I'm still working in the requests as a priority. I need to figure out how to draw them without getting super hyped about the quality, as that really takes it out of me. Second to that, I need to figure out how to improve my stamina to prevent myself wearing out. I'm thinking more frequent rests on the longer sessions.

[Suuper-san]

So here's how my new method has been working out - I start a page with a theme, and then save it and continue it later until the page has filled up.
So I can pick up at any time and just do one sketch or copy and then put it back down again. It's been really useful for filling gaps.
To save on time spent actually saving the image when finished, I work at twice my normal zoom, so I have more canvas to work with, and the quality is basically still fine.

This is a compressed image but you can click to enlarge. the real image is 4000px wide haha
Took 75 minutes over several days to fill it up (I've also been working on pages of other themes like faces)


Since returning from my holiday though I've been starting to return to my ridiculously high powered and organised self, which I have not seen for many years. It might be a fluke, but it might not.
I'm also going to be on MR a lot less (yeah I know I said that already), so I'll stop talking now :P

[legomaestro]

Yessss high power mode

And haha that's a pretty cool idea having a theme per canvas. I'm definitely stealing it. It has the potential to let you study anything and not get bored of hyperfocusing on one thing. Smart stuff!

[Suuper-san]

it has quite a few advantages, some of which I will mention in more detail once I gt the hang of it, but one is that you are more aware of what you are studying more or less of, so like if you fill up a page of clothes, but only half a page of hands, then you know you're not studying enough hands, that kinda thing.
The downside is that if you have too many themed canvasses, it might take forever to fill them all if you spread your work. I've got about 10 at the moment but I can definitely see it growing, which is a potential worry. again, it's something I'll figure out as i develop this workflow.

I'm also doing a complete 180 on what I said previously and processing all my WIPs, still in batch, but now I work a bit at a time each day, rather than one whole session. mixing it up with studies enables me to immediately apply what I have just copied or learned in the WIPs I am developing. Again, it's early days, so it'll be at least a month or two before I can evaluate the results, but at least I'm doing stuff. same with my requests, I'm trialing that as a bit-a-day style as well. it's a lot easier to get started when there's no expected output to psych you out.

my energy is a bit more balanced now but I still have a lot of high power motivated moments. until it becomes a habit though, it's a bit fragile. again early days.

[Suuper-san]

Finished a page of manga faces copies.
Took over 2 hours to complete, over the last week or so.
I always use the same pen settings, but depending on mood my hand is heavier etc so you can see the bands of different styles that I have used haha