Completed [Competition] Art of The Week

[Piggo]

I love Far Cry 5 so much that i've decided to replicate the loading screens for the HL2RP thread on the Metrocop forums

 

[derpykitty]

i need some criticism to better my posing.​

 

[Anthrax_PL]

i need some criticism to better my posing.​

her hands, maybe?

i know nothing about posing

 

[RGB]

80% of the above image's failings is lighting and general atmosphere.

There is none.

 

[RGB]

Not as good as half of the stuff on here but uh, I made this random sketch like yesterday of my CP off-duty, HERO-4/Alexis Wright. Not really too fussed about the competition part of things, just curious if people think it's any good. I should do more HL2 based stuff.

So let's start with some of what's solid.

Proportions are nice, mostly, and it's not all straight lines, no, you've tried to get some proper shape on some of the limbs.
You tried to do the hands, not well, but you tried, and that's more important than you know.
Mouth is more than a single line.
Decent decoration to the clothing, it's not plain and dull.
All in all it doesn't look objectively bad, and that in itself is an achievement, but we both know it's lacking.
I see how you structured it with a skeleton overlay, which is good practice, keep that up.

So- Starting off, we'll work from things that cover the whole image, and then shift top to bottom, head to toe.

First and foremost, and the biggest thing that kicks the ass of most artists, is two things. Perspective is one and weight & flow is the other. Now, this isn't a tricky piece for perspective, which also means there's no real interesting angle, but we'll address the other part, weight & flow.

The line of action on this image is just boring. To be clear, the line of action is the general flowing motion of the character's body, captured in one line. This is important as it defines the character's flow and feel on the page, and helps you place them in the scene, rather than pasted on top. Let me show you.

This is the line of action for your character, and it's pretty boring. It's a straight line, and that's something you want to avoid as much as possible when drawing a character outside of reference sheets, or when it's with a purpose. It's flat, boring, and adds so little to them. Your character's defining features are hardly best highlighted in this, but let me show you an example tweak of a pose drawn from the one you did that helps add weight to the character.

It's a little exaggerated to make the point but see how there's a clear flowing line from head to toe that better places them there? You can see which foot is taking their weight and it helps add a sense of weight, motion, and adds to the whole thing if you can capture that. It's difficult to do that, so it takes practice.

Another thing I did, now moving onto the head, is turn this one's head to the side, as you can see by the guide lines i drew to represent the side of the head. A 45 degree angle is pretty useful and less bland, and a pretty useful trick, because straight-on faces are pretty uncanny until you've got it down, with issues such as the nose (present in yours). Learning to draw the slightly turned head would be to your benefit.

We go on and while I appreciated the detailing in the clothing, equipment, and decorations there is a problem. It's flat. Even pressed and starched military uniforms crease, and adding creases and folds to clothing is a very important thing to work on. While there's a hundred and one ways to practice this, I practiced with 15 minute sketches until I got good. For your benefit I'll attach this here.

Spoiler: 15 minute sketches

I lost the original of the above but I have this headswapped version and I keep laughing

I don't see much point in bogging this down too much, so other issues include your shading technique. I used to use a pencil, you're doing it too hard. Invest in a pencil kit. Hard pencils for outlines, soft for delicate shading. If you like pencil on paper pick some up, even if you only use one pencil it might help a lot if it's not a standard 2B, which are pretty hard.

The arm on the left has a short bicep and a long forearm and it bugs me, it's your only major proportion failure. Oh, and the eyes are big and buggy, while potentially stylistic, looks weird.

Try work on the female shape more. Hips are defined, waist is not, neither is the chest or breasts, only vaguely hinted at. This can make it harder to identify a gender, and when you clearly want to present one it's an issue.

Feet aren't level, what the FUCK.

Belts float on top of the clothes, rather than actually press in.

Baton looks weird, try draw it at an interesting angle next time to make it stand out and look cooler.

And to anyone who thinks art is a chore and you'll never get good, it takes practice. This was me a few years ago, progressing.

Spoiler: Old to New

Keep at it, you'll get there eventually. All you gotta do is persist.

 

[Maxim]

Was going for 'comic' aesthetic, as I plan on making a comic based around 'bla bla bla'.

Feedback is always appreciated; the following pictures are not in the 'comic' form.

 

[CloudBucket]

Was going for 'comic' aesthetic, as I plan on making a comic based around 'bla bla bla'.

Feedback is always appreciated; the following pictures are not in the 'comic' form.

mmmmm particle systems

 

[Deleted member 5162]

 

[CloudBucket]

Tried to go for a more cinematic pose this week. Of course there is allot to fix up but SFM decided to do the crash allot with this one so I wrapped it up. So here it is.​

 

[Anleus]

SFM decided to do the crash allot with this one so I wrapped it up.

SFM crashes a lot, for instance after loading up a lot of models when browsing the model viewer. This happens a lot when making a scenebuild, cus you'll obviously be browswing the model viewer a ton when placing in a lot of different models. The reason for this, is that each time you switch to view a different model when placing in a new animation set for model is that it uses up the program's memory. You can see the memory amount the program uses in the bottom right hand corner

After having used a lot of memory, say maybe around 4000mb, it will start to go red. When it goes red, it means the program has used up a lot of memory, which means it has stored a lot of information to all the models that have been loaded, and it means it will soon crash if it goes over this limit. Now, I have not found out if it's possible to make SFM allocate more memory usage, or if you can flush the memory by completely reloading SFM without having to quit the program and reload it again.

So basically as tldr, when memory goes red, save your work (for the love of god) and restart SFM so it doesn't suddenly crash unwillingly.

 

[Piggo]

That memory limit is complete bullshit considering that something as old as Gmod can handle god knows how many 4k textured models at once

 

[Ond]

Tried to go for a more cinematic pose this week. Of course there is allot to fix up but SFM decided to do the crash allot with this one so I wrapped it up. So here it is.​

SFM crashes a lot, for instance after loading up a lot of models when browsing the model viewer. This happens a lot when making a scenebuild, cus you'll obviously be browswing the model viewer a ton when placing in a lot of different models. The reason for this, is that each time you switch to view a different model when placing in a new animation set for model is that it uses up the program's memory. You can see the memory amount the program uses in the bottom right hand corner

After having used a lot of memory, say maybe around 4000mb, it will start to go red. When it goes red, it means the program has used up a lot of memory, which means it has stored a lot of information to all the models that have been loaded, and it means it will soon crash if it goes over this limit. Now, I have not found out if it's possible to make SFM allocate more memory usage, or if you can flush the memory by completely reloading SFM without having to quit the program and reload it again.

So basically as tldr, when memory goes red, save your work (for the love of god) and restart SFM so it doesn't suddenly crash unwillingly.

That memory limit is complete bullshit considering that something as old as Gmod can handle god knows how many 4k textured models at once

Reminder that Gmod posing is superior for this reason among many other things

 

[Piggo]

I agree that Gmod is far superior in many aspects but the only thing it lets down is lighting, you need to put in serious effort to reach sfm level in gmod (which overall makes it more impressive tbh)

 

[Ond]

I agree that Gmod is far superior in many aspects but the only thing it lets down is lighting, you need to put in serious effort to reach sfm level in gmod (which overall makes it more impressive tbh)

I feel like the lighting looks too artificial in SFM

It's best when it's not perfect as it looks more natural.

 

[Anleus]

That memory limit is complete bullshit considering that something as old as Gmod can handle god knows how many 4k textured models at once

Gmod uses more memory stored on your PC, say if you got 8gb ram it probably uses all of that, where as to SFM is a "program" capped to about 4gb and isn't yet patched to todays standards where people have a lot of more ram these days, idk, Valve completely abandoned SFM (idk tho, havn't researched on it fully)

I'm trying to move on to do poses in blender and or UE4, but that requires me to find some assets that isn't from the scenebuild megapack lmao

 

[CloudBucket]

I choose SFM because it is a program that I can pose better in and I am used to.

You can do allot with sfm and gmod. Now please stop arguing about the programs and let people pose in what they want.

 

[MaXenzie]

I choose SFM because it is a program that I can pose better in and I am used to.

You can do allot with sfm and gmod. Now please stop arguing about the programs and let people pose in what they want.

as an sfm poser exclusively

i think gmod is better

shame i dont have the motivation to fucking learn it tho

 

[Bandit]

as an sfm poser exclusively

i think gmod is better

shame i dont have the motivation to fucking learn it tho

stand pose tool and ragdoll mover

p much sfm but less high quality images

 

[liew]

Spoiler: alt versions

 

[Piggo]

I choose SFM because it is a program that I can pose better in and I am used to.

You can do allot with sfm and gmod. Now please stop arguing about the programs and let people pose in what they want.

We're not arguing and we're not telling people what to pose in, that was just a friendly discussion about our programs