Completed [Competition] Art of The Week

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[Maxim]

Been working on this one over the past two days or so after being inspired by some early GMOD comic series. This is fashioned in a way where the pictures attempt to give you the whole 'gist' of the thing, whereas the individual thoughts of the people in the scene are ultimately decided by the viewer.

As is, I would like some feedback on posing, lighting and the choice of overlay (the photos supplied are in a sepia form).

Whether it be deconstructive or constructive feedback, I am open to all.
So please, feed away.

Spoiler: Series of pictures

 

[Danny]

Spoiler: Poster Version

 

[Piggo]

The only thing dislike about your work is the HL2 models, they're getting far too old now

 

[Piggo]

Sorry should have said thats just a personal gripe and not an implication to not use em

 

[Dicknose]

I do not have any motivation to do anything in SFM

 

[lemon]

I seriously need to find some kind of page with cool things to say here

@.:BurningFox:., @RGB did a great job of summing it up,. so I'll just leave you with his post, as I honestly can't add anything better than that

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.

@IBascoKitty, a pretty dull picture, to be quite honest. Not much is happening here, although I can sense some kind of story going on here. What it needs the most, is filling the scene with something else than just a wall in the background, and a different camera angle would help with that (I'd place it a little bit above her right hand, letting that female rule the left side of this poster, while rest is going on somewhere in the right side, being more of a background, like here). As for posing itself, it actually isn't that bad, it feels quite natural and doesn't look stiff, which is really surprising, since you're new here. If I were to give you a mark, this here would be something like B-. It has potential and idea, just isn't polished enough

@Antloin, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a screenshot from the HL2RP server on the graveyard hours. It's... Empty, and that's pretty much it. There's nothing to it, except for the camera angle that feels like you' be zooming it. Whenever I see something like that, I just reimagine Utopia again, and it was a really good series with a solid camera work, so this here is a plus. Nothing more than that though, and I can already see wasted potential of having a guy in the middle of this scene standing above a fresh corpse of someone he murdered, while from all the corners of this picture swarms of cops run towards him. Nice work with the camera angle though, I'll give you that

@RGB, you know what I think about this one,

cool legs on the left one btw

@Maxim, an important thing about comic books, is that they have a certain style. You can look at this one right here for reference, it's a shot from Fables. First of all, contrast, light and darkness are very close to eachother, shadows are usually just black. You did that in the picture I show in this post, but rest of your work lacked of any real lighting to be quite honest. Second thing, outlines. You're using SFM I think, and one of the render options (you can access them like I did here, but the outline option is at the bottom of this window, in Ambient Occlusion) allows you to do just that. The third thing that bugs me here, is that all the images are a bit too high resolution. It's not a bad thing if you're uploading something like a single wallpaper, but for a comic I'd say that it's kinda missing with the point. Either way, I'm a huge fan of comics and if you could, please, link me your work, I'd honestly like to see it in flesh

@Danny a

So, the winners

@Piggo and @liew on the first places

This one is just purely perfect, @Blackquill, if you're looking for new loading screens,
this guy here is the one that will make probably the best ones you can get

This one is simple in every aspect, but does the job, and I could honestly see it as a wallpaper.
Sometimes being complex isn't the way to go

Speaking of being complex, @CloudBucket did something like that.
Even when some of his work got lost, it's still looking sharp, and it grants him a honorary

​

 

[Dicknose]

[doublepost=1522708521][/doublepost]Here is what I spat out

 

[Piggo]

That means a lot to me, thanks a lot Cuntcake

"Cuntcake" what a fuckin username lmao

 

[Dicknose]

@liew i made this after the judging

 

[Piggo]

@Blackquill I'm 100% down for doing loading screens in any particular style you'd like

 

[Cavity]

I seriously need to find some kind of page with cool things to say here


@.:BurningFox:., @RGB did a great job of summing it up,. so I'll just leave you with his post, as I honestly can't add anything better than that



@IBascoKitty, a pretty dull picture, to be quite honest. Not much is happening here, although I can sense some kind of story going on here. What it needs the most, is filling the scene with something else than just a wall in the background, and a different camera angle would help with that (I'd place it a little bit above her right hand, letting that female rule the left side of this poster, while rest is going on somewhere in the right side, being more of a background, like here). As for posing itself, it actually isn't that bad, it feels quite natural and doesn't look stiff, which is really surprising, since you're new here. If I were to give you a mark, this here would be something like B-. It has potential and idea, just isn't polished enough


@Antloin, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a screenshot from the HL2RP server on the graveyard hours. It's... Empty, and that's pretty much it. There's nothing to it, except for the camera angle that feels like you' be zooming it. Whenever I see something like that, I just reimagine Utopia again, and it was a really good series with a solid camera work, so this here is a plus. Nothing more than that though, and I can already see wasted potential of having a guy in the middle of this scene standing above a fresh corpse of someone he murdered, while from all the corners of this picture swarms of cops run towards him. Nice work with the camera angle though, I'll give you that


@RGB, you know what I think about this one,

cool legs on the left one btw


@Maxim, an important thing about comic books, is that they have a certain style. You can look at this one right here for reference, it's a shot from Fables. First of all, contrast, light and darkness are very close to eachother, shadows are usually just black. You did that in the picture I show in this post, but rest of your work lacked of any real lighting to be quite honest. Second thing, outlines. You're using SFM I think, and one of the render options (you can access them like I did here, but the outline option is at the bottom of this window, in Ambient Occlusion) allows you to do just that. The third thing that bugs me here, is that all the images are a bit too high resolution. It's not a bad thing if you're uploading something like a single wallpaper, but for a comic I'd say that it's kinda missing with the point. Either way, I'm a huge fan of comics and if you could, please, link me your work, I'd honestly like to see it in flesh


@Danny a

So, the winners

@Piggo and @liew on the first places

This one is just purely perfect, @Blackquill, if you're looking for new loading screens,
this guy here is the one that will make probably the best ones you can get

This one is simple in every aspect, but does the job, and I could honestly see it as a wallpaper.
Sometimes being complex isn't the way to go

Speaking of being complex, @CloudBucket did something like that.
Even when some of his work got lost, it's still looking sharp, and it grants him a honorary

​

You forgot mine :c

 

[lemon]

You forgot mine :c

 

[Piggo]

Changed my entry

because WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

[doublepost=1522773270][/doublepost]go to 0:16 for the best part

 

[Anthrax_PL]

let us get some videos up in here

 

[liew]

 

[Cavity]

 

[Heck]

Shit looks hella dope

 

[constantdisplay]

finally got around to clearing out my addons and got ragdoll mover working again along with alot of other things

 

[Hamilton]

It's really beauty and creative! Good luck man
Can you say which map you used on it? (If it was Garry's Mod)