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Ana's Art Returns!


Anacybele
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By that I think he means not getting a tablet is akin to shooting yourself in the foot since a mouse really limits what yo can do artistically as it just wasn't made for it. It's setting yourself a ceiling of what you can achieve so if you're actually interested in getting better at art, you should get a tablet. The program you use doesn't matter nearly as much as having a something that actually emulates the feel of drawing on paper rather than with a mouse.

I used a mouse many years ago when I first started, and I think my first tablet was ~$140, but it was one of the best investments I made since it allowed me to do a lot of thing that I wouldn't have able to do if I just stuck with a mouse.

If you're not interested in ever getting better and achieving much higher levels in digital art, then I can't help you.

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I never said I wasn't interested in getting better, nor did I say I would absolutely NEVER buy a tablet. I just said I had no current PLANS to get one. I'll probably end up getting one in the future, just not soon.

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As I said, I haven't much experience doing older people. I tried to use Wence's mugshot for reference (since Elbert was my base for him), but I guess I need more practice. There are a couple other older people in my fic that I plan to make art of, so I'll definitely be getting that practice.

What, I can't alter the style just a little? xP I really don't like how some characters are drawn out to look so tall. It looks unnatural to me. Not all characters are like this to me, only some, like Gareth (that guy is a giant, I swear). I've also taken some design features from GBA games, not just Tellius ones. Basically, I'm playing with RD's style, but adding my own twists to it. And yeah, shading can be tough and I agree that anyone can improve at that.

And I don't remember why I started using 2px thick lines. I think it might be that thinner ones disappeared under the darker colors often, making the drawing look like I pasted in parts of a computer generated 3D model. I believe it had something to do with that, but I don't entirely remember. xP

Yeah, keep practicing them old men! XD I also had a hard time drawing beards and old guys at first. Now everyone looks more manly in my drawings, even the girls. lol Maybe focus on smaller eyes and longer and stronger jaw. That should be good enough for now.

Of course you can alter the style. I know the FE 7 & 8 tended to have really realllly long leggy people! But I think that's to compensate for the anime style they used on the faces because the round eye shapes and faces tend to make everyone look younger (especially the girls). Plus taller = cooler, shorter = cuter?

Well, maybe try using thinner lines for other art and see how it goes. Maybe you've improved on colouring since then and it'll look less copy-pasted now. The thick lines you're using now might make your art look more cartoony and cutesy than what you're going for. You already use thinner lines for facial features like the eyes, so you don't need to go so thick for the clothing and armor, I don't think.

I'm sorry, but a tablet is just not on my list of things to buy right now. It might be in the future though.

That's fine. You can be stubborn about that for a while longer. XD Took my little sister a while to give up on the mouse too since she was so comfortable with it.

You can still use some tricks to improve even more though, like using dark grey brown for your lineart instead of pure black. Or starting to colour your linework a little more to tone down the harshness and meld it in more with your colours.

You can also try using gradient overlays over your colours. A slight variation of colour will makes everything look more lively to me, anyway.

None. I said my disc was missing, so I couldn't install it on my laptop. It's on my desktop PC, which hasn't been booting up properly for a long time. I've been using GIMP 2 instead.

I'm not in college either. College just didn't work out for me, unfortunately...

Wah, that sucks. Do you have the License Key/Serial Number written down anywhere for it? If it was one of the newer versions, I think you could download a trial version of that same one and use the old serial number and that might work.

But yeah, it's not worth it to rebuy a new one unless you get a major discount. O___O

Maybe you will be lucky and find a place that sells a Photoshop OEM for cheap.. like this one: http://gsfhxnirjkln....p-cs6-extended/ (PS CS6 extended for $149.99 --warning, no idea if this place is legit though! But you basically download the software and they give you a key. MAKE SURE TO BURN A DVD OF WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD IN CASE YOU NEED TO REINSTALL IN THE FUTURE!)

You can also get stuff like Corel Painter X OEMs for cheap too. I bought mine for about $50 bucks ones. I feel it's worth it even if I have only used it like.. 10 times. XD But then again, I like owning legal copies of things. You can technically get everything for free if you search hard enough.

I see. I have heard of Paint Shop Pro before, but never considered it. I only turned to GIMP because I knew it was free and I had used it before. I was confused by it the first time I used it, but back then, I was making signature images with it rather than coloring drawings. But anyway.

Also, $60? That's not cheap, that's about average for a computer software. Also, nice pic you got there. Maybe I should reconsider dumping GIMP for one of these other programs. I just don't want to end up making too many changes to how I color, or else the style in my future character art won't match what I already have anymore. If you know what I mean. I'm not sure I explained that right. xP

GIMP has an awful interface, I know that much. XD I am super annoyed by it, anyway. Damned floating boxes everywhere.. wtf!

Paint Shop Pro series is a lot more like Photoshop in my experience, and although some tools are different, some of them actually make more sense than how Photoshop does them. It's a much muuuch less expensive and a more streamlined program too. You can try out the trial version for a while and see how it goes.

(look at this price.. $50 for PSPX4.. lol Even I am tempted to buy though I have no need http://www.corel.com...rod4900069#tab3 )

$60 is just cheap compared to Photoshop's crazy regular retail prices. XD I mean, it's like a 30 MB program, so you'd think it should be like.. $30 at most, but I have grown to accept that SAI is superbly good for what it does.

I know what you mean that you don't want the style to change dramatically, but it's inevitable as you improve anyway! There's always an urge to go back to redesign or update all your old stuff when you realize how much better you've gotten. This happens to a lot of people who work on webcomics and stuff too and the audience can see the progress~. lol Somewhere along the line, they make marked improvements or a style switch and you can't go back anymore! It's a good thing, but also bad because you have to redo all the stuff you're now cringing at. XD Or maybe you'll be able to just move on.

Edited by Prax
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Yeah, keep practicing them old men! XD I also had a hard time drawing beards and old guys at first. Now everyone looks more manly in my drawings, even the girls. lol Maybe focus on smaller eyes and longer and stronger jaw. That should be good enough for now.

Geez, you make long posts. xP

Anyway, thanks, I'll try that the next time I draw an older man. I haven't yet attempted an older woman though. But I think I can do better on them than older men since I tend to draw women better than men in general. xP

Of course you can alter the style. I know the FE 7 & 8 tended to have really realllly long leggy people! But I think that's to compensate for the anime style they used on the faces because the round eye shapes and faces tend to make everyone look younger (especially the girls). Plus taller = cooler, shorter = cuter?

Yeah, the FE GBA games did have some long-legged people, like Priscilla. xP

Well, maybe try using thinner lines for other art and see how it goes. Maybe you've improved on colouring since then and it'll look less copy-pasted now. The thick lines you're using now might make your art look more cartoony and cutesy than what you're going for. You already use thinner lines for facial features like the eyes, so you don't need to go so thick for the clothing and armor, I don't think.

Yeah, you're probably right about that. I used to use thinner lines, but back then, I hadn't yet figured out the technique I use for filling in the empty edges of an area after I've used the paint bucket tool, so... Yeah, now would be a good time to return to thinner lines.

That's fine. You can be stubborn about that for a while longer. XD Took my little sister a while to give up on the mouse too since she was so comfortable with it.

It's not that I've grown real comfortable with a mouse. It's just that there are other things I want to buy more right now.

You can still use some tricks to improve even more though, like using dark grey brown for your lineart instead of pure black. Or starting to colour your linework a little more to tone down the harshness and meld it in more with your colours.

You can also try using gradient overlays over your colours. A slight variation of colour will makes everything look more lively to me, anyway.

That's not a bad idea. I could even do this on my older pieces so they match more with my newer ones. In terms of my character concept art, that is.

Wah, that sucks. Do you have the License Key/Serial Number written down anywhere for it? If it was one of the newer versions, I think you could download a trial version of that same one and use the old serial number and that might work.

I wish I had written it down, but I never did, unfortunately. xP

GIMP has an awful interface, I know that much. XD I am super annoyed by it, anyway. Damned floating boxes everywhere.. wtf!

That, I can agree on. Those floating boxes annoy me too. >_<

I know what you mean that you don't want the style to change dramatically, but it's inevitable as you improve anyway! There's always an urge to go back to redesign or update all your old stuff when you realize how much better you've gotten. This happens to a lot of people who work on webcomics and stuff too and the audience can see the progress~. lol Somewhere along the line, they make marked improvements or a style switch and you can't go back anymore! It's a good thing, but also bad because you have to redo all the stuff you're now cringing at. XD Or maybe you'll be able to just move on.

Yeah, but I have sooo much FE-related art. It'd take forever to redo it all and I just can not be bothered. Especially since I already did redo a couple of them.

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  • 5 weeks later...

So, I finally have a new piece that I finished the other day! And thanks to Prax, I got free Photoshop too. ^^

Anyway, here's that piece.

poffin_pweez__by_great_aether-d5qzq7r.png

It's Fennekin, the new fire starter for Pokemon X and Y! I found the little guy to be so cute that I just had to draw it! It just might be my new favorite starter now too. I also couldn't resist adding a cute bow around its neck. x3

I think I might have made the ears a tad too large though.

Edited by Anacybele
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The designs of most Pokemon are typically symmetrical, but rarely is the posing THIS symmetrical, is what I think eclipse is getting at. The right and left sides almost look mirrored with each other, which is generally considered bad posing. I think it looks fine in the head but the body could stand to move to either side in a 3/4 view. or with some changes to what the limbs are doing.

[spoiler=Example]

from tuna's art tumblr

tumblr_mghshq5zdF1r93xvlo1_400.png

Official art:

fennekin.png

The bodies here are both presented in asymmetrical poses that feature the body in 3/4 view. It's much more dynamic and natural feeling. Note that the limbs are all slightly offset from each other.

Try moving one of the front paws inward and have it touch the ground, and maybe push the other away from the body a little more, or sell some depth of coming forward. You could probably get away with not moving the back paws, since it's a sitting pose.

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Thanks, but no thank you. Fennekin is meant to be in a "begging" position in my piece, so having one paw touch the ground or having the head face a different direction would ruin the idea I'm going for. Besides, I did try to make the head tilt to the left a little. Guess I didn't do a good enough job. xP

Edited by Anacybele
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I think bringing the paws inward would be more how it would appear...

And to give an idea, I mean you could make them positioned more like this:

1ODBv.png

Edit: Oh yeah I think sometimes they can look like this too

1OEk1.png

Idk if I did that exactly correctly but hopefully it gives you a good idea~

Also maybe mess around with angling a slight bit with the long fur of the hind legs to help make the image look less mirrored~

Edited by Freohr Datia
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as it is now its to straight line and lifeless. try to give it more character and make look less like its being forced to take that position. it is pretty cute thought yeah.

And how do I do that?

Freohr: Thanks, though at this point, I don't know how I'm going to edit it seeing as I already went over it in PS.

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having a tablet would help but just doing things like making the feet less boxy would also help. also variety of line is an important thing to remember in any form of art so changing the thickness of some of the lines would change the drawing for better or for worse.

Edited by ShinyPichu
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Freohr: Thanks, though at this point, I don't know how I'm going to edit it seeing as I already went over it in PS.

Yes.... of course...

You know, this is the reason people recommend using layers~ Because you don't use layers, you're never in the mood to edit your own drawings to improve them because you make it hard on yourself to do so and it takes too much effort =b

Or it was you who said you never used layers, wasn't it?

Edited by Freohr Datia
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having a tablet would help but just doing things like making the feet less boxy would also help. also variety of line is an important thing to remember in any form of art so changing the thickness of some of the lines would change the drawing for better or for worse.

Thanks, but I'm not interested in buying a tablet right now. They're too expensive at the moment.

And Freohr, actually, I do use layers. I just merge some of them when I'm done. For example, the background is made up of a few layers, and Fennekin itself is one layer that used to be three.

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Thanks, but I'm not interested in buying a tablet right now. They're too expensive at the moment.

It's never to early to buy a tablet. do some research on tablets and try to find a inexpensive yet usable one because if you plan to be a digital artist having a tablet is a must.

though its really your choice so you don't have to listen to me but i recommend that you do.

Edited by ShinyPichu
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It's never to early to buy a tablet. do some research on tablets and try to find a inexpensive yet usable one because if you plan to be a digital artist having a tablet is a must.

though its really your choice so you don't have to listen to me but i recommend that you do.

I don't think it's a must. I feel just fine using a mouse. I'll probably buy one eventually, but not right now. If I did, I'd practically be broke.

Edited by Anacybele
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Too much symmetry can make a pose feel stiff, because poses are rarely perfectly symmetrical. The other suggestion I could give for loosening up the pose a bit, if you don't already do it, would be to do your underdrawings on paper and scan (or take a photo if you have to) to ink over, since it's easier to get flowing lines with a pencil than with a mouse. And of course more than anything practice will help things get looser, especially a lot of quick gesture practice.

(I can plug the Monoprice tablets again, having set up the one I got my mom for Christmas and found it to be $35 of pretty sweet hardware once I got a few driver bugs worked out, but I gather that will fall on deaf ears.)

Edited by kdanger
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I always sketch my drawings before bringing them to the computer and going over them in Photoshop. xP

Well, almost always. I did do a couple pieces in the past that did not have a sketching phase, but this Fennekin piece isn't one of them.

Edited by Anacybele
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Also you probably shouldn't merge layers, for future reference, unless they're affecting your computer running speed or you learn to edit single-layer documents (or if you do something crazy like 400 layers), don't merge. It'd make going back to fix things a lot easier .

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Also you probably shouldn't merge layers, for future reference, unless they're affecting your computer running speed or you learn to edit single-layer documents (or if you do something crazy like 400 layers), don't merge. It'd make going back to fix things a lot easier .

True. But in this case, I didn't know there was anything to fix, so I thought merging them would be fine. Don't get me wrong, I agree. I never merge until I'm completely finished and have my final product. I look it over before merging in case I find errors I could fix myself.

Besides, I hate going back and editing old pieces. I'm just too eager to start on something new. Sometimes I do redo old stuff though.

Edited by Anacybele
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