Friday, January 16, 2009

Poorly executed

One of my biggest problems as an artist is my complete lack of consistency. This stems from me not drawing NEARLY enough. I'm lucky if I get a good sketch in per week, when really I should be doing 5-10 a DAY. I'm hoping to carve out more of my time in the future.

Here's an example of a drawing that I think is okay, it's just very inconsistent (and has anatomical problems among others).

This is Spy Jupiter. This is just digital inking over digital sketching. The tentacles aren't filled in, so the outlines may get confusing... I think it's a neat pose and a neat situation for him to be in (entagled in some tentacles that seem to organically grow out of the walls). One thing I notice is his right arm's foreshortening. And his neck may be too long.

And, this version of Spy Jupiter goes "off model", even though technical there is no model for the character, it's all in my head.

Part of growing is adapting, and not copping to a particular "style" until all the fundamentals are there, but it's hard for me to do any kind of art for games if I can't distill my character designs into something you can refer to quickly. Consistent proportions, angles, outlines, etc.

I think a good exercise for anyone (and I'll try and do this) is to first, draw a simple character model (front, back, side and 3/4 pose). Then, for about 10 days, draw that same character in one new pose per day, staying as close to on model as possible, warming up with 20-30 quick gesture, skeletal sketches of the character to get a feel for how that character carries his weight, how he walks, and generally what makes him stand out from other characters.

If I get past some of this drawer's block I've been having, I'll definitely give it a shot.

1 comment:

Riley said...

This is all very interesting to me who can't even draw a stickman with any kind of accuracy. I like seeing how you approach things. I would be curious to see how you progress in doing a drawing like this. How you start with most basic shaped to this stage and onto providing more detail and then coloring, shading, etc. Just think showing how one image progresses from idea to finished product would be cool and informative to see.