Critique: Looking for tips to improve!
- Thread starter Gem-Wolf
- Start date
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LameFox
Guest
I find it had to offer specific critique about highly stylized art—outside of real catastrophes it's hard to separate intent from accident. I'm not a big fan of fully black lines for instance, and find that coloured ones look more lively—but is it wrong? Not really. Some people just like them that way.
Broadly I'd say that if you're not happy with how it is now, probably the best way to improve it is to establish as clearly as you can what you want it to be like. For instance, creating a ref folder/sheet with examples of elements you like from various different artists' work and using this as a basis to measure if you're achieving those things. Essentially giving yourself something to compare with the way a realist painter can look at a photo or a scene in front of them and check how closely they've captured what they like about it. I realize that's a bit like saying 'just critique yourself instead' but it's genuinely what has always worked for me.
Broadly I'd say that if you're not happy with how it is now, probably the best way to improve it is to establish as clearly as you can what you want it to be like. For instance, creating a ref folder/sheet with examples of elements you like from various different artists' work and using this as a basis to measure if you're achieving those things. Essentially giving yourself something to compare with the way a realist painter can look at a photo or a scene in front of them and check how closely they've captured what they like about it. I realize that's a bit like saying 'just critique yourself instead' but it's genuinely what has always worked for me.
Gem-Wolf
da golden wuff
Thank you, what color lines do find works best?
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LameFox
Guest
Typically I'd just make the lines a modified version of the underlying colours in the object. Lighter, darker, maybe slightly different hues, etc. There isn't really one way that works or doesn't work, it's the kind of thing where if you experiment with it you can find ones that fit on a case by case basis.
BSporn
Active Member
Judging by the work you've posted. You've found a good thing and are sticking to it. There isn't really much for you to improve on if you want to stick to this specific style.
So my biggest advice would be to get out of your comfort zone. Start drawing backgrounds, draw full scenes, draw sequential art, start painting instead of cel shading. Try rendering entirely in black and white, or 3d sculpting, whatever sounds most appealing. But try things your uncomfortable with and are bad at.
You might verry well come back to this style at the end. But you'll have learnt a bunch from the other stuff that you can then bring to this asthetic.
So my biggest advice would be to get out of your comfort zone. Start drawing backgrounds, draw full scenes, draw sequential art, start painting instead of cel shading. Try rendering entirely in black and white, or 3d sculpting, whatever sounds most appealing. But try things your uncomfortable with and are bad at.
You might verry well come back to this style at the end. But you'll have learnt a bunch from the other stuff that you can then bring to this asthetic.
Gem-Wolf
da golden wuff
Thank you for the tip!
I have done many backgrounds but all of them are NSFW so not I have not posted them here. So backgrounds are not really out of my comfort zone. However I have no idea how to paint. What is that? What is the difference between painting and cell shading? I have tried 3D sculpting but it was not my thing, so I am going to skip that one. I will definitely try different things though
BSporn
Active Member
I'm no great painter or anything so take my advice here with a grain of salt. But getting into painting the first time the thing that helped me the most was doing ten minute value studies. Just setting a timer finding some. Life drawing photos and trying to match the light and dark areas as accurately as possible using only black and white, not worrying about colour, and avoiding any use of outlines to define shapes. Just purely blobs of grey to get stuff like this.
It puts you into a different mindset in how you're creating an image, getting rid of the mental idea of an outline and seeing it as varying areas of light/dark.
Then after that you can move onto refining it moving on to trying to match the transition between light and dark. From gradual gradients to sharp lines etc. And eventually onto colours. But that first step in changing how you actually see an image will be the most important.
It puts you into a different mindset in how you're creating an image, getting rid of the mental idea of an outline and seeing it as varying areas of light/dark.
Then after that you can move onto refining it moving on to trying to match the transition between light and dark. From gradual gradients to sharp lines etc. And eventually onto colours. But that first step in changing how you actually see an image will be the most important.