[Mirithorn]

If you could print it on t-shirts I think you could sell them.
Well, I would buy them anyway. But I'm not sure how wonderful of a gauge I am for the way most people would react.

This post has been edited by Mirithorn: 21 July 2006 - 04:56 AM

[Deepsycher]

I like the colours. I think that would look good for a diamond shape.

[Spoon Poetic]

Gobbler, are you posting in hopes of constructive criticism, or is this a compliments/encouragement-only thing?

[Gobbler]

Both. I like to show off a little, but since I'm not perfect and always trying to get better: Just tell me what you like and/or dislike about the pictures and I will try to work with that. Correcting mistakes post-production is getting a little bit more difficult with all the light-effects and stuff so I may not always do that, but I'll be sure to consider any advice you give me in the following pictures. For example, I couldn't do anything about the pose of the young lady in At the Edge of Time, but it sure did teach me a lesson about that and I'll try not to make that mistake again. It may work out in my mind, but if it doesn't show in the picture, well, then I screwed up.

And if everyone just says "Woo! Awesome! Brilliant!", then that's fine with me too, cause it means that I'll have to deliver something of a higher quality next time in order get that effect again.

[Spoon Poetic]

Okay then. I have some constructive criticism to offer.

First of all, as much as the glowy effect can be cool, in this particular piece, it kind of detracts from the image. It's distracting, and makes it harder to make out the shapes. Well, okay - I'm only referring to the glowy white parts; the colored parts seem to be subdued enough. The white parts though are like WOAH, GLOWY and it makes it hard to concentrate on the rest of the piece. Remember that because of the stark contrast between black and white, any special affects you do like that will have double the effect.

Secondly, I really have no idea how you could fix this, as I've never been able to successfully draw a dragon; but it's kind of hard to make out what it is even taking the glowy part out. The half to the right of Sira looks like a dragon's tail, I think, but the left half I'm having trouble with. But you did say you didn't draw all of him - at first I was thinking you meant, you left out some details like claws, scales, etc; but maybe you mean you didn't give him a head or something?

Sira Chica's form and face and hair all look wonderful; like I've said before, you really have a way with the female figure. However, one thing bothered me - her hairline is too far up her head. It makes her look like she's balding...

Other than that, I say great job! I love the hair style, and I know exactly what kind of shirt she's wearing thanks to its 349245 or however many lines. It's a great concept, too - I love art that has a story. Overall, it gets a yaaay from me! Yaaay!

[SimeSublime]

I don't know how I missed all these updates. Shame on you Slade! But getting to the latest picture. To be honest, I found it confusing. It was difficult to distinguish between Sira's upper body and that of her friend. I do really like the hair and tattoo effects though, and the dress looks lovely.

[Gobbler]

Ah, see people, that's the way I like it. Especially because I totally have to agree. I've been looking at this picture for months now and even though I am still a little bit proud of it, I know that this was a little bit too much for me and my skills at that time. A good idea, some good effort - but a rather poor execution.

Sira is actually holding on to Gorn's neck, Miss Poetic. The little strand of her hair is falling over his... umm... ear. Yeah, that's his head on the right... I knew I shouldn't have included a dragon when I can't even draw one. Sorry, messed up. *sighs* That's why I drew Zee and wanted to make her something more special. She's a very complex composition too, but this time, you can actually identify what is suppposed to be displayed. Or at least, I hope you can.

It was all a little confusing, because my mother couldn't make out Gorn's head anywhere, too, while three of my friends saw it right away.

And yup, I also messed up with her face and her hairline. That's the reason why I experimented around and ended up drawing Daia by accident - faces are one hell uva lot difficult to draw. I sort of rushed things with Sira, I guess, and I wasn't really happy about Zee's face too, but I hope that I'm getting better at this.

And thanks for reassuring me about the tattoo effects and Sira's babydoll-esque dress, I also think that those are the parts really worth looking at.

So, I'm currently working on another picture after inspiration struck me again (ouch, by the way), it won't be a complex composition but a complex (at least for me) pose this time, even though I'm currently planning on making it a close-up picture like Daia no Hana. I'll try to go easy on the effects and find a good balance (the preceeding pictures strike me as "a little too much" sometimes) and I hope that I can make the hairs look even more real this time. Might take a while though.

This post has been edited by Gobbler: 26 July 2006 - 09:42 AM

[Spoon Poetic]

I hope I didn't discourage you or anything; I didn't mean to. It's still tres awexome, and I was just trying to offer my superb expertise () in order to help you on future pieces.

Speaking of future pieces, I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming next!

[Gobbler]

Me too...

Alrighty, half-time report: Hairs are done, but the face is giving me some troubles. Makes me even wonder if I should just release the picture like it is with only the hairs showing.

Oh and... my site's structure has changed, so the pictures won't show up in this thread anymore. I'd correct it if someone would grant me mod-rights for a day. I've also removed the additional pictures for At the Edge of Time and Daia no Hana - just shout if you want them back. Don't ask me about those ugly comic-style-five-minutes pictures that I drew in the beginning though - they're history.

This post has been edited by Gobbler: 23 August 2006 - 05:46 AM

[Gobbler]

*takes a deep breath and all his courage*

Alrighty ladies and gentlemen, I think it's time for the next generation to step up. "Next generation? " I hear you ask. Yes, indeed, that it is, well, at least from my point of view. The premise is still the same: Draw some white lines on a black canvas. But the outcome is more than that this time.
Well, at least from my point of view.

Here we go.

Or rather: Not. Not yet, that is. I'm gonna do some storytelling first and it might take a bit, so if you're short on time or just want to see the picture: Scroll down.

Alrighty. let's recapitulate on what I've done so far:
In the beginning, there was Dawn, the first child, made solely out of a bunch of white lines. She only featured around 200 of them. I went on with some studies and experiments until I started to put some colours in the game with At the Edge of Time. Flood the whole thing with light, focus on the characters and you'll get what came after that. But it all was far away from being perfect.

The more details I wanted to draw, the more I found that I would never be able to create the scenes that I made up in my head with what I was using so far. Ka'Zee, the eleventh child, made me realize this. Her face, as beautiful as it may be, was only a notion. A nice exp​ression, yeah, but not the complete exp​ression. There's more to a human face than just some lines. Colours, shades, skin - things that got lost on the black background.

So I set out to find a way of realising those things in the next picture. Yet once I started drawing, I quickly noticed that I didn't have the slightiest bit of a clue about how the hell I was going to do that, so I put the project on hold and started to experiment again. And Daia no Hana was the result. Well, at least I was able to add some details to a face this time, but it still wasn't complete.

If you read my last post before this one, you'll see that I had started yet another picture after Daia was finished, but I only got around to drawing her hairs. Somehow I just couldn't draw her face and that really did my head in. It's a sad story for me, but I guess the thirteenth child will never be finished. Well, at least I could practice drawing one hell of a lot hairs that way and I think it payed off.

I think two months or so passed in which I couldn't draw a good line for the life of me. Well, but since I'm writing all of this now, I guess inspiration came back to me after all. Woo! So I took out the sketches for the project which I previously put on hold and started to mess around with it again.

And here's the result:

Lisian
The fourteenth child. Bearer of the word and mistress of the wind.

Now what could I say about her... let me think... I'm really not a fan of explaining the characters I come up with. After all, I'm pouring all of my soul into these pictures to express and show who and what they are, so please forgive me if I cannot seem to find the right words right now.

So yes, she's got skin. Something which I never would have believed, even if I had travelled through time and told myself about it. It just seemed to be impossible, yet here she is, and I think I've did a decent job. I'm sometimes thinking that it's very close to a real photograph, but when you actually look very closely, you can still see all of those lines I used to carve her out of the background. This time, I used about 4250 of them. Took me some time to finish those, I tell you that. But the skin was the really tough part. You wouldn't believe how long I studied people, photographs, close ups of faces and my own skin to get a feeling for how the light and dark tones work together to create perceptible shades. And reassembling that knowledge in the picture was even more of a thrill. I've spent hours after hours on selecting colours, making dots with them on the canvas and smudging them together until it looked good. *phew* Good memories, but it's even better to see that I'm finally done. I especially like her collarbone, that one turned out to look really good in my opinion.

One of my goals for this picture was, to not make her appear static. She should seem somewhat alive, maybe even moving. I'm not sure whether I've succeeded. Originally, I had intended to make her raise her arms, but I figured that it wouldn't make much sense in regards to her character. After all, only beginners use gesture magic.

... that, and I didn't want to include my own hands in this picture again.

I found the piece of clothing she's wearing in a catalogue, but I gave it one or two twists of my own here and there. The low neckline wasn't quite as low in the original version... in fact, there wasn't even really something that you could call a neckline, which is a crime in itself.

So I thought "Oh, what the hell" and turned it into a blouse-like thingy. You get resp. see the picture.

Well, I guess that's all I've got to say for now. Oh wait, there's one more thing:

I hate critics!

No wait, that's not right. I don't hate all critics. Just the stupid ones. Really, if people tell me that they don't like my pictures - deal. If people tell me that they don't like my pictures because there seems to be something wrong about them - even more of a deal. That's the stuff I must deal with/want to hear if I ever wanna get anywhere with this.

But so god help me, I hate those stupid critics! Like, people giving you advice, who haven't even got the slightiest bit of an ounce of an understanding about their own bloody anatomy. "Couldn't you try making her hand turn that way? That would be cool." "... I... I guess I could... if she was in Vietnam... or born in Tchernobyl. "

Gah. Hate em. But all the others: Be my guests. You may stone me now. Fire away.

This post has been edited by Gobbler: 25 November 2006 - 10:26 AM

[Deepsycher]

To me the picture looks so real.

About the critics that is true for those who can't draw but complain.
They can talk about it but can't do it.
Sadly I happen to be one.


Not meaning to be rude:

Between the face and hair looks a bit odd to me. (Slightly as if the hair was stuck on.)
I am not sure if this is to do with the shadows as needing to be darkened or the brightness between them.

[Emu]

lovely! very lifelike. she looks like she's about to tell a secret.

[assignedrisk]

'Deepsycher:' To me the picture looks so real.

Hello all, I'm new. :o

I love the picture. She looks Guinevere-esque to me, ala Tennyson version. Or how I would envision the wife of the noble King Arthur...idealized, of course.

[Spoon Poetic]

I love it! Most realistic work yet, I would say. I still do so love the more stylized drawings you've done in the past; they have personality because they are abstracted. But she is absolutely lovely.

Now please don't hate me, I hope you know that I do at least know some about this stuff, and am not just criticizing because it's fun or because I think something would be cool some other way. But one thing that does bother me is this one part on her... chest? shoulder? Well, whatever the part under her necklace chain. There seems to be a part of her that sticks out that seems wrong to me, as far as the human figure goes. The shadows and highlights are sculpting this thing that juts out - if it's supposed to be the clavicle, it should be horizontal, etc... But really, it's not that noticeable - I notice because I have to look at and draw the human figure over and over and over nearly every day, and so I'm becoming quite familiar with what's wrong and right and being trained to notice when something's out of place. So if it's going to be too incredibly hard to fix (and I'm sure it wouldn't be a walk in the park), you could definitely just leave it. One other thing that doesn't really bother me due to the abstract nature of the thing, but you might want to know anyway, is if this were to be realistic, she would have a shadow on her skin next to where the blouse is, to be consistent with the light source you are suggesting with the shadows cast on her face by her hair - but I think maybe you are making her blousy thing glow? In which case, forget the shadow.

Overall, beautiful! You definitely did make her dynamic, and she has personality, something very difficult to achieve. I'm in love with her hair! (And beginning to think you have something for red hair? Hehe.) The necklace is awesome, too - did you paste a picture in, or also draw that? Gorgeous. And, I want her blouse.

I wish I had the time to create with Photoshop like this. I know how to doctor pictures and I can do some flat, abstract freehand drawings, and I can play with effects... But I might be coming to you with questions when I take the Art with Computers class!

[Gobbler]

Alright, alright, I'm sorry for getting so worked up about critics, it's just that one of my friends recently suggested something so infinitely stupid that I just had to lose my temper. So don't restrain yourselves and give me your best shot.

Between the face and hair looks a bit odd to me. (Slightly as if the hair was stuck on.)

Noted. I think you're right, I might have to experiment a little more with that, maybe I can fix it.

I love the picture. She looks Guinevere-esque to me, ala Tennyson version. Or how I would envision the wife of the noble King Arthur...idealized, of course.

That's a nice thought. And yeah, she was meant to indicate some kind of nobility.

I still do so love the more stylized drawings you've done in the past; they have personality because they are abstracted.

I hear ya, but I can't seem to create more of them anymore. Everytime I start drawing, I subconsciously zoom in and start placing myriads of little lines, while a big one could have done the job too. I'm afraid that I'm just a sucker for details.

But one thing that does bother me is this one part on her... chest? shoulder? Well, whatever the part under her necklace chain. There seems to be a part of her that sticks out that seems wrong to me, as far as the human figure goes. The shadows and highlights are sculpting this thing that juts out - if it's supposed to be the clavicle, it should be horizontal, etc...

Under her necklace... let's see... hmm, I think I know what you mean, maybe I should correct the lighting at this point a little. I'll give it a shot.

One other thing that doesn't really bother me due to the abstract nature of the thing, but you might want to know anyway, is if this were to be realistic, she would have a shadow on her skin next to where the blouse is, to be consistent with the light source you are suggesting with the shadows cast on her face by her hair - but I think maybe you are making her blousy thing glow? In which case, forget the shadow.

Oh fuck , you got me there. *adds another point to the list*

I'm in love with her hair! (And beginning to think you have something for red hair? Hehe.)

Funny, up until now, I only drew blonde girls and Sira's haircolour clearly wasn't one you would find in real life, so all of my colleagues seemed pretty sure that I have a thing for blondes. Truth be told, I have a thing for hair in general, I don't care which colour, they're all so pretty. Just do something with it, women, please! Everyday I find myself looking for some new inspiration and most of you just don't seem to know what beautiful hair you could have.

The necklace is awesome, too - did you paste a picture in, or also draw that?

I made that myself, well, with the help and influence of some fashion catalogues. I know it looks like it's pasted in, that's probably because I've never expected to draw some skin underneath, maybe I can make it look a little bit more realistic, too.

And, I want her blouse.

A few hours after I put that picture up on my website, my mum called me and she had already showed it around to all of her friends. I guess I could create my own fashion-label now, as there seems to be some demand.

I wish I had the time to create with Photoshop like this.

Me too. You know, I should have been studying, but I just can't help it...

I know how to doctor pictures and I can do some flat, abstract freehand drawings, and I can play with effects... But I might be coming to you with questions when I take the Art with Computers class!

Sure, if I can help, then don't hesitate. Well, this being said, I think I should add that I'm some kind of a dummy when it comes to explaining stuff and I seem to have a talent for knowing absolutely naught about the particular things that people ask me about. Oh well.

Thanks everyone, that helped an awful lot. I'll get back to work then.