Is it significant when you can recognize the references in a piece of art?  I always thought the rule of thumb was that using reference is good, but copying reference is generally poor.  An artist should make effort to, I don't know, go beyond what the reference provides?  Learn from the reference and incorporate that into the artist's own vision?  Or ... something?

I ask because when browsing other art sites I routinely recognize the sources in the artwork that is posted.  I'm not sure that other visitors do, and the references are never explicitly acknowledged.  What's proper for this sort of thing?

Tourist

From what I've seen, it depends.  There are a lot of artists out there that seek to learn only to copy what they see; nothing more.  And I'd suspect it's at least a good practice exercise in many respects to at least try this every now and then -- I'd think that it probably improves one's ability to recognize minute detail and draw them accordingly.  Here's a good example of multiple people undergoing a similar exercise, in which they all draw whom many people somehow believe to be the most beautiful woman in the world: http://dueysdrawings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7008  You'll notice how many of them use extensive gridding in order to get extreme likeness.

As for not posting references, that's a bit of a different issue and probably has more to do with stealing/plagiarism rather than good/bad art practice.

I was once a proud twig, always gaming away, living at my mom's, unemployed, till an overweight foreigner who I used to tease about his weight made me work out with him. I became more confident, energetic, got a job. I met a girl, who told me I should learn to socialize more, she was very blunt about it, very bad things were said. I told her I was happy how I was, she wouldn't take it, helps me fix myself, I end up skyrocketing my career. We're going to get married.

I'm happier than I could ever have imagined thanks to people taking the effort of not letting me proudly be what I thought was fine, cause it most certainly wasn't.

Just saying.

I was about to point out that grey area between "being a dick" and keeping things silent, but I think this is a wonderful example of it -- "encouragement", which is definitely applicable when it comes to social and health issues.  Happy to hear about the marriage, g'luck mate!

I'm not sure this grey area exists in other situations, though -- the situation being homosexuality, transsexuality, etc., since there's nothing to "encourage".  People can't change aspects like sexuality, and whether or not you agree with what they are, you should allow them to be proud of who they are, since they can't change it and being a dick hurts everyone.

So I'm not sure that states of being, such as Obesity and Homosexuality, can really be grouped together as easily as some think.

I think that this "Obesity" discussion is getting really off-topic, though -- perhaps I should tie this back to women with large breasts in vidya (the whole feminism discussion isn't off-topic, I just don't really have anything to directly address it right now, so I'm skipping over it a bit.)

I think the idea of having a character that works as either male or female is a wonderful way to describe a good character in many settings.  Obviously, there will be key aspects of gender that have an impact on a story, such as the ability to become pregnant.  As another exception, girls that strive "just to be" DO exist in the real world, and the implementation a few 2 dimensional characters here and there does make things more interesting.  i.e., having 10 female characters that are all waist-size 0 with Double-Ds that have a constant urge to bed a (male) protagonist is boring, stupid, cliched, and trivializes women as a whole.  However, having 8 or 9 females that act like normal people and having 1 or 2 boring "strive to be" female characters would be interesting.

I also don't think it's bad to mix a little bit of sexualization into a 3-dimensional female character.  By a "little bit", I mean "recognizing she's female and may be feminine", without forcing her to be the exact opposite of the "ideal women" in modern vidya.  A good character example:



Ritz wears pink clothing, a cliche of effeminacy.  She has somewhat-apparent cleavage, with bronze cups around her breasts, but they're rather small and they definitely don't jump out at you at a first glance.  She's also wearing something that's between a skirt and actual armor, which is also somewhat "feminine".  On the other hand, she fights as a warrior, and during the entirety of the game she's in, she's not objectified as a sexual target whatsoever -- she's treated like the warrior she is.  You could easily make her a young boy instead of a young girl, and she'd be just as effective.  It's an interesting combination, and I think it was actually pretty great.  I'd love to see less women characters who are polarized to be either "extremely attractive and only strive to be beautiful" or "extremely defiant of society's expectations, dresses just like a man 100% of the time, hates anything effeminate"; I'd love to see more characters that are more naturally between the two, with an additional sprinkling of interesting characterization on top.

(1) I'm lazy. XD

Sounds like the first thing you need is self-discipline; it's hard to improve rapidly without being able to keep oneself on track.  Overcoming this is probably the most important thing you can do -- I'm still getting over my feeling of "artistic laziness", but now that I'm more demanding of myself, I'm noticing speedy gains.

(2) I haven't find any article that, really shows what I want.

This site is pretty invaluable: http://www.posemaniacs.com/

We also have an anatomy thread in the "General Discussion" part of the fora where you can post your progress

(3) I mostly do monsters, and non-human stuff, which is why I base myself on, my own made bones and stuff, but I have come to realize, It's still needed.

I think you'll definitely find that working with human anatomy will help with forming arbitrary monster anatomy; you may even want to work on the anatomy of other animals.

• Colors, I, I can't find it so that this color goes good with another, I am still very lost in colors, but I hope to improve.

Learning basic color theory isn't as hard as learning basic anatomy (at least, in my opinion thus far), partially because there are a lot of resources out there that can help you practice and move forward quickly.  I found that it was both fun and enlightening to recolor a lot of the pieces in the PixelJoint hall of fame.  It's also helpful for figuring out how many of them pick such great combinations of colors.

Of course, it's good to start by understanding the extreme basics: http://www.worqx.com/color/color_basics.htm

• Bigger Sprites, Firstly I started Pixel art to make some art, but small, Now I have come to realize, Pixel art seems small, but it's huge, and it fascinates me xD so I wanna learn more and more. And I want to be able to make bigger sprites, for Portraits or big characters.

I'd advise you practice your traditional drawing skills (paper+pencils), since it's a simple way to quickly get ideas down and get up to speed with the basics.  I was recommended this book by many artists here, and I'll recommend it myself since I found it so helpful: http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201  It'll help you get on your feet rather quickly.

There's a lot that can be improved, but before we get to that, could you possibly upload a non-JPEG version of this?  That is, a version of this that you had before you saved it as a JPEG?  PNG would be fine.

Time to make good changes during the beginning of this new arbitrary date!

Personally, I made the resolution to draw a lot more, and as of yesterday I got at least two hours of drawing in, and surprisingly learned a ton during this short period of time.  Also "played" around with my new colored/B-8B/charcoal pencils and drawing paper a lot.