AuthorTopic: Nervous beach girl portrait  (Read 2685 times)

Offline DTE462

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Nervous beach girl portrait

on: August 11, 2018, 04:10:34 pm


Here is a nervous pale beach girl. I think she lacks depth but I'm not sure why. Mostly happy with her clothes though. I usually struggle a lot more with cloth.

I tried to convey frazzled hair without going overboard.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or insight.

Offline Kiana

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #1 on: August 11, 2018, 05:23:14 pm
I think the lack of depth here is mostly due to the lack of contrast, especially in her skin. If she’s at the beach, assuming it’s not cloudy, there would be strong sunlight and strong shadows. You would probably see warm, saturated colors in the light and either orange or bluish shadows depending on the time of day.
To achieve mastery is not to be able to work without thinking; rather it is to have total control of one's choices.

Offline DTE462

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #2 on: August 11, 2018, 09:18:33 pm


That is definitely an improvement. I'm not sure about the mid shading around her eye. But I'm happy with the darker shading now, and it seems like her main skin tone is what it needs to be to read as pale right?

I also cleaned up some of the angles and lowered the color count.

Offline yaomon17

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #3 on: August 11, 2018, 10:01:55 pm

Stronger light, stronger shadows

Offline DTE462

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #4 on: August 11, 2018, 10:56:28 pm
This looks great. After I see someone doing it right it seems so obvious but before then I just can't picture it. The eyes alone make a huge difference.

Offline DTE462

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #5 on: August 12, 2018, 05:10:27 am


Here's what I came up with. Thanks to the both of you for the suggestions. I'll have to come back to it but at least there is some depth now.

Offline Helm

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #6 on: August 12, 2018, 05:35:24 pm
That's great incorporation of critique so far DTE462. Well done. I want to help too, but not so much with the shading (I think the 'more contrast' direction was very good) but with the construction of the character. I realize you're going for an anime-esque style, but I still think you might want to take a few steps backwards and clarify the character's construction a bit. The facial characteristics feel to me a bit 'symbolic', just placed on the face in a T shape without enough thought to the planes of the face etc. Does that make sense? I like that your character has a personality and an emotional state you're going for, so perhaps a little bit more construction will help sell that even more.

Simple things you could do back in the construction shape to sell the exhaustion etc:

1. make the head pose down, eyes looking lower, as a tired person might
2. have one hand interacting with the head, perhaps catching a strand of hair or adjusting the tennis visor
3. sweat drops! Very anime-friendly and easy to do. You don't have to do a huge one, even drops of realistic perspiration on the skin would read at this res. Show us what it is the character is doing that's making them exhausted.

On that last note, I can recommend:

4. finish the figure drawing. Even if you don't end up pixelling all of it, know what the character is doing, what their environment is in and how they're interacting with it, even if it just just by gravity. This is such an important thing that I wish someone had told me very early on. It's the best way to learn to place your characters in a setting and have them meaningfully interact with it, even if you only end up doing a bust. Challenge yourself.

I don't of course expect you to go hit the drawing board for this particular sprite just because I said so. I appreciate that you've already taken critique on board in this thread and you've already progressed from your initial sprite. Even if you don't return to this one, take the above points into account if you would for your next piece. More thought in the construction phase will ALWAYS pay off. 

Offline DTE462

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #7 on: August 17, 2018, 03:39:10 am

In the sketch I'm referencing she has a fan which works really well, but when you mentioned it I thought it would be funny if she was covering her eyes even more (the idea of the character is she works outside on a picturesque beach but generally hates being outside). I may have to mess with the placement of her hand so it doesn't get in the way of her eyes too much. I tried to add sweat because that would further the bit about her hating to be outside in the sun but all the sweat was either too big or looked like pixel noise. I'll have to keep working on it.

And lowering her eyes like you suggested works really well too. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to put a little bit more time in refining the ideas but they are subtle things that make it a bit more humorous.

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Nervous beach girl portrait

Reply #8 on: August 20, 2018, 12:10:49 am
before you can draw complex poses you need to understand the parts you are working with.

It's frustratingly general advice, but you need to practice your basics. Bone structure, Muscle Structure, and maybe some basic shapes.

As to why:
-her arm looks like a stretched piece of taffy, flat and curved awkwardly over her face. There's not enough volume, nor shape, to make it read as an arm! At first I actually thought it was a single very long finger! This bit's hard sometimes.

-Her skull structure, though certainly not bad, shows a lack of understanding you're only gonna get by sitting down and drawing some skulls from reference.

-Shoulders don't tend to have spikes like that, a lot of this just takes a lot of practice to understand.

Watch some of the Proko guides on youtube, and use google to your advantage. This is a great concept for a character and you at the very least show a good sense for character designs, you just need to not avoid those fundamentals.
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