Sketchbook Stuff, Opinions appreciated

[Komouri]

Ok so the other day I realized I haven't really uploaded anything anywhere for the last year and a half. This made me sad so I started flipping through the last two sketchbooks I filled and found at least a few things that were usable and not just me trying to figure out how to draw hair again after my last hiatus. Anyway, its all pretty basic stuff but opinions and criticism on my chicken scratch would still be welcome if you could spare the time.



This is Kom, a main character from this webcomic project I'm working on. She's a ruskling which is basically a human with a rat-like tail and sharp teeth. She lost her tail so she pretty much gets mistaken for a human whenever she isn't grinning like a lunatic.



The second of the two main characters. Megan is Kom's partner/boss and I haven't thought of a good name for her species yet.



Dorothy is another pretty important character. Shes got a lot of prosthetics going on with both of her arms and legs being mechanical as well as her right eye. This picture might seem really inconsistent but she really just changes her look a whole lot over the course of the story. The bottom-middle picture is of her sporting a more realistic bionic eye and I guess Kom with her old haircut snuck on there too.



Dorothy again. Interchangeable limbs are fun, especially when they are chickenlegs.

I should have a few more on the way once my scanner stops being a butt.

[Sajomir]

OK, you have something cool going on. Even in pencils your lineart has such a "cel" vibe to it that catches the eye right away. I'm digging the faces, eyes, and general design of your stuff. Most of the bodies look really nice, too.

The big issue I'm seeing is that your bodies in the first image collage lose a lot of that strength whenever they're doing something beyond just standing around. The picture where she's grabbing her head and the two holding guns are the ones I mean. It's in her posture and in her limbs - she gets very stiff and unnatural. I just kind of noticed that all the great ones were just of the girls standing around in kinda cool-looking poses, but nothing action-y going on.

By the way, did I mention I LOVE what you're doing with these eyes? Their shapes and expressiveness are excellent, with the "Ricochet Love" one taking the cake. Keep that up, it's a great skill to have for a comic and will help a LOT with keeping the reader hooked in the moment.

So I guess my suggestion would be practice more full-body shots doing a wider variety of things. It doesn't have to be diving-from-explosions-while-returning-fire-upside-down action, it could be simple things like sitting, having a drink, two people shaking hands... heck, whatever you want.

[Komouri]

Thanks for the feedback. I know I need to work on my more dynamic poses especially considering I'm looking into possibly starting a webcomic in the future. Standing around looking cool probably won't cut it for long if I do. Occasionally I'll feel ambitious and do something a bit more exciting but it mostly ends up looking kind of weird. Speaking of which, here's another thing:



Mixed characters this time. The story I'm working on is called Kicks by the way thats not just a random word I decided to have them jumping around behind.

[J4ke]

I really like 73h eyes.

[Komouri]

Thanks! More coming as I scan it.



I don't draw big things very often so I thought I'd give it a try. This one makes Kom look tiny but Megan is just kind of raised up a bit there. She actually is the taller of the two but only by about 3 inches or so. Take the "coming soon!" bit with mountainous piles of salt by the way.

I can't believe how smudgy this thing is augghh

[wei_wu_wei]

Ditto to what's been said here so far re: line art and energy. You've certainly got something compelling going here. I'll also echo the praise on the expressiveness of the eyes, but there's also something there that's bugging me:

Unless the character is looking straight on to the camera, there's something off about the far eye. I can pass it off as 'style' up to a point, but sometimes it "breaks" the character for me, especially on your profiles. This isn't always the case on your 3/4 views, but pretty evident when it is there - Dorothy, 1st one on the bottom row of your first post is a good example, And all of the profiles look a bit off to me.

The rest of the work looks great, which just makes these things stand out all the more to me. Hope this was helpful.

--wei

[jimthegreat1012]

They're interesting enough to look at, and the anatomy is okay, but you're channeling Panty & Stocking/Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann really hard here. I think if you tried publishing this stuff as is, Gainax fans might be a little miffed...I'd work on differentiating your style from theirs a bit more, because I do like the poses and stuff, and you probably could make a good comic with these two. The "Kicks!" pose with the two of them running/jumping is great, hahah. =)
It's just that it's such a unique art style that I think it'd be really hard to avoid drawing comparisons to Gainax's stuff as it is now, you know?

This post has been edited by jimthegreat1012 on Jul 25 2011, 04:42 PM

[Komouri]

Thanks for the crits, guys! Haha, well if my stuff is going to resemble something it might as well be Gainax I guess. Seriously though I've heard the comparison before. It wasn't really intentional but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been influenced by Gainax in the past (I had a pretty heavy FLCL obsession back in the day). I always try to put my own spin on things though.

Here's a few more bits and pieces:



Oh god look at that right leg. This picture is a good example of me having no idea what I'm going for when I start drawing and continuing to have no idea as I do it. The anatomy is all over the place, I couldn't tell you what Kom is even doing up there and the whole thing looks weird but I had fun drawing it. Perhaps less Lucozade for me in the future though.



Just another random Dorothy sketch. Remember, kids! If you're too lazy to draw something properly just wrap it in bandages!



In the original Kicks storyline Dorothy was kind of a minor character and this is pretty much what she looked like. She was a 10-12 year old kid living with her parents whose arms and legs hadn't developed properly in the womb and she had the prosthetics all her life whereas today's Dorothy is about 21 by the time the story takes place and got the prosthetics after an accident as a teenager. So yeah, totally different characters basically.

[Komouri]

Don't worry I'm almost out of sketches for now. While most of the stuff I've been doing lately is Kicks-related theres been a few other things too. So yeah, clockwise from the top-left:

Vesker: My WoW character. Undead rogue, haven't been playing lately so her gear is pretty average. If you're wondering why every other character I draw is a looney then all I can say is that grin is just REALLY fun to draw.

Fran the Rapid Needle: Just a random new swordy character I ended up making without really intending to use her for anything. Kinda like the design though so she might turn up in Kicks at some point.

Ellie Langford from Dead Space 2: Well it was supposed to be her at least but I did most of it without a reference so not so much. Oh well, there it is anyway. I didn't think I'd like her half as much as I did when I started playing but she turned out to be a pretty great character.

Shade the Echidna: Yeah I know. I hadn't drawn Sonic stuff for a while and I'd just finished that Dark Brotherhood game on the DS so I figured I'd try Shade. Pretty cool game, its kind of nice the new character for this one wasn't another bloody hedgehog too.

[Komouri]

OK, so I did a few more things. Crappier scanner this time and some of them are kind of chewed up from too much eraser use but here they are anyway.



Top two are of Dorothy. Yes, all of that Saw movie stuff in the top left folds away into her arm when she's done cutting stuff up with it. I have sort of a long-distance relationship with realism so Dorothy works more like a terrifying Inspector Gadget. The bottom three are of Kom because I've been making hundreds of tiny, OCD-fuelled changes to her design lately.



Dorothy, Kom pre-haircut and Gretel from the Timesplitters videogames (doesn't really look anything like her because my Gamecube is broken and there are barely any references for her).



More of Kom before Megan picks her out of the insane asylum she finds her in. The left is kind of an important moment in the story when Megan gets irritated trying to talk to someone wearing a muzzle and takes it off her. I know the hand doesn't actually look like its grasping anything but I'd drawn it like five times and I was getting bored. Remember what I said about me going slightly eraser crazy? Yeah, these two probably suffered the worst of that.



Big smiley Kom.



Sorceress lady.

More on the way once I finish defibrillating my scanner.