I don’t really know how this works..my image appears a little fuzzy after resizing, sorry about that! It’s my first time posting an image on the forum..and it’s my first digital artwork. I learned a lot in the process (and am so aware of how much I need to learn)!

Hi guys! Those of you who use Procreate might be interested... I just stumbled across designcuts.com for the first time following links for some recommended digital brushes from an old Youtube video and they happen to be running a Procreate Event at the moment (until Sunday 30th August) with free live tutorials and deals on brush packs.

Personally, I have been resisting purchasing brushes because they can be damn expensive and I know I’ll eventually become more proficient at developing my own but I have been on the lookout for some realistic looking watercolour brushes and was thrilled to score a set of 68 for US$5 (at 75% off because I bought a few different sets at once but no regrets, I’m using Procreate more already!)

The Live Tutorial videos look fairly interesting (lots on Lettering if that’s your thing..) and can also be viewed in retrospect in the ‘Learn’ section of the website.

@hakepe I think to demonstrate this particular story you need to push the man back more like this:

This shows that he has fallen behind and also suits the direction he is walking, following the curve of the path while the woman and dog are moving in the straight direction. When they are too close it looks like she is rudely cutting across a stranger. His gaze will need to be adjusted to look at them running ahead so that we know that he is connected to them.

@Art-Dud said in 3 Areas of Feedback Request:

I would love feedback on three areas:

1. How do the compositions read?
2. How do my character silhouettes read?
3. Does the image make you contemplate a “back-story” or “front story”: What is motivating the character‘s action? (A past and/or future anticipated experience)

1 & 2) I really like your style and the character is in a great variety of dynamic poses that read well for each scene. I love the secondary focal points like the hip hop teddy winking and the apple juice I.V. haha

First up for feedback: the perspective is a bit wonky in all of the images, sometimes it kind of works (to push the backgrounds into more obscurity) so I’m not sure if it was intentional but it stands out as a bit visually jarring in other areas (especially the shelves because they look unstable).

Front cover: Would a brighter colour shirt work better? That yellow blends in a bit to the background. I feel like a red shirt would showcase his energy and enthusiasm for so many different occupations. This is the image to really represent your character’s personality considering he is ‘in costume’ for the rest of the scenes.

The ‘office’ scene: doesn’t really give a specific career angle, I have no idea what he is working on so it doesn’t invite me in like the others. It’s also a very all beige, tight space - I really want to remove or push back the books behind his head and see some more intriguing objects.

The haircut scene: is my favourite storytelling. I love how earnest he is in his work and teddy’s expression looking up at his new do The problem here is that the boy looks like he is standing too far back to be that close to and high above the teddy (especially if he’s seated in a chair)

In the dancing scene: the back leg could do with being resized down a bit and shaded to push it back, I keep getting confused about which leg is closest to the viewer I wonder if he is singing or whistling or just pouting in concentration. Also a lot of attention is being drawn to the water bottle in the foreground, perhaps fade it or move the purple tone to the boom box or hoodie instead? There are a lot of warm colours dominating in that scene.

The surgeon scene: is my favourite! It has a really satisfying harmonious colour palette (good balance between cooler and warmer tones that helps us see the character more clearly) I also instantly recognise the game and appreciate the humour (I’d be interested to know if it could cause any copyright issues with Hasbro in publication though?)

3)As for back-story/front-story, it’s tricky because you’re communicating his aspirations more than his reality. I read that the character has a lot of varied interests is energetic and imaginative. I want him to win in life and stay curious to learn more and find what makes him happy. I think you could show a bit more personality in his surroundings to help the audience get to know him and get more involved making estimations about which career we think fits him best because of the hints we saw. But that could be difficult too because most of your images are at a tighter crop - perhaps have some different camera angles...also what if he was outside in at least one of the scenes?

Sorry, that was looooong, but there were a lot of images to get through I’m nit-picking a bit but I really like your work and think you’re nearly there with it! Hopefully something I said helps you even just a little

@Griffin @TessaW Oh! I now know why My ‘Sort by’ button has been set to show most popular first. I don’t even know how but that’s another problem solved. This is a very useful thread indeed!

@Jules said in HELP! (Please ):

My project is... an “Art of...” book based off my own short film.
My short film in one sentence: Man has fallen out of love with his art until it (his art) reminds him who he is and the progress he’s made.

Sounds like a fun project Are you also making the animated short or is the entire focus creating art for the Art of book of the ‘would be’ film?

they don’t have the feeling I want so I am just looking for any tips: anything you like, hate, hate, love, what you want to see, what could be improved, etc. I have a list of the character traits for each “version” of my character.

Well my question is - what feeling do you want? You’ve created a character, now you have to fill him up with all the feelings so we can ‘read’ them in his features, expressions, gait, posture, costume. You might need to experiment with pushing and pulling of his features to create some very different versions so that you can form your idea of how you want him to appear because every design decision you make is going to lead us to think a certain way about him.

When I look at your character he reminds me of a cross between Roger from 101 Dalmations and Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille (it’s the slim face and larger nose combo), which is a fitting association because they are both creative types. He seems sensitive, introverted, a thinker, hard-working/studious type.

Your expressions are reading well, keep going with them to add more variety (show the really extreme versions of the emotions you’re depicting). I would do some tracing of male character expression sheets (Pinterest) and then warp them to fit my own character’s features. Perhaps also make a 3D model (I like using plastacine over aluminium foil) to give you a better perspective of his head from all angles in space. Draw turnarounds.

My suggestion is to really flesh out the character as if he were a person who actually lived. Give him a backstory that goes deeper and wider than the single story you’re thinking of for your short because it will inform so much about why he had his creative meltdown and help the audience connect and care about him.
What is his personality type?
What are his relationships like?
What does he do to socialise (he looks like a wine connoisseur to me, like he would host small dinner parties and impress his friends with the skill of perfectly pairing wines to fine food to treat them )
What is his favourite.. [fill in the blank].
What clothes does he wear, why does he gravitate towards that style?
What are his pet peeves?
What is he absent-minded about?
How does he walk/move? I haven’t seen his body type yet but he seems like he would be tall and lanky with big hands and feet and a loping walk..but maybe I’m wrong. On that point, I don’t think the child version really looks like him, he needs a more oval face - can still have chubby cheeks and longer/skinnier legs (although this is all based on my assumption of his body type).

I recommend the Introduction to Gesture SVS classes as a springboard to practise showing emotion and expression and probably the Character Design one too (which I haven’t done yet but I presume it would help a lot!) And obviously, look at the character design in the Art of books.

I think you’ve made a really strong start and I can see you have a lot of potential! Keep drawing and looking at character design inspiration everywhere. Personally, I also have a lot of work to do on my own character design skills so my advise comes from what I have found useful in my own study.. and from my experience in character building for theatre Hopefully some of it helps you too!

.

@Mary-Toth

I like your inking and line work style but your instincts are probably right, the story is a bit cryptic. I only read the sparkle as fairy magic and I’m unsure, is this a photo of the fairy?

I’m struggling with this prompt too on a couple of fronts (B&W format, original idea, composition being the main struggles!) so I’m still working thumbnails of my ideas.

@Lee-White And this is precisely how I would illustrate the Tools of the Trade portion of an ink drawing book as well!

I hadn’t previously heard of Alphonso Dunn so I am not familiar with his book but when I watched his video I didn’t see anything that I haven’t already seen displayed in so many other instructional art books, magazines and textbooks in my 20+ years of education and interest.
The fundamental sections tend to be very similar between publications and are obviously included as an entry-level introduction to the novice. I usually skip over them at first because the real selling point of these books comes from the unique artistic spin and focus the individual authors bring. Alphonso’s book looks like a good and very comprehensive manual on ink drawing and I sympathise with his offence in assuming that his work has been ripped-off but I disapprove of his defamatory response, particularly when he hasn’t yet viewed Jake’s book as a whole. It’s unfair controversy. From what I can see their books have very different objectives and Jake’s book stands alone, and handsomely at that, in the arena of instructional, growth motivating art books.
I refuse to believe that Jake is anything but a man of integrity and I’m sure his publishers had done their homework in ensuring no copyrights were violated. Hopefully the truth comes to light and good can come out of this horrible situation

@Griff Honestly, I have the same issue!
Our drawing styles are similar (I also couldn’t resist including hands to help tell the story in some of the the ‘head gestures’ haha)

The way I see it is, as long as we’re making progress and managing to simplify our drawings into a gesture of a person then we’re doing it right! I don’t draw cartoons (yet) so I’m not being too hard on myself but I have set myself the goal to use as few marks as possible to get the expression across and to draw quickly without worrying about them looking neat - that is progress for me! You can push yourself further, it’s your choice, but I’m sure, like me, you are still learning a lot even if you aren’t departing from your style too much.

I’ve decided that I will come back and redo this course again when I have developed a bit more flow in my sketching because I know for a fact that being too detailed is making my characters look stiff and I want to break that habit. I plan to do a lot of thumbnailing in the meantime so that small scale forces me to simplify and focus on the shapes and line of action even further. You could try to do the exercises on a smaller scale if you really want to try and push your boundaries?

Hi! This is my first time posting and I’m super new to digital drawing but hopefully my perspective can still help you - take what you want and ignore everything else! Also, I’ve never overdrawn on anyone’s work before and, truth be told, I feel weird about it, but it’s also the best way for me to show what changes I would make in your situation.

I’m currently doing the Introduction to Gesture class on the SVS Curriculum and one of the construction methods is to do the pose yourself. When I do this pose (on the edge of my bed haha) my left hand is facing forward and there is tension in my pinky finger as it grips the edge...so I translated my hand into a paw for your image - it’s a really useful method!

I propped the back foot up onto the bowl because, to me, it seemed like it needed more tension (I would possibly also twist the foot around and show more of the bottom of the paw but my style is more realistic so I think this could work for your style and matching the direction of the other back leg)

I brought the tail more into the centre and added an outline on the other hind leg to give more definition to the rump area to show the twist in the body a bit more clearly.

I reduced the size of the ear that is further away from the viewer. And added a bit more ‘weight’ to the base of the fishbowl. Probably the biggest change came when I moved the fish - the cat wasn’t really focusing on it (that’s the hard thing about eyes that don’t have a definite pupil, the head angle is the only aspect showing eye direction although I really do like this eye style!)

All that said - I absolutely love the endearing character you’ve created and it is so much better than anything I have been able to draw digitally after months of learning how to use Procreate

@hakepe Oh good, I’m glad I was able to help We’ve all been there - some pieces practically have to be wrestled out of the imagination!

@hakepe I think to demonstrate this particular story you need to push the man back more like this:

This shows that he has fallen behind and also suits the direction he is walking, following the curve of the path while the woman and dog are moving in the straight direction. When they are too close it looks like she is rudely cutting across a stranger. His gaze will need to be adjusted to look at them running ahead so that we know that he is connected to them.

@hakepe I love your quality of line, it has a lot of nice movement This is a good drawing and I could perhaps give more constructive feedback if I knew a bit more about what you were trying to convey but I have a few points to bring up that could help.
The big one is that I’m not really sure what is happening in this scene and it is mainly because of the central character’s pose. Is she falling over the dog? At first I thought she was about to take off running with the dog because of their playful expressions but her posture is leaning too far back, in a squat/side lunge kind of way and looks like she is about to launch sideways over the dog (onto something soft like a bed or sofa because her expression communicates that she’s feeling happy about it). I now think the dog is laying down because it’s so close to the ground but he also looks a bit like he’s in a leaping posture so I’m unsure at this stage.

My mind is quite confused about the way they are positioned so close in the space, I can’t figure out their relationship to each other and what was happening in the moment before this for them to intersect inches away from on another like this on the path.
Also, her facial features seem too big for her face, she needs a bit more cheek space on her right side for balance.
Despite the action happening right beside him, the man seems to be looking past it all. Is he holding a ball in his hand? I would make it more obvious if so..and if not I would do something else with his hand because my eye follows his pointing finger out of the frame.

@Braxton This latest idea with more fairies and ink as bait is a lot of fun! The fairy laying down looks to me like she is making an ‘ink angel’ impression on the table Perhaps one thing to consider is that Ellie seems a bit too close to the action to go unnoticed. She would look stealthier if she was distanced by a wider table.

@arielg said in final composition course assignment -problems with colors!:

I have a question though, which sounds to me alot like mixing audio:
i feel like i have lost the "quality" of each color I de-saturated, like its essence to the expense of the whole.

are we all sure that's what it takes-to lower saturation, and to lose the liveliness?or perhaps the color picking is the real issue?

in mixing, you use equalizers to lower the audio parts that are making the mix more muddy, or that are lost in clarity, and you lower certain frequencies to make the whole mix clearer. i had problems in that field too... I feel like if the performance is great, then everything else falls in place.. but i don't know what it means technically

I’m not entirely sure I understand your question but I’ll try to answer...if you’re asking if you have to avoid saturated colours to make a pleasing image, of course not. Part of colour composition is personal preference and there is a place for bright colours when done well, like in more graphic or editorial illustration and in children’s books when it suits and doesn’t distract from communicating the story. Lots of highly saturated colours can convey a bright, sunny, positive, cartoony world (perhaps the ‘liveliness’ you’re talking about) that is especially attractive to very young children. But like in music, it’s about balance between the colours - the different notes, rhythms, instruments all complimenting one another so that they sound pleasing and like they belong together in a song. The craft is revealed in the artist directing and managing the balance of all the levels and it takes many years of training and practise to develop proficiency in any craft.

Colour picking is usually the issue, the more one learns about colour theory and the more they practise painting and experiment with colour mixing, the easier it will be to pick the right colour levels on the first go without having to desaturate and repaint so much along the way. Doing greyscale value studies to find the light, mid and dark tones before you begin can help direct colour selection because you’ll know where the light is coming from and where the focus should be. I haven’t done it yet but Will Terry’s class on Choosing Colors for Storytelling might be helpful for you.

Also in this particular work, you can add in saturation through lighting - for example the salamander’s face is entering the sunlight so you can brighten the red to show that light and add highlights in the same or similar tones on other parts of his skin to unify and add form.

@arielg Happy to help in any small way - you did the hard part!

@Jules haha good that’s what the forum is here for and it’s a pretty big project.. I say take all the help and encouragement you can get!

@arielg Great! It’s looking so much more cohesive already. Just toning down the colours has completely changed the way my brain can see what is happening in the image: my eyes go straight to the yellow squirrel and then to where he is looking (the salamander).

@Jules haha really? There must have been a glitch on the forum

I have been thinking a lot about going crazy on the SVS classes for character. I could use a little more help to boost my confidence.

Me too, I’ve been concerned it might distract me from my current projects but I think I might just alter the assignments so that they’re helping me with them by putting all the knowledge straight into practical use (then I’ll go back and do the proper curriculum later when I need a project!)

big noses are endearing and he starts out so serious that he needs to have some sort of emotional appeal to the audience. I’m trying to make his first hair do look more businesslike and stiff too and then have it transition to kind of messy and curly.

Good points! His costume and posture would change a lot in that transition too. That will be fun to play with!

I made him super round because I wanted the whole cute, happy feel that more circular characters provide, but it doesn’t really fit with him as an adult... so I’m going to keep workshopping that.

It’s exactly where I would have started too. I think bring in the roundness in his eyes and cheeks, happiness in the gesture, expression and gleam in his eye. His eyes/nose/mouth are recognisable between boy and man. It could still make sense if he had a little rounded belly as long as the legs and face are longer to match his adult self. How long they are will depend on the age you’re flashing back to.

Thank you so much for all you said! It’s given me a lot of really good things to think about, and a lot more of a direction to go in then the one I had before

Yay! I’m glad I was able to offer up had something useful for you. I’m interested to see how your project develops.

Also, if you search ‘LightBox 2020 Storyboarding‘ in YouTube you will find more useful sessions, I’m still watching the parts I missed!

@Jules said in HELP! (Please ):

I might use for my 2-D animation project but it might be a little too ambitious with my artistic vision for it

And also very ambitious for the limited timeframe you will have as a student But it sounds like a smart plan to develop on two projects from one workload especially when your ‘Art of book’ project will come a lot more organically if you are actually thinking of and preparing a short film.

I attended LightBox Expo last week and John Nevarez had some very interesting presentations on storyboards which are still up on YouTube (for a limited time) if you wanted to check them out:

Story Moments and Story Beats: https://youtu.be/RrJF0D1mi-Y
Watch Me Mess Up: https://youtu.be/62ccKgNK13M

Stephen Silver’s character posing presentation could also be useful - https://youtu.be/V3YmL3EotHo

Edit: Also Normand Lemay’s Drawing from Imagination in Procreate - https://youtu.be/Us4ei14XNHY