Critique drawing for @Realises! Space/click to see next image (and move mouse around to scroll around image), and go check out @Realises if you haven't already! (critique goes over what each means) you can also fullscreen, might help a bit to see. uhh FYI I'm kind of in a rush so I decided to just Photoshop the seagulls in >w< you get the idea... they're just there to preserve / add to the composition of the original. Critique notes are in the Notes and Credits! oh nooooooo her right elbow is wrong and I'm upset I didn't catch that ;~;
Coding for image scrolling: @Virtual-Boy Other code: @Realises Original art: @Realises Photoshopped bird images: the Internet (aka the people who took those bird photos) Onto the critique! 1. (this is just my finished critique, we'll come back to it at the end) 2. original image! I love the whimsical feel. There's a couple of stylistic and technical things that I'd like to touch on here, though, before we move onto the figure drawing. First off is that the lined, more blocky style is at odds with the softer, realistic one. Most of the artwork is in this lined style, actually, but to be honest, I think it might help the atmospheric perspective to change the far background into all realistic/paint style. Also, the two different ways of drawing clouds don't mesh particularly well, so perhaps just choose one or combine them. I personally love those realistic clouds, so that's what I went with in my critique drawing! But, the lined style is really useful for distinguishing the middle ground from the background, so I would keep it there, and i think it looks very nice! A couple of things to finish up here; the cherry blossom petals seem to lack a source, so they look out of place. Lastly, although the seagulls are cute, in the particular styles you mentioned, both Ghibli and Varguy tend to render birds realistically, and I think it would make them look a lot more graceful as opposed to goofy (though, again, they're adorable - don't get me wrong!). Alright, onto the character drawing itself! 3. Looking at the structure of the body of the original. Sorry for the terrible quality (thanks Scratch lol), but just by outlining the basic shapes you used it becomes pretty apparent that there's a problem! I think the torso is alright (although, when one's shoulders are reaching forward the back tends to flatten, because the shoulder blades are being moved towards the sides of the body), but the pelvis and legs seem to be having trouble. It looks almost as if the legs are bending in the opposite direction than they should! Remember that the legs are made of two segments just like the arms, and keep in mind the knees and the natural flexibility limits of people. The feet look fine though (I always have trouble with feet so I'm jealous haha!). The head structure also seems to be a bit off, with the skull being large but the face itself being rather small. References will help a lot! I really recommend them, especially photo ones for profile angles since you can't really use a mirror in that case >w< 4. The sketch I put together for the critique. The face is just basic anime, haha! But I did try to make it cover a larger area of the skull and gave her a more prominent jaw. For the legs, I made sure to account for each part of the leg, as well as the knees and the butt (plz don't report me, it's for educational purposes - I'm serious!). To give her a more "spread my wings" look, I decided to put her left arm out to the side. It was supposed to mirror her right arm, but I screwed up the foreshortening...so don't mind that... uhh the hair also didn't quite turn out how I wanted, it ended up looking more like a flat shape than something with dimension ;w; Moving on haha - even though the body may look complicated, keep in mind that it can still be broken into simpler, solid forms, and that's where the real power in the figure lies! You know how to draw clothes pretty well, so I'm skipping that step and just going on back to the finished critique. 5. Final critique again, and I'll talk about it some more now! So, the background rendering is a bit messy, but I did switch it to a painted look, and I think it looks more separated and far off than it did before, giving the image more depth. I also added some more saturation to the top of the sky for that summery feel! I ended up removing those big clouds at the top from the composition entirely; IMO I think the seagulls are enough and leaving them alone helps to draw more attention to them. I did add the sun (although I screwed up the placement, it's too low now that I think about it) because it seemed pretty apropos for the light source direction. I removed the flower petals for speed and clarity's sake, but if you really want them there, it's not a big deal! The seagulls, again, were Photoshopped in to save time; I stand by wanting them to be realistic though :3 reference photos would help for that too! And i think that it would be nice to have something adding interest and depth in the foreground, so I threw in another seagull (its placement is off, and the silhouette's interfering with the girl, but you get the gist of it) Random last things; I changed the hat a bit to make it look like it was also being blown by the wind; added some blue at the far edges of the hills to make it look like it was being covered in haze towards the horizon; did some editing/color balance; added vignette. That's all my space!
