Sayterra

Happy Birthday Dirtwolf

So here's a lil sneak peek on the inkwork for TRUCE! Featuring Motley and Sayterra...

http://grumpygoat.deviantart.com/art...-Peek-65307062

Just a lil note though I mentioned it on my DA account, to anyone who has a painted commission, I do not have a painting area set up at my new place, so please expect painting to commence as of next week.

Yup, and the Mako populations are on the decline. And that's still a baby to my standards. I worked with sharks for over a year. They're not good eatings, they have some of the higher mercury levels of oceanic fish out there. I'm a halibut girl myself.

Your Mako picture makes me horribley sad. That's a baby

Getting the commission list down...whew...

http://grumpygoat.deviantart.com/art...grine-65261384

Please get in touch with me if you'd like the piece edited, and about my PM! I need to know where to send pieces

Nothing beats you, your hands and feet, and if need be... a mirror.

I can totally see where you wanted to go with Superman, but man, it took me a second look not to see three legs on that piece. The calf muscle on his left leg (viewer's left) looks really awkward. I highly suggest if you can find it (try www.abebooks.com It's my dirty lil secret for getting art books cheap) Sarah Simbley's anatomy for the artist. Beautiful muscle reference that I think with your style, you'd be appreciate and it'd be helpful

Are you looking for a critique on this?

Scarf I've been of a fan of your stuff for a long long time I've just been pretty quiet on the boards for the past many months.

Hey Scarf! If this is too late, then disregard it.

I redlined your current piece:

http://www.icefox-studios.net/albums...ilgirlnew2.jpg

1. I added more hair on the back, I feel like some of your sketches are sometimes deficient in cranal capacity, but god I love your style so I didn't really want to go over this one much.

2. I felt like the strength of the pose would be better offset with the leg positioned back a lil. All the weight is on that backleg. The way you can tell where the weight is centered on a figure is to draw a straight line down through the head. (That note was more for the general audience, I'm sure you know that one XD)

3. I just wanted to say I love her waist. I've no idea why but I like it. It might be my love for corsets but, anyways XD

4. I had to disagree with the tail up. It really took away from the overall dynamic silhouette that you've got going on, so I sketched that in.

5. I'd bring the knee to the front, it seems a lil awkward to the side.

6. Six was optional really. I love foreshortening, so you could go a lil bigger on the hand/glove but it's more of a stylistic thing.

Your style is awesome, by the by :3

Hmm I'm gonna have to try that.

So I was thoroughly not happy with my first inkjob, so I went back and inked it from scratch.

http://grumpygoat.deviantart.com/art...-Inks-65224674

These are the final inks of the character, the background is forthcoming.

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2. Some lines can be finicky, and don't panic if a pointed edge becomes rounded, that's just how Illustrator works.

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You can also edit the smoothing fidelity of the brush by double clicking the paintbrush tool and sliding it down to 1 or 2 instead of 4 or 5.

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3. Hey! I drew a line and tried to draw another line close to it and my first line disappeared! Yeah, Illustrator does that. This is why I take on a watercolor approach to inking. This means, I draw a line, then I find another section away from that line to ink, and then I can go BACK to the first area.

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I don't find this easy or intuitive, since I have always worked the same area before moving on. So another option: I double-click on the paint tool and turn off "edit selected line" sometimes.

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All the above works to. I just don't like turning off edit selected line because I normally DO get the line I want, I just tweak it later. Nira is also an excellent artist who should REALLY post her work...

Funkylicious!

Good god she undersells herself.... very nice sketches...lots of character.

http://grumpygoat.deviantart.com/art...-Inks-65051534

I figure I'd post this, I've had a couple questions about how I ink in Illustrator. This is the same procedure I've used from Illustrator 8 up to CS3. Setup's fast. Get your sketch in, double click the layer and set it to TEMPLATE. Hit Ok. Lock the layer, and add a new layer for inks. Ready to ink? Let's go!

1. The brush I use is set to such: angle -120, roundness 60%, pressure 1pt (sometimes I vary the pressure to 2pts and set roundness to 70%...) Then I go to the bottom two boxes for color and stroke, one with white and one with black. Under should be a few lil option boxes. One will read NONE and have a red line through it. Click that. This means you've got a brush that wont fill up with the fill color. Woo!

2. I normally make one pass at one line, and then if it doesn't work, I'll either take the brush tool right over it or delete it using DEL and start over. Some lines can be finicky, and don't panic if a pointed edge becomes rounded, that's just how Illustrator works. You simply need to go over JUST that section of your line and draw a harder edge and it should correct the line.

3. Hey! I drew a line and tried to draw another line close to it and my first line disappeared! Yeah, Illustrator does that. This is why I take on a watercolor approach to inking. This means, I draw a line, then I find another section away from that line to ink, and then I can go BACK to the first area.

4. It's done! Now what? Okay, here comes the fun part. All those lines are separate lines. And you want it to be one picture that you can move around and export as a line drawing! So you're going to select the black arrow in the left/top corner of your toolbox. Hold the left mouse button down and drag a box (you'll see the lines) over the ENTIRE area you've inked. All the lines should light up with whatever base color is used for inking (that red or blue line that appears WITH the black ink). Right click once with your mouse. A dialogue box for the image should come up. Within that box is GROUP. Click that. Now, all your lovely lines are ONE unit! HOORAY!

5. This step's real simple. Delete the sketch layer out of there! You don't want that EVIL sketch showing up for your next step.

6. Exporting! I use my inked piece and color it in photoshop. So to do that, with your newly GROUPED inks, you're going to go to FILE-->Export. Choose your file name appropriately and SAVE AS a PSD. It will ask you a million things in that dialogue box. Your biggest concern will be DPI. I tend to save at either 300 or 600 dpi (most magazines are printed at 150 dpi so twice that is more than enough for a color print). Hit okay. Done!

Now you can take your linework and open it up in Photoshop. Go ahead and color away!

Rowr... I... I'm trying not to... GRAWR *head asplodes*

I hate that commercial...so much.

Hee, well you PAID is the thing. I sat here with purdy prints goin "They have no home. Sad homeless art!" But in a few cases, people paid half or whole and then they disappear...

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geez that kichi gets alot of b-day art her friends must really like her :P

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Truth!

All I got was a shirt that said "I went to my birthday and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt".

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I didn't get anything ;_;

Hehe... really nice gift Dayn :3 I'm sure Kichi loves it. And if she doesn't, something's wrong with her :P

Oooh for a sec she reminded me of Liz from Hellboy I like!

So may I ask a related question... what happens when a commissioner drops off the face of the planet? I've had it happen *eyes Hyper* and I'm left going "Waaaaaaait you forgot your aaaart!"... Unless it's only in sketch stage, then I'm stuck wondering where the person went to? D:

*sad goat*

I know Gill doesn't need defending, but I just wanted to toss my two cents in....

13 months of wait... alright. Understandable to be frustrated, but good things come to those who wait. I'm upgrading a lot of my own commissioners for their patience since I'm still out from the car accident that nearly took my life. I can only IMAGINE what a chemical burn to the lungs did to Gill.

And yet he's still taking charge and being professional. Hat's off to him...

Artists are constantly dogged for long commission times. But I've a feeling that Gill and I share the same approach about commissions. Why would we want to sign our name to a piece that we didn't put our all into?

Would a commissioner be satsified with average artwork if it was done faster?

An average painted piece for me is 40 hours. That's 3.75 an hour. I don't charge what Gill does, because I'm not the same caliber or genre, but I do put my all into each piece... I can't speak for Gill, but I'm obviously not into commissions for the money, so to speak... but food for thought...

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Five pages... *crawls through the debris*

So... my take on it. Whether or not you want it, people are GOING to comment, critique, praise. Any number of those. Hey, maybe even a flame. Artists need to learn a new art: taking a critique. Because taking a critique is an artform in and of itself...

Juggy, if you really want to improve, you have GOT to develop a thick skin for comments like that. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't. Water off a duck's back. But what happens when you answer in the format you have, regardless if you wanted a critique or not, it makes you seem like a whino. As if you're trying to cover up for the inadequacies of the piece. They look like excuses... and it's unprofessional. You can lose jobs that way. Because bosses do not want to deal with artists like that. Hell there might be art directors surfing this thread even now.

Instead, you could have simply stated, "Hey, thanks for the critique, I'll take it into consideration for my next piece!" and be done with it. It makes you look professional, it makes you look like you've taken their comments into consideration...and you're done!

When I pitch storyboards, sometimes my jokes get cut down by my director. When I design something, my boss will draw on top of it to show me what I need to improve. I have to take everything with a grain of salt. Most of the time, when it's another artist that I've dealt with, usually I can learn from it. But really, any time I get a critique, I listen. Even if I don't agree, even if it wasn't asked for... I listen and take things into consideration and make notes for later. You wont always get your way with directors or bosses, but what those people like to hear, is that what they said, even if it's not agreeable to you, is that they've been HEARD, and that they were addressed. That's it. That's all..

Remember: Thick Skin...

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Fine advice Sayterra... and I do not disagree. I've been on this board long enough, and learned enough from it, to know that I need help. I've had some great comments on my work from the likes of Doug, The PMD, and others. And in turn, I hope they respected it when I commented on theirs.

If it seems like whining, maybe that's how it seems. This is the internet and things can seem many ways to many people. To me, it simply seemed annoying.

It's obvious that this was a "requested" fan art piece and that the person requesting it was happy with it. If you see someting you don't like... saying so is fine. But when doesit go over the line?

If Doug does up a (possibly expensive) piece for someone, and spends HOURS on it, it's far too easy for someone to come along and devalue it by insisting on certain things.

I think you may have missed that the "critic" came back a number oftimes to that thread to emphasize their point. To me, that starts to border on trolling. Fine, give your point, if it's take, ok - if not, then move on. But to try to push it on the artist and the person requesting it - even if they dissagree - is just wrong.

Sayterra, you gave the example of a professional environment, lets go with that. You're working on a piece from your editor and you finish it upand give it to her. She likes it and you like it. But some guy in the office does not. You listen to their point, yet both ofyou disagree with it. No biggy right? But then that same coworker keeps coming by your desk and insisting they are right.

You telling me that it wouldn't get annoying?

((The truth is, all of this could have been handled by a polite PM instead. I come to these boards primarily because of the pride peple take in their heroes. It's a joy to see how mch people put into them - art or otherwise. When soeone tries to burst that joy... it's discouraging))

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If someone was to badger me after the fact? Ignore them. It's up to you to be the bigger person and leave those folks alone. Yeah it's hard (I'm one of those that gets easily frustrated) but in the end, it usually works. Or if it's online, get up from your computer, and leave for five minutes. Get a glass of water. Turn off that section of the message board. Do something else.

I've yet to see Doug be insulted on his pieces. I guess he's lucky or I haven't seen it. I'm not one of those lucky ones. Imagine having one designer from Disney love your work, but another animator says that what you've done is nothing but "animator's post it note doodles"... without telling me how I needed to fix the piece.

That's something that we have to deal with as artists. We're going to get people who say "I don't like it!" Yeah it's discouraging, but one voice out of many shouldn't dissuade you from being artistic...

Well I think folks are getting confused as to what a critique is and isn't.

A critique affirms what is correct with the piece as well as what is incorrect with the piece. Critiques also inform the artist as to how to correct the errors or give advice as to how to find ways to correct the errors. If there isn't help given then I don't really call that a critique.

Gill, the toon pieces are yours? I ask because I'm not sure if you've hired folks or not. Either way, I'm diggin em.

Five pages... *crawls through the debris*

So... my take on it. Whether or not you want it, people are GOING to comment, critique, praise. Any number of those. Hey, maybe even a flame. Artists need to learn a new art: taking a critique. Because taking a critique is an artform in and of itself...

Juggy, if you really want to improve, you have GOT to develop a thick skin for comments like that. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't. Water off a duck's back. But what happens when you answer in the format you have, regardless if you wanted a critique or not, it makes you seem like a whino. As if you're trying to cover up for the inadequacies of the piece. They look like excuses... and it's unprofessional. You can lose jobs that way. Because bosses do not want to deal with artists like that. Hell there might be art directors surfing this thread even now.

Instead, you could have simply stated, "Hey, thanks for the critique, I'll take it into consideration for my next piece!" and be done with it. It makes you look professional, it makes you look like you've taken their comments into consideration...and you're done!

When I pitch storyboards, sometimes my jokes get cut down by my director. When I design something, my boss will draw on top of it to show me what I need to improve. I have to take everything with a grain of salt. Most of the time, when it's another artist that I've dealt with, usually I can learn from it. But really, any time I get a critique, I listen. Even if I don't agree, even if it wasn't asked for... I listen and take things into consideration and make notes for later. You wont always get your way with directors or bosses, but what those people like to hear, is that what they said, even if it's not agreeable to you, is that they've been HEARD, and that they were addressed. That's it. That's all..

Remember: Thick Skin...