Suichiro

Bah. Even if it is thematic, I won't play it then. IMO, balance and fun comes before character spotlight. No matter how awesome Reaver might be, I don't want to have to deal with him.

The best I can do is give you Deebs. She comes with her own Smirnoff though. :3

Reaver's rez power is REALLY annoying. :<

Combined with an ET that can basically one shot you, it's pretty annoying to fight him.

As if I had money to throw around for commissions. :/

I love you, BW. :3

That sounds strikingly like a certain Superhero Fandom Art Forum I peruse from time to time.

Everyone here is going too far and too deep into a potential course of action that *hasn't happened yet.*

Tracing has it's benefits. You absolutely cannot say otherwise.

It's good for building up physical muscle control in your hands and arms and it's a great way to gain confidence in your lines when you're starting out. You just cannot use tracing to gain creative skill.

It's the difference between a treadmill and a marathon. The treadmill can build up your body enough to make the marathon easier, but you'll never ever get anywhere. But just because it doesn't go anywhere doesn't mean it's completely useless.

People have this irrational hatred of tracing. Like everything else, it has it's uses and it's drawbacks. It's all in how you treat it.

Even if he delivers on the artwork, he's already broken the trust of the customer. It's too late, you simply can't get that back and communication should have been kept to keep the process moving.

Gill is an amazing artist, there's no doubt about that. But he's obviously no businessman. He should really just get out of this commission biz as a primary form of income.

I've seen this before in other places and with the proven track record here, it needs to be restated. Just because someone has talent, it does not elevate them above other people. Gill is just as responsible to his customers as a plumber or a tailor is. You *cannot* keep making your customers unhappy like this and expect to keep getting paid. That's not how reality works. If this was one of us, it wouldn't be tolerated. Why is Gill any different?

Drawing isn't like riding a bicycle. You *can* forget how to do it. Foo is right, pick up the pencil and DRAW. No matter what it is, no matter how small or large, you have to start moving your hand again. Drawing is many things, one of which is physical muscle control. Only drawing more will get your hand back into shape so you can ready yourself to learn effectively.

There's no trick, no loophole and no guide to picking it back up. Just pull out a pencil and paper and go to it.

See, the moment he offered to split some artists with me, I'd stop attacking him and negotiate. :3

I'm beginning to think a certain art forum celebrity is going to be very overused in these MAr missions. >.<

ROFL, Suichiro approves of this mission. The art forum is *indeed* ripe for parody. :3

(IBF the whining about not getting picked for the mission.)

I wouldn't call it a critter contest exactly, since the criteria for winning isn't about good critter design. I'd say it was more good critter costume design. You could have an awesome costume set for the enemies, but if they're all totally un-fun to fight, I'd vote them down anyday.

Critter Costume Contest? CCC?

Masami Obari is kind of an extreme style and so is Clamp works. Rumiko Takahashi is a more 'normal' style indicative of anime in general, but it's a little dated.

For general anime art style, you likely want to look at a midpoint between Full Metal Panic, Read or Die, Full Metal Alchemist and Onegai Teacher. More stylized than that, you get into Soul Eater, Negima, Bleach and Naruto.

That's roughly the limits of 'average' styles. Once you eclipse that, you get into a whole nother world of craziness, like Utena, xxxHolic, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Hale Nochi Guu, Ghost in the Shell, Studio Ghibi stuff, FLCL, Airmaster, Detroit Metal City, Hellsing, Yu-gi-Oh and Last Exile. All of which have their own very unique styles.

Go go Captain Science! Powered by belligerence and champion of the closed minded!

As for the current links, they only link to DA and you can't see mature content there unless you've already agreed to it and are signed in, thusly they are covered by the two click rule.

I'd say that your want to use the 3d program is corrupting your work. You're much better off just staying away from it for now, or using it in the pieces where you're much more familiar with the style already.

You can do whatever you want really, but many of the forum regulars have basically warned you that this is likely a bad path to follow. It's up to you now whether or not you want to listen to the voice of experience or forge ahead. Either way, it'll be your decision and your art.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
can I post Melanie Moody if I put a bone on her???

[/ QUOTE ]

WOW, I read that wrong. o_o;;

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!! *gasp* ....hahahahahaaaa! XD

[ QUOTE ]
The simple cell shading Shia showed you is a good place to start,

[/ QUOTE ]

Nooooooooooo! /cry

Very nice there!

All NSFW content needs to be behind two links. The two click rule is there so that you cannot directly link to any adult material from this site. Instead, you link to a pointer site where you can then link to the real material. This was instituted a while back by the mods.

As for the style you want to go, Masamune Shirou is probably the worst place you can steer this project. That's so high on the complexity scale that it's really no longer 'anime' style anymore. It's true CG with some anime elements. But as with anything we try, you need to take things in steps. Jumping to the end of the scale will only make all the needed skills inbetween dull and flawed in the end.

Simple, simple, simple. Then we can get more complex.

Okay, this is somewhat difficult for me to get around the two click rule, but this is my attempt.

Look in here for the following pictures:
/Melanie_Moody_Inks.jpg
/Melanie_Moody_Flats.jpg
/Melanie_Moody_Cel.jpg

This is an example of the 'less is more' aspect of anime style art. In the 'Inks' pic, I've taken your piece and slimmed down the number of lines to create more of a minimalist piece. That's generally the smooth and clean look of most anime styled pieces. It's also similar to the art deco style of the new breed of Bruce Timm style pinup art and fusion style superhero cartoons.

In the 'Flats' pic, I've just added basic color flats into the picture to give it some hue. It already starts to look like an animation cel, with it's very basic bold shapes.

Finally, in the 'Cel' pic, I added one and only one level of basic shading. It is not a soft shade, but instead a hard cel shade, where the light separation is very obvious. Now it really looks like an anime or animation style piece, with it's bold shapes and simple shading. To finish the job, I just added some highlight into the hair crown.

You already have the basic proportion down, you have some of the styling down, now you just need to work on the 'less is more' mantra. Once you have the style down, then you can start getting more fancy and doing more complicated techniques, like multilevel shading, soft gradation and coloring the line art itself. But for now simple is the way to go. Once you can make it look easy (which we all know it never is,) then you'll know you've succeeded.

[ QUOTE ]
corrected her thumb and cleaned it up a bit..

CORRECTED-Melanie-Moody

kinna wondering now that you cant see her thumb from that pose.. err.. WHERE is that naughty thumb going?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's going where no man has gone before!

As for more critique, I can only offer a minor suggestion since you already seem to have a handle on the basics of developing the style.

Try to do the final lines with as little cross hatching as possible. One of the things that separates animation style from standard styles is the look of the animation cel. So, continuous lines and cel shading rather than sketchwork and hatch shading.

If you can remove the hatches and make your lines contiguous then I'm sure you'll be one step closer to the style.

*makes a joke about a removable costume*

It's the same technique most artists use. You cheat and draw them in 2d. Circle, line, circle, line, circle, line, forever. It's time consuming, but it works.

[ QUOTE ]
Apparently, the art forum is a refuge for sexually-liberated thought and olive oils.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fixed for you. :3