City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

CoH is conducive to creating art

bAss_ackwards

By bAss_ackwards,
Posted on: 2009-02-18 20:24 in Multi-Media Fan Creations

 

Posted

No, really, it is. I’ve lost myself in WoW for the last few months, and obviously haven’t don’t much in the way of art-stuff. I do enjoy the game, and the fact that my fiance also plays is big draw, but I am rarely left with any desire to draw afterwards, and I tend to get bored with the constant farming.

So Sunday night, I decide to start up my account again, and after a few hours of enjoying the Skype conversation, and busting bad guy chops, I really felt the need to work on some art for my characters. I’m still waiting for the script from Meg, so I can start working on the comic - and yes it will be a full fledged comic, penciled, inked, and colored. I figured it would be a good idea to sketch out and tackle any issues with the main characters now, rather than with in the pages of the comic. I can figure out what cosmetic changes I wanted, and how I wanted to render some items.

So here’s what I have done. This is about 5 hours of work thus far, and I’m still not quite happy with it. Meg and I figured out the main problem is there is no center of interest. When I sketched this on paper, I didn’t not imagine his swords being on fire. It was simply a character sketch to practice drawing the armor. However, I think the fire looks so kickin‘, that I really don’t want to get rid of it, nor do I think toning it down will help. I tried to make the eyes glow a bit more, but I’m not sure how much more I can do. The chains are also a bit of an issue…I wanted to find an easy way to render chains (they are such a pain to draw by hand), and this was also an experiment of a cheap/easy way to render them, mostly with a Photoshop brush.

So what do you guys think? Should I leave it as is, and just mark it as practice/experiment, or do you think it’s worth saving? Also I was, and still am running a fever while working on this, so I don’t think this is quite up to my usual standards.

 

Posted

I think it's a truly amazing piece, myself, and can't see too much to be unhappy with, personally. But, then.. we are our own harshest critics, aren't we?

Also, I hope you get over your fever soon. That's never a good thing to hear about!

 

Posted

So firstly, I want to say, I REALLY love the character in the piece, and the lighting/colouring is awesome,

But I will also agree that there is no centre of attention to the piece,
So, for me, ANY piece, must be it's own mini-story, it doesn't have to be much, But this one feels static.
So the easy fix i'm going to suggest to really lift the piece to epic proportions is -

1- Drop the background, then

2 - add a wider area around the canvas, with an extra chunk of 'space' at the bottom (and perhaps a softly hinted at horizon line/background)

3 - In that empty space at the bottom, a set of menacing shadows, for example, gangbangers with Baseball bats/more chains.

= Voila, Instant story, He's now waiting with purpose, and the audience knows that there is about to be conflict, danger and excitement.
(and hey, if that makes it pop, you've got cover art, or even poster art for the planned comic?)

Anyway, that's my two cents,

But, on a slight tangent, as an artist who also finds chains to be a pain to sketch, what was the "technique" you used?

 

Posted

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.

http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Massacre_Melanie -the original Fire/Dark Corruptor -
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115217
The Guide to BURN

 

Posted

The blades are perfectly flat-faced to our view, but the hilt angles suggest they should be otherwise. It looks like the wings are suffering a little bit from that as well. Actually, I am noticing a bit of under-developement on perspective in many spots, including placement of the viewer. Instead of viewing the character from center try a worm's eye view, for example. You can be a lot more menacing that way looming over the viewer and such.

Simply standing in place and trying to be dynamic is a difficult proposition. The best idles, I think, are the ones that are half-way between standing and doing an action. Far more interesting though, would be to have an action pose for the guy. Something aggressive would look great for that character! Here is an oldie (click image to enlarge) I did a couple of years ago for some mild inspiration. Interesting and dynamic things to see are twists in the body, arches, shifting body weight, and etc. Keep those in mind as you draw your next one and you'll come out with something fantastic!

You've got a good handle on coloring and lighting. Call this one done as a good warm-up and hit the ground running for the next one!

Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP

Remember kids, crack is whack!

Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it

 

Posted

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I think I'm going to follow bAss_ackwards' suggestion, and call this done, but take note of all the critiques given, and apply those to the next piece I make. I may come back to this one eventually, and adjust the contrast in the background, or even make a real background. I do agree that the perspective on some parts is off and the pose could've been better, but I'm probably not going to adjust that since it would require redrawing most of the picture, and I think at that point, it would be more efficient to start over.

And for those of you wanting an easier time making chain I used this tutorial. I also have some other tutorials saved under my favorites on Deviantart that may be of use to someone.

 

Posted

Lol... technically, I would say "needs" glasses, no. But as we all know, according to Hollywood, wearing silverish-reflective sun glasses indoors adds 10 points of awesome. :P