Pixel Art Style -> Drawing Style

[Bernie]

Helm: Thanks! You're an awesome artist. I'll give each technique you've shown me a go, even if just for the sole reason of excercise and memorizing them. All my drawings here are 3-pixel brush photoshoppy pictures (you probably noticed), so I'll have to start looking into Painter or Illustrator soon - that, or maybe even actual inking.

The comic page you posted is fantastic! Did you ink it by hand? Can something like this be achieved using Painter or Illustrator at a printable size (300/600 dpi)?

Thanks for the time and effort you've put into this. I appreciate it.

TheYak: Unlike myself, you're using non-computery stuff to draw. That's a good thing and I'd recommend to keep it up!

[biothlebop]

Since you already recieved excellent help about the direction of lines and general shading (thanks for the downward-strokes thing, I never laid notice to that) I did a little overpaint which is how I visualise the shapes and flowlines of your character's face. It's not a shading thing as such, (but it could be used like this if you wanted to draw a darth-maul thing) but rather the way how I feel that all the shapes flow out from the corner of his left eye and around his head. If you shade him, you could try either across these flowlines or along, some of them are unneccessary and probably a little misplaced, so any great artists are free to submit their improved versions.

[Bernie]

biothlebop: I'll keep this image as a reference, it's pretty interesting. First time I hear about flowlines... very interesting indeed! Thanks!

Here's a go at shading with a strong light source coming from behind - possibly a bad choice for excercising shading:



(By the way, this is what I'd consider manga style. It's shown me that I'm still very clumsy at doing poses.)

[biothlebop]

It might be because I just invented it for this thread but it might also be a word for some other art thing that I don't know of. I was thinking of it in the way that if skin was like water that was dropped on a bare skull, it would flow along and around edges (due to bumps, crevices and the wrinkles caused by muscles) somewhat like that (kind of like tapestry folds). The forehead has some strangeness to it (since I stopped some of the lines near the hairline and haven't bothered to examine the lumps in my own upper and back of head) and as does the upper part of the nose (where the white edge seems too close to the right eye as my nose has a litttle crevice between the forehead and the bone point). The cheek-region is for a person that is quite fit,  rounder cheeks wouldn't bend inward like that nor would the cheekbones be as defining (they would be more spherical).

Here is something quite alike it, but with more general lines.
http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/oversoul.jpg
http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/cc_detail.jpg


If your light source is straight from the behind, I'd say the hair and the lower arm look the best, while I'd probably go a little further up the shoulders and shade a part of the neck.
Looking at how you have shaded across the shapes (example arms) but along the surfaces and wrinkles, you have done the exact same thing as I was trying to accomplish with the flowlines picture. Also as I seem to remember, the shading across (or over the shorter side) method was supposed to make the picture more dynamic, which I think you accomplish very well. A person blown away by an explosion should probably look a little clumsy and off balance, however I dont think the pose is bad at all. It's not overly foreshortened/fisheyed/tapered (which could speed the movement up a little more), but it is good as it is since it doesn't look gimmicky either.

[LilBlueSmurf]

Lighting from directly behind (or directly in front) is not a good thing to practice shading with, and not to be mean, but yours just looks like you shaded the interior of all the basic shapes.  Back lighting usually results in a silouette, possibly with some light reaching around on the very edges, and sometimes a small amount of reflective lighting on the dominate features.  In general, shading practice is done with 'classic' light angles, like overhead, 3/4, side, and below.  If you get all those down you can usually shade everything in between with much less trouble.  Strong back and front lighting are each their own beast however, so at some point I guess you have to experiment with those too.

[Bernie]

LilBlueSmurf: You're not being mean if you point that out, and you're right, too. I'll try to shade a couple of 3/4 views tomorrow. I just felt like experimenting.

biothlebop: Those pictures are interesting, thanks for sharing! You're right about the forehead issues, I wasn't sure how to draw a few parts of it, specifically the area where the nose connects with the forehead.

The recent picture was a foreshortening/pose excercise. I'm not very confident with those two aspects and end up guessing most of the time. I really should look into more basic shading for now, though. More pics tomorrow.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Helm]

Drawing explosion-behind-character-in-front is difficult and you did it pretty good. Good shading on the clothes generally, maybe the face is a bit scribbly, but I think it's passable for what it is.

on the comic page, it's real ink on paper, I very rarely ink for work on photoshop. This is an exception but usually, my best iniking in with real inks.

Glad if I could help at all, if you have any questions I might be able to help with, shoot. From working on your face I noticed: you're weak at nose and nosetril placement, you don't define the lips, especially upper lip, much, and finally that you make constantly round faces. I put more chin on it for the kirby-esque edits, and edited the lips in a different manner on every iteration to give you a sense of how many different 'faces' there exist with very minor alterations. This is what you need to break out of the manga style thing: more definition. Don't be afraid of full lips, more bony faces, long faces, narrower eyes, crooked noses etc

[LilBlueSmurf]

I was inspired...  So here is a quick paintover, the second one I stuck in just because it seems like it should have some sort of dark background (yes I know it totally screws up the nice blast art, but I wasn't worried about that.  Don't look too close, I did it sloppy.  It is also a bit 'shiney' but I refrained from shading very much.

[Bernie]

LilBlueSmurf: I see what you mean - more black could have put more effect into it. It would make the light behind the guy appear stronger. The black background also is a good idea. Thanks!

Helm: Thanks for the feedback. I drew a new face, trying to adress these things. Then I added the high contrast shadows and a little bit of feathering. I don't think it turned out very well, I must have done something wrong... the feathering seems unbalanced somehow. And now that I look at it, his left eye (from his view) is a bit misplaced:



I'd like to give inking by hand a go. What would you suggest? I'd need something that can do very thin lines and I like going over my lines to make them thicker.
Your exception is also very awesome. I'd like to explore all the options I have, so I'll also check out painter and illustrator.

[biothlebop]

I really like yor shading in the lowest picture. The lineart's got some anatomical issues though that make it a little strange. For example, the hairline usually recedes in the corners of the forehead and comes closer down in the middle. Since his hair looks kinda short and combed backward you could try something like this (unless he has real good hair, which gives him that hero-look).
http://www.newhair.com/images/photos/hairline/ra_a01.jpg
It seems you were going for that gorilla-like male with the quite straight nose, sharp jaw and bulging forehead, but I personally think you could ease on the shading above his nose in the third picture and combine the shading you did in that region the rightmost picture with the overall shading of the lowest.
The lower part of the line from the corner of the eye is a little too crooked in my eyes, when I do it I imagine it as the line that runs from the eye to the outermost tooth (not the one that is most back in your head but the one that is the most to the side in a front view of the skull).
I have my own struggles though when drawing (my lines/style is rarely coherent) and I don't follow all the advice I posted here (or at least think of them while drawing) so don't take this as the absolute truth.

As for hand inking, I am a sucker for brush pens (but my rendering is generally more sketchy), otherwise I like both technical pens with really fine points (I rarely use these since the lines are so even, the smaller the tips, the easier they are destroyed), as well as general overhead markers, for graffiti-sketches I use a Magic Marker with two tips (mostly because it's faster but it makes really clean lines too and never bleeds). The thing I go for is usually price, and my staple is a permanent overhead medium from your standard bookstore, but if you haven't used a brush pen, go buy one.

Here are some of my incoherent techniques, in 100% working size (although I usually work zoomed out, but I prefer working with larger brushes and straining my computer on huge canvases). I rarely work long on a single picture, and usually scale them down/up the contrast/generally just try to simplify them when I think they look good enough and retain some of the living lines I kill in the process.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/new/crack.jpg

[Helm]

I think that final high-contrast+feathering look worked quite alright actually, bernie. The problems are more with the original lineart than the rendering on this one, I'd say, and as it was mentioned. Keep at it!

as for real inking, I suggest any good pigment ink marker, from 0.1 to 0.3 for fine work and 0.7 or so for fuller lines, and an ink brush or well pen with lots of different end bits for variable length one-stroke lines.

[Bernie]

biothlebop: Hehe, that's a wild picture, and it speaketh the truth! Thanks for the feedback. I usually draw more comical things so there's bound to be a lot of mistakes in these new ones, I never bothered to look at face anatomy before. It's good you point these things out. I'll keep it in mind for my next drawings. Thanks once again!

Helm: I'll go and grab a few of these pigment ink markers, they sound easy to get. I have a few but they don't work very well anymore. I'm a bit scared of actual brush/well pens... sounds like messy business.

I noticed that my hand is very unstable and shaky when drawing things with pens. Can that be trained away?

I've had Painter 8 installed for a while but never started to use it, so I spent a few hours getting used to hit. It certainly is tougher than drawing stuff with 3-pixel brushes (which is cheating in a way, but great for sketches). However, Painter has cool smoothing, allowing me to draw at 50% size or lower, even. If my art had to be printable, would I have to draw it at A4/300 dpi? It's a pretty huge image and drawing at that size is very difficult.

Is it normal for lineart at A4/300dpi and 100% zoom to look rather messy? It seems to be okay when I print it. I'd love to take a look at one of your comic panels scanned in at that size. Would that be possible?

Thanks!

Here's my first Painter pic that actually looks like something (and he looks friendler than the guy before):



EDIT - one more:



EDIT - 'nuther one, to adress the combed back hair thing biothlebop mentioned, should look better now:

[Helm]

Yes, things will improve the more you train. But a super-steady hand in not needed to do art. When you have to do straight lines, use a ruler. When you have to do a long smooth curve, use curve tools. The rest freehand them and you'll be ok.

If my art had to be printable, would I have to draw it at A4/300 dpi? It's a pretty huge image and drawing at that size is very difficult.

As a general rule, yes. A4/300 dpi. I've gotten used to drawing at 25% zoom and then zooming in to 33% to do more detail, sometimes going up to 50% zoom with an 1pixel brush for more detail work. It's something you pick up, again. Inking on the PC at such resolutions isn't as traditional inking. Go from general to specific. Do thumbnails at small zoom, go in and start refining as you go.

Is it normal for lineart at A4/300dpi and 100% zoom to look rather messy? It seems to be okay when I print it. I'd love to take a look at one of your comic panels scanned in at that size. Would that be possible?

Yeah, quite. Lemme show you.






That's 300 dpi and 72 dpi respectively.


About your examples, tighten up the feathering more, I'd say. Pay special attention to every line.

[Gregjazz]

When you draw the heads facing that diagonal direction, something about them looks "stretched" or if it was in an isometric perspective.

Mostly this one:

[Bernie]

Helm: Very informative. Thanks for posting the picture! That gives me a few general guidelines. I'll post more pictures later.

Geoff: I can see what you mean. It's like his face is kind of narrow. I'll look into it, thanks!

EDIT - More photoshop feathering (still need to work out a good way to do it in painter):

[biothlebop]

NOTE: I wrote this before the bodybuilder man picture. It is almost perfect in my eyes. In fact, it brought tears to my eyes.

I noticed the same thing as Geoffkhan, but your pictures really are rapidly improving. Try drawing some bald people for a change, and maybe drawing hair on a new layer on that skull form. Also drawing the head from really awkward angles helps in mysterious ways and you soon find yourself drawing the 3/4 portrait better.
There is no substitute for drawing people from life (I do it in trains, libraries, buses, everywhere in the summer) but photographs are almost as useful (less fun though), but at least for me, trying to copy a expression or doing anatomical studies (without painting over) is extremely frustrating and repetitive.
If you get good enough at it though, you will never have to learn anything new (drawing wise) if you own a camera.
My drawing motives are quite limited, since I haven't made nearly enough studies, and mostly scribble (which doesn't advance my skills but sometimes gives me ideas).
Looking at art (mostly sketches in my case) made by real artists can result in Eureka's that throw your style off in a completely different direction or advance it and your pictures suddenly look better but you might not understand why. This is what I believe is wrong with much anime, some people learn it by using exact guidelines or copying other's styles. Same goes for Loomis, though his ideas are more generally applicable (don't reinvent the wheel), and the thing I believe should be learnt from him (not the old-school illustration style).
That is what you are struggling with when you do your foreshortened/dynamic poses. You have learnt that the arms and legs are cylinder-shapes and you just connect them, instead of thinking of the figure as a whole, flowing form that is frozen in air. If you want some examples/inspiration, this guy is a master of dynamics and strange poses.
http://www.hpx1.com/

Now for some concrete thoughts:
The lowest of the three was best, it's quite three-dimensional and has the looks of a handsome Russian person from a old communist poster.
The first picture has some conflicts, the inward cheeks and defined cheekbones suggest a slim person, while the line on the edge of the right nostril curves in the direction that suggests a fatter person, a child or someone with food in their mouth.
The second picture has some three-dimensionality issues to it, the back of the head is from a slightly different view than the face/eye region as is the other side of the face that we do not see. The eye is quite close to the eyebrow and the forehead downward V-shape / downward arrow shape doesn't fit with the eye. The shadowing at the cheek is very well done.
In all three pictures you have used the same forehead V-trick. I don't know if you understand why you place it there, as it is now, it looks like something a person who looked at someone elses art would do (copying a nifty trick from it and placing it into every drawing), like in the Eureka/why I hate Anime section of this post.

After all that, I'd say that if you draw something and it doesn't look right to you, you are improving. When you have found out what was wrong with it, you fix it and it looks good, your progress stops.
Sometimes I don't realize the mistakes I have made, because bad anatomy and errors are easily covered in style.
Personally, I think ugly is the new beautiful (in art at least). I seem to remember someone sayng that Catherine Zeta-Jones had one of the most perfect faces (which lead me to believe that there is some standard for what is beautiful/a perfect face, forcing you to use those standards if you want to draw pretty people). Ugly people on the other hand have a more wide range of features, and can be much more expressive (and fun to draw).
Here is a ugly-beautiful-man sketch I made for this post, and how I would simplify it if it was made for a comic book. I'd probably still use filters to simplify it (it saves time, unless I took it as a learning process), they are gimmicky though, and it is highly recommended that if you do this, you touch up them afterwards by hand.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/el_tonic/new/comics.jpg

[Helm]

you have anatomy issues, here I edited only the left side of the body to give you a sense of what would work against what you did. same mirrored below to give a more full impression



joint of the arm is on the same circular path as the navel. Your abs were too small too, and you've misinterpreted the muscular structure of the arm quite a bit. Nothing you can't fix by doing general anatomy work for a while. Book studying here will help much more than internet message boards.

[Bernie]

Helm: Thanks for the edit! I'll go and find some literature about anatomy for art. I think all these issues stem from starting to draw comic stuff thinking you wouldn't really need anatomy because it's 'just comics'. It's a big mistake to make, but there's always time to go back and study it - like right now.

I posted here because I wasn't sure what to work on, and now I have some good directions. Zat is gut!

biothlebop: Your pic is good fun. I'd say I prefer the original image of fatty guy over the filtered ones. I usually use very few filters and generally none on lineart. I like my lines the way they are. And your lines are good, no need to filterize them.

I've been drawing men because it's easier to do details on them. I think I could give an old woman a go, too. Another thing I'll start doing now is sketching stuff before I draw my lineart. I haven't done that for pretty much all of the pictures I've posted in here. I hope that studying anatomy will also get rid of most of the weird drawing habits I've collected over time.

Drawing motives... I'm not sure if I have any, I just love doing it.

Thanks for posting that link, there's a lot of awesome stuff on there.

I'm off to learn anatomy. Thanks so far, Critics Lounge!

[loominous]

Before you're off learning anatomy, I'd really recommend looking into mass and lighting.

I'm very envious of the linework and character of the pieces in the first pages, but the shading of the later pieces reveals a lack of understanding in these two areas.

Especially when doing highcontrast work, which is sort of inevitable in comics, you really have to know your form/mass if you are to apply light, or else the shapes will turn out distorted and freakish looking.

Some like the creepy style you automatically get when you determine the light with limited understanding of the shape you're dealing with, and how light works in general, but if you aspire to have control over how things will look, I'd recommend taking some time to learn how to construct objects, rather than relying on linework, and postpone things such as anatomy and lineart studies.



Basically, you learn how to simplify shapes so they become comprehendable, and also because blockiness is quite attractive if done right, and will boost the 3D feel, since we're dealing with a 2D medium.

So, if you were to construct some planes on the head of the character, it could look like this (really rough):

(animated)


If we were to follow the simplified shapes of the planes, you can easily see that the current shading is sort of arbitrary, as in, the shadows overlap the planes, getting darker at places without any real reason n so on.

If we instead rely on the planes, we get a simpler, and more comprehendable result. Here I used only three tones, or two, depending on how you count:

(animated)


Here are the two after eachother:

(animated)


Now, he's lost his ruggedness, and this might not at all be what you want, but that's easy to add. The tricky part is to learn how to construct object and apply light and have it look convincing. This is how I do it:



First, construct the head. You can draw out the planes like above, in more or less detailed versions, or not at all, once you get used to it.

Secondly, determine the lightsources. Usually there's more than one, but for excersise it's best to start with a single strong one. Later you probably want to add a fill light, to light up the shadow side, and a rimlight to accentuate certain edges.

This isn't an easy decision, since if you stick to the lightsource placement and type consistently, the look of the image will drastically change depending on this choice.

Thirdly, picture, or draw the object as seen from the lightsource/s. This will be your guide in deciding what value the planes will have.

Note what edges are facing you directly (as seen from the lightsource). These will be the brightest ones.

Then note which ones you can't see. These will be in shadow, and completely black, if no other lightsource hits them, or reflected light bounces onto them.

Now note which ones are visable, but facing away from you. These will get a value according to the angle in which they face you, the more away, the darker.

Lastly, note which areas are concealed from you, not by turning away, but by being obstructed by other geometry, such as a nose. These areas will fall under cast shadows.



The difference between castshadows and ordinary shadows is the geometry that causes them. In the case of ordinary shadowedges, we can take a ball on a table as an example, the shadowedge will be "feathered", since the geometry gradually goes into shadow. In the case of castshadows, the light is instead blocked by an object, such as the ball blocking the light from the table beneath it. In this case, there is no gradual surface change, since the table is either recieving light, not blocked by the ball, or vice versa.

The edge will be feathered anyway depending on the distance between the blocking object and the castshadowsurface - the further away the more blurry -Ã,  the spread of the light, and the intensity, the more intense, the sharper shadows, which is just our brains compensating for the contrast.


Here are some examples illustrating how I determine the values using the planes extracted from your guy, the first one being your lighting situation:





I really recommend obtaining a fairly solid understanding of form and light before anything else. Anatomy knowledge and feathering techniques are both neccessery to achieve high standards, but serve really as icing on the cake.

A character with messed up anatomy will still look right if properly shaded, since we'll just assume his anatomy is strange, which is the case some people. A character with perfect anatomy, but shaded without understanding will always look crap, atleast to other artists, since light is form and texture.

As always, I recommend Andrew Loomis' books, which used to be available for free online, but has been removed as of late. Due to their popularity, it's not hard obtaining them anyway.

Great style in general, and good luck.

Edit: Some spelling

Edit II: Also, I'd loose all the small lines that I assume you've created to add detail, until you get an understanding why they're supposed to be there. Lines will be concieved as form, and any erroneous ones will distort the shape.

[Bernie]

Wow, thanks for the informative post! It makes shading a lot more logical to me. I had to give this a go right now:



(Left: Photoshop, Right: Painter, still pretty hard to handle for me)

I'm going to try this on characters in different views with different lightsources later tonight and try some more complex polygon meshes. I used to work with 3dsMAX, but I never thought of applying it to 2D art like this.

I've also been looking into a bit of face anatomy earlier (Dynamic Anatomy/Burne Hogarth). Interesting book. I'll also try to acquire Loomis' books. I'm sure I can find them at the local bookstores.