Zargothrax: I have to agree with the others, this is some nice shading!
Also, well drawn cloak of grey tomorrow, and a plus for how nicely the drawing fades out at the bottom, instead of just "cutting off" at some point.
The only advice I'd give, is to pay attention to how the anatomy of a cat's nose really is. It's symmetric, if you draw a line down, from the tip of the nose along the surface, when it touches the mouth it touches the middle of the mouth. Because of how a cat's head/mouth/nose is shaped, there is a "notch" to the mouth, unlike with humans. You captured that well, but the centre of the "notch", and thus the mouth is off centre.
Zargothrax: Thank you all, for the feedback!
As for featured, I hope to make some stuff in the future that will be more worthy of such title. Maybe not at the moment. Some time later.
Zargothrax: I was just thinking about Astartes Gaius and >>89 a few hours ago, needless to say I was quite surprised to see this! Thanks Lapma, this just made my day!
Zargothrax: @twistNtwirl: In my opinion it would be a completely acceptable thing to "bother people here with a TL;DR". Even if it's long, noone is forced to read it, and in my opinion, many-many artists here would actually be interested in this information. Or maybe I'm just biased as I'm also known for sometimes leaving TL;DR ramblings.
But in case you disagree, please add me to the address list of said PM!
Zargothrax: I swear there is a famous artist who created in a similar style, I just can't remember who.
By the way, I just want to point out, I'm really glad to see artists illustrate Katia, and Prequels other characters differently than they are depicted in the comic. It's like seeing these characters again in an entirely new perspective; the perspective of the individual reader and artist.
Zargothrax: There is wisdom in what XenoYparxi said though. There are ways you can impove faster. In my opinion, that is by learning and doing technical stuff. If you wan’t to go down that route I’d recommend reading the comments under >>5710.
Zargothrax: @XenoYparxi: I’d say „"tracing" the things you like” is the way we develop our own style. Well, as long as we don’t actually trace, of course, just taking more inspiration from others than what then could be regarded later as „original”. I’d call it „mimicking”. Art styles rarely pop out of one’s head, it’s usually just a mixture of styles we liked and copied.
By the way, I think this comment would’ve been more impactful If you had written it under >>5782. Here, only the head is is mimicked. I wouldn't call it a "traced image".
I think the worst lapma could be accused of here is „art style theft”. And if someone starts stealing your style, in my opinion that’s the biggest compliment you could recieve as an artist (save for extreme cases where you make a living from your art and someone’s trying to steal your wind). Because it means that you inspired others. It’s the equivalent of others looking up to you and saying: „I want to be like you”.
Zargothrax: These are all absolutely fantastic!
I'm going to elect 'A', because I love flowing capes/hair and arcane badassery.
Also, I just noticed (especially on C) the extra details on her nose. The wrinkles, from the nature of the expression are exactly how they should look like on felines!
(I really hope the boruu dowscales this image as it's gigantic)
Zargothrax: @Rick2tails: Not only that, but their shoulders as well. Cat collar bones are not connected to the clavicle, that's why they can squeeze through anything, once their head fits.
Zargothrax: Something I made to celebrate the arrival of our new, split-loving member!
(Also, shamelessly art style thieving from Boogeestro (sorry m9 you draw too well).) I may have drawn the ears too large, giving her a particularly bat-loking appearance, but I kind-of liked the aesthetics of bat-kat, so I left it as it is.
Zargothrax: A bit more confidence please! ;)
Well, I’d rather not tell when I first started drawing as it would be pretty depressing. What matters is mileage, not how much time passes during that.
While I don’t really consider myself an „artist”, or „good”, I think I can still answer when I started noticing improvements.
When I started out, I thought about drawing as just lines next to each other. Drawing lines at the correct angles, differences and curves. Breaking this mindset and thinking about drawing as projecting a 3D body onto a canvas brought significant improvements (without this, drawings are kinda flat on the plane of the paper). What I mean is this: You have an idea in your head, though you can’t imageine all of it in your head, as bodies are complex (for now, I take it you want to make good figure drawings). So it is important to draw actionlines and boundingboxes, to indicate for us the pose, and what space the figure will occupy in 3D space. The point of the guidelines and such is to connect the imagined model in your head with the projection on the paper. If the connection breaks, you’ll notice that you just don’t know where certain lines should go in order to make the bodyparts have the desired orientation in 3D space. This also means that you should be familiar with 3D space. There is a free course here [url] http://drawabox.com/[/url], you don’t even need to make an account or anything, it’s just there. A few things about it: It’s long, and not very exciting, but clear, and your goals will be nonambiguous.
An another revelation was settling the „what came first, the chicken or the egg?” question, where the chicken is the pose, and the egg is the anatomy. One way of drawing is if you start building up the body from one point, say the head. The proportions and the anatomy will most likely be correct, but in the end you may notice, that this is not the pose you wanted (99.9% of the cases, the pose will be much stiffer than you imagined)! The other way is to start drawing an overly simplified body first, that has the correct pose. The problem here is that without points of reference, such as where certain muscle groups connect, where certain joints are, it is difficult to guess how long the limbs, or the torso should be, where the legs supposed to start, etc. Nonetheless, the second approach is the correct one. Realizing and using this improved my drawings significantly. By the way, the gesture of the figure makes much more of an impact on how „good” the drawing is percieved than nailing the muscle groups and every single bump on the body. How to practice this? Do so-called „gesture drawings”. Google it, watch youtube tutorials about it, others have explained it much better than I could. To be fair you still need some anatomy knowledge to make good gesture drawings, such as how the legs and the arms connect to the body exactly, but not too much.
The third thing I can think of is this: Drawing can be learned, but not tought. It doesn’t matter how much KNOWLEDGE you have on bodybuilding, you’ll need to do curls to grow your biceps yourself. KNOWING what to practice is important, because you can improve much quicker by doing meaningful excercises rather than screwing around aimlessly, but these excercises only help if you do them. This is the part I really struggle with, and I’m aware, that fixing this „part” would improve my skills tremendously. So I can’t give you any advice on this topic because I’m also bad at this (Even as of now, I’m typing this wall of text instead of practicing). Instead, I’ll give you someone else’s advice, maybe it’ll help you:
Make imperative goals. Or how do I say this. Goals that describe the HOW more than the WHAT. The latter would be for example „I want to be good at drawing” (this is WHAT you want to achieve). Every time you look at your drawings, your assessment on the matter would probably be „not yet”. Which is near perpetual state of failure, until you can finally say „yes I’m good at drawing”(and you’ll quit before that probably). The former would be for example: „I want to get better at drawing every day by practicing 1 hour every day” (this is HOW you want to achieve). Or practice anatomy 20 mins a day, then 20 minutes of gesture drawing, then 20 minutes of drawing an unfortunate khajiit. Or whatever timeframe suits you. Notice that in this case every day when you successfully draw for 1 hour is a victory. Big difference. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the shoulder every time you succeed.
Oh, and this might sound obvious, but you can only learn to draw if you don’t hate drawing. If a certain excercise or drawing becomes a huge chore for you, stop doing that. Maybe try it again later, but know when to say no.
Also some say that being part of a friendly community can be quite encouraging in pursuing a hobby. The boruu is a great place in this regard, for the most part. So as for this advice, you’re already on track.
Zargothrax: @CaptainLackwit: I’m glad this is resolved then. Also looking back at tired-me, I was overthinking a little. But a few things I’d like to add (I know we’re over this, but I want it off my chest):
The possessiveness. I didn’t make that up. It was a genuine input from a boruu member under a drawing that sparked a very similar debate. So this standpoint is an existing one. I’d also like to add that the drawing (that I’m not going to reference) was uploaded over a year ago, when OC romance images were not posted in large volumes, still almost every time one appeared, flames followed.
Problems like these don’t just go away by themselves. Resolving them requires understanding both sides. In your case, it seems simple enough, but see the opinion above. It doesn’t really matter if this person is right, wrong, wierd, or anything. They exist, they come to the boruu like us. We either find a pieceful solution (the blacklisting feature was such a step), or start banning people (or do nothing and let the Mods clean after the flames till the end of time).
I’m no moderator, but I still care for this community, because it was probably the main inspiration for me to start drawing. I know, we can’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try, that’s all I’m getting at. Anyway, I’m glad to see how this ended, at least in this case.
Zargothrax: I recall quarrels of similar nature back when OC shipping fanarts weren’t so popular too.
Obviously the quantity of these submissions (nowadays) didn’t help, but this points towards that the problem originates from the nature of these images primarily, not their amount. Or rather, the way these pictures makes some viewers feel.
Perception is such a strange thing. Vision in this case. We receive a bunch of electromagnetic waves, on different frequencies, this triggers millions of signals to be sent on arbitrary neural networks (formed by all our past experiences), which will construct something we abstractly refer to as a feeling, or emotion. Where am I getting at? These networks are person-to-person, so everyone feels differently about these images. Considering that not everyone gets triggered, raises the question, that maybe the real issue that sparks the fights isn’t in the pictures, but in certain viewers. Think about it. Why would someone drawing pictures of fictional cats kissing cause discomfort to people? Isn’t this absurd a little?
Well, for the record, people watching the boruu, are by definition people who care about Prequel and Katia, so that’s one part of the puzzle solved. But this doesn’t explain why blacklisting didn’t stop the disputes (although it did help somewhat). This leaves one option only: The offense isn’t taken in the unpleasantness of having to look at these drawings in some people, but in their mere existence (eg.: „how dare you draw that of her!”). This behaviour leans towards being awfully protective about a fictional character. Yet the more of a fan someone is of a story (and thus its characters), the higher the probability they might care for them. And it would be so strange, to scold people for liking Prequel on this website right? (still, manners tho)
Well, this doesn’t explain why people aren’t upset about the stuff made for the… erm… other boruu. The obvious difference is that that’s there, and this is here. Different places for different purposes and audiences. This implies that people treat the boruu as being consistent. So, for instance, if I made shipping art of Katia and an OC, that would make people think that Katia, Nick, and this OC are in a love triangle. But that’s utterly wrong! These should be considered to be in their own „pocket dimension”, they are all supposed to be separate. And now I think because of this, people believe that the boruu’s Katia is claimed by some OC (who’s an outsider to most of us), which is a notion incompatible with playing nicely together (meaning the problem isn’t in the drawing, but rather how we conceive the boruu). Maybe emphasising the detachment with a „fanfiction” tag or placing them in a separate (consistent) pool or something could help that, but I don’t know at this point, this is getting wierd.
I’m not going to lie, the reason why this topic interests me is because these drawings make me feel slightly uncomfortable too (not so much that I would start blacklisting). And because I like this community and miss when it was more pieceful. Also, sorry for the babbling, I’m tired. For me in some ways that has similar effects to being drunk for other people.
Zargothrax: Wowee, I apploud thee! For such willpower, and patience, that is. This single post contains more drawings than what I've ever uploaded combined.
Zargothrax: This definietly falls in the jawdropping category, Lapma, if you weren't already the creator of the current featured masterpiece, you probably would be anyway at this point!
Zargothrax: @AMKitsune: I sincerely believed the blacklisting feature would solve the disharmony on the boruu, yet it seems I was mistaken.
The rabbit hole goes deeper.
Zargothrax: @Sashimi: Thanks! Sank quite a lot more time into this than I initially thought I would. I keep rediscovering the fact that the later you find a problem in the fundamentals of your drawing, the harder it will be to fix it.
Zargothrax: Reminds me of that masterpiece of a videogame called "GAME OF THE YEAR: 420BLAZEIT vs. xxXilluminatiXxx [wow/10 #rekt edition] Montage Parody The Game"
Highly suggested for those in the dank arts
Dramatic Descriptions
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I checked before committing this comment and no, we don't have, but maybe we should?
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Also, well drawn cloak of grey tomorrow, and a plus for how nicely the drawing fades out at the bottom, instead of just "cutting off" at some point.
The only advice I'd give, is to pay attention to how the anatomy of a cat's nose really is. It's symmetric, if you draw a line down, from the tip of the nose along the surface, when it touches the mouth it touches the middle of the mouth. Because of how a cat's head/mouth/nose is shaped, there is a "notch" to the mouth, unlike with humans. You captured that well, but the centre of the "notch", and thus the mouth is off centre.
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Hold on. Is that Jotaro on the profile pic? Nyehehe... Hope to see more JoJokes as well
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As for featured, I hope to make some stuff in the future that will be more worthy of such title. Maybe not at the moment. Some time later.
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But in case you disagree, please add me to the address list of said PM!
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(Referencing both athletic and artistic skills)
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I'll see myself out
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By the way, I just want to point out, I'm really glad to see artists illustrate Katia, and Prequels other characters differently than they are depicted in the comic. It's like seeing these characters again in an entirely new perspective; the perspective of the individual reader and artist.
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Our cats behave very well in the presence of the christmas tree, I hope that doesn't change this year.
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By the way, I think this comment would’ve been more impactful If you had written it under >>5782. Here, only the head is is mimicked. I wouldn't call it a "traced image".
I think the worst lapma could be accused of here is „art style theft”. And if someone starts stealing your style, in my opinion that’s the biggest compliment you could recieve as an artist (save for extreme cases where you make a living from your art and someone’s trying to steal your wind). Because it means that you inspired others. It’s the equivalent of others looking up to you and saying: „I want to be like you”.
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I'm going to elect 'A', because I love flowing capes/hair and arcane badassery.
Also, I just noticed (especially on C) the extra details on her nose. The wrinkles, from the nature of the expression are exactly how they should look like on felines!
(I really hope the boruu dowscales this image as it's gigantic)
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(Also, shamelessly art style thieving from Boogeestro (sorry m9 you draw too well).) I may have drawn the ears too large, giving her a particularly bat-loking appearance, but I kind-of liked the aesthetics of bat-kat, so I left it as it is.
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Well, I’d rather not tell when I first started drawing as it would be pretty depressing. What matters is mileage, not how much time passes during that.
While I don’t really consider myself an „artist”, or „good”, I think I can still answer when I started noticing improvements.
When I started out, I thought about drawing as just lines next to each other. Drawing lines at the correct angles, differences and curves. Breaking this mindset and thinking about drawing as projecting a 3D body onto a canvas brought significant improvements (without this, drawings are kinda flat on the plane of the paper). What I mean is this: You have an idea in your head, though you can’t imageine all of it in your head, as bodies are complex (for now, I take it you want to make good figure drawings). So it is important to draw actionlines and boundingboxes, to indicate for us the pose, and what space the figure will occupy in 3D space. The point of the guidelines and such is to connect the imagined model in your head with the projection on the paper. If the connection breaks, you’ll notice that you just don’t know where certain lines should go in order to make the bodyparts have the desired orientation in 3D space. This also means that you should be familiar with 3D space. There is a free course here [url] http://drawabox.com/[/url], you don’t even need to make an account or anything, it’s just there. A few things about it: It’s long, and not very exciting, but clear, and your goals will be nonambiguous.
An another revelation was settling the „what came first, the chicken or the egg?” question, where the chicken is the pose, and the egg is the anatomy. One way of drawing is if you start building up the body from one point, say the head. The proportions and the anatomy will most likely be correct, but in the end you may notice, that this is not the pose you wanted (99.9% of the cases, the pose will be much stiffer than you imagined)! The other way is to start drawing an overly simplified body first, that has the correct pose. The problem here is that without points of reference, such as where certain muscle groups connect, where certain joints are, it is difficult to guess how long the limbs, or the torso should be, where the legs supposed to start, etc. Nonetheless, the second approach is the correct one. Realizing and using this improved my drawings significantly. By the way, the gesture of the figure makes much more of an impact on how „good” the drawing is percieved than nailing the muscle groups and every single bump on the body. How to practice this? Do so-called „gesture drawings”. Google it, watch youtube tutorials about it, others have explained it much better than I could. To be fair you still need some anatomy knowledge to make good gesture drawings, such as how the legs and the arms connect to the body exactly, but not too much.
The third thing I can think of is this: Drawing can be learned, but not tought. It doesn’t matter how much KNOWLEDGE you have on bodybuilding, you’ll need to do curls to grow your biceps yourself. KNOWING what to practice is important, because you can improve much quicker by doing meaningful excercises rather than screwing around aimlessly, but these excercises only help if you do them. This is the part I really struggle with, and I’m aware, that fixing this „part” would improve my skills tremendously. So I can’t give you any advice on this topic because I’m also bad at this (Even as of now, I’m typing this wall of text instead of practicing). Instead, I’ll give you someone else’s advice, maybe it’ll help you:
Make imperative goals. Or how do I say this. Goals that describe the HOW more than the WHAT. The latter would be for example „I want to be good at drawing” (this is WHAT you want to achieve). Every time you look at your drawings, your assessment on the matter would probably be „not yet”. Which is near perpetual state of failure, until you can finally say „yes I’m good at drawing”(and you’ll quit before that probably). The former would be for example: „I want to get better at drawing every day by practicing 1 hour every day” (this is HOW you want to achieve). Or practice anatomy 20 mins a day, then 20 minutes of gesture drawing, then 20 minutes of drawing an unfortunate khajiit. Or whatever timeframe suits you. Notice that in this case every day when you successfully draw for 1 hour is a victory. Big difference. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the shoulder every time you succeed.
Oh, and this might sound obvious, but you can only learn to draw if you don’t hate drawing. If a certain excercise or drawing becomes a huge chore for you, stop doing that. Maybe try it again later, but know when to say no.
Also some say that being part of a friendly community can be quite encouraging in pursuing a hobby. The boruu is a great place in this regard, for the most part. So as for this advice, you’re already on track.
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Couldn't agree more. And sometimes it really is so damn random, we can't even explain it to ourselves, let alone to someone else.
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The possessiveness. I didn’t make that up. It was a genuine input from a boruu member under a drawing that sparked a very similar debate. So this standpoint is an existing one. I’d also like to add that the drawing (that I’m not going to reference) was uploaded over a year ago, when OC romance images were not posted in large volumes, still almost every time one appeared, flames followed.
Problems like these don’t just go away by themselves. Resolving them requires understanding both sides. In your case, it seems simple enough, but see the opinion above. It doesn’t really matter if this person is right, wrong, wierd, or anything. They exist, they come to the boruu like us. We either find a pieceful solution (the blacklisting feature was such a step), or start banning people (or do nothing and let the Mods clean after the flames till the end of time).
I’m no moderator, but I still care for this community, because it was probably the main inspiration for me to start drawing. I know, we can’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try, that’s all I’m getting at. Anyway, I’m glad to see how this ended, at least in this case.
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Obviously the quantity of these submissions (nowadays) didn’t help, but this points towards that the problem originates from the nature of these images primarily, not their amount. Or rather, the way these pictures makes some viewers feel.
Perception is such a strange thing. Vision in this case. We receive a bunch of electromagnetic waves, on different frequencies, this triggers millions of signals to be sent on arbitrary neural networks (formed by all our past experiences), which will construct something we abstractly refer to as a feeling, or emotion. Where am I getting at? These networks are person-to-person, so everyone feels differently about these images. Considering that not everyone gets triggered, raises the question, that maybe the real issue that sparks the fights isn’t in the pictures, but in certain viewers. Think about it. Why would someone drawing pictures of fictional cats kissing cause discomfort to people? Isn’t this absurd a little?
Well, for the record, people watching the boruu, are by definition people who care about Prequel and Katia, so that’s one part of the puzzle solved. But this doesn’t explain why blacklisting didn’t stop the disputes (although it did help somewhat). This leaves one option only: The offense isn’t taken in the unpleasantness of having to look at these drawings in some people, but in their mere existence (eg.: „how dare you draw that of her!”). This behaviour leans towards being awfully protective about a fictional character. Yet the more of a fan someone is of a story (and thus its characters), the higher the probability they might care for them. And it would be so strange, to scold people for liking Prequel on this website right? (still, manners tho)
Well, this doesn’t explain why people aren’t upset about the stuff made for the… erm… other boruu. The obvious difference is that that’s there, and this is here. Different places for different purposes and audiences. This implies that people treat the boruu as being consistent. So, for instance, if I made shipping art of Katia and an OC, that would make people think that Katia, Nick, and this OC are in a love triangle. But that’s utterly wrong! These should be considered to be in their own „pocket dimension”, they are all supposed to be separate. And now I think because of this, people believe that the boruu’s Katia is claimed by some OC (who’s an outsider to most of us), which is a notion incompatible with playing nicely together (meaning the problem isn’t in the drawing, but rather how we conceive the boruu). Maybe emphasising the detachment with a „fanfiction” tag or placing them in a separate (consistent) pool or something could help that, but I don’t know at this point, this is getting wierd.
I’m not going to lie, the reason why this topic interests me is because these drawings make me feel slightly uncomfortable too (not so much that I would start blacklisting). And because I like this community and miss when it was more pieceful. Also, sorry for the babbling, I’m tired. For me in some ways that has similar effects to being drunk for other people.
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The rabbit hole goes deeper.
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Highly suggested for those in the dank arts