Trying to draw more realistically, eh? Draw things as they appear naturally? You seem to be drawing from what you remember, or what you think eyes/lips/noses should look like, which means you're still not sure how faces really look. As I have a one-track mind about situations like this, I wonder what I'm going to say...

From what I remember? Kinda, I guess. I can draw heads great when it's perfectly straight forward, but this head's tilted. And, yeah, I'll resize it, but I'm not going to do a bust 'cause it's gonna be for a character bio for a story I'm writing. :> The other character will follow this guy.

Awesome. :D Thanks.

EDIT: Upon coming back to this, I realized it sucks. I'm redoing this (and I guess I gotta if I'm gonna change the size of the drawing).

EDIT2: And I'm also gonna try a different (and easier) view.


Edited by Pumpkinbot - 09 February 2010 at 7:22pm

Yeah, I switched back to the same view. But I don't get what you mean about the shapes. You make arms out of cylinders, a head out of an oval, a hand out of a cube, etc. What do you mean?

Using basic 3D forms to help guide making more complex ones is good. What I was talking about was using 2D symbols in place of 3D forms. Like look at your eye. Does an eye really look like that? No, what you drew is just an ellipse with a circle in the middle of it. An eye is a 3D thing with volume, what you drew is a 2D shape with no volume.

Sorry, didn't know you were above help from professionals.

Not every manga drawing is chibi or "super-cute" in style.

Manga is just an exaggerated form of realism. If you can draw Manga, you're not far from Realism. If you can draw Realism, you're not far from Manga.

Anatomy isn't easy.  Looking better though.
You can try this site for references too:  http://www.posemaniacs.com/

To be honest.  I'm not sure anything is wrong with your anatomy.  It's hard for me to tell from that image.  Maybe the upper arm is a bit too long.  I can't be sure though.

Eh, I don't think so. Second head is from chin to nipples, third head is from nipples to belly button, fourth is from belly button to crotch. I followed that. (Thanks to the books dpixel showed me. :P)

Well, I'm not going to fully render his hands because he's going to have his hands tucked into the pockets of a hoodie.

EDIT: Ist das gut?



Edited by Pumpkinbot - 11 February 2010 at 6:40pm

Don't start with a stick figure, then trace outlines. Draw out the forms as solids.

Don't do clean ups before the general feel of the form is right. Pure outlines won't express the bulk of the body, the striations of muscles, the shape of the skull, etc. Tweaking outlines will eventually force your sketch to wander into some weird forms.

As for the anatomy of your sketch, there are two points I want to touch. First, the posture doesn't feel natural. The top half is straight, shoulders relaxed and a bit forward. It suggests a somewhat feeble or shy personality. The bottom half's weight is supported mainly by the left leg, and the bow of the right leg reminds me of cowboys...

The second point is that the forms of the muscles are off. The lines of the neck muscles connecting to the shoulders and arms are too noodley. The definition of the muscles aren't there. This doesn't apply just to muscular people, mind you. With your hand curled up like that, there should be some bulge on the upper portion of the arm. Look for reference photos of heads taken from the side. You'll see that the neck is connected to the base of the skull, slightly to the back, and the neck is actually tilted forward.

Here's a half-minute sketch. Take note that I don't use straight lines for the character, even for the base stick figure. Each section of the body is defined [head, neck, shoulders, pecs, abdomen, upper and forearms, hands, hip/ groin, legs, feet.] If I were to directly outline from scratch, It would be near impossible to ensure the correct form of the body.


Anime, Manga, Realistic, Comic, Cartoon, East, West, etc. Believe it or not, the base proportions for them ARE based off real anatomy. What makes them different from each other is how the original shape is altered to express a certain personality for the character. An 8-head superhero is just like what a 7-head John Doe would look if he carried an extra 200 pounds of muscle mass. ONLY START EXAGGERATING ONCE YOU LEARN THE FUNDAMENTALS. It is frustrating, but everyone who wants to improve has to go through this.

The facial features and eyes are out of proportion to the rest of the head. I think his cranium is too big also. Take a look at this.
http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/3d/modeling_human_head_in_3ds_max.png

Yea probably not the best reference, just picked one that looked near the perspective of the head.

The only problem with that is how specific poses are and how scarce good poses are. :/ I've been trying to look.

Anyway, since I can't do it (this is my...third attempt? Fourth?), I give up.

You'll never get any better at pixel art if you give up on it after a few try's. Take my thread for example,(not bragging) but my first attempt looked like crap, even up to my 10th try it didn't look very good. Then after more and more attempts it started to take shape. Practice is the key to good pixel art- just art in period. 

You're still young. Meago might have beautiful scraps in her gallery, so what? It's quite possible she's done thousands of terrible drawings before she registered on Deviantart. Some artists start drawing before they could even walk. I know of a few people around me who started when they were over 20, but picked up fairly quickly because they were willing to work their butts off to learn. Don't compare yourself to Meago. You're you, don't strive to be the shadow of another person.

I'm sorry about the ineffective critiques. If we had the time, I'm guessing all of us would post exhaustive texts on theory and such, but that would mean every thread in the forum would have the exact same stuff.

All the technical aspects on anatomy take time to understand. The subtle curves of the body, the way skin slides over muscle, how high heels affect the way a person walks, etc. I'm telling you now, there's no good tutorial for realistic anatomy for pixel art out there. But there are tons of anatomy references for artists. It shouldn't matter what pose is available out there. Just try and study whatever's available. After a while you'd find ways of translating those references into whichever pose you have in mind.

If you need anatomy reference, I'd recommend Ron Lemen. I've read though his stuff in ImagineFX, and his tutorials on anatomy are both awesome and easy to understand. I still have the magazines on my desk until now as reference.

Okay, back to your work. Is there a specific style you want to emulate? (By style I meant A specific artist's style in a specific genre.) It might be easier if we work on breaking down that person's way of painting, so we can adapt it to your style.

What people said.

We all started from exactly the same point: 0.

It takes practice to learn drawing, you can't substitute practice with some tutorials or advice, even the best there is. They can only vaguely point the way, at best.

The most difficult thing to draw is the human body. So, huge congrats for trying, but you won't make awesome stuff on your 1st, or 2nd, or 20th try. No way. Fact of life.

But each and every try is a step forward, even those that fail miserably.

Now, there's only 2 things for you to do:
- sketch from life, on paper. Go in the street and sketch people. Ask friends to pose for you. Draw yourself in the mirror.
Do that a lot, everyday, don't try to make anything nice, it's your eye you're training.

- before working on a serious piece, paper or pixels, get refs! Not one: lots! Sketch them, get used to them. Only when you feel you can do it without looking at them, is the time to start.


How many times did I write this lately? Pfuuu. :D