Munin´s art

Creatures · October 13th, 2012, 6:20:55 am

I've been trying to make a reference sheet for someone, and I've only recently started. As I'm better with traditional style for initial drawing, I decided to colour and fix it later on computer, as the sheet has to be digital. But before I continue with the next step, could you please tell me about things I need to fix?

Spoiler

The part on the back is actually another wing, very small and folded.

EDIT: I know feathers are layered in wrong direction, I fixed it, but can't scan it right now. I'm just a bit mad at myself - I started them drawing in the right direction and then thought that it's wrong. And then it took me twice as long as it would, as I'm not really good at drawing feathers like I did. And then to fix it ^^'

Creatures · Post by **Munin** » October 16th, 2012, 4:36:22 am

sparkpaw wrote:Hi Munin! I'm back for some more advice. :3
I'm working on making some pixel pets based on the epic new doni's. But I'm not very good with fur.... at least not semi-realistic or realistically.

So anyways, here's a wip. The face has had more work than the body, but you can still see generally where I am going with this.

Feel free to save the file and play with it or whatever you'd like. :3
I do like the lines the way they are, so I need help basically on getting the fur to look realistic. (And I am doing this in grayscale)

I have to agree with ML1201, a pixel pet is something quite different ;)

The anatomy looks good, no obvious things I´d see there. The fur on the head looks somewhat stiff, too orderly and regular. You´ve paid attention to the fur direction but the "areas" of different direction don´t blend into each other overly well and on the nose it is not correct (the hair is parallel to the nose but should be normal to it).
I am not sure if you plan on leaving the tail like that but the very distinct outline does not really fit the whispy, insubstantial look of the spectral wolves´tails in my eyes.
For the fur I´d recommend taking a look at GlassWalker´s sideart for the red panda or temple cat, her way of doing fur is great and very natural looking.

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Ravenlore wrote:Hi Munin, I'm trying to make an outline for an ouroboros hatchling, and this is what I came up with so far. /yesitsverybad

It really isn´t bad so far

I have to admit "hatchling" would not have been the first thing I´d thought though because it´s somewhat on the big side, how big is the adult sprite going to be?
The only thing that makes this critter look a bit odd (apart from the obvious oddness of the concept of an oroborous xD) is that the body has slight variations in thickness due to the way the upper and lower outline of the curve are arranged (it always gets thinner in the curved parts and the "straight" parts are thicker which you should be able to fix by just moving the lower outline down by one pixel in the curved parts). Also I´d have expected it to be a bit more snake-like and taper off a bit more severely towards the end. Or if you want to make it look like it has swallowed more than the very tip of the tail leave it at that thickness and have the jaws clamped around it fully instead of leaving a bit of air between upper jaw and tail.

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WillowPuma wrote:Hi Munin!
Recently ive drawn this sort of dog thing...

But I think it looks too much like some sort of balloon.

There are several factors adding to the "balloonyness" of this little critter.
First of all the anatomy is a bit off, you´ve got very long, stiff legs attached to a really thin body. The legs are not of the same length and thus don´t end on the same plane so that it doesn´t look like the dog is standing on the ground. The shape of the paws adds to that as they are not formed like they are carrying any weight, the dog is just floating.
The neck gets too thin where the head attaches and the tail attaches somewhat too low on the body.

Another thing adding to the feeling that the dog is not a living creature ist the shading. You have pillowshaded the critter, meaning the light is coming from the viewer and hits always in the center of each body part making it look like the body is made up of stuffed pillows. Usually you want to avoid that, light coming from the direction of the viewer is unusual unless the viewer has a torchlight or is about to run the poor creature over. Stronger contrast would help make it more three-dimensional.
Here´s a (rather crude) example of how I´d change anatomy and shading (I didn´t change the whole tail, it would need some smoothing as well now that I look at it):

->

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SilverDragoness wrote:I've been trying to make a reference sheet for someone, and I've only recently started. As I'm better with traditional style for initial drawing, I decided to colour and fix it later on computer, as the sheet has to be digital. But before I continue with the next step, could you please tell me about things I need to fix?

Spoiler
The part on the back is actually another wing, very small and folded.

EDIT: I know feathers are layered in wrong direction, I fixed it, but can't scan it right now. I'm just a bit mad at myself - I started them drawing in the right direction and then thought that it's wrong. And then it took me twice as long as it would, as I'm not really good at drawing feathers like I did. And then to fix it ^^'

The tiger´s legs are a bit stiff looking. I know it is hard to show the joints in this perspective but just bending them a tiny little bit helps a lot. The left front leg (our point of view) does not seem to have a paw. Either it would be slightly visible in front or behind the other leg or the paw would be bent more if it didn´t have contatct to the ground. Right now with both far legs being off the ground the whole creature looks somewhat unbalanced, like it is going to topple over sideways. The paws are rather more delicate than a tiger´s usually are, if you look at references you´ll see that their toes are not that well defined. Unless the nearest paw is not touching the ground we would not see the toes from that perspective (leading to the same problem that the balloony dog has, there´s no weight on the paw and thus the contact to the ground is somewhat lost).
The wings attach somewhat oddly, a bit too far away from the shoulders and both on one sode of the spine. I´d also turn them so that they are parallel to the body instead of normal to it as right now there is no way they´d generate any sort of lift if the creature were trying to fly. The small folded wing on the back is odd and doesn´t make any sense but I guess that´s not something you could change if it is not your character. You´ve already noticed that the feathers are not correctly layered so I won´t comment on that further.

Creatures · Post by **Ely** » October 16th, 2012, 4:42:28 am

Munin wrote:
Ravenlore wrote:Hi Munin, I'm trying to make an outline for an ouroboros hatchling, and this is what I came up with so far. /yesitsverybad

It really isn´t bad so far
I have to admit "hatchling" would not have been the first thing I´d thought though because it´s somewhat on the big side, how big is the adult sprite going to be?
The only thing that makes this critter look a bit odd (apart from the obvious oddness of the concept of an oroborous xD) is that the body has slight variations in thickness due to the way the upper and lower outline of the curve are arranged (it always gets thinner in the curved parts and the "straight" parts are thicker which you should be able to fix by just moving the lower outline down by one pixel in the curved parts). Also I´d have expected it to be a bit more snake-like and taper off a bit more severely towards the end. Or if you want to make it look like it has swallowed more than the very tip of the tail leave it at that thickness and have the jaws clamped around it fully instead of leaving a bit of air between upper jaw and tail.

Yay, you're back!

Well, it's going to be...bigger?

Otherwise I would just be staying with this as the last and final stage of the ouroboros. Thank you for the advice, I'll get to it straight-away. On the other hand, do you think I need to make the head a little more snake like? I can't do dragon. Too hard. xD

Creatures · Post by **Munin** » October 16th, 2012, 4:45:13 am

Not really back, just passing through xD
I was just asking about the size as the bigger the sprite gets the harder it is to do and if your hatchie is already quite big the adult would need to be bigger. I like the head, it looks like a good mixture of dragon, snake and dinosaur to me and thus perfect for an oroborous.

Creatures · Post by **WillowPuma** » October 16th, 2012, 10:05:22 am

Thank you very much!
Anatomy is not my strong point

especially necks.
And legs.
Thanks!

Creatures · Post by **sparkpaw** » October 16th, 2012, 6:04:04 pm

Munin- so I should maybe try for more of a flat fur look with accents of the long fur on the "mane", belly, and ears like the cat? And I think the nose hairs are correct- they are going from the nose towards the eyes. O_O At least, I followed the same direction as my reference... ^^;

But anyways, yes, that tail won't be lined in and blocked, it'll turn into that foggy look. And I will also be downsizing (the whole picture) greatly. But still won't be a pixel pet, I suppose

Thank you for your help dear!

Creatures · October 16th, 2012, 7:09:49 pm

Munin wrote:
Spoiler
SilverDragoness wrote:I've been trying to make a reference sheet for someone, and I've only recently started. As I'm better with traditional style for initial drawing, I decided to colour and fix it later on computer, as the sheet has to be digital. But before I continue with the next step, could you please tell me about things I need to fix?

The part on the back is actually another wing, very small and folded.

EDIT: I know feathers are layered in wrong direction, I fixed it, but can't scan it right now. I'm just a bit mad at myself - I started them drawing in the right direction and then thought that it's wrong. And then it took me twice as long as it would, as I'm not really good at drawing feathers like I did. And then to fix it ^^'
The tiger´s legs are a bit stiff looking. I know it is hard to show the joints in this perspective but just bending them a tiny little bit helps a lot. The left front leg (our point of view) does not seem to have a paw. Either it would be slightly visible in front or behind the other leg or the paw would be bent more if it didn´t have contatct to the ground. Right now with both far legs being off the ground the whole creature looks somewhat unbalanced, like it is going to topple over sideways. The paws are rather more delicate than a tiger´s usually are, if you look at references you´ll see that their toes are not that well defined. Unless the nearest paw is not touching the ground we would not see the toes from that perspective (leading to the same problem that the balloony dog has, there´s no weight on the paw and thus the contact to the ground is somewhat lost).
The wings attach somewhat oddly, a bit too far away from the shoulders and both on one sode of the spine. I´d also turn them so that they are parallel to the body instead of normal to it as right now there is no way they´d generate any sort of lift if the creature were trying to fly. The small folded wing on the back is odd and doesn´t make any sense but I guess that´s not something you could change if it is not your character. You´ve already noticed that the feathers are not correctly layered so I won´t comment on that further.

Okay, so I need to ...
- fix leg joints
- add a paw (how did I manage to miss it ^^')
- fix the view of the other front paw and make it less delicate
- move wings

But I actually intended the wings to normally be turned parallel, but the tiger is in the "I'm big and strong and dangerous and most cerrrrtainly biggerrr than youuu" position - that's why I drew wings turned towards us, like he's showing off and making himself bigger.
And it's actually more like a contest - each entrant makes up their own character for entering. Those small back wings were intended as stabilizers and to aid in manoeuvring - my intention was to say they're stiff in vertical direction, he can only spread and fold them, but can't be moved up and down. Though I might have drawn it too small to be of any use in that ...

Anyway, thank you so much for your help!

EDIT: Is this any better? I haven't moved the wings yet, as I'll rather do that on computer. But don't mind the patterns, I was bored and started scribbling all over it ^^' And I know toes are still very defined, I'm hoping I'll be able to make them look as they do on computer, but for now I use them as guidelines.

Spoiler

Creatures · October 30th, 2012, 6:52:41 pm

Well, it's been a while! :3 I've found things other than MagiStream to occupy my time, so I haven't been on very often.

Thank you very much for the critique you gave me on my ocelot sprite. I'm afraid starting over might be the easiest thing to do-- for me, it's rather difficult to edit certain things on a sprite. It may be simpler to start over on paper, giving the cat a more "bulky" look before scanning it in and trying once more. I'll get to work on that, and thanks again for your help.

I do have something else that I need help on. xD; I've been rather obsessed with drawing dragons lately, and I've been sketching out a concept for a wingless dragon character of mine, Krya. Along with practicing her anatomy, I've been trying to draw her from three different angles. The angle I've outlined in blue is obviously the worst, and I need a bit of help with it.

If there's anything else that seems "funky" with her anatomy, feel free to mention it!~ c: I need as much help as I can get with Krya, since I'm going to be drawing her a lot in the future.

Spoiler

(Sorry for the out-of-place gray line on her back, the curve there looked a bit extreme so I tried fixing it.)

Creatures · Post by **Munin** » November 1st, 2012, 9:01:07 am

SilverDragoness wrote:
EDIT: Is this any better? I haven't moved the wings yet, as I'll rather do that on computer. But don't mind the patterns, I was bored and started scribbling all over it ^^' And I know toes are still very defined, I'm hoping I'll be able to make them look as they do on computer, but for now I use them as guidelines.
Spoiler

The front paws look better like this, yes. I don´t see any other differences if I am honest, the legs still look as stiff as before.

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ShadowOfThePhoenix wrote:Well, it's been a while! :3 I've found things other than MagiStream to occupy my time, so I haven't been on very often.

Thank you very much for the critique you gave me on my ocelot sprite. I'm afraid starting over might be the easiest thing to do-- for me, it's rather difficult to edit certain things on a sprite. It may be simpler to start over on paper, giving the cat a more "bulky" look before scanning it in and trying once more. I'll get to work on that, and thanks again for your help.

I do have something else that I need help on. xD; I've been rather obsessed with drawing dragons lately, and I've been sketching out a concept for a wingless dragon character of mine, Krya. Along with practicing her anatomy, I've been trying to draw her from three different angles. The angle I've outlined in blue is obviously the worst, and I need a bit of help with it.

If there's anything else that seems "funky" with her anatomy, feel free to mention it!~ c: I need as much help as I can get with Krya, since I'm going to be drawing her a lot in the future.
Spoiler
(Sorry for the out-of-place gray line on her back, the curve there looked a bit extreme so I tried fixing it.)

Yes, I think starting over is indeed easiest for the ocelot but the lines you have would make for very good lines for a house cat if you want to practice

I´ll critique and redline your dragon sometime next week, I am on holiday and don´t have a tablet with me.
As you suspected the blue sketch has some perspective problems and some things about the legs look off to me that I have to think about and scribble over to see how joints and bones would be placed but with a mouse that´s tedious work.

Creatures · Post by **ML1201** » November 1st, 2012, 7:35:18 pm

So Munin is not giving out tricks or treats this year? :o

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Munin´s art

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post

Re: Munin´s art - free help/critique (please read first post