An Anime a Day Challenge

rajillustration 2021-02-25 06:58:00 UTC #1

I have a confession to make, I am a professional artist that can paint pretty good but cannot for the life of me draw a very convincing anime (I just...I draw in a way that screams "This is not natural for me to draw this way") and I want to fix that shame because it's just been so many years, and I consistently have this problem. So I'm making an art challenge for it because it's 2021 and this is the year I draw an anime without it feeling like I'm using two thumbs. (EDIT: All thumbs? two thumbs? I have no idea what this saying is.)

So, if you want, join me in Anime a Day Club, and do a simple study of an anime a day, using reference or no reference, it's up to you. This is the safe place where we can post our anime attempts and disregard our entire western Art education and do what your one animation teacher told you to never do (or maybe you're hella good and want to smoke me? that's fine too.) I'll be here posting every day with what I learned from stalking different artists. Hopefully. Maybe? Stuff might come up, but hopefully I can knock one of these out in the evening over the next 30ish days? (If by some miracle I get my vaccine before those 30 days then I will leave my damn house, but that will not happen.)

Tanako 2021-02-25 07:05:50 UTC #2

I'm interested but one thing tho, We need to use real human anatomy( pictures and stuff) and maybe some draw anatomy bodies. the reason why I say this is because using Anime as a reference isn't gonna cut it. you need to understand the basics of the human body before diving into unrealistic or manipulating the body

rajillustration 2021-02-25 07:09:49 UTC #3

Day 1 is a study from "welcome to Rivenrows" which is a comic by Sh0d03 https://tapas.io/series/Rivenrows/info

and I figured it would be good to start with since it appears to simple--but it was harder than I thought to nail the proportions--I kept wanting to go back to the Western way, which in the end gave me this weird wandering eye I usaully don't have haha.

Something I really like about that comic, is that they are really good at using Clip's particular method of blending to make a really neat and shiny texture near the eyes--and I'm gonna be honest--I don't know what is going on with the eye-fold anatomy. But it looks neat.

-I've also noticed a lot of hot colors in shadow in anime influenced art--so I'm really happy to see their use of red in the shadow, which is also something else that made me want to do a study of this. It's actually not that bright of a red. I went a little brighter than I needed to (which is partly my mistake for doing colors on a white background, I'll have to remedy that for the next study tomorrow)

-I also like how they do grey sclera in the eyes--like reallly gray sclera

-I'm also going to be getting some Clip Studio practice for this challenge, so this is the first time I've drawn in the program for a whillllle so forgive my jank.

rajillustration 2021-02-25 07:12:11 UTC #4

These are strictly style studies, and so you should already have a pretty good understanding of anatomy before venturing forth. But if you want to do studies that are human anatomy only--go right ahead, most good anime actually has a really good understanding of anatomy. The proportions are just different.

Tanako 2021-02-25 07:50:15 UTC #5

Oh ok, I guess I missed that part. well in that case I think I'll pass. it would be weird if I was the only one focusing on anatomy while everyone else is focusing on style. I think I have a pretty good style of my own.

nathanKmcwilliams 2021-02-25 18:34:28 UTC #6

Alrighty. I'm down, this sounds fun. Mine will probably all be sketchy as heck though, hope that's okay.

rajillustration 2021-02-26 02:02:15 UTC #7

Totally fine! I'm only spending so long on mine, personally.

rajillustration 2021-02-26 02:21:06 UTC #8

For my Second Anime a Day, I decided to take a stab at the mascot character from "Mahjong Soul" because I play a hell ton of that game and I look at this chick...basically every day (and she tells me to give her snacks, every single time I open the app). I got deep into Mahjong during quarantine (The free kind, I don't gamble) but that aside, I did learn some things from this study. I mostly wanted to dive into coloring, but it was taking a while to draw so I just...decided to do a polished lineart today, and we'll jump into trying to reverse engineer how they colored it tomorrow. It's a shame I don't know the original artist, since they work in a studio and there's probably a lot of artists who work on the same images--so I can't just stalk them and see what programs they're using and maybe what brushes they use as well. My guess is SAI, since that's more common in Asia than Photoshop in the West.

-I realized that maybe the illusion of the huge eyes may also be a bit of...an illusion--because there's so much contrast compared to her skin color, which is practically white. I'll find out tomorrow, but I definately still feel like the eyes are the wrong size.

-Decided to take advantage of Clip's vector abilities where I can edit a line after I draw it--which was really helpful in nailing certain shapes. I think if I were using paper I wouldn't have to do this, but I'm on a tablet so I did enjoy playing with the vector lines. Good stuff. I never really learned how to manipulate it so I'm glad I spent the time to learn that today. I need to learn the quick-keys for those tools however, or at least add them to my quick-keys becuase they are mad useful.

-Another thing I realized is that these eyes are like...hellllla low on the forehead. It's mostly bangs but man this cat girl has so much forehead.

-One of the things I need to figure out is anime hair. Spent most my time on that and I have no idea if this is the information I'll need for coloring. But again...we'll see tomorrow.

rajillustration 2021-02-27 01:11:43 UTC #9

Day #3 and I have colored the anime.

Now her right eye is hella winking at me? It didn't look like that yesterday. Huh.
Anyway, I realized that this artist is drawing on top of their line layer as like a final polish sweep. I don't feel like covering up all my linework so I'll just...do this much. I appreciated how they use a backlight to show stacking of objects--so the bells are stacked where there's a backlight, same with the layers on the bows.

I'm definately using a different brush than they are. No idea what brush they're using. I was using a soft watercolor standard one in Clip, and I might need to learn how to really finangle Clip brushes because I'm not loving the feel of it. But it looks pretty all right despite the large right eye so I'll leave it at that and move to another anime for tomorrow's study.

rajillustration 2021-02-28 01:53:06 UTC #10

For today's study of my Anime A Day challenge (I think it's day 4?) I'm gonna do something a little bit harder and try to deconstruct the art of Puzzles and Dragons

This game has a really good art team (that needs to lay off the boobs but that's another story about gotcha games in general) and I play this game...often (I main just two Yuna's or just two Yugi's and I need nothing else) because of how good the art is (also, it's a good game). I've always liked how they do very dynamic poses and make it look--just really damn interesting. So obviously it's such a very complicated picture, that I'm just gonna do it one day at a time, trying to reverse-engineer what is even going on here.

Some things to note: I don't know what his left foot is doing, and I may just cover it with the fabric?

-I like that they covered his other hand in fabric. That makes my life so much easier.
-he has so much hair and I don't think I made his hair big enough
-forshortening is hard
-I have lost the energy of the pose, and I think it's in the lines of the back, and that his chest needs to be curved downward towards the floor some more to give it a better S-curve? Will probably see why tomorrow when I load up this image.
-and I'm not sure what information I'm going to need when I color this thing, so I'm holding back on linework when it comes to the muscular structures. Really wish I had a higher-def picture, but this is the best I got (From here https://ilmina.com/#/CARD/5062 in case you want to check out other art on PAD, it's just a really good recourse for some great poses)
-there's a theory amongst artists that you will 100% of the time draw your head too big. So afterward you need to shrink your heads. Always. I will need to shrink his head.

rajillustration 2021-03-02 03:21:37 UTC #11

Updating my art challenge of apparently only myself (feel free to jump in at any time, ps). Feeling like I don't know where to start coloring the other one so I'm doing some gesture studies today of Persona 5's art because that art team is hella fire. and I cannot get over how wild the perspective and gesture is in this picture.

I'd look up who this artist was and figure out more about their process but I just ate a hot dog that is not sitting well with me so I'll deal with that later.