The Critique Community Thread

[Zyephen]

Not sure what you mean by 1s instead of 2s?

[Zyephen]

I tried messing with the timing a bit, you like this one better?

[ratique]

[UrMom]

Well, I don't know a thing about animation. But to cut on time and cells you can always do a smear of your character's legs as they jump over the log? This might also help smooth out the animation cuz it does look a little janky on the part where their legs start rearing up to jump.

Visuals look great, btw! Very nice to look at!

[Zyephen]

@DaniBoy thanks. I'll see if it helps.

[dawgofdawgness]

Definitely makes it more "action" in my opinion!!
It looks great

[Luminosophy]

I have zero experience with animation myself, but it does look way better with the slight pause. Although overall it seems a bit jerky. Not sure if it's just because you did a quick example fix.

That background is insane, I love it. What brushes were used for the foilage?

[Zyephen]

@spudfuzz I just downloaded a pack of 'too many gawd damn brushes', and used some of the tree/leaf brushes and layered them over each other.

@dawgofdawgness I think I'd have to draw in more a few more frames if I wanted it to be smoother. Most people over on tumblr seem to like the old version better I think because it's less jerky.

[hotsubsandwich]

it's also been used as a rather lazy/ offensive stereotype in the past.

Now I feel bad for suggesting the tilt of the eyes. Oops! I was mostly going off of what I’ve seen other western cartoons do and what I perceive. I have never done a study of different races while looking at real people though. My bad

All my detail is done through drawing, so when it comes to colour I pretty much just BS the details.

Hmm. Well, see now my issue with this advice is that this is what I already do? I use texture brushes on a lot of surfaces that I feel are too plain, and simple shading to suggest texture in situations where texture brushes are too much. But you were saying it is completely texture-less so now I’m confused because I thought it may just be too subtle in my examples but your advice is basically to be subtle??? I don’t know anymore

which one do you draw first? And have you considered perspective grids?

I draw the figure first and then the background, to get an idea of how big the character will be/how “close the camera” is and then fill in backgrounds. I haven’t used a perspective grid yet, but I may have to try that.

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

Thank you spud!

Honestly I think I would advise against rotating the eyes. Besides it not being at all what makes people look asian (any photograph of an asian person will in fact have rounded eyes that sit normally), it's also been used as a rather lazy/ offensive stereotype in the past.

Oh no 🤦‍♀️ the last thing I want to be is offensive! I’ll keep it mind for when I draw her in the future (or i’ll just recorrect it later; to bad I saved over the original :’D)

Facial structure is usually very rounded and rather flat, so I wouldn't have the cheeks protrude nearly as much.

This part of was kind of confusing. Do you mean in general, the facial structure of my characters is rounded/flat? I usually try to round out the faces so they don’t look too angular.

Honestly what you had wasn't too far off from looking Asian. If anything I think the other kids could have more experiments with different eye shapes.

Experiment how? Could you give suggestions please?

I dont want to complicate my style too much, as I want to be able draw these guys with some sort of ease!

Thanks Again for such a thorough critique !

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

The pose looks good to me! one thing I would try for the gun is creating a basic rEctangle block shape as a guide and then use that to help you draw the Gun at an angle, since it’s a 3D object. Your current sketch for the gun looks kind of flat, so that might be why it’s not working.

edit: Something like this, you see?

establish the basic shape of your object (gun), and then flesh it out (like you would a character)

[joe_galindez]

Do I detect a fellow Animorphs fan?

[edmourabarbosa]

I could be wrong here, but I'm of the opinion that the styles are inverse to what you're want. The "dream-like" style has the dark tones more saturated. This is pretty clear if you look at her hair, for example. The "normal" style has more washed colors, which in my opinion is a characteristic of a "dream-like" scenario. In my opinion you should just swap them.

[Zyephen]

hehe, just coincidence, I'm afraid ^^;

[dawgofdawgness]

Thanks ^_^ I'll try that out

[hotsubsandwich]

I've tried using some of the advice y'all have given me on this Voltron fan art (learning how to properly upward tilt a face, and color using more than one hue, and more contrast) I was wondering if it looks like I am improving with these techniques or if I'm still not grasping them.

[Zyephen]

This might help you see it better

If you want a more drastic head tilt:

If you want even more tilt the chin/jaw will eventually start to bow upward. Best advice to learn is to just draw anatomy. NOT anime or comics, but actual photographs or models. It's the fastest way to improve really.

[hotsubsandwich]

I appreciate you taking the time to look at my work.
So from your red line I actually kind of learned that I did understand how to do the head tilt because I already knew everything you told me with it.
I actually did draw most of the eye lids kind of how you demonstrated them in my sketch and then erased it in the line art because I tried to imply it through shading. Maybe the colors weren’t dark enough.
I also feel like I drew the mouth exactly how I wanted to despite your red line.
I may add nostrils, but I did know they would be showing and Just didn’t like how they looked so I ended up erasing them.
And I only wanted a slight head tilt.
A final word,
I’m not against using realism to learn but I also think that’s an overused and overrated piece of advice. Not everyone is skilled in drawing realism, or even enjoys drawing realism. Anatomy is one thing, but you can learn that by drawing stylistically and studying photos of real people.
I just don’t like being told what to draw for fun.

[Zyephen]

@hotsubsandwich If you don't like my advice you certainly don't need to listen, but If you want to improve on your anime's anatomy, learning real anatomy is the way to do it. Think of it as a foundation to build a more stylized art style off of. I was the same way when I was younger, only wanting to draw anime and manga, taking a life drawing class with real nude models improved my anatomical understanding 10 fold, and really boosted my confidence too.

Something like this for instance still looks anime, but the artists has very strong foundations in anatomy, and color as well. http://static.zerochan.net/Sesshoumaru.full.1934009.jpg

Just food for thought.

[LordVincent]

Nude model drawing is super helpful!
Personally I am of the opinion that we all learn in different ways and there's value in most professional sources. Taking some real life references in is needed, however just how much that is depends from person to person. Some people just find it easier to understand the shape language when studying real life and drawings side by side.

I remember as a beginner it was hard to understand real life without a drawing (even when I was doing realistic portraits) because I have aspergers syndrome, so my brain picked up on every single detail, all the way down to the pores. I have had to manually teach it what to filter out and ignore. (Someone will call bullshit on this, but you need to understand: Some people with aspergers and adhd can walk through a crowd and be unable to "turn off" anything anyone around them is saying. They hear every single word every single person is saying and it becomes a confusing information overload. We're left not knowing what to do at all.) And surely, I'm not the only one.

That being said, even if you learn in this way, using real life references is neccessary too in order to be able to spot mistakes that artists are making, so you don't pick up their mistakes.

Just offering a bit of a middle ground and a small explanation to people on either side so we don't create some weird debate over this