Why do I still hate it?

[Krysteena]

So for my 100the episode of my book I revamped one of my old pictures. I have been staying away from airbrush and trying to make things more anime-ism verison my natural art realism. The changes have not came easy and many people have helped with the changes. I plan to make a manga of my book so I am trying ot get better. The piece i did below looks more cartoon then anime for some reason to me so maybe you can give me some points. I went from one extreme to the next lol!

[NOOR_ASAKZ05]

What drawing program do you use? Maybe I can help you.

[Krysteena]

I use Autodesk cause it was loaded on my tablet and free that said I am trying to grow into clip studio but there are a lot of things that is frustrating and confusing it is just me needing to adjust I have had auto desk 4 years now and it was my first for digital art.

[kyupol]

Looks great either way. Personally prefer the old one but that's just my opinion

[NOOR_ASAKZ05]

Unfortunately I have no experience with it​ Anyway, your problem seems to be with the type of layers. I don't know how to explain this, but the shading on the hair and clothes looks faded. You may need to adjust the type of layer if you have one and make it look blended in harmoniously, if you get what I mean.

[Krysteena]

I had to may people calling it AI but I know why because I use the airbrush a lot it creates blurry look that gives it a more digital look to it. Also I had a way to small file so when uploading it it made it more pixeled and worse! So I changed that also the original takes longer to do as I add more details.

[wolflu66]

You can still achieve effects similar to the image on the right using brushes with sharp edges. You don't necessarily have to paint the light and dark areas as distinctly as in anime style.

↓artist: Rinotuna
https://x.com/rinotuna

[vapidink]

If you want to get a better lighting effect you can play around with the different layer blending modes. If you're only using "normal" layers it can be a bit harder to get the right contrast to make dramatic lighting stand out. It's why the purple looks more dull than if you'd used an "add glow" or "glow dodge" layer.

The other thing I would point out on why the picture looks odd is that, considering all of the dramatic lighting you have in the picture, there should be a lot more contrast between colors. Her legs, for example, look very flat except for the bit of rim lighting, but if the flames are below her, then there should be brighter lighting towards the feet and fading upwards. In the old picture it looks like you did that part a little bit better, as you can see the gradual shift in brightness. But yeah, the airbrush definitely gives it a sort of muddled look too.

[ArtGremlin]

I personally prefer the old one, because in the new one the lighting seems to not reflect realistically off of the materials it’s reflecting on to. I think your real problem is that you need a better understanding of light. Now, it is a pretty tricky subject, but I think what’s probably helped me with lighting most has been watching yt tutorials (from people who know what they’re talking about) You may not understand the information perfectly all at once, but it will slowly sink in with practice and study.
Thing is, both of them look like anime style to me. I feel like the thing that defines “anime style” is mostly how you draw the face of your character or stylize the proportions. How you simplify the lighting can play a part too, but if I saw a drawing with a character that had anime-like proportions but realistic lighting, I’d still call it “anime style”
Ai can replicate anime style very easily, so I don’t think going all anime can really save you man 🥲 I’m not entirely sure why people are mistaking your art for AI, but maybe it’s because semi-realism is a popular way to generate art. To me it looks pretty human so 🤷 (except the background of the old one. Not sure what about it, but it just looks very realistic compared to the character. Like, not saying that’s a bad thing, it looks very nice, but if you told me you didn’t draw it by hand I wouldn’t be surprised?)

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I'm not a hundred percent sure what you mean by "more cartoon", but the issue that stands out most to me is that the highlights on the "New" version are super unnecessarily bright.
Like, lemme just use the color picker tool on the same areas of the drawing:

And this isn't just the highlights on the girl; the lighting on everything in the drawing is blown out and simplified the same way. There isn't as much hue blending or overall color grading as there is in the painting; just singular bright colors airbrushed over everything in the direction of light. It makes the coloring look less skillful, tbh. =/

I think if you wanted to make the art look more "anime", the time you took to hard-line everything in the drawing is more than enough; your linework is beautiful.
You could also try to up the color contrast; high contrast usually helps to make things look more anime:

I feel like even the new colors look better this way; that bright pink lighting blends in more with a brighter image...

[wolflu66]

I also like the old version. In any case, when people suggest you 'use less airbrush,' it doesn't mean you need to abandon your original style and switch to painting like anime.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Another vote here for the older version. It could be touched up here or there for details but it looks good. The newer version feels like it's trying too hard.

[Humbug]

I prefer the old background more, the lighting and shadows are downplayed enough that it makes the character stand out more. The increased contrast of the lighting in the new image makes the character blend into the background instead. Also, the purple highlights is not necessary in the background, it just detracts further from the character.

[svlyisanliu]

Oh, wow, probably it's not helpful, but I like the older version more. I'm a fan of more blurry stuff in general

[Lensing]

I use Autodesk Sketchbook too, I have exactly the same problems with the
transition to CSP. I just can´t get used to it because I´m so used to Sketchbook.
One example I love the space bar shortcut for turn/move/zoom in & out in one tool and
use that all the time. The Autodesk Sketchbook interface is lovely and so easy
to change.

The only thing that is worth looking into imo, and this will maybe help you too, is
the coloring options in clip. I do all my sketches in Autodesk and then change to
Clip for the flatting because that´s way easier with the lasso tool in clip.
There are some tools which work better in clip for the rendering like the soft and hard
eraser, and the smudge tool which are better to show hard or soft edges when
you do the rendering

[Sinful_Pen]

it's a artist thing bud, my wife goes through the same thing i think they are both good. keep up the good work.

[Krysteena]

Right like I said I am awesome at realism and how light effects peoples natural curves but anime throws that out I will look at a flat shadowed line down the face and be like okay so we ignore the eyebrow curves and the lip and chin just a line lol.

[Krysteena]

I agree I was scared to dig deep into contrast thinking it would wash the image but now seeing it I like it it pops more

[Krysteena]

Funny thing I put way more time in the old verses new 8-10 hours verse 10-16 hours difference. When I make the manga this will take a crap ton longer to create.

[Krysteena]

Its because the light of her sword bouncing off that area