I was not implying this. The point I was trying to get across is that whatever will first interest a person in general weither it be manga, modern/abstract, patterned, still life, etc. they should start and work with a general perception of what they feel and define it to be, based on pure common knowledge. What better way to firmly grasp the mechanics than that? You say that one should emulate different styles and them actually learn the build-up behind it all, but count the number of people who'll say, "yes, I'll learn the mechanics behind this, that, and this" after becoming good, and compare that to the number of people who'll say "Mechanics? Who needs mechanics!? I'm happy with the style I've seen over here, there and there", by the time they've emulated to the point of near-excellence. Eventually, this may lead to unoriginality simply put, and may actually cause the person to backtrack depending on how seriously they take the magnitude of their art. In short, your method has a chance of working, but can be much more effective if used in excess in a later stage of an artists developement. A slightly extreme example would be for one to perfect his own style to the purest he can. Once he's done that, he can mix n' macth with whatever other style he can. One word:Revolutionary!
It's the stuff that most legends are made of.

Added after 17 minutes:

In the end though, it's wherever Seph wants to take it!

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(This sig has been removed for a greater purpose)

Indeed.... An artist should never confine him/her self to one avenue of education or style. there is so much out there to play with. to do so would almost be criminal.

Okay, I am not one for writeing a lot, but here it goes:

I think it will only be fair to share what I have learned in art so far,

First, in 6th grade, my friend drew a drawing of a animeish girl, (It was very basic, but at that time, to me, it was gold) So I asked him, how he did it, So he went over the basics that he used to draw it, so I did as he did and learned to draw it. This was my first real encounter with drawing, and I instantly fell in love with it. I also bought a basic “How to draw manga book”, and practiced some.

In 7th grade, I took art classes, I didn’t like it because all we did was draw still lives, (contour draw). But I excelled in that class, because I cared about it, unlike the others did.
In 8th grade, my friend had pretty much mastered emulation of DBZ characters, this made me very jealous, and thou I tried, and tried, I could not match his talent at that time.

In 9th grade, I carried around a scrap book, which I would add drawings to, at time, and time. They weren’t, good, but it gave me lots of practice. This is also, where I met a girl we call “kitsune” (fox), she had strange, but awesome, ability to draw in anime style. It was as if every line she put on paper, had a Japanese look to it. I asked her many times to teach me to draw…but she always told me that it wasn’t possible to teach some one to draw, I just had to learn it my self by practicing… She showed me drawings from when she was younger (they were bad, compared to how good she was now). Her method of getting good, was to just contour draw from mangas (mainly Inuyasha) . It did her well.
You can see her deviant art here: http://kitsuneneko.deviantart.com/
I don’t think it does her justice thou, she just doesn’t try when it comes to computer drawing.

9th grade was also the year I started my comic book… which was cool, because I could see my self get better as I drew.

--- I don’t want to go on, this forever, so I will skip the rest, but I am in 12th grade now, and haven’t taken a art class since middle school (my high school doesn’t have art classes)

Ok, time to comment on some stuff,

I chose bleedmans style to emulate, because to me, its just the way I think manga should look, not to serious, but not to chibi either. I have seen LOTS of different art styles.. so I can say, that bleedmans IS my favorite.

@OHNHAI – I love that ppg style blak, that’s freaking awesome! As for what you are saying about learning art, its similar to what kitsune said, so that is what I am trying to do, and probably more intensely then before, if it will quicken my learning process. I love your attitude, and you make a good mentor. Major thanks for everything!

@Erix – I can’t see your picture from school, because imgshack is on the block list, but when I do see it, I will comment it… and thanks for taking the time to draw it. (If you want to, you can email it to me [sepher0(at)gmail.com])

@Darkman – I personally think that it is impossible to create a style without any reference at all, It is true that people need to know the basics first(human anatomy, ratios and perspective) but these can be taught and learned in books, the hard part is implying them in a way that the artist thinks looks good.

---

This took me a good 45 minutes to write, I think this is my first long writing that wasn’t for school.

And of course I had to wait to post this, because the forum got overloaded again… :p

Thanks for all of your comments… I will post a few different styles of Blak, when I get a chance to use a scanner. (I don’t usually have internet on weekends, so I will probly end up posting it Monday.)

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Avatar is of Blak
Drawn by OHNHAI (based on drawing by Erix), Colored by Sepher0

Who is Blak?

Find out more here:
http://www.snafu-comics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9680

keep in my mind, my drawing was done under the assumption Blak was a girl .

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His name is wrath. He has ed's right arm and part of ed's left leg. he's really annoying and thinks the humonculos that Ed made is his mom.

Added after 5 minutes:

I'm a really big FMA fan. I've seen the whole series, own at least five of the dvd's, am impatiently waiting for the movie, own the second and first game, and have a page on one of my websites dedicated to Fma.

Added after 45 minutes:

oh, by the way, i like your character. He's a perfect opponent to bell. thing is, bell's bad, so it's bad vs. bad. But, your character does have plenty of opposite characteristics, compared to bell, so it could work out in the end, maybe if bell betrayed her dad, or if your character teamed up with the ppg and bell teamed up with the RRB.

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I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am the Darkness of the heart. You will be pulled in. So hang on.

Cool Image. and very close to being right on the money..... No really.. Good pose, good proprotions, nice feel for the character. it's just off on one or two fairly minor points..

The head is too small and kinda flat, the ear is a tad high. The hands need to be bigger and thus the arms need to taper out wider. and you forgot some eyebrows I have taken the liberty of taking your drawing and makeing these changes ( in my own style naturally) here.



And before you go wailing "THATS NOT MY PICTURE it too good to be my picture!!!!" look here. Here I have overlaid your image on my version. as you can see apart from the few small proportion changes and tidier line work it IS your picture. See ! :D work on your line work and keep an eye on Bleedman's proportions and you will up to this level in no time..

The eyes were placed perfectly ( I could not do better) so many get that wrong. though Bleedman does tend to place his hero's eyes very wide appart....

The right hand was tricky though ( even I needed a few attempts...) But the key thing to remember whith Bleedman Style arms is though the wrists CAN bend they rearly do and it's better to treat them as solid and emphasise the flair. (a good tip for hands in general is open they should be able to cover the face.)

You go to my thread right now and do this to my guy ketil, as seen in ava/sig

I like my own work fine, but I cant get inking down. If you could show me my flawed areas on my own style I would greatly appreciate it. Also a few tips on what I can use for inking.

If you do this, use my most recent pic of him, I wanna see it touched up. Plz and ty

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OMG...

....

Its like.. whoa.. ( I think i peed my self )

----

OHNAI, could you post a link, or tell how, you inked like that, thats something I have been wanting to know :p

And how the hell are you so good at emulating styles... its kinda scary...

---

Erix, I do like your art!

---

I am going to spend some time coloring that with photo shop....

_________________
Avatar is of Blak
Drawn by OHNHAI (based on drawing by Erix), Colored by Sepher0

Who is Blak?

Find out more here:
http://www.snafu-comics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9680

Ohnhais a monster. I mean granted the effort I put into my Blak wasnt but a 5 minute inciment during a BWL wipe on WoW. But the guy is leagues above us, maybe his age holds some bearing on it, but still. I want to know how he inks, and as soon as I do, I'm blowing cash on w/e the solution is. As it stands, I use MS paint and a scanner to ink, so I'm hoping its simple like that.
If its using an actual pen.......ugh I guess I'll buckle down.

Added after 41 minutes:



Since both my guy "ketil" and your guy "Blak" are both dark in some way,I figured I could do this.
I dont have time to color it, but I wanted an excuse to take another crack at Blak.

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Yeh, it did take about 4 hours to draw and then touch up so it IS a bit un-fair to hold it up to a 5 min job, but my pont was that that 5 min wonder was actually VERY good. Also yes. experiance (sadly related to age...) is another huge factor. As to being able to emulate styles easily, its actually not that easy, it take experiance, observation and practice...


anyway on with the tale of inking.....


Generally I tend not to ‘ink’ as such, more like I work the pencils till they are to a finished quality. In other works I use pencils to ink my images.

I tend to revise my line work once or twice before I call an image ‘finished’. To do this I normally use a layout-pad. A layout pad ( in this case A4) has very thin sheets so when you place a drawing under the top sheet you can see through to it. You can then trace you image through again, making changes and correcting slight errors, massaging the linework. I’m very fussy about line and shape of line so leaving that to the one time only event of brushing or penning ink on top of a precious bit of pencil art is an anathema to me. My version of your image would not have been as good had it not been for you version underneath serving a scaffold.

This also has the bonus of leaving you with a far cleaner image as all of your scaffolding, your layout and false starts are on the sheet under your image. This naturally makes it easier you to get a nice clean scan that needs only minimal clean up if at all ( I some times like the greyness of scanned pencil.) Talking of which.. Never scan pencil with the B&W setting on your scanners. Never! This literally used just black and white leaving you with an image of Fax quality (that’s no way to treat your art) Use Greyscale at the very least as this will reproduce your line work far better. True you will need to spend a bit more time cleaning it up but the quality of the resultant image will be better.

If you need to touch the image up, then you need to take it into a paint package. I personally use Photoshop CS (being a professional artist as I am, would you expect anything less?) but there are good cheep if not free programs that come close to good old PS. (PaintShopPro, GIMP……) Get one of these if you cant afford PhotoShop and for the love of GOD stop using MS paint (its SHite….). You should also think hard about buying a graphics tablet too. My personal preference is Wacom, as they are the best, but I do understand that people don’t have the same cash flow that I do and they can be expensive, but I find the familiar action of using a pen stylus to draw with far better than trying to emulate my hand drawn style with a mouse…

But generally so long as you get the right settings on your scanner and you have got a tidy enough pencil drawing then it should scan fine and only need the most basic level balancing to make the blacks blacker and whites whiter.

The main thing is to do as much of your line work on paper, and use iterations to polish the line work as much as you can before sucking it into the computer.

Oh yes… one last thing. The bigger you can draw an image the better it will look once down sized to fit on screen  that image filled an A4 sheet. If you can ALLWAYS draw the image bigger then you actually need it to be.. Most comics are drawn twice if not three times bigger than what you see them as. How else do you think they add so much fine detail?

Added after 1 hours 31 minutes:



but the point I was trying to make was I'm not... your image is REALLY very close. you simply need to spend time polishing your line work. You only spent 5 mins on your sketch.. It took me a further 3+ hours to produce my set of lines... It IS within you to do just as good...

If you dont believe me get a layout-pad (thin pages) and re-work your image. dont change the proportions just go over the lines and try and apply my line quality to your image. It will take you time. you may well have to work through several itterations before you get to the end, but when you get there you will see that the biggest difference between your image and mine was in the line quality.

Print you image out so he fills a sheet of A4 and use that to work from.

Typically I only spend a very short time on my drawings, I guess one of my best aspects is the speed at which I draw. But like you said, if I took the time maybe my lines wouldnt look so sketchy.

and to hear you say my work isnt far behind does make me feel tons better about my work. The only usual critiquing I get is from people at school who really only think its good because its so much better then the average person can do.

I scan black and white to darken the lines, then convert to a greyscale, then create another RGB layer for color.

Oh and dont be concerned about my programs, I got photoshop CS (no I didnt scam it, my family owns a printing company, thus has several copies)
I might of scammed it though if this wasnt the case .


Edit: I also just relized a huge flaw with any sort of tracing. See when I draw, I turn my page in accordance with my line, I can only draw straight smooth lines vertically. This in turn makes tracing very difficult.....

guess I'll figure something out

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only if your source and fresh sheet are sepperate.

With a layout-pad the source image is held in place by the top sheet of the pad (which you leave in the pad) this way you just turn the whole lot to get to the right angle to draw the next curve.

Failing that get a piece of board (preferably something with a smooth surface so you can use it as a drawing board. then using small bits of masking tape in the corners you tape the source to the board then tape the next sheet over the top. again this allows you to turn everything without loosing alignment...

actually ohn, I have a question about photoshop.
Now I wanted to try just defining my lines, have the drawing as a greyscale. Then I copy the channel and spot color it as black. Then I turn the original channel into an RGB. It was working great, but then when I saved and re opened, I lost the greyscale channel completely. I'm not sure what happened, but I retried the proccess, and it kep happening.

So my new drawing, as seen in my sig, really took a hit on the lines (I just ghetto'd the lines with magic wand and coloring them black".
Any advice on how to fix this problem?

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Hey can I use Blak for a fanfic? I would need to know what his personility is like though....

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So much ownage, so little time...

By the way...guess what's back! Hopefully, I'll continue...

http://snafu-comics.com/forum/viewtopic ... 3c838ce6a5

Can i use him for a fanfic too? My idea for a giant fanfic was shot down, but i'm working on one in secret and have a few... Temporary partners, but i still don't have enough home made characters.

Added after 35 seconds:

and I'll also need some info on him, if it's okay.

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I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am the Darkness of the heart. You will be pulled in. So hang on.

little Blak is becoming famous.

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I'd like to use ketil too, but you said you're a solo guy, erix.

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I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am the Darkness of the heart. You will be pulled in. So hang on.

if its a Fanfic your free to use him as you wish. Just dont take credit for him.
When I say I'm a solo guy I mean that in the sense of writing, I feel that I lose freedom writing with multiple people.

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I am quite curious as to what Blak's personality will be like.

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(This sig has been removed for a greater purpose)

I posted a fanfic... I miss understood the comment..I guess I should go delete till Sepher0's comes back right? ^^;;

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So much ownage, so little time...

By the way...guess what's back! Hopefully, I'll continue...

http://snafu-comics.com/forum/viewtopic ... 3c838ce6a5

Im not awake right now

I need to spend more time reading what has been posted, which I will later (maybe in an hour)... but right now, I am kind of anxious to post the coloration I made.



I changed the eyes, so that they were more bleedman style (too me any way)

Here is a wallpaper version


-----

To the people who want to make fanfics...

You may, but keep in mind, that I already have a story for Blak in my head.. so when I do mine, dont say its close to yours, because I am not out to copy any one, I have ideas... they will show when I make the comic

His personality... is similar to Nny (JTHM)
Crazy, but calm at times... like for instance, He sleeps in class, but if any one woke him up, he would probably throw them through a wall.

He loves Bell.. but she doesn’t show the same passion..
He hates Gir...
He hates most people.

His plan for world dominance is so that he wont be bothered any more.

He doesn’t really care what other people think, just because doesn’t like any one. (except Bell)

He enjoys the fact that the rowdy ruff boys are inferior to him.

If you manage to make Zim not annoying, that would be what Blak is like.

---

Ok, I will post more later... Like when I am more awake,

tell me what you all think of my coloring...

and thanks guys!!

_________________
Avatar is of Blak
Drawn by OHNHAI (based on drawing by Erix), Colored by Sepher0

Who is Blak?

Find out more here:
http://www.snafu-comics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9680

Good call on the eyes. Definate improvement. Nice work on the Flats. though you would have none better to have set the layer with the line work to 'Multiply' and paint the colour on layers under the lineart. Might have been better to have given the black clothes just the hint of a hue (blue green tan) to sepperate them from the blackness of the hair. But other than that a damn fine effort . Cool beans.

Spiffy! I feel that the shading on the hair could have been done better though. (I'm no coloring guru myself, so I just based that on observation.)

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(This sig has been removed for a greater purpose)

Very adorable design. As much as she looks like Wrath from Full Metal Alchemist, she's still frickin adorable. The newer renditions look pretty cool too.

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My Art Thread

uh, Blak's a he.

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I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am, I am everyone, everwhere, everyhow, everyway, everyday.

I am the Darkness of the heart. You will be pulled in. So hang on.