Comments?

[Guild_Premier_Ghaleon]

Hey everyone. I'm headed to college come October, going for a degree in Graphic Design and Animation. However, I'm a bit rusty and my talent is currently mediocre at best, so I've started making still frame images to try and get my groove back. This is one I've been working on for a couple of days. I'm liking how it's coming along, but there seems to be something off about it. I'd be grateful if some of you fine people found it in your hearts to critique this little doodle.

[Nobiyuki77]

Not half bad, but some work is needed.

My main observation is that the waist is too thin. If he's sporting a 6 pack it shouldn't be thin. Also, I'd shy away from defining 6 packs with lines if possible, try to show it with shadows instead.

The belt needs some work with the folds. Take a paper cloth and wrap it around your waist as seen in this drawing, then take a look in the mirror.

The clavical of the neck looks off center.

The left arm (his right) doesn't look right. Either his elbow is up to high, or his shoulder pad should be twisted accordingly to show that he's reaching out to us. If he is reaching out to us his hand should be a mite bigger.

Keep it going.

[Kizyr]

I'm going to assume that you want an honest assessment. If that's not the case, then just ignore me.

At the top, the head has this rigidly-defined trapezoidal shape that ends up making his entire expression look very exaggerated. Besides that, the extremely wide shoulderpads and extremely thin waist, likewise, are way too exaggerated. All those exaggerated characteristics, at least the way they're drawn here, make the character design itself aesthetically displeasing. There's also a bit of popeye-arm going on with the forearm and elbow joints. The hand is also too wide; it looks like you had difficulty cramming all five fingers on it--the thumb is also too long. Lastly, what Nobi said about the six-pack waist is right, but I think it'd be better to drop it altogether and work on the rest of the character design first.

Have you worked on realistic drawings at all? You'll have a chance to work on that when you're at college. I'd recommend to pay it a lot of attention. Every good artist I know, even if they were all right before training, became exponentially better after learning how to draw human figures realistically. All this criticism right now shouldn't discourage you, but you should still be aware of how much you'll need to improve. KF

[Guild_Premier_Ghaleon]

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback guys. Don't be worried about speaking your mind, I want all the productive criticism you can throw at me. And yeah, looking at the picture while reading your comments makes it alot more obvious to me, so thanks! Ill work on those faults now.

[Alunissage]

I'll try to give you some in-depth comments later, when I have more time. I'm not terribly familiar with the stylistic conventions so it's hard for me to see from one sample what oddities are intentional and what aren't, if that makes sense. I must repeat and emphasize Kizyr's advice regarding drawing real people. It is absolutely essential. Even if your interest is in stylized drawings, having a real foundation of how people are put together is what makes it work and become believable in its own context.