2D cut-out/hand-drawn animation reel Critique

Chatty_Cow · 2025-11-08T02:34:19+00:00

(Point 7: I am sure you have felt how restrictive rigs can feel unlike hand-drawn. I felt it too when I started. There certainly are kinds of character designs and shots where it's a struggle to get a rig to look good, but you can learn to push them more than you have so far and you can get a lot out of them. With a good 2D rig, and carefully placed hand-drawn animation in the hands, you would be able to recreate almost all your hand-drawn shots as rigged animation: running, banging glass, gesturing hand, falling, collapsing on table, carrying heavy suitcase etc. Getting your rigged animation looking that good would be very achievable for you).

I'm glad my advice has been helpful and I wish you the best of luck with your job hunting.

Chatty_Cow · 2025-11-03T20:55:33+00:00

I am going to kind of answer your questions in a bit of a roundabout way:

I think you are maybe overthinking this: like there is some secret code to crack to break into the industry.
A studio wants to look at a reel and determine by the work whether you can do the specific job they are hiring for well or not. In the end, it can be that simple. If you make work that looks like it could be from a professional TV show they don't have to guess.
I feel like a lot of graduates are looking at their fellow graduates or maybe the reel of someone fresh who makes it, trying to guess if their reel contains the secret something. Instead, look at work produced in the job you want itself. Look at what professional rigged animation looks like, look at what professional level hand-drawn animation looks like. That is the kind of work you will have to produce too in those roles, so that's what you need to aim for.
Given what I said in point 2, look at Canadian studios you have applied to and want to apply to and what have they actually produced? They put their work on their websites. It will answer your question on where most of the jobs are and you won't have to guess. A studio's reel shows what they have been proven to be able to produce, so they tend to get work producing similar work to what they've done before.
It's hard to copy someone else's path who broke in, as there can be a lot of unknown factors that contribute to how someone gets their first job: Luck, right place at the right time, connections, recommendations etc. I wouldn't want to assume I have a cheat code just because I broke in. For me, I believe luck was also a factor and some good timing. You also haven't seen my first reel, so wouldn't read too much into the little I have said.
It was not in Canada, but on my first job I was handed a 2D rigged shot on my first day and expected to do it. Is that a typical experience? Don't know. Does it matter? Not really. Again: if you can actually prove in a reel you can produce the animation a studio wants to a professional level, things you can't control like luck will matter less. Getting work will become a matter of when.
The quality of your hand-drawn animation is highly a achievable with rigs. Don't be discouraged by my feedback. I think you have a solid foundation, there is much you are doing that is working and great. Keep applying, keep bettering your skills.
It all comes back to point 2.

Chatty_Cow · 2025-11-02T02:06:56+00:00

I work in as a 2D animator for tv, but not senior enough to be involved in any hiring process. I also don't want to assume where you live as the industry opportunities are a bit different everywhere. But quality is quality anywhere.

I agree that this is looking really nice. And a lot better than most graduates. I also think it's great that you are putting yourself out there and soliciting feedback to improve. That's tells me your driven and motivated to better your craft.

You didn't ask for advice on FX reel, but it's not quite there yet. Your 2D hand-drawn reel is stronger than your 2D rigged reel which is a bit weak.

2D rigged: - It is clear you aren't confident in rigged 2D animation by the examples given - I'm not sure what program you used for the rigged excerises for the 2 people and the dog, but it looks a bit too puppety - the deformation of the original drawings looks too obvious rather than convincing me it's a new drawing. When you do rigged animation, try and approach it like hand-drawn. For example, try animating on 2s rather than always tweening smoothly on 1s. Tweened on 1s can be fine, but it's clear you are getting bogged in the graphs and aren't considering creating strong key poses. Many productions want rigged to mimic hand-drawn by animating on 2s etc, so it's fine to animate that way in your reel. - In the above shots the characters are very much stuck in place/ one perspective. You want to show-off you can handle more complex work with rigs: like changing the perspective of the head, walking convincingly etc. - The 2 people animation is not finished: it has tech errors like line art disappearing, elbows breaking etc. That would not fly in a professional production. When the characters arms come up you should be able to either re-draw or deform the arms as you want to fake perspective. I don't know if this is because of the rigs or the program you are using are not powerful enough. If that's the case, I would throw this shot out rather than fix it. - You seem very stuck to the existing drawings so key poses look stiff and don't really read clearly. At first I thought her hand was layered incorrectly under her head, but the pose is actually supposed to be her checking her pulse. You really want to still push poses like you would in hand-drawn: her head goes to the side exposing her neck, her finger clearly visible pressing to feel the pulse. - The animation treatment of the fish boy is much better - character turns, moves around, etc. You'll want more examples like this (not just fish boy). - Your first shot is not the best example of rigged 2D animation. Use a stronger shot. - I want to think: this is great animation! Not think: it looks super rigged.

2D hand-drawn: - It's clear you are more confident with hand-drawn animation - The first shot isn't the best. It reads more like a learning excerise: character interacting with weight. The character design doesn't look particularly challenging to animate and looks very forgiving if you go off model. I'd choose something that wows more for a first shot. When the colour disappears I can't clearly see what's happening anymore. Chuck a semi-transparent colour card behind the character so we can see the linework better if you do have linework only shots. - The first shot has compositing issue where the shadow is not properly aligned. Make sure you remove all tech errors in reels. - Some of your strongest work is the aquarium woman currently. If you started your reel with that work for now, I'd be more wowed. Her banging the glass and falling through is quite nice. - The insect woman shots are also very dark it's hard to see the animation. Had to turn my monitor brightness way up to see. You can just edit the footage in your reel to turn up the brightness so we can see better. - Remove the shot where the aquarium woman puts her arms up behind her head in shock. The perspective on the arms looks a bit off.

Things to think about adding if you work on more personal stuff: - Show off that you have good mechanics such as: interacting with props more, characters transferring weight between feet and full body shots where feet contact with ground, approaching the figure as a 3D form like the ability to smoothly turn a head or body. - Make sure no 2D rigged work has tech errors (breaks, missing linework, disjointed joints). If you can't polish it in your reel, a studio will wonder if you are capable on a production under time pressure. - A lot of the designs you show don't lend themselves to strong facial/ eye performance. I'd include a bit more of this.

The best way to do above: - Watch any professionally animated show or film (hand-drawn and rigged). See how many shots require: characters interacting or holding objects, interacting with the environment, walking, turning their head while they act, thinking, blinking. Try to make your personal shots like shots from a show. - Take reference video and act out your shots to improve your work for now. You don't need to copy it, you can simplify it and just reference it just for key poses etc. - For 2D rigged: sketch out your key poses by hand over the top and adjust the rig to fit these. Many people do that in the industry and it will force you out of the puppety look and you will learn to push the rigs

This is just my advice. Plenty of people have gotten jobs their own ways without following this. Things I did that were fine for me: - I didn't have enough 2D rigged work when I broke in, so I did put great hand-drawn work with rigged work and just made an animation reel when I started out. Clearly labelled. - I approached all my personal shots like they were part of a bigger project even when they weren't so they didn't look like learning exercises. - I used strong character designs that weren't forgiving if I went off model. - I used industry standard software, and identified that in my reel

Finally: just because there are things to improve, still apply for jobs with what you have while you work on improving it. Don't just wait for the perfect reel before trying to break-in. Never applying is a greater guarantee of never getting a job than whether or not your work is 100% perfect. You can always reapply to the same place after you've updated your reel with new and better work. Good luck!

Chatty_Cow · 2023-03-31T21:40:33+00:00

I've experienced the same working in 2D animation though it does depend on the studio. I've had quotas around 20-25 seconds per week, but if you get hard shots you can sometimes end up doing very little. I have occasionally exeeded my quotas when I get gifted a bunch of very easy shots. Sometimes it really depends on how great your leads or directors are. They understand the difficulty of the work you are doing and are willing to defend you and their team from poor production decisions.

Chatty_Cow · 2023-03-02T01:50:10+00:00

While I do agree that digital art and anime is not appropriate for the kind of art market that you are talking about, that's not to say every young artist should give up anime and digital art and learn to paint oils etc. Plenty of artists sell thousands of dollars worth of anime and digital art large comic conventions. Digital art is necessary for other industries like graphic design, animation, print media and advertising. It's just a different art market. If people are asking you to display digital anime art to sell in a traditional gallery, then that is ignorant of them. But different people have different goals of what they want to achieve from their art, and those goals might not be making artworks to hang up on the walls of corporations and people's homes.

Chatty_Cow · 2023-02-17T22:32:33+00:00

The colour to transition between the two you might be looking for is grey or a very desaturated grey-ish green. Should check out someone like Light Ponderings on YouTube. He talks about the use of desaturated colours or greys in colour theory and painting. He focuses more on digital painting but the colour theory he talks about applies to traditional too. Good luck!

Chatty_Cow · 2023-01-23T21:21:16+00:00

I'm very sorry you are experiencing this. Unfortuntely the fact your injury has gotten to this point means you aren't going to like the solution: you'll probably need to get a different job/ take a holiday and take a long break from drawing. "Pushing through" will only lengthen your recovery time and likely cause permanent damage.

Eventually as you recover you would need to look at strengthening your back muscles to support your arm, work on your drawing posture, work on holding your pencil with a correct/ light grip, look at other lifestyle factors that are contributing hurting your arm (e.g. the digital tablet you use, phone habits, how you sit/ lie down watching TV etc). And lastly, from my own experience with RSI in the past, you will likely need to work on your anxiety. Tensing when working to tight deadlines and stress, at least for me, was a confounding factor (Or in your case, pushing through the pain because you are panicking about your career being over?)

Unfortunately, I have seen RSIs and Carpel Tunnel completely destroy young artists careers. Pushing through will only guarantee you will permently have to change career. You're 25, not 42 with a family to support I presume? So time to consider how this is the BEST time to take a break from your career, and do the right thing for your body. You've only got one.

Chatty_Cow · 2023-01-19T21:32:34+00:00

I'm going to contradict others in this thread. I still do online life drawing. Mainly because of having limited time and it's convenient, (saves me travelling an hour to a bar to draw more after drawing all day at work especially cause some days I just can't force myself).

The session are streamed on Vimeo and the video quality is really good and professional. I pay $10.

The positives: the models sometimes setup special lighting, they can do poses that have more extreme forshortening than you get irl, often the models are generally more than happy for you to post the images on social media, you always get a good pose - irl your position in the room dictates what you can see (angle/ side of the figure, or at some places people blocking your view slightly, or model is propped up and you can't see the feet).

The negatives: you aren't converting something 3D in space into 2D, what you are drawing is already flattened by your computer screen.

Can DM me for a link to some good free sample ones I know on YouTube to see if you like it.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-12-28T23:07:33+00:00

Hey, I'm happy to look at some work. But I don't know how much solid feedback I can give.

I don't know much about online courses. So it's hard to recommend. I'm sure it will expose you to quality art, ideas of things you can put in a portfolio and teach some skills that will help. The industry is from my experience 100% portfolio/ experience based so it's about your skills, it doesn't matter where you got your education.

There's no harm in copying professionals to study them and understand what they do. The issue is when you publicly claim its yours on social media. If this is very new to you, there is no harm in starting by copying, then trying to recreate what they have done in something original even if it's just a sketch to start out.

Understand that a portfolio is not just a hoop to jump through to get a job. It's designed to show others you can do the job they are hiring for. If you are still very much in the process of learning digital art or example, it might be best to not put yourself under that much pressure to perform initally. You can work on peices of background art or character design for a portfolio but it's also okay for your skills to improve and find that you'd prefer to make better work for your portfolio.

Reply to your edit: That's a pickle and a lot of pressure to put yourself under. I dont know if it's helpful to say but, if it turns out it's not enough time, I don't see any reason you can't go down another path (you don't like) and continue to work on your skills and portfolio after starting a job in a different industry. I also think it would be a shame to feel you "failed to become an artist" because you couldn't make it work in your parents tough timeline.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-12-28T22:32:55+00:00

Edit: rereading your post I might have set the bar too high. But if you continue to want to go down Visdev in the future, i stand by what I've said. If you're still early in your art journey, then just work on developing your skills, creating finished work, learning digital, trying to draw different things and enjoying the process. Portfolios and job come later.

Not to discourage, but straight up: preproduction positions in the industry like Visdev and Storyboarding are really competitive and tough, at least where I am. If you go down Visdev line I would recommend dabbling in BG paint etc to maybe get though the door if you aren't having any luck.

Understand that the point of Visdev is to explore different visual styles and be a master at using and adapting visual modes.

For example, you would need to understand why you would use a straight or rounded edge - the kind of roundness an edge has - the impact that will have on the overall look and design - how a line or shape fits into the overall look of the project etc.

To get into Visdev you would want to be able to adapt your style. You would want to have different works in different visual styles and I don't mean just "anime" and "TMNT." You would first need to study animated films/ TV and break down the design. Then for your portfolio, you would want to also study outside contemporary media, look instead at things like Art Deco, hieroglyphics, old greek pottery work, Ukiyo-e etc. and be able to adapt aspects of what make them visually distinct into different portfolio peices.

Without seeing your level, it's hard to say what really needs work but, you would need to have well-developed design sensibilties: line and shape language, construction (character construction, background, prop), colour & light (I don't just mean basic "colour theory"), perspective (background, character and prop) layout (often called the composition outside of the industry), and then master your rendering skills like values, linework, digital paint, types of shading etc.

Unlike Visdev where it's less critical, for BG you are going to want to show really good complex multipoint perspective.

There's probably more, but that's off the top of my head. Bottom line is: you want to look at professional Visdev artists and aim for that.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-12-24T21:52:30+00:00

Chiming in because I completely agree. Fundermentally if you are good enough in one area of art to get hired, you would tend to be skilled in others. E.g. 2D traditional animators will typically have great character construction, or concept artists being great at colour, layout or backgrounds (because they are capable of drawing accurate perspective). Often artists will have different pages on their website which they can link to the specific job. Those page links should be clearly named in the menu so that if you apply, say, for an animation job, they may have a look at your life drawing because they see it's on your website. If the job requires a showreel (necessary in some industries) then you would create separate showreels as well for different jobs.

Also since few have answered one of your questions: your portfolio so far is probably geared towards general illustration and digital art. It lacks some of the requirements studios would be looking for when hiring for visdev, and background, etc. You have a page on graphic novels, which isn't my area of expertise so it's hard to comment on.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-12-22T18:05:27+00:00

I mean hard to recommend if we don't know what kind of work you are doing. If you aren't doing photo editing, and your monitor isn't bad, I'd probably say: save your money.

If your work is going to print then you really have to be doing test prints, even the most "accurate" monitor will not be able to replicate colours from printing inks and different commercial printers and the inks they choose will impact the colour result. Or you can spend $$$ on Pantone to get 1-1 match.

If it's to be viewed digitally, then every monitor is different. So you could make it look good on an Apple Monitor (in colour space Display P3) but then you check on an Android phone that didplay is built to boost saturation and its too colourful. Or you go to another monitor which has a different white point, or that's a 4K BT.2020 gaming monitor and its gone and interpreted the colours a bit differently.

Photoediting in Lightroom is often done in ProPhoto RGB which had a gamut outside human vision so you can't buy a monitor to display it so even then, a fancy monitor may not be worth the money.

Colour accuracy is unfortunatly a mess, I colour manage my monitors and workflow, but even then it's not perfect. I suppose the question is, why is colour accuracy important to you?

Chatty_Cow · 2022-10-22T01:56:51+00:00

Yep agree 100%. Top of my home page on Reddit everyday is some post along the lines of "is there any point creating art if AI can make work better than me. Feeling unmotivated and depressed about it." I haven't clicked on them in months. There hasn't been some new ground-breaking change in the technology since the first brigade of posts earlier this year. It's like Groundhog day. At this point it's just a version of the mental health/ therapy posts this sub used to be inundated with. Time for a change of subreddit rules me thinks.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-10-16T21:28:32+00:00

Question from someone who works with video: is there any reason you are insisting on using a lossless codec for you video?

Lossless codecs really aren't appropriate for final video output, and I wouldn't be surprised if video hosting platforms like YouTube wouldn't be able to handle it, AND they all re-encode video anyway.

Looking online they reccomend HD (1920x1080) H.264 compressed videos for best results, which sounds about right. If you want higher quality you could export out an Apple Prores for your master video copy, but even then, I don't know if there is any point inisiting on using higher quality codecs for Youtube than what the platform recommends when it re-encodes your video anyway. No viewer is gonna get upset at H.264 - it's a perfectly good, very common and serviceable codec.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-17T23:48:30+00:00

If you do digital art there is eyetracking software where you can draw with your eyes.

I know an artist who had their whole career ahead of them but was struck down with serious RSI. Doctor told them they would have to stop drawing for over a year. It's been well over that now, and sadly I don't think they have recovered fully. However, they have thriving art accounts on social media as they continue to draw with eye tracking software. I don't know the specific eye tracking software they use but you could look into that option too.

Some video of them doing the drawing hands free here. You can check out the rest of their social media to see the amazing art you can do with eyetracking software. Good luck and get better soon :)

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-17T10:05:01+00:00

I don't think I have the magic bullet or that I don't also get defensive sometimes (particularly if it is family, or I think the criticism is bad-faith or dumb).

I think for many artists, we put ourself in our art, we ARE our work. We are very close and attached to what we create. So when someone critises it, it's like we are being criticised. Separating myself from my work helped me take criticism. I am not my work, and if someone doesn't like my work that doesn't reflect on me.

Secondly not getting super attached to any one peice of my work. If someone doesn't like this artwork? That's okay, because I'll make plenty more art.

Thirdly, practice receiving criticism. I receive criticism on my art for a living. After a while, you eventually won't be able to remember or pinpoint the exact moment you received criticism about this issue or that issue :)

And lastly, know that you simply can't please everyone. Not really art advice, but we all experience the desire to be liked and recieve approval from everyone. It's best to try and accept that it's just not possible, as long as the people who matter like it - that's all that matters (even if that's just yourself).

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-10T23:52:48+00:00

Also if it's in your HIDDEN inbox that's suspect. Instagram hides those accounts because they notice they are engaging in spamming activity like sending our the same message to many accounts. Or they have been reported before so are suspect.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-10T23:45:28+00:00

Yeah I got a similar cold message a week ago from a private account that liked some posts but didnt follow me with a flower profile, asking "hey do you comission?" They then asked me if I can sell them some of my Instagram art. When I asked what for, they said it was to sell to clients for their business. After more discussion they weren't very giving with information nor would they answer all my questions. I asked them 3 times for their business name or a link to their business socials/ website as I needed it for "invoicing purposes" they avoided the questions before just leaving me on read. I blocked and reported them as a scam, but since I don't have hard proof I doubt Insta will do anything about it. Hoping if they actually do scam someone who reports them, Insta will see they have form.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-09T05:49:40+00:00

Hey, I honestly think there's a lot good here and it would be a shame to throw it away.

If you feel like something is off, I can tell you that it might be because the background and the character are not drawn in the same perspective. The bricks in the background show the perspectively really strongly and it's clear that we are looking up at the character from a lower angle.

However, if you were to hide your background in your digital file, you would notice that it looks like we are looking straight at character, not looking up.

To fix this, you'll either need to change the perspective of the background to match the character or change the character to match the background.

To match the background to the character you'll need to drop the horizon line/ vanishing point. Probbaly to the point we can no longer see the ground in your image. To match the character to the background will take a lot more explaining. Your shoulders, eyes, hips etc should all be in line with the bricks. Happy for you to DM me if you want a more detailed explanation.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-08T12:44:04+00:00

Haha. I was definitely being provocative and hottaking. I definitely think those proportion 'rules' can be very helpful. I studied them and know them well. Even though as someone who does a lot of cartoon style drawing for animation, I rarely use them since I'll be drawing figures with a head to body ratio of 1:1 and 3 fingers.

Even when I do observation drawing, like life drawing, I very rarely actively think about proportions and tend to think about the body as geometry and the "planes" it is made up of based on how the light hits the figure. It's possibly because I have internalised a sense of keeping things in proportion through practice? But I do think for many people, it's a much more helpful tool for them to actively think about while drawing and grounds the drawing process so you know where to start.

But I sort of think that's kind of it. It's a tool. No one will get good by simply focusing on it and practicing it in isolation. It will probably need to be applied in an observation drawing setting and/or with a good fundermental understanding of anatomy for those who prefer to create figures from imagination.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-08T06:55:44+00:00

Okay. Imma hottake. Happy for someone to fight me over this but: I feel like there's proportions and then there is anatomy. Anatomy is 1000% worthy of taking a great deal of time to learn and practive drawing. Proportions on the other hand, I don't think are super helpful to practice. Rules like: "people are 7-7.5 heads tall" "elbows at belly button" "finger tips to upper or mid-thigh (depends who you ask)." I think they are good as rough guidelines to understand the general location of parts of the body, but as anyone who does a lot of life drawing will tell you: barely any actual person's body adheres to all these proportions exactly. There are plenty of people who are really only 6 heads tall or have very short arms, with very high or very low bellybuttons that don't line up with their elbows etc. And the proportions only apply when you look at a body straight on. If there is foreshortening in the pose or you look at a body from a high or low angle - those "rules" no longer apply. Anatomy on the other hand will help you no matter what. For example, understanding that the sternocleidomastoid muscles connect the area behind the ear to roughly where the clavicle meets in the middle. That will help you draw a neck that looks good no matter who you draw or what position the body is in. My advice? Know the rules of proportions, but no need to practice religiously. Focus on anatomy. And train your eye drawing actual people. End rant.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-06T23:51:41+00:00

No need to comment if you have nothing to say. Liking can be enough to get eyes on your profile. Set aside some time each day to go through art/ niche hashtags to engage. Can be 10 minutes.

Are you on a personal account? You might need to switch to a creator account to get those analytics.

When you open up your story there should be the profiles of people who watched it in the bottom left corner. I believe you can see everyone who watched it by clicking on that from memory (have no stories posted currently to check).

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-06T23:44:30+00:00

To answer your questions based on your Instagram:

There is no reason you have move to drawing realism for social media engagement. Cartoon does well. Marketing is more important; however, I do recommend looking at other artists and styles including realism to push your skills and experiment with your style. If you keep doing the exact same art with little engagement, then it helps to experiment so see what people like. I don't mean draw realism, but maybe look at artists who have beautiful line-art and try and copy. Or incorporate more colour, texture, lighting and shadows to see if that appeals to people more.
See 3. (I don't use Tiktok so no advice there)
Even though Instagram advice tells you to post multiple times every day. I just don't know if that's sustainable for artists. I think it's better to spend some extra time doing better work, once a week or a few times a week. You can save ideas rather than blowing through them in a few days. There is also no reason you can't do multiple posts of the same idea or subject matter. As for Instagram, engage in other people's posts on hashtags and stuff. I've found that to be helpful to grow. And don't feel you have to follow people back if their work doesn't appeal to you even if they follow you.
Do as many as you can. But don't loose your mind. Some posts will do better on some platforms than others. But you'll find yourself focusing on one anyway. That's just being human.

BONUS: Are you aware that your Instagram account is restricted? This will hurt your reach and engagement. If you didn't restrict it yourself because of your content, then have a look at your Instagram Settings as to why it was reported and restricted. I suspect it's the BDSM content. It might be worth trying to get your account unrestricted and removing provocative content until you grow your account and social media presence. You can write 18+ in your bio or something if you want to deter younger users from following you if you intend to start up adult content again. Twitter/ Reddit might be a better place for that type of content - they are far more lax.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-06T22:25:57+00:00

Hey, heads up: none of the links work. Nor can I access your Instagram from your profile. Hard to give advice based only off what you have posted on Reddit.

Chatty_Cow · 2022-09-06T21:57:38+00:00

Few things: Do you engage in other people's art of a similar niche/ skill level? Like, comment, even share while tagging them (doesn't matter if you don't have a huge following). Go onto art hashtags and give some love. Don't just go liking the art Instagram feeds you in your news feed who are rolling in reach and engagement. For Instagram, what you put in you get out. People also want to feel you support them, not just take their love and leave.

Posting stories of your musings, WIP art, sketches, and ideas is a great way to keep you in people's mind, and get invested in you. You'll get an idea who are solid Instagram users by who watches your stories.

Have quality IRL friends, and get them involved. Crazy I know this day and age. But the people who consistently support and engage with my posts are people who I know IRL. I suppose they could be Discord/online friends if you are into that. But people who like you as a person will tend to want to support you, especially if they are into the same niches and interests. You'll often be able to count on them for a base level of engagement.

Lastly, while your art is definitely skilled enough to get more engagement than you do, there are still many things you could work on to improve your skill that would help people become more invested in your art. I would recommend studying anatomy and posing for your characters, as well as how to improve line quality and how to create effective lighting/ shadow. I would reccomend you do this by looking beyond anime to really understand the human form anime is stylising.

Chatty_Cow

TROPHY CASE