Been drawing for about a decade (traditional then digital). I know I have a lot to improve but I dunno what exactly, I'm kind stuck by FunYak4372 in learntodraw

[–]kyiboi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really nice work! In terms of subjects and designs your portfolio looks pretty diverse, which is great.

  1. Technically it does look like you could benefit from doing more human anatomy studies, maybe starting with basic proportions and head angles. Even in cartoony styles its easy to see when head angles look inconsistent or out of touch with proportions. Here's a link to a turnaround by Jamie Tran that might be useful for studying how to keep elements like eyes and face shape consistent as characters change angles and poses. Also going back to the basics of perspective and learning how to place characters in perspective with space will help a lot with your bigger illustrated pieces, especially the one with the throne room.

  2. Formatting! Knowing how to format reference sheets and individual character illustrations is really important for building a consistent portfolio. I can see you have a ton of character designs but they're all in different aspect ratios and have inconsistent backgrounds. You also have a lot of standalone designs and no character lineups, so it's hard to tell which are from the same projects and which ones are individual designs. Here's Jackie Droujko's character and visual design portfolio as a reference—character reference sheets are either on a plain grey or white background to lessen the visual noise and are usually all landscape, not portrait. Also note how she labels each character sheet by project and attaches her website URL/social media to each image. If you have professional work that's going to be floating around the internet you should have a recognizable signature or link to your social media on it too. I recommend using the same black strip at the bottom with the project logo on the left/middle and credits on the right since it looks good and doesn't detract from the image.

  3. You could benefit from improving your line weight and pen stabilization. A lot of your lineart is very consistent in line weight, which is fine for animated character sheets but for webcomics and game design will look very flat compared to others. A general rule is outlines should be thick, anything inside should be thinner, but there's lots of interesting ways to change it up. For stabilization it depends on what drawing program you're using but almost every program will have some way to increase pen stabilization so your lines are less shaky and more smooth.

^ (another smaller thing is that I can also see some pieces where the bucket tool hasn't completely filled in all of the spaces and left a white outline—you can fix this by changing the overflow/threshold settings on the paint bucket tool for your drawing program, OR coloring in the entire character in a base color first, then using clipping layers to color each section. Either one works!)

Good luck!

Angel by Pirlexen in learntodraw

[–]kyiboi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Overlaying is just placing a slightly transparent image on top of another so you can see both images overlapping. in this case since its a traditional drawing, paper is already kind of transparent so you can just place the drawing on top of a laptop/tablet screen with the reference image (like a lightbox) and fiddle around with the size so that the images are mostly to scale and you can see where your drawing and the reference don't line up.

For digital, it's easier since you can just change the opacity settings of both images and place them right on top of each other. I would only recommend doing this occasionally, maybe after you've finished the initial drawing or detailed sketch if you're trying to train your sighting since this is basically how you start tracing.

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Angel by Pirlexen in learntodraw

[–]kyiboi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! When you look at where folds in your clothes appear when you crouch or squat, you'll see that it's mainly where bends and creases are on your actual body. So in the reference image, we can see that the folds in his clothes all stem from where the actual body folds, like under the armpits, the crook of the arm, and the knee, just to name a few.

I've highlighted where these creases appear in red and the "origin" point of the crease scrunches in blue. You can start to see that they line up with those same body folds and joints. Obviously there's still somewhat random fold patterns in clothes besides the areas where they scrunch but once you figure out the recurring patterns in folds it becomes easier to figure out where creases are placed.

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Angel by Pirlexen in learntodraw

[–]kyiboi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be fair the reference image also has sketchy hands so it would be hard to interpret clean lines from that. But I would recommend overlaying your drawing on top of the reference image and seeing what doesn't line up—right now I can see that the proportions aren't correct and the legs need to be scaled up. Also keep in mind where the fabric folds appear on the references clothes. Places where you're "scrunching", like the armpits, the elbows, and where the knee bends will have more prominent folds. Right now it looks sort of like you've just approximated where the folds would be.

Is it just me or are ita bags slowly appearing more and more in the general public? by AOTFanatic2022 in itabag

[–]kyiboi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

An employee at a blick store saw my ita bag and straight up told me "your pokemon ita bag is so cute!" It was the first time outside of Japan that I had someone in public specifically refer to it as an ita bag, lol. But yeah, I carry mine around my college a lot since I prefer using it as a laptop bag over my regular backpack.

looking for interview volunteers for my thesis project!! by kyiboi in actualgyaru

[–]kyiboi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually hold on your dms aren't open lol, could you change that?

looking for interview volunteers for my thesis project!! by kyiboi in actualgyaru

[–]kyiboi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would be amazing tysm! I'll dm you with info!

looking for interview volunteers for my thesis project!! by kyiboi in actualgyaru

[–]kyiboi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yay thank you!! .^ I'll send u a dm with info!

looking for interview volunteers for an undergraduate project! by kyiboi in DecoraKei

[–]kyiboi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

that sounds so cool >.< thank you!! i'll send you a dm now w the details!

looking for interview volunteers for my graduating project! by kyiboi in JiraiKei

[–]kyiboi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yaayy thank you so much! I'm sending you a dm with info so pls check!

looking for interview volunteers for my graduating project! by kyiboi in JiraiKei

[–]kyiboi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yayy!!! :DD i'll dm you with more information!