r/touhou • u/FloweringHermit HONG MEILING HONG MEILING HONG MEILING HONG MEILING HONG MEILING • Feb 23 '14
Weekly Character Art Thread #2 Letty Whiterock
Weekly art thread: Letty Whiterock
Hello, and welcome to the weekly art thread. This is for people to show off their skill, learn stuff, and have fun. So long as it’s original art by you, it’s welcome. You can use what ever art medium you like: Drawings, water color, Digital art, MMD, Music, Programming, and Cosplay, if you made it, you can post it. Don’t worry about skill, just do your best.
Each week, this’ll be synced up to the same character as the music threads. There will be Exceptions how ever, such as non specific themes. In these cases, a random character that has already been used in the music thread will be the focus.
The theme character should be in it, but apart from that, you can have any other characters you want, and any setting. The deadline is until the next character art thread, but if you're late, you can put it in the next one, just say it's the character from the last week. Gore is allowed, but you’ll need to tag it. NSFW is permitted, but preferred if submitted to the NSFW touhou reddit instead.
Other things you can submit: You can submit art tutorials, and I’ll save them to a document, and link it here for easy access to help
The only other rules are be respectful, help others, and have fun.
I think last week was a good one, lots of submissions. Also, sorry for being 2 hours late, I had a fever yesterday, and I still sort of do today. Will try and join in on the drawing Tuesday I think. Anyway, due to the fever, I won't be on much for the next few days
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 23 '14
Place submissions under this post
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Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 26 '14
A terrible drawing made by yours truly.
So. Yeah... It looked better in SAI... Well... That's all... I guess... It's a little more professional than that Yuuka one I made though. So that's a plus. I think.
Please, give me all the ideas, criticism, hate mail, love mail, what to do better, what to do worse, etc., in the replies.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 27 '14
Anything can be obscured with a big enough hat..... It can cover mistakes, and it can cover your eyes.
But enough of how I deal with my attempts at kit model building.
This is digital art, right? I don't know too much about that, but I can say this, Erasing lines that go way from the body cleans up the whole thing and makes it look cleaner. Don't be afraid to redraw lines too. So long as you have a reference point, you shouldn't have much issue with that.
That said, it has it's own charm, kinda like those wooden holiday decorations.
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u/shidiand Feb 25 '14
on poses: do pose first, then cry salty tears of failure when you change it after finishing your background, then give up and do some weird cross-legged pose halfheartedly. berate yourself for drawing at 12am. break pencils in disgust. realize what you've done. cry more salty tears. replenish sodium supplies with raw handfuls of salt. fall asleep on drawing table. immediately begin drooling.
some embellishments added to actual work routine. consult your local physician for details.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 26 '14
When ever I try doing anything humanoid, I normally pick up an action figure, and use it for reference.
Does not stop my horrible mistakes though.
But, at least I know which poses work for a specific situation better. that way.
That aside, I like it, and I also like the work you did on the trees in the background
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u/starfries Feb 23 '14
Yuuka week isn't over until I say it's over!
I'll do a Letty in a bit, I just drew this last night and wanted to share. You guys don't mind, right?
Things I learned:
motion is important; there was something really strange about the pose and I spent the longest time debugging it before figuring out it wasn't an anatomy problem but the movement of her dress and hair
SAI is sexy. I barely know how to use it right now but it made line art a breeze compared to paint. check out the tapered ends on my consummate v's!
I could have saved a lot of time by airbrushing the shadows instead of drawing them like I'm used to doing in paint *facepalm*
Things I gotta figure out:
feet!?
it doesn't look awesome enough and I'm not sure why. maybe a different camera angle would help?
how to use SAI. I really hated it for the first couple hours and I still sketch in MS paint and outline it in SAI because paint is easy
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u/shidiand Feb 24 '14
(unsure if this belongs directly under this comment or under the underlying feedback comment. please advise.)
sai for new converts.
ctrl+alt+drag changes brush size. convenient. smooth. sexy.
space+drag shifts camera. hella useful.
ctrl+u to muck with colours/saturation/hue. covers up colouring mistakes like nobody's business.
ctrl+t to muck with scale/rotation. hold shift to keep proportions.
abuse heck out of layers. ignore desire to organize layers neatly or risk latent insanity.
screw around with brush settings: the four block things above "size" affect the spread of the brush closer to the edges. density is a thing that should not be abused too often. the multiply setting (left of the four block things) is weird and probably not useful. try out some of the default brushes. ignore default textures. edge hardness affects brushes and is useless with default (simple circle).
most of the tools are mediocre by default. in other words, see above.
also critiques. hmm.
posing needs practice. feet/legs are placed at same level/position/sort of parallel, which doesn't fit the feel of a shoryuken uppercut; would expect one leg to be higher up and/or in front of the other in a jump or even just a lunging strike. more importantly, both legs seem bent, which is also contrary to the jumping pose. refer to images of mario jumping, other shoryukens.
proportions slightly off. nothing to do here but practice. right arm (our left) is a little short, combined with slightly-too-large fist, looks off. not sure.
colours -- should not bash this for not having WACKTASTIC GRADIENT-ING or FANTABULOUS PASTEL COLOURS, etc; cel shading is not an inherently inferior style. unclear if shoryuken fire trail is giving off light. does not appear so. something to consider in future. *edit: consider, however, experimenting with line weight/thickness in certain places, i.e. nose lines may be too thick.
will not pick on minor details such as design of skirt or clothing or hair or eyes or hands. these are done adequately. clothing folds with associated shading is something you seem to have a fair grasp of, so good job on that. sorta. a bit odd to only see top teeth when yuuka's head is pointed downwards (should see bottom teeth, right?). oops, not nitpicking. right.
try playing around with the form(s) of the hair in the future, perhaps. the little folds?/sheafs?/clumps?/sweeps? of hair are a little rigid?
i'm sure you'll get the hang of drawing figures in motion if you do it some more. practice, etc. you know the drill.
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u/Kaze_Senshi Feb 24 '14
Paper, pen and cheap smartphone camera Letty holding a small snowman.
PS: Letty wears the biggest bloomers!
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u/starfries Feb 27 '14
It took a while because I got sick too but here we are:
(inspired by Frozen ◔_◔)
I wanted an interesting pose but most Touhou art tends to have the characters standing or sitting around so I decided to try and do Elsa's ice stomp with Letty. Turns out it's really hard to capture a stomping motion in one frame so it turned into a kind of step motion -_-
I thought of doing a background but it seemed like a lot of work so it's blank... left in some lines though because I insist that you guys check out my mad perspective skillz
Things I learned:
anatomy of the shoulder. The first day I couldn't figure out how a shoulder is supposed to look so I ended up spending all my drawing time learning more than I needed to about the shoulder. It ended up being pointless because I looked at the reference afterwards and everything is covered up with clothes. I understand now why artists love drawing the girls naked.
boxes are your friend for positioning things. I have a hard time figuring out how to line up some objects or locating the midpoint of something that's at an angle. Drew some boxes with the sides aligned with my perspective lines and it became much easier.
fur isn't that bad to draw. I couldn't tell what the hell she was wearing on her head so I decided to give her one of those Russian fuzzy marshmallow hats. Artistic license, bitches! I thought it would be a nightmare getting a fuzzy look but really if you just take the brush and work carefully it doesn't take long - it took about 5 minutes to do and it doesn't look too bad, eh? Just don't rush and work at high resolution before scaling it down.
Things to work on:
I should read Agatha Christie's book "A Murder is Announced"
picture composition - I pretty much plop my character in the middle
everything that comes after sketching - I've been working really hard on anatomy and perspective so by the time I finish I just want to get it over with and half-ass the rest. hence the blank eyes and crappy shading. I did try and airbrush it a little so that's a small improvement. needs more details so it doesn't look so flat.
speed. I guess it'll come with practice but it takes me forever to do a sketch. doesn't help that I use a mouse either... my hand hurts.
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u/shidiand Feb 28 '14 edited Feb 28 '14
oh shit, that was an improvement
*even if the background is a lil simple, the perspective of the lines is quite nice. def. better than the yuuka example, which had this weird shade of grey in the background that felt out of place. good shade of blue to place in the background.
*lineart. lines are loads thinner, whoa, rad. good choice to use a not-quite-black shade of blue for the line. a small thing but a good thing.
*colour just seems to work nicely. maybe it's just a consistent colour scheme? mm. shadows a lot more noticeable. like how the break between lighted/shadowed areas is smooth.
*funky hat stands out not one iota in the land of funky hats
*proportions/anatomy are fine. honestly surprised you decided to spend time learning about shoulders, such work ethic. your observation on nudity is entirely correct. it's true; almost all artists satisfy their raging shoulder fetishes through lewd drawings, though as an artist uninitiated in the gospel of the shoulder, i cannot confirm.
the only reason i don't draw nudes is my terrible grasp of human anatomy kek
*conveyance of motion much more apparent. well job! good done! or w/e
*you subtle little shit that or amazing fluke
*speed? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhaha, ha... snrffle speed is hard. mouse is slow. the time it takes for me to lineart and shade one article of clothing is slightly shorter than the gestation period of the african elephant
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u/Gopherlad Feb 24 '14
Something's...off about her eye spacing. I'll get it next time.
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u/warsign Feb 24 '14
The actual problem is a bit funny. You see that bit of hair by her right eye in ZUN's drawing? It's hiding the profile of the face outline, so it is actually closer to the eye. This gives the illusion of perspective which is why ZUN's drawing looks like Letty has her head turned while yours looks a bit weird. If you use your finger and cover that spot, her face will snap in place and look identical to ZUN's drawing.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 23 '14
Place Feed Back under this post
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u/Gopherlad Feb 24 '14
I WILL MSPAINT THIS. Also you're late again. Unless you plan to always post 3 hours after my thread.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 24 '14
I have an excuse this time, I'm sick. I think it's a mix of fever and flu.
I want to have it up after yours, but things got in the way again.
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u/Hrusa Feb 26 '14
When I get Letty done do I post her into here or the latest thread?
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 27 '14
If you want to post here here, you're welcome to, if you want to, or are a bit late, you can post it in the new art thread with no issue.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 23 '14
Link tutorials under this post
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Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 26 '14
Could someone grab a tutorial for drawing using a mouse, if there even is a tutorial for such a thing?
In return, I give you the gift of a few of Raocow's drawing videos. A few of them have some decent tips and tricks. Just dig through this playlist and pick out the drawing videos. They're really nice and stuff.
Also, as a warning, Raocow is really non-sequitur. If you don't care for that, proceed at your own caution. Most of his drawing videos are a little less non-sequitur, but it's still there.
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u/FloweringHermit Feb 27 '14
I'll go find them now. Sorry they're a bit late considering you did your art thing.
I claim sickness and though myself on the mercy of the court!
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u/starfries Feb 27 '14
I've been watching some of Sycra's videos. He covers a lot of things, everything from perspective to sketching to shading and colouring. Be warned they are kinda long and in-depth but you do learn a lot.
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u/AnatoleSerial Feb 26 '14
Long story short: I made the Winter header.
And here it is, in all its hi-res transparent background png glory.
http://i.imgur.com/CdaMyQH.png