Latest Posts by zelo-ref - Page 2
a softer sequel to this
(please dont repost without credit)
You can actually add your own images into it if you want to compare more dynamic characters or use alternate poses. And I’ll show you how owo
1. You go on the site:
2. Left click the image and scroll down to inspect:
3. You see those two links down there? Those are the image links for the sillouhettes, just add your own image (must be a url, i personally like imgur):
4. And bingo bango! You got your own custom images to compare heights with! I hope this was helpful owo
This is what it’s like to go to an all-plus size, body positive pool party
After years of negative experiences at pool parties and the like, I was so excited to attend the 2nd Annual Golden Confidence Pool Party hosted by fashion blogger Essie Golden. This party wasn’t just about having a good time — it was about creating a space for women to feel good about their bodies.
Photos: Rick Jones
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I show you my brightest smile to wish you an happy new year !
Thank you so much for your support and kind words. It’s mean a lot for me !
May 2017 be a sweet and creative year !
Source: FOERVRAENGD
List of tutorials that helped me with environmental painting: “How to make your own Perspective Grid in PS” <—- this one is the best thing I’ve ever discovered. Srsly CHECK IT OOOOUUUUT! Snuffen’s Background Tutorial P1More or less ALL tutorials by Griffsnuff is awesome, so make sure to check out the rest of them! More or less ALL tutorials made by AquaSixio! List of youtube channels that also helped and inspired me: FZDSCHOOL - More or less one of the most known concept art-related resources I know on youtube. It’s great to sit and draw and just listen to the talking. SinixDesign- This guy is also great! He has some design workshops ever now and then where the viewers can send in their stuff for critique! very encouraging and inspiring! moatddtutorials- This guy is more into drawing than painting, and has a more cartoony style. He has interesting methods when it comes to perspective. And he also challenge himself in some of his videos (the engine block video is a great example of this) foxOrian- Also known here on dA for his awesome perspective and composition tutorials. He has a youtube channel where he posts some videos that might be interesting as well.
Alexander Wang rtw sp’17
Worked on a few file blades today! The bottom 4 are done and ready for sheaths! If you’d like one message me here or visit my etsy shop. The largest one on the bottom is $55 not including shipping and the others three are $45. The top ones will get a twine wrap and epoxied like the others.
Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LunarLightForge
Thanks everyone!!
1815 Jean-Baptiste Wicar - Princess Charlotte Gabrielli Bonaparte as a young peasant woman
need refs/inspo for period clothing?
here you go:
Medieval (9th-15th century):
10th century and earlier
Romance (1000-1250)
11th century
12th century
13th century
more 13th century
14th century
more 14th
15th century
and more 15th century
Gothic (1150-1550)
Renaissance (1520-1650)
16th & 17th century
16th century
more 16th
Tudors (1500-1550)
more Tudors
Elizabethan Period (1558-1603)
Jacobean Era (1603-1625)
17th century
more 17th century
and again
and even more
this won’t stop
Baroque (1600-1750)
Georgian Period (1714-1830):
18th century
more 18th century
18th century women’s fashion
18th century men’s fashion
Rococo (1720-1770)
Classicism (1770-1790)
children 18th-19th century
Regency Preiod (1811-1820)/ Empire (1800-1820s):
1790-1820s
more stuff on regency and georgian era
even more
that’s not enough regency
and more
how is there so much
early 19th century men’s wear
early 19th century women’s wear
Victorian Period (1837-1901):
Romantic Era (1820-1840s)
Civil War Era/1850-1860s
1870-1890s
more victorian
Edwardian Period (1901-1910):
1900-1910s
Belle Epoque (1880-1910s)
more edwardian/belle époque
Modern:
1910s-1920s [Fashion between the World Wars]
1920s
more roaring 20s
so much 20s
1920s hairstyles
1930s
1930-1940s
1930-1950s
1950s
more 50s
1960s
1960-1970s
1980s
lots of periods in one spot/fashion through centuries:
here, here, and here is almost everything (and properly ordered)
also here with lots of historic fashion magazines
historic fashion
costumes of antiquity
more historical clothing
history of fashion
more history of fashion
“vintage” clothing
historic costumes
children’s historical fashion/toys
details
historic wedding dresses
historic assecoires (hats, shoes…)
hats
masks
parasols
lots of embroidery/jewlery
it indeed is western/european centric, I’m sorry for that, but for other cultures I simply don’t have so many references
Khanjar Dagger
Dated: circa 1800
Culture: Indian, Moghul
Measurements: overall length 38.3 cm
The dagger has a lightly-curved, double-edged blade with a slightly strengthened tip. The grip is sculpted in one piece of jade or agate in shades from yellow to beige, provided with a guard. The upper part of the quilt features a gold lion two rubies for the eyes and an emerald on the head. The wooden scabbard is covered in red and gold cloth and silver mounts engraved with floral motifs and partially pierced.
Source: Copyright © 2016 Czerny’s International Auction House S.R.L.
Notes on Character Design
Character design and drawing are tome-sized topics and even if I had all the answers (I don’t - I have a lot to learn), I’m not sure I could communicate them effectively. I’ve gathered some thoughts and ideas here, though, in case they’re helpful.
First, some general things: - Relax and let some of that anxiety go. This isn’t a hard science. There’s no wrong way, no rigid process you must adhere to, no shoulds or shouldn’ts except those you designate for yourself. This is one of the fun parts of being an artist, really - have a heady good time with it.
- Be patient. A design is something gradually arrived at. It takes time and iteration and revision. You’ll throw a lot of stuff away, and you’ll inevitably get frustrated, but bear in mind the process is both inductive and deductive. Drawing the wrong things is part of the path toward drawing the right thing.
- Learn to draw. It might seem perfunctory to say, but I’m not sure everyone’s on the same page about what this means. Learning to draw isn’t a sort of rote memorization process in which, one by one, you learn a recipe for humans, horses, pokemon, cars, etc. It’s much more about learning to think like an artist, to develop the sort of spacial intelligence that lets you observe and effectively translate to paper, whatever the subject matter. When you’re really learning to draw, you’re learning to draw anything and everything. Observing and sketching trains you to understand dimension, form, gesture, mood, how anatomy works, economy of line; all of the foundational stuff you will also rely on to draw characters from your imagination. Spend some time honing your drawing ability. Hone it with observational sketching. Hone it good.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do this sort of thing better than Claire Wendling. In fact, character designs emerge almost seamlessly from her gestural sketches. It’d be worth looking her up.
- Gather Inspiration like a crazed magpie. What will ultimately be your trademark style and technique is a sort of snowball accumulation of the various things you expose yourself to, learn and draw influence from. To that effect, Google images, tumblr, pinterest and stock photo sites are your friends. When something tingles your artsy senses - a style, a shape, a texture, an appealing palette, a composition, a pose, a cool looking animal, a unique piece of apparel, whatever - grab it. Looking at a lot of material through a creative lens will make you a better artist the same way reading a lot of material makes a better writer. It’ll also devour your hard drive and you will try and fail many times to organize it, but more importantly, it’ll give you a lovely library of ideas and motivational shinies to peruse as you’re conjuring characters.
- Imitation is a powerful learning tool. Probably for many of us, drawing popular cartoon characters was the gateway habit that lured us into the depraved world of character design to begin with. I wouldn’t suggest limiting yourself to one style or neglecting your own inventions to do this, but it’s an effective way to limber up, to get comfortable drawing characters in general, and to glean something from the thought processes of other artists.
- Use references. Don’t leave it all up to guessing. Whether you’re trying to design something with realistic anatomy or something rather profoundly abstracted from reality, it’s helpful in a multitude of ways to look at pictures. When designing characters, you can infer a lot personality from photos, too.
And despite what you might have heard, having eyeballs and using them to look at things doesn’t constitute cheating. There’s no shame in reference material. There’s at least a little shame in unintentional abstractions, though.
Concepts and Approach:
- Break it down. Sometimes you have the look of a character fleshed out in your mind before putting it to paper, but usually not. That doesn’t mean you have to blow your cortical fuses trying conceive multiple diverse designs all at the same time, though. You don’t even have to design the body shape, poses, face, and expressions of a single character all at once. Tackle it a little at a time.
The cartoony, googly eyed style was pre-established for this simple mobile game character, but I still broke it into phases. Start with concepts, filter out what you like until you arrive at a look, experiment with colors, gestures and expressions.
- Start with the general and work toward the specific. Scribbling out scads of little thumbnails and silhouettes to capture an overall character shape is an effective way begin - it’s like jotting down visual notes. When you’re working at a small scale without agonizing over precision and details, there’s no risk of having to toss out a bunch of hard work, so go nuts with it. Give yourself a lot of options.
Here’s are some sample silhouettes from an old cancelled project in which I was tasked with designing some kind of cyber monkey death bot. I scratched out some solid black shapes then refined some of them a step or two further.
Here’s an instructional video by Feng Zhu about doing much the same thing (only way better).
- Shapes are language. They come preloaded with all sorts of biological, cultural and personal connotations. They evoke certain things from us too. If you’re ever stuck about where to go with your design, employ a sort of anthroposcopy along these lines - make a visual free association game out of it. It’ll not only tend to result in a distinguished design, but a design that communicates something about the nature of the character.
Think about what you infer from different shapes. What do they remind you of? What personalities or attitudes come to mind? How does the mood of a soft curve differ from that of a sharp angle? With those attributes attached, how could they be used or incorporated into a body or facial feature shape? What happens when you combine shapes in complementary or contrasting ways? How does changing the weight distribution among a set of shapes affect look and feel? Experiment until a concept starts to resonate with the character you have in mind or until you stumble on something you like.
If you don’t have intent, take the opposite approach - draw some shapes and see where they go. (It’s stupid fun.)
You might also find it helpful to watch Bobby Chiu’s process videos in which he feels out his character designs as he paints.
- Cohesion and Style. As you move from thumbnails to more refined drawings, you can start extrapolating details from the general form. Look for defining shapes, emergent themes or patterns and tease them out further, repeat them, mirror them, alternate them. Make the character entirely out of boxy shapes, incorporate multiple elements of an architectural style, use rhythmically varying line weights - there are a million ways to do this
Here’s some of the simple shape repetition I’ve used for Lackadaisy characters.
- Expressions - let them emerge from your design. If your various characters have distinguishing features, the expressions they make with those features will distinguish them further. Allow personality to influence expressions too, or vice versa. Often, a bit of both happens as you continue drawing - physiognomy and personality converge somewhere in the middle.
For instance, Viktor’s head is proportioned a little like a big cat. Befitting his personality, his design lets him make rather bestial expressions. Rocky, with his flair for drama, has a bit more cartoon about him. His expressions are more elastic, his cheeks squish and deform and his big eyebrows push the boundaries of his forehead. Mitzi is gentler all around with altogether fewer lines on her face. The combination of her large sleepy eyes and pencil line brow looked a little sad and a little condescending to me when I began working out her design - ultimately those aspects became incorporated into her personality.
I discuss expression drawing in more detail here (click the image for the link):
- Pose rendering is another one of those things for which observational/gesture drawing comes in handy. Even if you’re essentially scribbling stick figures, you can get a handle on natural looking, communicative poses this way. Stick figure poses make excellent guidelines for plotting out full fledged character drawings too.
Look for the line of action. It’ll be easiest to identify in poses with motions, gestures and moods that are immediately decipherable. When you’ve learned to spot it, you can start reverse engineering your own poses around it.
- Additional resources - here are some related things about drawing poses and constructing characters (click the images for the links).
Lastly…
- Tortured rumination about lack of ability/style/progress is a near universal state of creative affairs. Every artist I have known and worked with falls somewhere on a spectrum between frustration in perpetuity and a shade of fierce contrition Arthur Dimmesdale would be proud of. So, next time you find yourself constructing a scourge out of all those crusty acrylic brushes you failed to clean properly, you loathsome, deluded hack, you, at least remember you’re not alone in feeling that way. When it’s not crushing the will to live out of you, the device does have its uses - it keeps you self-critical and locked in working to improve mode. If we were all quite satisfied with our output, I suppose we’d be out of reasons to try harder next time.
When you need some reassurance, compare old work to new. Evolution is gradual and difficult to perceive if you’re narrowed in on the nearest data point, but if you’ve been steadily working on characters for a few months or a year, you’ll likely see a favorable difference between points A and B.
Most of all, don’t dwell on achieving some sort of endgame in which you’re finally there as a character artist. There’s no such place - wherever you are, there is somewhere else. It’s a moving goal post. Your energy will be better spent just enjoying the process…and that much will show in the results.
Small Dagger
Dated: 19th century
Culture: Russian
Measurements: overall lenght 30cm
The dagger features a straight, double-edged blade with a central groove and golden decorations. The steel hilt is decorated en suite, the white horn grip having oblique, golden staves. The steel scabbard is also decorated en suite.
Source: Copyright © 2016 Czerny’s International Auction House S.R.L.
(If you haven't answered this before) how do you do shading?
i havent !! and. i cant say this is gonna be any help but heres some of the things i try to keep in mind when im shading stuff
so youve got your flats on your initial drawing, the thing thats getting the business
then youve got find out where the light is coming from ! your light source is gonna determine where all the highlights and shadows are cast, and while it doesnt have to be EXACT, its generally a good rule to keep it pretty consistent through the drawing - sometimes youll probably have to deal with multiple sources, and each ones gonna be casting its own light and shadow ( and color by extension )
the intensity and sharpness of your shadows generally also reflects the brightness or closeness of the light ! basically if you wanna make something look BRIGHT, you gotta make sure the shadows are dark enough to get the idea across
so the actual shading part - the way i shade is by getting a brush on a very low opacity, picking the color i want for shadows and then layering the strokes over and over until i get about the darkness i want ( because im LAZY and i dont actually work with complex backgrounds a bunch, i can usually get away with drawing the shadows directly on the locked flat colors layer so theres nothing to clean up after )
afterwards i clean it up a little if i need to, add highlights while keeping in mind where the light is coming from, and start on the Detail Work ( it also might be helpful to keep in mind that highlights dont always go on the EDGE of things, but rather where the curve of something is - where the light would catch. this can help add a little depth and make flat things look rounded out ! )
and THEN its basically me zooming into the drawing at least 200%, putting another layer over the top of everything, and going over the outlines with a tiny brush so the harsh black is mostly gone ! there shouldnt be anything along the edge thats darker than the darkest part of the shadow ( with exceptions like the eyes and nostrils )
and thats mostly it ! i picked red for the shadow color, but picking your shading ( and flats ! ) based on the colors in your background can go a LONG way into making it seem like your character is actually in the environment
reflective light is also an important thing to keep in mind when choosing shadows and highlights - light and color doesnt always just hit an object and stay there, and even in the shade there could be light bouncing back from stuff like water or grass creating smaller, subtle highlights along the edges of things close by
not everything reflects the same way either ! something like a piece of wood is going to react differently than say, a metal ball
so you get your light source, basic highlights and shadows, not bad ! but then theres ALSO the light reflecting from the rest of the environment along the edge of the ball, and then finally the color from both the dragon and the ball reflecting a bit on each other
honestly though these arent RULES of drawing and more just guidelines i work with sometimes, and maybe your style of shading and highlighting looks completely different than this and thats ok !! - im still figuring a bunch of stuff out about light and reflections myself, and the great thing about art is that you can do whatever the hell you want with it
