Original Character

[Elliot Rodriguez]

Good morning everyone!! I have some more artwork and this is from two weeks ago, so it's relatively new. This is an original character of mine, I had/have (not sure yet) the intention of putting this character in a comic one day. At the moment I have no name for this guy, but it'll get there eventually. I had posted a sketch of him on another thread and I got immediate feedback about the torso and body proportions, some things that were completely off to which I made some changes and now I have the finished work. I hope I made it better, but who knows. Please take a look and I'd appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks again and have a great one!

[Smitty]

Something new. Cool.

Watch your shapes and perspective. The front of the chest belt has to attach to the back of the belt. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. The stuff we can't see defines what we can see. Wrap the belt over the shoulder not the bicep. Draw your cape hem first and work back and up from there. When the front overlaps the back, the back's still there! Again, what we can't see defines what we can. Your rocks say the horizon is above the page, the rest of the drawing says it's at the bottom: gotta pick one and stick to it.

More consistency with lighting. Pick one light source and stick to it. Beware backlit halos. If things disappear into shadow, GREAT! That's what shadows are for

Watch your line of balance. We can place all the weight on one leg but the entire drawing has to support that. Your drawing says the weights distributed which means the back leg has to swing out. Just because the bones are covered doesn't mean they're not there.

Your legs look like gobs of tooth paste. Are pants tight or loose? Pick one. If tight, show the form of the leg. If loose, show a loose tube of fabric.

Beware bulbous big feet. You could stack up 3-4 feet in those boots.



Rendering is getting better. There's a suggestion of form you were missing before. Individual strokes have taken on meaning rather than the tone-unconcerned-with-volume of previous stuff.

[Elliot Rodriguez]

Something new. Cool.

Watch your shapes and perspective. The front of the chest belt has to attach to the back of the belt. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. The stuff we can't see defines what we can see. Wrap the belt over the shoulder not the bicep. Draw your cape hem first and work back and up from there. When the front overlaps the back, the back's still there! Again, what we can't see defines what we can. Your rocks say the horizon is above the page, the rest of the drawing says it's at the bottom: gotta pick one and stick to it.

More consistency with lighting. Pick one light source and stick to it. Beware backlit halos. If things disappear into shadow, GREAT! That's what shadows are for

Watch your line of balance. We can place all the weight on one leg but the entire drawing has to support that. Your drawing says the weights distributed which means the back leg has to swing out. Just because the bones are covered doesn't mean they're not there.

Your legs look like gobs of tooth paste. Are pants tight or loose? Pick one. If tight, show the form of the leg. If loose, show a loose tube of fabric.

Beware bulbous big feet. You could stack up 3-4 feet in those boots.



Rendering is getting better. There's a suggestion of form you were missing before. Individual strokes have taken on meaning rather than the tone-unconcerned-with-volume of previous stuff.

Thanks for all the tips Smitty, I really appreciate it. The chest belt and cape are things I overlooked, lol. I was too busy focusing on the body / anatomy aspect, that I overlooked that. Looking back at it, yeah, that chest belt is all over his bicep.

I'm still having trouble with lighting and how that works in contrast with the solid blacks. The light source, according to how I wanted it, is supposed to be on the right side of the page, so that would mean that the left side of the figure would have the shaded areas. This is also supposed to be on a sunny day, so I'm thinking that since the sun shines everywhere that it wouldn't be too necessary to shade the left side of the figure completely with black. That was the doubt that I had going into this, I guess I'd have to study that some more. That's also the reason why I did the backlit halos on his shirt, arm and the top part of his cape, I figured they would be there considering that it's daytime. I'm just explaining my thought process behind this piece, I didn't have a reference for this one, since it's an original character and I just made up this particular pose.

His legs are a disaster. They were supposed to be some slightly loose pants, but as you said it, they should either be tight or loose, I need to fix that for future reference. I didn't know how solid black areas would work with clothing in that case either and the faults are obvious here. His boots didn't come out right either, as you said, they're too big.

The way I imagined this piece is that this character is standing on the cliff of the mountain and we get to see the landscape behind him. To give some indication of the height of the cliff, I decided to add the rocks that you see to the right, which were meant to be a neighboring clifftop or maybe an extension of the cliff that he's on right now. I figured that the horizon line would be somewhere around the top of his boot, but then again, I didn't know how to pull that off. Something like the horizon line being way off in the distance, but again, I had no idea how to make that work.

Thanks again for your feedback and your insight, I really appreciate the patience you have with my work, lol.