Summer Characters

 More art practice today. Let me show it for you. 

These are going to be in order. First off is something from last night. This is fanart of, actually, Imogen Temult, who is a character from Critical Role. What I find interesting about this is that I didn't feel like drawing fanart of Imogen in particular. I think her design has some interesting elements I wanted to attempt in my style, particularly her pronounced lips and mid-length, curly hair. Usually, my characters have indiscernible lips and short hair in anime style triangles. This picture, and some other practice, made me realize I've still been drawing the heads too big in proportion to the body and the neck too long. Let's see what happens when I practice not doing that... 

Unrelated character. You'll notice the neck is shorter and the head smaller. This was drawn mostly to experiment with a different method of drawing a feminine body. See the three lines that make up the torso below the pectorals? And how the back is concave?

This was practice doing faces from a character from the anime Land of the Lustrous, which is an anime about gem people defending their home from invaders from the moon. This character is "Phosphophyllite" or "Phos" for short. It's a 3D CGI series that incorporates CGI and 2D better than almost anything else I've seen, especially on tv. I didn't sign this picture because I used a reference.

This is one of mine. A picture using what I've practiced. You'll note the style of the eyes, the distance between the nose and mouth, the body shape, and the hands. Proportions between the upper and lower body are still off. I should've put more time into those before drawing the desk.

Now this is nice. Slight bird's-eye-view. New eye shape. Good proportions. Decent work on the hands. And, of course, the mouth is the right distance from the nose. 

Here's something a little different. Dynamic posing with one finger pointed towards the "camera." I got his back arm in the right place, which I'm very happy about. The foreshortening is good, as are the proportions. I like the expression I did. He definitely looks pretty crazy.

Part of my interest in drawing cute characters is that it helps you draw really scary ones. Once you know the rules, you can break them better. I'm really happy with his pose here. The arms look great, and I finally got the tuchus in the right place for one of these poses. (Side note: "tuchus" was not in Blogger's dictionary. I had to look it up on Merriam-Webster to make sure it was spelled right. I didn't know it came from Yiddish until now.) The face took some experimenting, but I'm very happy with how I got it to look, and it didn't take too long. I also didn't have to look anything up for this drawing, which I appreciated.

God be with me. Lord save me. I love you.

Hemacer

These are hemacers (HEE-mah-surs, /hi-mɑ-sɜɹ/). They are from a book idea I have. The premise of the book is not important at the moment. In fact, the designs for the hemacers might change depending on development. 

Basically, what you need to know it that the hemacers are aliens from another dimension. Their planet was attacked by a superpowerful being who moved their planet off its orbit and shunted a lot of the heat in the atmosphere into space. So the hemacers have moved to our planet. 

I've taken to amateur speculative biology recently. The hemacers are from a planet where terrestrial life evolved with three limbs. Typically, their animals walk on spindly legs, run on two legs with the third as a balance, or run or hop with all three legs. 

God be with me. I love you. God help us all. 

1/3rd Rule

I had no intention of posting today, but I wanted to share this. Let's hope I don't forget it. 

For a long time now I've been comparing my art to other styles that I like, wondering "Why can't I make characters look attractive that way? What am I missing? Is it the space of the eyes? Is it the head shape?" Now, after years of wondering, now I know... 

It's the mouth. I just moved the mouth closer to the nose. 

That's it. 

Now, this makes perfect sense. A human's mouth is not halfway between the nose and chin like how I have been drawing it. This is what I've felt makes it so obvious for me to spot my own work. It lends a distinctive look to my previous characters' faces. But a human's mouth is roughly 1/3rd of the way down from the mouth to the chin. They teach you this in every basic art class and face drawing tutorial on the planet. I somehow missed this. 

And now I can draw a face. Sheesh. 

God be with me. I'm tired today. It's been a long week of the last few days. God save the world and come back soon. Love you.