I know I haven't posted a lot of art, and 99% of it is nsfw. But just in general, I'm curious as to what you guys think I should work on and what I should focus more on?

AmnesiaCreations said:
I know I haven't posted a lot of art, and 99% of it is nsfw. But just in general, I'm curious as to what you guys think I should work on and what I should focus more on?

Hey! I just went through your posts and all your artworks are really pretty, but my main problem with most of them is that it's rather hard to tell what's going on - what I mean by that is that it's difficult to distinguish features of certain characters and make up the exact pose they are in. This is probably partly because of your stylistic choice to do this hard "cell" shading with a very limited color palette. Your style kinda reminds me of mysticalpha's which I'm not a big fan of honestly (probably because I'm a sucker for realism).

So IMHO you should focus on clarity.

I find something a bit disturbing in the eyes of your characters. Perhaps they don't seem to be in synch with the rest of the action, or they are too intense, or something...

In posts 2125170 and 2125181 you have best eyes.

Hecc you want us to tell you, unless blitzdrachin decides to show up, you'll be better than anyone here.
At least looking post #2125229
Which is weird, this is well made (well, hand is a bit glitchy, as usual, you got problems drawing the jaw), but you got good color and simple, pretty shade. That marked as 2019.
But then a posts marked as 2020, post #2125167 and post #2125172 seem like a major downgrade.
They have head anatomy damaged, parts being far from where they should be. There are tricks you can use to figure it out, you can take time and redraw until you like it, you can sketch it from multiple angles and use those to help figure out where everything should be, you can use images and even 3d technology to help yourself. but don't skip ensuring that your sketch is good, it does not matter how good you become at shading and coloring, people will notice and comment the failures at basic anatomy.
Like this thing > post #1815092
It would have taken a few minutes to fix, but nah lets spend hours doing beautiful shading over a broken sketch why not.
Your shading is bizarre, I have seen something like that once in a tutorial for custom shader in 3D modeling tutorial. You got this flat jump from one shade color value to the next. It looks so bizarre and wrong, don't do that. Either do smooth shading, as you did in those two posts but blurring it out, or a simple 2 part shade with lit and unlit areas.
Oh and post #2125172 has lit character areas that are on the other side from the light source. You got to be careful and thoughtful when drawing, people see what you do and they will find that it does not make any sense.
Looking through, you are bizarrely better in 2019 than in 2020. You tried to do simple shading with more accurate anatomy in 2019, then seemingly tried to do more, tried to do realistic shade but failed and got half flat shade/half realistic. You got to go all in or not at all.

I would suggest you to practice more structure and anatomy. Maybe watch some proko videos about structure? you need to draw more smooth poses imo.

Your shading has a weird feature where some shadows on parts (tails and ears) will be filled in completely black. It's most obvious in these two pieces:

post #2125170 post #2125179

This makes some shapes quite difficult to read, and muddles the anatomy a lot. For instance, in the second pic, the character's tail completely blends into the shadow of their legs, which makes it seem like they're sitting in a huge black oil spill, or that they've covered themselves in Vantablack. The white outlines, which serve to differentiate between these parts doesn't help. It doesn't make sense that either of these shadows would be the darkest parts of the scene, because the things around them are clearly reflecting at least some light. This kind of shading can be effective for small details, like in the character's armpits where their line-art bleeds into the shadow. But when a larger shape is completely black, the effect is confusing.

AngryDraconequus said:
Hey! I just went through your posts and all your artworks are really pretty, but my main problem with most of them is that it's rather hard to tell what's going on - what I mean by that is that it's difficult to distinguish features of certain characters and make up the exact pose they are in. This is probably partly because of your stylistic choice to do this hard "cell" shading with a very limited color palette. Your style kinda reminds me of mysticalpha's which I'm not a big fan of honestly (probably because I'm a sucker for realism).

So IMHO you should focus on clarity.

I never thought of that. I really should focus on making the character the highlight of the picture tbh. I'll keep your words in mind while doing my current commission (the only issue is the perspective they wanted but i'll still try to keep them in the main focus as best as i can.)

anonymousanalogue said:
Your shading has a weird feature where some shadows on parts (tails and ears) will be filled in completely black. It's most obvious in these two pieces:

post #2125170 post #2125179

This makes some shapes quite difficult to read, and muddles the anatomy a lot. For instance, in the second pic, the character's tail completely blends into the shadow of their legs, which makes it seem like they're sitting in a huge black oil spill, or that they've covered themselves in Vantablack. The white outlines, which serve to differentiate between these parts doesn't help. It doesn't make sense that either of these shadows would be the darkest parts of the scene, because the things around them are clearly reflecting at least some light. This kind of shading can be effective for small details, like in the character's armpits where their line-art bleeds into the shadow. But when a larger shape is completely black, the effect is confusing.

That's from when I was starting this style of shading but I have been working on it quite a bit. However I will keep that in mind. I do have to agree with you on the block out of shadow. I kinda did that out of feeling it should be like that, but now that I look back at it. I don't really like that. So, it's something I've kinda stopped. (i'm still learning how to do this version of shading but I'm glad to know where I should focus on lighting up the big block shading.) Thanks for you imput ^^

BirdOfGrain said:
Hecc you want us to tell you, unless blitzdrachin decides to show up, you'll be better than anyone here.
At least looking post #2125229
Which is weird, this is well made (well, hand is a bit glitchy, as usual, you got problems drawing the jaw), but you got good color and simple, pretty shade. That marked as 2019.
But then a posts marked as 2020, post #2125167 and post #2125172 seem like a major downgrade.
They have head anatomy damaged, parts being far from where they should be. There are tricks you can use to figure it out, you can take time and redraw until you like it, you can sketch it from multiple angles and use those to help figure out where everything should be, you can use images and even 3d technology to help yourself. but don't skip ensuring that your sketch is good, it does not matter how good you become at shading and coloring, people will notice and comment the failures at basic anatomy.
Like this thing > post #1815092
It would have taken a few minutes to fix, but nah lets spend hours doing beautiful shading over a broken sketch why not.
Your shading is bizarre, I have seen something like that once in a tutorial for custom shader in 3D modeling tutorial. You got this flat jump from one shade color value to the next. It looks so bizarre and wrong, don't do that. Either do smooth shading, as you did in those two posts but blurring it out, or a simple 2 part shade with lit and unlit areas.
Oh and post #2125172 has lit character areas that are on the other side from the light source. You got to be careful and thoughtful when drawing, people see what you do and they will find that it does not make any sense.
Looking through, you are bizarrely better in 2019 than in 2020. You tried to do simple shading with more accurate anatomy in 2019, then seemingly tried to do more, tried to do realistic shade but failed and got half flat shade/half realistic. You got to go all in or not at all.

Consitancy is an issue I have, and I feel that I'll be always battling it as I take tips from those I'm talking with at the time and everyone seems to have different tips and tricks which leads me to loosing some skills I had. It sucks and I'm still learning to combat this, but hopfully this year is the year i get past that.

BirdOfGrain said:
Hecc you want us to tell you, unless blitzdrachin decides to show up, you'll be better than anyone here.
At least looking post #2125229
Which is weird, this is well made (well, hand is a bit glitchy, as usual, you got problems drawing the jaw), but you got good color and simple, pretty shade. That marked as 2019.
But then a posts marked as 2020, post #2125167 and post #2125172 seem like a major downgrade.
They have head anatomy damaged, parts being far from where they should be. There are tricks you can use to figure it out, you can take time and redraw until you like it, you can sketch it from multiple angles and use those to help figure out where everything should be, you can use images and even 3d technology to help yourself. but don't skip ensuring that your sketch is good, it does not matter how good you become at shading and coloring, people will notice and comment the failures at basic anatomy.
Like this thing > post #1815092
It would have taken a few minutes to fix, but nah lets spend hours doing beautiful shading over a broken sketch why not.
Your shading is bizarre, I have seen something like that once in a tutorial for custom shader in 3D modeling tutorial. You got this flat jump from one shade color value to the next. It looks so bizarre and wrong, don't do that. Either do smooth shading, as you did in those two posts but blurring it out, or a simple 2 part shade with lit and unlit areas.
Oh and post #2125172 has lit character areas that are on the other side from the light source. You got to be careful and thoughtful when drawing, people see what you do and they will find that it does not make any sense.
Looking through, you are bizarrely better in 2019 than in 2020. You tried to do simple shading with more accurate anatomy in 2019, then seemingly tried to do more, tried to do realistic shade but failed and got half flat shade/half realistic. You got to go all in or not at all.

A lot of my cretiqu seems to be on the shading, I'm still wanting to see if I can keep the mix, but I'll work on getting it more fluid and natural looking. But I do see where everyone is coming at. A lot of the drawings I see people being iffy about are the early tests of this style but it is still a valid point.
Other than shaidng I fully get the whole janky line work. And after I look at my work, once it's done, I find myself not liking it. So I'll be trying to do more practice and sketch layers then just saying fuck it and lining it. Maybe even running it past some of my friends too. But thank you for your honest words. You all make great points and I'm looking forward to working on what you all have brought up.
thank you a million !!