Topic: Richter Sketch (Feedback + Tips?)

[Claimh Solais]

Preparing for my comic's transition into hand-drawn art so I'm doing some practice sketches of CV characters. I started off with Richter, and included both the line-art and shoddy colored version in the attachments. Comments and feedback and stuff would be appreciated.

Also, I'm absolutely abysmal at shading so some tips on that would be most helpful.

[theplottwist]

Before reading: Consider that I'm mostly a pixel artist. I can pull off HD artwork, but I'm in no way a master. My thing on HD artwork is drawing cutesy characters.

Richter's left arm gets absurdly thin near the elbow. To be more precise, it seems to lack flesh on that area of the arm. And then his hand is way too small. A nice trick to draw hands is to compare it with the character's face: The hand's width should be able to cover the area between the eyes leaving just a tiny bit of both eyes escaping outwards, and the hands length should be enough to cover the character's face from their chin with the bottom of the hand's palm to their forehead with the tips of the hand's fingers. Of course you must apply perspective to these notions, but the hand you have right now is not working even with perspective.

The nose seems to be in a really weird perspective, as if it was broken to the side. Ideally the nose line should be more vertical as opposed to being so much diagonal like it is now. On the position it should be, too, the nose hole should either be reduced to a tiny dot or disappear completely.

Something on the outlines: Try your goddamn earnest to keep the outlines consistent. You have thick outlines everywhere, but on the face they get mysteriously thin. I perfectly understand this is because there should be more space to draw the face's features, but this creates a strange effect where it seems like the character's body was made by one artist, and the face by another. Once you master keeping your outlines consistent you'll have more freedom with them as your style evolves.

I cannot say very much about shading. The tip I could give here is to place a light source visibly on the picture to guide you and darken up the art where you imagine a shadow would be considering the light source's position. With this style I'd say hard shadows (cellshading) with low detailing would work much better than anything else.

[zangetsu468]

This would be Richter if he was on Drawn Together

[Claimh Solais]

Richter's left arm gets absurdly thin near the elbow. To be more precise, it seems to lack flesh on that area of the arm. And then his hand is way too small. A nice trick to draw hands is to compare it with the character's face: The hand's width should be able to cover the area between the eyes leaving just a tiny bit of both eyes escaping outwards, and the hands length should be enough to cover the character's face from their chin with the bottom of the hand's palm to their forehead with the tips of the hand's fingers. Of course you must apply perspective to these notions, but the hand you have right now is not working even with perspective.

The nose seems to be in a really weird perspective, as if it was broken to the side. Ideally the nose line should be more vertical as opposed to being so much diagonal like it is now. On the position it should be, too, the nose hole should either be reduced to a tiny dot or disappear completely.

Yeah, I didn't even really notice these things until you pointed them out (I'll blame a lack of sleep for these slipping by). As for his arm, yeah, I'll definitely try widening those out, and probably just redraw his entire hand. The nose, I actually meant to redraw that, but considering how I constantly forget things even in my own comic, that one just slipped my mind.

Something on the outlines: Try your goddamn earnest to keep the outlines consistent. You have thick outlines everywhere, but on the face they get mysteriously thin. I perfectly understand this is because there should be more space to draw the face's features, but this creates a strange effect where it seems like the character's body was made by one artist, and the face by another. Once you master keeping your outlines consistent you'll have more freedom with them as your style evolves.

Really? I actually thought the only place the outlines seemed funky were on his left arm (where they're noticeably thicker than anywhere else). I can, however, attribute this to my lack of understanding how the brush in this program works (it actually stays the same size relative to your view, regardless of how close you zoom in). I do feel like completely redrawing his face, though, so maybe I'll touch on it and thicken the outlines there (since it'll be easier than thinning them everywhere else).

I'll post an updated sketch after I wake up a little more and work on it.

I cannot say very much about shading. The tip I could give here is to place a light source visibly on the picture to guide you and darken up the art where you imagine a shadow would be considering the light source's position. With this style I'd say hard shadows (cellshading) with low detailing would work much better than anything else.

That's the style I was considering anyway, but man, even with a visual light source I'm bad at actually putting shadows on the character. Whenever I do a modified sketch I'll include a shaded version so you can see what I mean.

This would be Richter if he was on Drawn Together

I actually have no idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing. While I know what Drawn Together is, I've never even seen so much as a screenshot of it.

[MooMilk]

Not bad. I never knew Richter could smile. LOL, you want him to draw the lines on his face thick like the powerpuff girls or something? Don't forget this is Castlevania.

[Claimh Solais]

Not bad. I never knew Richter could smile. LOL, you want him to draw the lines on his face thick like the powerpuff girls or something? Don't forget this is Castlevania.

No, I see where plottwist is coming from. Looking over the sketch again, the lines on his face are significantly thinner than the lines anywhere else in the drawing. I feel they should be thinner, but they're far too thin on this original sketch. Which is why I'm reworking it.

He's got that dumb grin on his face cuz Rondo Richter is 19-years-old and I like portraying him as the hot-blooded youth. It comes somewhat from my CV project on the backburner (turn-based RPG called Castlevania: The Greatest Five), where I gave each of the five Belmonts a differing personality.

Leon: Knightly, serious, and strong-willed, yet not the brightest (a joke on his ignorance on everything in Lament of Innocence)
Trevor: Serious yet friendly, will of iron (inspired by his Judgment persona).
Simon: Brash, quick to frustration, kill-first/ask-questions-later (inspired by his Judgment persona).
Juste: Knowledgeable, refined, calm (based on the fact that he's the only Belmont with real magical knowledge).
Richter: Hot-blooded and cocky (based on the fact that Richter is famous for kicking EVERYTHING, as well as Evil Richter's desire for endless conflict in SotN).

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On another note, I haven't yet reworked the original sketch, but I did this other sketch as a practice on posing. Note that the pose is intentionally wacky, as I'm trying to get back into the swing of making characters look more fluid as I've had an issue of them looking stiff and like they're right out of Mortal Kombat 9. Plus I've been watching a lot of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure lately and it kind of stems from that.

[SecretWeapon]

It looks better. But he looks like he broke his right foot. Is the original posing like this?

[Claimh Solais]

Original posing?

[X]

While I agree with Plot on the first image about his overly narrow arm/elbow, I feel the head is the right size. It looks fine from my perspective.

[KaZudra]

The Pose is fine, it's just lacking perspective, some limb size adjustments could fix that.

[Claimh Solais]

Modified the original sketch. I completely redrew his face (and repositioned his facial features in an attempt to make it look more natural. The results are debatable). I also completely redrew his left arm from the elbow down, resulting in a wider lower arm and a larger left hand.

Richter's new face comes off smug as hell. I like it.