Looking for feedback & advice
3yr
Egor
Hi all, It's my first time posting art online to get feedback, any advice would be appreciated and I'll try my best to give concise context of what my goals with art are, but feel free to give any feedback based just on the artworks themselves, thanks in advance to anyone who spends time to reply! First, a quick summary of my journey learning art up to this point. I'm 23 now, started to draw at about 14 but didn't really put any serious effort to learn the fundamentals up until 3-4 years ago, then I got into an art school for 2 years learning graphic design and academical drawing/painting but then dropped out due to life circumstances, and before that point I didn't really learn to draw digitally, but after 2 years of art school I got some grasp on drawing fundamentals and for the last year and a bit I was adapting to drawing digitally, I attached two of my best works so far to this post. Now for the current goals, on the practical side of things I want to get a job making art, and so far I settled on being 2d artist for games as the most optimal career choice based on what I like to draw and what work is available locally, though I'm not hell-bent on gamedev specifically and the competitiveness of this field of work scares me off a good bit and the quality and quantity of work needed to get into the industry feels so far out of reach, so any advice on what should I do with my art to get closer to being employable as an artist would be appreciated. On the more personal side of things, I really struggle with enjoying the process of making art and having a clear goal of what I want to do with art aside from the whole get a job drawing thing. I feel like my main problem with art now is more in the creative part rather than technical, though there's always more to learn, right now I feel like problems with the "creative" part of making art hold me back more than technical stuff. I overall feel the lack of creative thinking behind my work, from all the information available online I have some rational understanding of what to do to, for example, design a character, but every time I tried to implement that understanding into making something I just get stuck in the coming up with ideas and setting a goal phase, so instead of getting some Idea of what I want to draw and having a plan I just rush in to draw first and ask questions later, because that way I get something done instead of getting bogged down in all the preparations. As an example, the first image started as a quick pose doodle, then I tried to draw in some anatomy details for fun and thought about making her into a wrestler character, as far as the design at that point it was completely different, then I looked for some wrestler reference and tried to design a costume, but gave up on that after a few hours and instead went the cyborg route, still wanted too keep her a fighter archetype an thought about how maybe she'd be a character in a fighting game, but I couldn't come up with anything cohesive and instead focused on trying to make it look as good as I can. That took about 1-1,5 moths of on and off drawing with breaks every few days and by the end of it I had to drag myself to some semblance of completion because I had no concrete goal in mind and otherwise I could have spent twice as much time and gotten nowhere. With the second image it was a lot simpler, I just took a pencil sketch I did a while back and did my best to make it look pretty, I think the whole process took me about 15-16 hours and there's a lot more time I could spend on polishing it but I feel like I hit diminishing returns on my effort and super detailed rendering of materials isn't something I'm ready to do for now. At this point I feel like I lost my train of thought and I'm not sure what more information I could add that would be useful for giving feedback on my work and/or answering my questions, thanks again to anyone who replies to this.
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Luigi Manese
Hi @Egor, reading about your story really hit home at the moment because I'm currently having difficulty finding that creative spark for myself. I've fallen off the wagon of doing consistent personal work, and I'm trying to change what I do throughout the day to try to get that flow going again. @Josh Sunga has offered some fantastic advice that you can apply within your workflow to make the process more pleasant. I don't think I can offer better advice on that end, so I'm going to try to give some suggestions on what has worked for me to get me 'inspired' on working on concept art. First and foremost, I think books are a fantastic way to get your creativity going, ESPECIALLY books that have not been adapted to TV or Movies. My favorite genre to read/listen to is fantasy, and whenever I really get into a book, I always feel the urge to want to paint some scenes or characters within it. This has the added benefit of giving you limitations on what you can draw/paint, because you're limited to what is being described in the book. Another thing that definitely helps my creativity is to play video games. I rank this lower than reading books because you can accidentally just end up copying some designs you consumed from whatever game your playing, and it results in making your personal designs feel a bit weaker. What tends to happen to me is that I get immersed in the genre, and THAT helps me explore some more original ideas to really bolster my design work. Additionally, just watching documentaries and finding out new things about how the world works also tends to get the creative juices flowing. There are many times that I look at a machine that I never knew about, or some sort of animal that I didn't know existed, and want to implement that into my personal work. Lastly, learning a new skill (like composition, painting, rendering, etc.) makes me excited to want to apply what I'm learning, so see if taking some online courses might help you out as well. I know I said that I couldn't offer some advice regarding your workflow, but something did come to mind right now as I read your post again. It seems like the the problem that you ran into with your first Cyborg Wrestler character was a lack of limitations/direction. You didn't really give yourself a deadline one when you wanted the piece to be finished, so you just kept slowly adding stuff here and there. Additionally, without proper direction, the design kind of forked into different areas. It seemed like you had a lot of success with the second piece you posted, so I think it would help if you limit your character designs to a time limit of 1-3 days. After that third day, even if you may not be fully satisfied with the piece, move on to the next one and try to apply what you learned. Additionally, try to limit yourself to very simple prompts (I think Cyborg Wrestler is a good example) so that your designs are more focused. Really hope this helps! Let me know if there is anything that I can clear up for you
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Egor
3yr
Hi @Luigi Manese, Josh’s advice was helpful, and your suggestions for finding inspiration are helpful as well! Now I feel like I skipped too hard on feeding my brain new books, games, movies, etc.I pretty much got stuck on the things I already know and like, and worrying too much about having to draw more left my inspiration well dry. With books the last thing I’ve read was Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series which I finished reading a few years ago, though there’s still some books I think I missed, but in general I just don’t know what books to look for and didn’t give that much thought before now. Video games are a big inspiration for me as well, but I sort of got stuck with liking the metroidvania and souls-like games a lot and don’t really play much of anything else, and now it’s just a waiting game for the next release on the steam wishlist. Although, I recently played the Nier replicant remake and it was fun and I got a bit of inspiration from that, and I like to watch animated movies a lot and have a few on my list of to watch things, but in general there’s things I already know and a lot of new things coming out that I just don’t find the mental energy to actively search for something new and exciting, and I was really into watching documentaries about animals and mythology as a kid and now that you mentioned it I think I should go back to that, I’m just not sure where to start yet. I thought about going through an online course at some point, but didn’t try it yet, I feel like I should at least somewhat reliably enjoy the process of designing things before jumping into the course or I'll get overwhelmed with the assignments and won’t be able to do everything on time or something like that.  Yes, the lack of limitations and direction was a big problem for me with making the fighter character, and I only made it more complicated than it should have been by trying to do both the designing and painting at the same time while not really understanding how to do it right, and instead of a deadline the only hard rule for that drawing I set for me was to draw and paint it to the best of my ability, and in general it’s hard for me to set deadlines because I’m still never sure how much time should each step of making the drawing take. I do try to limit myself with simple prompts for characters, but get stuck a lot in the step that comes next -  doing research and looking for references. So instead I tend to just draw without actively thinking about what to do until I don’t understand how to draw some part of the design and then I look for reference. I feel like preparing all the prompt research and references before starting to draw would be a better and more productive way, but I just get stuck every time I try to think and plan ahead with drawing. Which is kind of a strange thing now that I think of it, because I can’t necessarily say that I lack the planning skills, since i played a bunch of strategy video games and I have miniature wargames as a hobby, which require a lot of ability to plan your actions in advance and adjust your plan in the process of execution. Wargames are a thing like a turn-based strategy video game, but played like a board game with miniature models and buildings, in case you are interested too look into it there’s a lot of different ones out there, Warhammer 40000 being probably the most popular one, and smaller games like Malifaux or Infinity the game are great too, but I think you should just look into it if it seems interesting to you instead of me going off on a massive tangent about it all. Your feedback did help! If you could give some suggestions and advice for how best to approach the preparations before making a design or a general art project that would be great. I have a hard time with all the prep-work that goes into creating art in an organized fashion, anything on how to pick prompts to start off with except randomly guessing based on your art tastes, would help. How to go about finding the right reference for the project before you encounter a “I don’t know how to draw this” moment mid-process of drawing something, because that’s the only way I’ve been able to look for references without drifting off into saving a whole lot of pictures that look interesting that I could maybe use later. Now that I think about it, the best way to explain what I’m looking for is “techniques for doing all the preparations that are needed to execute a design or a drawing”, because I’ve had a hard time finding concrete explanations on how to do it compared to all the technical stuff like perspective or painting. Though on the technical side of things, I feel like I still barely understand how to paint with digital brushes, i had a few years of experience painting with watercolors and a little bit with acrylics, but translating that to digital was hard, with the cyborg fighter I spent some time trying to make my own simple brush for painting so that I’d better understand how it works compared to a brush I get from the internet and have no Idea how and what I should paint with it, but I feel like experimenting with brush settings was a bit too much for now, so with the purple-gold spikey lady I decided to go with hard-round brush only until I can paint with it and i feel sort of successful with that, at least I finally got a feel for how to paint with opacity and have some semblance of control over what I’m doing. I hope this all didn’t get too wordy and long, thanks again for your time!
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Josh Sunga
Hey Egor! First of all, thanks for sharing part of your story. I am a fellow dropout- there seems to be more and more of us as communities like this continue to grow :) This is my personal advice, but I think it would help to see both your practical and personal goals as one in the same. In order for you to be "employable" you have to develop your own efficient process. More importantly though, you need to make it more enjoyable for yourself in order to do that. It's hard to develop a process if you feel like you're fighting through each step. A lot of artists burnout because the pressure of being employable hinders the learning process. All that said, If you have an issue with your own creativity I actually think that's a good sign. It means you want to come up with more interesting ideas! I did a paintover showing the simple starting points that I use when a design isn't quite there yet. It's easy to get caught up in trying to come up with a good idea too early. If you feel stuck, just take the time to explore the design visually- it might spark a new idea or get you closer to where you feel satisfied: There are different ways to "push proportions." For your first image, I made the arms much bigger and made the legs slightly more slender. I also made the headdress larger. Adjusting proportions can create visual interest at face value but I'm also mindful of contrasting larger/smaller shapes, wider/thinner shapes against each other. For the second image, I exaggerated the tall and sleek feel you already established. Sometimes simply making a design wider or taller can enhance it greatly. Now the real fun part is exploring different shapes and silhouettes with our design. Artists usually generate those more creative ideas through this process. You can see that the variations are rough, but the purpose is to provide yourself with options. Once you explore enough, you will have exercised your imagination and then you'll be able to make an informed decision on where to take your design. This might take time to practice if you're not used to iterating a ton of designs, but a good start is just to humor your imagination and have fun exploring! Focus on the big picture which is the silhouette! I hope this helps! And again thanks for sharing- good work!
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Egor
3yr
Hi Josh, thanks a lot for your feedback! I think I wouldn’t have dropped out the second time if not for the financial side of things, but since I’ve dropped out again I feel like I’ve had the most artistic growth, so I think of it as a good thing now. I feel like I did burn myself out with all the pressures of being “employable”, and not being able to develop an efficient process for making art because of drawing not feeling enjoyable is definitely what I still struggle with, but I wasn’t able to put it into the right words as you did. Making the process of creating art fun again was something I decided I need to do a couple of months ago, It’s good to know that I’m on the right track, now I feel like I was skipping steps with focusing too much of how I have to be employable and actually slowing down my progress instead. It’s nice to hear that having issues with my creativity is a good sign, but I feel like it’s a part of me setting an unreasonably high bar of what I have to do compared to what I can at the moment and as a result doing more harm than good, I should work on toning that down a little, but I’m constantly afraid of slipping into not putting enough effort into art. After looking at your paintover I think I’ll try my best to implement pushing proportions into my process, as well as bringing contrast into the shapes of the characters. I totally skipped this part of designing with the two drawings I shared, with the first one I did some iteration on the design, but instead of separate thumbnails I did it all in the same drawing gradually changing things, that’s probably the main reason I’ve dragged with this one for so long, and I probably should have included the process images in the first place, so I’ll upload those here. Playing around with the designs width and height is definitely going on my to-do list, and I’ll be sure to practice making quicker explorations of designs with, and now that I thought about it I think another big problem that slows me down is trying to do everything with the drawing at the same time, and I should give myself more time for coming up with ideas, iterating on the designs and then pick the best one and practice painting it pretty with lighting and details as a separate step. Your feedback did help, so thanks again for your time!
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Dominik Zeillinger
Hi @Egor oh man, I am really more of a visual type, so I do not know if I got all the points you wrote about... I like your drawings: cool design, colors, poses, everything very good in my opinion. It is clearly visible how much time you put in the drawings. On little thing on your fighter: The lines on the back on her feet look very sketchy in comparison to the rest. I think you shoul work on them an make them more follow the form of the muscles (see attached picture). An concerning your working process: Find yourself a project to work on. Is there a book you like? Maybe Robinson Crousoe? Take a character and make your version. May Robinson as a robot. It is much easier to work on a project, that gives you some limitations.
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Egor
3yr
Thank you, glad you liked the drawings! About the fighter character, the whole back view is still only a cleaned up sketch, both lines and the lighting, I just gave up on getting it to a completion and I did the bare minimum for it to be readable, definitely would work on the form if I spent more time on it. Finding projects to work on is actually the hard part for me, and I’m not sure how to get over it, it might be kind of like a fear of a blank page when you just draw, but my problem is not of being afraid to come up with something, but not being able to get to any understanding of what to do with a project from a few words to jump off of like “medieval tournaments but with mechs” or “space crafts + sea creatures”, it just feels like blindfolded dart throwing at a wall of text to pick something almost random and I don’t know how to apply what I know about drawing to make something out of it, and in general it’d be working on something I don’t really care about, I tried to make some sketches going off of “island where everything is made out of turtle shells” but ended up dropping it after a few sketches and focusing on making this fighter character. Oh, and about books, I didn’t read much for the last few years, but before that I’ve read the whole of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and it was super fun, but I feel like what I tend to draw wouldn’t fit with the fantasy comedy setting of these books.
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