Hey Lo, First of all, it's great to have you here in the Proko community. I know that, at least in my personal experience, it can be daunting to share your artwork and open yourself up to criticism (especially when you may find your work "embarrassing") but it is certainly a big and beneficial step. Aaravi has some good points. Learning how to create art is a journey and everyone's journey can be different. It's important to be able to sometimes just let go, experiment and see where it takes you. But I understand the frustration. Oftentimes we have an idea, even if only vaguely, of what our art should look like (or of what our "destination" is on this journey) and when we fail to achieve that ideal, it can be disheartening. I often think back to this video with a speech from Ira Glass. https://vimeo.com/24715531 It may say storytelling in title but I believe it fits all kinds of creative expression. You may have to do a lot of work to get to the point where you feel you are consistently creating things that live up to your vision, but I believe with good practice and perseverance you can get there. Now, you came here asking for a concrete plan. While there is a balance to be struck when it comes to following a rigid plan and allowing your creativity/desires to flow, I, as an artist who is also always learning, will try to give you some ideas that I think will help. You're probably familiar with the saying "practice makes perfect" and maybe you've heard the follow-up from Vince Lombardi "Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." In this case, I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle. You can do a ton of work and make progress, but intentional work will in most cases get you further faster. With that said, here are some things I would recommend focusing on. Structure: The Basic Forms This was something that I neglected for a long time, and it wasn't until I started going through Proko's figure drawing series that I really started to grasp and incorporate it. Being able to consistently draw the basic forms (spheres, cubes/rectangular prisms, cylinders) can be key to leveling up your art. Even before knowing anatomy, it can take a flat, lifeless drawing and turn into something that looks like it really exists in a world on your page. Take this drawing I did almost a decade ago, and compare it with just the underdrawing of one of my recent projects (For an even better example of using simple forms to construct the figure, check out Proko's Mannequinization Lesson in the figure drawing fundamentals course https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/mannequinization-structure-of-the-human-body/assignments ) I see so many newer artists who can do beautiful things with colour, but it's effect is muted because of the flimsy structure beneath it. You don't have to be a master of anatomy to draw the basic forms that help the objects you create to feel real and tangible. Breaking things down into simple forms also helps with shading. When you're armed with this knowledge/ability you can really make your drawings pop! I really like to look at animators, or artists with a simpler style when it comes to studying these basic forms, as it can be easier to spot the building blocks they used. Some of my favourites to look at are https://www.instagram.com/seangallowayart and https://www.instagram.com/gurihiru In addition to breaking down real human models into basic forms, it can be fun to look at artists you enjoy and do the same to their work. This can open up your eyes to new ways that you can break down the human body into simple forms. Looking at your work and one of your time lapses, it looks like you already have a fairly good grasp of this area. Your piece with Ganondorf, Link and Prince Sidon stands out to me in this regard. Especially Ganondorf's arm, you can really feel the form. Continuing to work on these foundational elements while expanding your knowledge of perspective and anatomy will serve you well. Even though this is an area you already do well in, I wanted to cover it before getting into the rest of the points. I have to take a break for now, but when I get back I want to talk about using interesting shapes + rhythms, line quality and confidence. Also, I will try to draw over some pieces to help give some visual examples that might be more helpful. For now, I'll leave you with this. I think your work is in a great place and I see a lot of potential! It's been fun to look through your work and I'm excited to see what you do in the future!

I FINALLY finished this piece. I incorporated a lot of the feedback I got here, or tried to. I spent a total of 13 months working on this piece and redrew it more than 2 dozen times in different media on different papers. Ultimately the "finished" piece was done in Prismacolor pencil on French Paper Co. Speckletone paper. I like the tooh of the paper and it works well with the Prismacolor though it's not really a drawing paper. This was a gift for my wife. The character is our dog, Marlow, who died 2 years ago. He loved water so this is how I envisioned him in doggie heaven.

I've been starting to deal with a lot of the same problems. A lot of my focus has been on black and white, or grey scale, pencils and inks. Recently for commissions I've been doing a lot of colour work. I quickly ran into the same problems where my composition worked great in the ink stage, but started to become really shakey with the colours. I've definitely started making the shift to designing my pieces with the colours in mind. A necessary lesson to learn, even for pencillers/inkers because someone's probably going to have to colour it. I'll see if I can find some links, but I read a lot of stuff about perceived brightness and the LAB colour spaces.

TLDR: Looking for feedback, any glaring mistakes, suggestions for background, additional clotheslines and/or falling clothes - yes/no? Update: Almost there! Normally I do my roughs digitally and then print them out to finish with traditional pencils, but I decided to challenge myself and get the whole thing done digitally (Even after a few years of having a surface, I still find that I draw many things more quickly on paper). At this point I'm mostly cleaning up, finishing up a few details (Like putting in her web for the first panel) and trying to figure out what to do with the background. Originally I was just going to put another building, but I'm not a huge fan of how that's looking. I also worry that a whole cityscape background will have too many elements that cut into the action in the foreground. Right now I'm tempted to leave it blank, but that's probably just me wanting to be finished. Any suggestions on this front would be appreciated. I'm also considering adding some more clotheslines, either into the foreground or further back, but I wonder if this would be too distracting/too busy. Similarly, I was thinking about having some clothes falling through the air but the same concerns pop up. Also, if anything stands out to you I'm open to any critiques as well. Not sure how much more I'm going to go back into this, but I always want to learn more for future projects (Who am I kidding, if you point something out there's a good chance I won't be able to resist fixing it). Thanks everyone!

Hey Terrence, I really enjoy these designs. I think that my favourite just by feel would be the center one of Alex. That hair + face shape is just fantastic. What pops into my mind is that he'd be completely at home in my favourite video game series, The Legend of Zelda. As for which designs work for those personalities. My personal pick for Alex is still the center one. I think that the smooth gentle curves make him seem really kind and inviting. The one on the left would be my second choice, it just doesn't seem as unique/interesting as the center. I'm not sure whether you were planning to keep the pairs together (center Alex with center Georgie), in which case I would still go with the middle ones, or if you wanted to mix and match. For Georgie, I'm leaning towards either the center one or the one on the right. I think they are both just more interesting than the one on the left even though it still captures the character pretty well. I think the one on the very right gives you an interesting visual contrast between the brothers that coincides with the difference in their personalities. But the middle one also works for the character if you want them to look more alike. Additionally, my gut reaction is that the middle one looks slightly more naive, while the one on the right captures the wild aspect better. I hope some of these thoughts prove helpful. Just the designs alone make me want to read the story and learn more about these characters. I'm excited to see the final product!

For books in general, I've always preferred physical. I'm much more likely to casually thumb through a physical art book (for example, when eating or relaxing in the evening), than a digital book. Some of it is probably because I already spend so much time at a computer/on my phone, it's just nice to get away. I also use my computer to display all of my reference/inspiration images when working (plus usually a tab or two open from the Proko anatomy course) so having physical books keeps my screen from getting too crowded.

Hello David Finch, thank you for the stream. It's fitting that you are drawing Stan and Marshall, as one thing they often talk about is art mentors. When Jason Fabok spoke at my highschool he told us about how he got connected with you and then you "re-taught" him how to draw for comic books. I was wondering if you could share that story from your perspective. Especially what it was about his art and/or personality/character that ultimately led you to teach him.

Hello Mac, I really like what you've got going on here. I can already tell it's going to be a lovely finished piece. I'll start with what you've already got on the page. The rabbit leaping on the left. I understand why we can't see a lot of the head, but it still looks like a rabbit without a head. Which seems kind outlandish in such an innocent painting. I'm no expert on rabbit anatomy, but just by looking at the other rabbits it seems like there should be a bit more head showing above the front right leg. The other option, of course, is to change the pose/gesture to a position where the head is less hidden. In a similar vein, the rabbit under her arm seems a little odd. I see the ear extending down but, again judging from the other rabbits, it seems like it should extend past her arm. Also, right now with just the eye he looks a little devious like a snake. Perhaps showing just a little bit more of the head, with either an indication for the nose or the insertion of the ears will help. Lastly, the rabbit on the bottom right. You did a wonderful job with the gesture. I think that he's my favourite. The only thing I would say is that his left ear seems to point off into nothing. You could try having it point back slightly at the end, like a very small s curve. Or introduce more elements that it points to and have those objects bring us back towards the girl. On the subject of ears, you could try playing with the bottom rabbit's. Right now they seem kind of straight and stiff for a pose with so much movement. Maybe have the flow back with the movement, or have them gently curve forward so they at least harmonize with the gesture of her leg and the flowers. These are just some fun thoughts I had that you may want to try out. Right now it seems like there is a clear divide between the rabbits and butterflies. You do have the flowers both at the top and bottom, which is a nice touch that helps tie things together. It may be nice to have a butterfly or two also flying down around the rabbits. Something else you may consider is adding in a third animal. To me, three is where things start to feel like there is some variety. I'm definitely getting some Snow White/Disney Princess vibes, maybe some small birds or a deer approaching. That's all I've got for now. I hope you find some of my thoughts helpful. Or that they at least spark some of your own ideas for the piece. Looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Hey D Sirus, awesome work you got here! I really enjoy the pose of the titan. So much so I decided to sketch it out while on a phone call this afternoon. I'm sure I made plenty of mistakes but it was a fun exercise! I like the gesture of yours a lot more, especially the pinch in the stomach where he bends. As for critiques, you've done a great job with the gesture, perspective and anatomy. There are just a few small things that stood out to me. For Hanami, I think that the forearm could be a little longer. I tried placing some 3D Models/action figures in a similar perspective and it seems that at that angle the hand usually ends up somewhere around the knee. For the Armoured Titan, the main thing I noticed was position of his left (On the right of the picture) triceps. Your insertions and origins all look pretty good, but you need to keep in mind how they muscles stretch and squeeze during movements. With a bent elbow like that the triceps should be stretched so that it's peak from this angle is almost at the center of the upper arm. I included some examples of Bodybuilder Frank Zane, it's not the perfect angle but should give a good idea of how the shape of the triceps changes. For his right arm, at that angle I think there should be more of the triceps/bicep brachialis popping out the lateral side, and maybe a little less on the medial side. The insertion of the bicep may need to move medially slightly, but I'd see how it looks after adjusted the triceps/bicep brachialis. As a last note on the muscle movement, both biceps seem a little soft/noodle-ly. Since they are partly contracted it's a great opportunity give them some structure with some straights, especially around where the tendons would be. I love a lot of your shapes for the muscles, especially the deltoids. If you added a few more areas of tension/structure it would give you a real nice balance. Other areas this could be applied are to the box of the wrists, and the knees. I can tell that you were thinking about the forms of the knees, but I would recommend emphasizing the boxy forms perhaps a little more than you would realistically see. Particularly on the lateral side of the knee coming towards us, the lateral epicondyle, knee cap and lateral condyle all provide opportunity for emphasizing that structure and boxiness. My last comment on the leg, is to be careful not to lose the gesture on the outside of the quad. There should be a nice straight from the IT band near the knee, and then a gentle curve from the Vastus Lateralis. I've included an example of some knees and roughly highlighted the areas that I'm talking about. I can't comment too much on this, but it seems that his right hand is bent a little too far toward us. I know the hand, or at least my hand, can't move near as far towards the radialis as it can towards the ulna. I want to end with some praise, because I really do think you did a fantastic job. I really like the shading and core shadows on Armoured Titan, and the perspective of Hanami is super solid. I can b e a bit wordy at a times, but I hope that my thoughts prove helpful. Don't take them as gospel, but rather consider them, analyze and come to your own conclusions. I'm excited to see what you do next! I imagine Todo would be a fun one for anatomy.

I've been thinking more on this and it poses a good question for this site. Is there desire from the Proko crew for this site to provide functionality like ArtStation/DeviantArt where users can browse portfolios and showcase posted artwork, or will it remain learning-focused only (it's not referred to on the roadmap currently)? I ask because if Proko expands into the gallery 'showcasing' features, that would be exciting and I'd look forward to doing that building out of the community and instructors providing good critique (instead of just posts with "oh wow, so awesome" as Artstation etc tend to go). If not, are we encouraged to mostly post course related work, or should we have functionality to link off to Artstation/Instagram/Flickr/DeviantArt, etc? I'd much prefer the former :) I'm trying to think how that also integrates into the learning and community experience and have a few ideas: - Galleries/portfolios are gouped by courses - Galleries/portfolios are gouped by community groups (either pre-defined or user created) - Each user has a 'Public' album where they can post art to show in the 'showcase' main gallery - Galleries/portfolios grouped by media - Galleries/portfolios grouped by experience level It might make sense for this site to be somewhat restrictive with it to maintain the learning, critique and interaction angle rather than self-promotion, which I think would also be better, leave the self-promotion and advertising to the other sites. This might also have the advantage of better tying critique-request posts to user's profiles and area of focus, but maybe not.

Hey Nathan, like the others have said, this is fantastic work! You've definitely gotten the likeness. I believe that the fact that you've got things so close is what's making it so difficult to see what's off. On my initial review, it seemed that the eyes may be a little large and/or slightly out of position. Particularly her right eye (on the left side of the image) My second observation was that something may be off with the angle/position of the nose bridge where it meets the eyebrows. As I mentioned though, it's so close so I wanted to be sure. I quickly popped it into infinite painter on my phone to do some one to one comparisons. One of the things I love about digital is how easy it makes it to compare your pieces to the originals with layers. In the first image I did a rough trace of the original photograph and fit your painting inside the head. You pretty much nailed the proportions of the overall skull so well done! Some of the things that stand out are that there is indeed something off with the eyes (and the irises) and nose bridge. Additionally I realized that the tip of the nose was a little off as well. Other things that could possibly be the culprit for it looking off are that the shoulder is lower, and the space from the edge of the arm to the seem has been shrunk. That last possibly major contributor is that the hair doesn't quite go high enough. There are a few other minor areas such as her left brow, her neck and the shape of shirt above where the scarf overlaps. I made a quick, rather messy adjusted image with the liquify tool, and included some side by sides for comparison. I may have missed some things but hopefully this helps you to nail down what was "off" about it. I've recently been grinding out head studies and they can be a real pain to get "perfect." Probably because we see them so often that we're very attuned to noticing when something is not quite right. Once again though, awesome job I can't stress this enough. It may seem like I listed a lot, but for every one of those there were ten that you crushed! Keep up the great work!

Hello Konstantinos! I've never made the jump into Gundam, but I'm a fan of all giant robots and love their designs. Possibly my first drawing book ever was "You Can Draw Transformers." By and large, I think that it covers many topics that would be helpful for constructing your Gundams. I will admit it's a pretty basic book. At the very least, it's a fun book to flip through and see cool robots. I'll see if I can share some images from it tomorrow.

I was thinking about this the other day as well. It would be really cool to be able to browse what people are putting out there, without having to go through all the different forum sections. Not to mention, if people are just posting things to their profiles we'll only find out about them if we are already there. I wondered if they had left it out intentionally because they thought that it might take away from the community feel there were going for, or at least they weren't sure how it would affect it. Currently, the different forums feel almost like classrooms and help to foster lots of discussion. Perhaps they wanted to focus on this niche before expanding with features that other platforms (Artstation, Deviantart, Instagram, etc) already have covered. That's all speculation though, it may have just not been a priority. Personally, though I like the idea. Especially the part about leaving out filters/popularity so that everyone has a chance to be seen. That seems more in line with the school/classroom feel; like Art lining the hallway.

Hey Stan, so far I'm really enjoying Proko 2.0 and interacting with all the great artists here! Big thanks to you and the rest of the team. Congratulations on a successful launch! I have a question in regards to the roadmap and user suggestions. Will you be adding in widely requested features as they arise while simultaneously working through the roadmap? Or does everything on the roadmap have to be finished before you add anything else? I'm going to take a wild guess that the answer is "it depends" but I'd love to here the official word from you. Thanks again!

This is looking interesting:D If I must say anything to improve, I guess it would be to tilt the centre panel (background?) a bit, with the character falling kinda in an angle against the background still, and move your viewpoint slight off-centre in the street? that way it will look more dynamic because the shot isn't quite long-focal length so there can be some more this kind of stretching going on there. Your character's already got great poses imo, if the architecture follows up with some dynamics, that would be awesome!

Awesome stuff here, Dante! You're anatomy and forms look very solid. You're also capturing the action very well, the only thing I could suggest is to try capture even more of the energy . When I'm playing around with poses I like to keep pushing them until they "break" and then take one of the two before that. You might find that you like the way that you've already done the poses best (They are very well done) but you might find something you like even better! One of the first images that comes to mind is Batman punching Superman in Batman: Hush drawn by Jim Lee (First image below www.instagram.com/jimlee ) If you look closely at Batman, his waist and chest are twisted so far to the point of anatomical error. Now this is certainly an extreme, and depending on your style you may not want to take it this far, but it does make for a powerful image. Another thing to note are the directions of the line of actions (LoA) for each figure. This is a trend I see in a lot of comic action shots, I've highlighted them in the shots below (Ed McGuinness www.instagram.com/edmcguinness John Romita Jr. www.twitter.com/therealjrjr1 & Ryan Ottley www.instagram.com/ryanottley respectively) The two lines curve away from each other; JRJR's piece has a particular powerful bend. If you follow from the beginning of the line, it's like they started to approach each other and then veered off. Which pretty accurately reflects what happened if you think about it. Sometimes the LoA's interact differently, there are many more examples, but I think that this was the best one to highlight for the pieces that you have here. You already have a little of it in some of your pieces, but try taking it further. In your first image, the way you've bent Bizzaro's body has his LoA converging with Superman's (See example below). One possible course of action would be to bend his torso and turn his head a little more so that it fits a line a little more like this (See second example). On the topic of heads, one thing I see a lot is having the head snap backwards (or two the side) and sort of dragging the body behind it. You have this in a lot of your shots (pretty much all of them), but again, just try taking it a little further. A big part of communicating the energy in these shots is thinking about how the force and momentum moves through the body, which can change depending on where and how they were hit. Before I forget, the green lines on the first two images are just to show the alternating rhythms on the figure and how that adds to the energy. Push the curves and twists, pack that energy in and see what comes out. It's pretty clear that you know a lot of this stuff already, I'm sure very little of it was new to you. I hope that some of it proves useful, or sparks some new thoughts/insights for your projects going forward. Fantastic work, excited to see more!