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DarkWolf's Fanart Thread

DarkWolf91 · 427 · 63109

raga

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Once again DW your drawing abilities amaze me, what you call a sloppy rough and slight incorrect drawing I call phenomenal.  I wish I had a tenth of your drawing ability.  I do wonder what is supposed to be happening in this scene though, spike seems to have a slightly concerned look but Chomper's expression is very difficult to interpret.


babidikrakenguard

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Dang i wish i had drawing skills like that :p Yet again, great work! :)


Malte279

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Great job! :)
I take it you are a natural, but may I know if you too had your practicing time before getting to the amazing artistic level with regard to LBT characters that you have reached?


Pangaea

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As usual, DarkWolf, you never fail to impress. :D

Sure, the background’s a little simplistic, but I was too distracted by the great character drawings to notice. :p

I especially love Spike’s expression. Upper leg aside (again with those pesky dinosaur limbs! :rolleyes:) I think that he turned out really well. :yes

Chomper’s expression is equally good, but I don’t like the rest of him as much. The way the front of his muzzle slants forward, the fingers on his left hand, and the intersection of his upper and lower body all look a little strange to me. His legs and feet, however, are excellent, in my opinion. :yes



Pronounced "pan-JEE-uh". Spelled with three A's. Represented by a Lystrosaurus.


DarkWolf91

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Once again DW your drawing abilities amaze me, what you call a sloppy rough and slight incorrect drawing I call phenomenal. I wish I had a tenth of your drawing ability. I do wonder what is supposed to be happening in this scene though, spike seems to have a slightly concerned look but Chomper's expression is very difficult to interpret.


Wow, thank you Raga! It means so much to me to hear that, though it's difficult to accept such lofty praises :oops
As for the scene, I'll admit I didn't have a detailed grasp of the situation :smile The general idea is that spike is apprehensive about something, and Chomper is attempting to persuade/reassure him, while being rather unsure about the situation himself.

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Dang i wish i had drawing skills like that :p Yet again, great work! :)


Thanks a bunch, Babidi :D

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Great job! (smile)
I take it you are a natural, but may I know if you too had your practicing time before getting to the amazing artistic level with regard to LBT characters that you have reached?

Ah, I fear that you're all going to give me a huge ego before long :oops
My most sincere thanks Malte, but if I am a natural at anything, it is only inflexible determination :p
I have spent many hours learning as much about drawing as possible, and many more applying that knowledge in practice. My ability to draw LBT characters stems from my(still incomplete) understanding of the long established principles underlying figure drawing, my own educated guesses in that area, and an understanding of the way in which characters are designed for animation. In regards to the latter, it's all to do with simple underlying shapes. If you can find the shapes and apply them correctly(that's the tricky part), your drawings of the character will be very accurate, or as an animator would say, "on model." Something that a lot of people take for granted is that learning to draw cartoons solely from observing other cartoons does more harm than good. Life drawing is, in my opinion, the most powerful tool in any artist's arsenal.
All that practice is the fun part, though. The biggest challenge that I had to overcome was low confidence, and the completely inaccurate inhibition that each drawing had to look 'good' or 'polished' or 'clean' before it was done.
Everyone makes bad drawings, it's unavoidable. It helps if you have fun with the bad ones, though, and see them as 'experiments' rather than 'failures,' because experiments are exactly what they are. There is a wealth of knowledge waiting in each one.
Also, no one should ever say 'I can't draw that.' You may not know how to draw it, but that hardly means that you can't!
Lastly, I have had the amazing privilege of meeting and learning from a good few fantastic teachers, whom I'll never forget. One of them announced something pretty simple that made all of the difference in the world to me:

"Once you stop trying to force your art to be what you think it should be, and just let it be what it is, things get a whole lot better."

And I've never looked back since :)



Chiletrek

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Hello:
 Well, the pic may not be perfect, but I am sure you are getting better with time :yes .
 Just one question. What happened in the pic? because the expression in the faces of Spike and Chomper tells that something may have happened :blink: .
 Keep it up!


DarkWolf91

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As usual, DarkWolf, you never fail to impress. :D

Sure, the background’s a little simplistic, but I was too distracted by the great character drawings to notice. :p

I especially love Spike’s expression. Upper leg aside (again with those pesky dinosaur limbs! :rolleyes:) I think that he turned out really well. :yes

Why thank you, Pangaea!

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Chomper’s expression is equally good, but I don’t like the rest of him as much. The way the front of his muzzle slants forward, the fingers on his left hand, and the intersection of his upper and lower body all look a little strange to me. His legs and feet, however, are excellent, in my opinion. :yes


Yes, Chomper's proved a challenge to draw. He looks a little better each time, though :D
All good points! I especially agree with you on the left hand. It looks a little like a bird foot, I can't help but laugh whenever I see it :p



Pangaea

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^ You're welcome. :)

As for the scene this picture could represent, it made me think of the beginning of “The Lonely Journey”, when Chomper is trying to teach Spike to find things by scent. Although Spike eventually succeeds in finding Ducky, it is implied that his earlier efforts were less successful. This could be a scene of one such failed attempt, in which Spike is feeling dejected and Chomper is trying to reassure him.



Pronounced "pan-JEE-uh". Spelled with three A's. Represented by a Lystrosaurus.


Mumbling

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Malte279

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Ah, I fear that you're all going to give me a huge ego before long :oops
You leave us so little alternatives there. Maybe you should draw something crappy for a change so we would have the least bit of a basis to inflate the ego again :lol


DarkHououmon

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Personally I don't agree with the "learning to draw solely from cartoons" thing. I've actually heard the opposite before; that watching cartoons while learning is a good thing, because you can observe how many different animators take on different aspects of style and such.

I've never actually taken a real art class outside of the usual class stuff in elementary, middle, and high school. Much of what I learned growing up came from cartoons as well as looking at other people's work. This is how I learned; it's a method that has worked for me for years.

The first time I got what could be considered a lesson was How To Draw Fantastic Dinosaurs, where I learned how to use shapes for the first time. This helped improve my drawing skills, particularly of reptilian animals.


DarkWolf91

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Thank you, Chiletrek and Mumbling!

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Personally I don't agree with the "learning to draw solely from cartoons" thing. I've actually heard the opposite before; that watching cartoons while learning is a good thing, because you can observe how many different animators take on different aspects of style and such.

Watching cartoons while learning is a good thing, but I maintain that using that as your only means is extremely limiting.
There are so many questions/decisions involved in character drawing and design, and if you learn only from watching how others have already answered those questions, you are not realizing your full potential. Most importantly your ability to discover and answer those questions for yourself(and I'm not talking about the simple stuff like 'what color should it be?' or 'how big should its eyes be?'). Style is only the end product, the 'polish' of it all. At the core of the art of any skilled animator, cartoonist, or designer, there are years and years of experimentation and life drawing.

But this is all advice from, and for, someone planning to work in the field! For people who pursue drawing simply for the fun of it, just do whatever feels right. It's all about expressing oneself and having a good time, after all :)



DarkHououmon

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I'm not so certain if I want to take life drawing now.


DarkWolf91

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Ooooh, it's extremely fun, I highly recommend it! It's veeeeery difficult in the beginning, though, and there's a steep learning curve. Also it's hard to get good instruction on the matter, as it's a very broad term. Everyone has a different idea of what it should be, and there are different ways of going about it that are more benificial to different varieties of artists and different people in general. Pretty much every book on it will present a unique method.

I really love life drawing, but I couldn't stand the course I took pertaining to it. Partly because my professor was always yelling at everybody, and partly because he taught it in a way that I found extremely unhelpful and counterproductive. I thought it might just be me until I went to a workshop taught by himself and a woman who had worked as an animator and clean up artist for production of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.' She much more stressed capturing the percieved movement, as opposed to his obsession with accuracy(he would give us bad marks if we failed to restate fifteen second gesture drawings. I mean, I'm all for re-working drawings, but fifteen seconds is hardly enough time to even record the entire model, let alone fret over relative foot size!) Even irritating experiences like that are very good practice, though.
But oh wow, I started rambling :oops



DarkHououmon

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I'm not very interested in life drawing. The only extent I knew of it was sketching/painting realistic things without much instruction on exactly how to do it. It doesn't help that I don't even like drawing realistically; I prefer the simpler looks of a cartoon. I can't draw scales or fur. I can't paint very well. I can't make something look realistic. There's just so much detail that must be put into a life drawing that just drives me nuts and discourages me from it.

Stating that life drawing could unlock my "true potential" doesn't exactly encourage me to pursue life drawing. I've never had a good experience with life drawing and it never helped me improve my drawing skills at all. It only frustrated me and it felt more like a chore than anything else. Sorry.


DarkWolf91

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Realism isn't necessarily life drawing at all, though. Life Drawing is simply drawing from observation, which is why I described it as such a broad term. When practicing it for cartooning or animation, realism is not the goal in the slightest. A more common, and far more useful, goal is simply finding the object/animal/person's shapes and recording the way that they squash and stretch in natural movement, as well as the way that they connect to one another. It's also extremely useful in learning how to balance poses and portray weight. Most of the best life drawings in those respects remain simple shape, line, or mass drawings. No intricate detail required whatsoever.



DarkWolf91

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Well, as promised and following a gi-normous wait, I have finally finished something!
I could work on this so much more, but no! I have to stop! It's going to drive me crazy!
I tried to use minimalist shading, like they tend to go for in the films.
Ali and Petrie, because we hardly ever see these two interacting! They're both so gullible- I imagine they'd have some amusing conversations :smile



Mumbling

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That's a lovely drawing! :) Are you planning on uploading it to DA? I like the background too :D


Malte279

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Wow! :blink:
I only have a small window up for firefox because there are other windows up on my screen which I didn't want to be overlapped by the firefox window. So I only saw the left part of the image before I scrolled to the right, and I swear that I was expecting a screenshot (hadn't read the text before). That background is awesome!
Same goes for the shading :yes
As for hopefully constructive criticism I think the proportions of Ali's legs (breadth rather than length) could be worked out a little. I like the idea of Ali and Petrie interacting. Imagine some conflict between Ali, Cera, and Littlefoot, perhaps Petrie would be the best to turn to. Odd as it sounds Ducky might be too kind to be a good adviser in conflict matters. Maybe Petrie is not the best adviser either, but I imagine him to be very capable of sympathizing with Ali in such a situation (especially when it comes to quarrels with Cera).


Nick22

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thats very good work DW! nicely done!
Winner of these:


Runner up for these: