Canon Fodder

Archive => Archive => [ARCHIVED] Art => Topic started by: bloodreaper on September 17, 2008, 08:37:00 PM

Title: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 17, 2008, 08:37:00 PM
--But not from as close up. Pity, as my test viewer expressed disappointment that you can't see the individual drops of congealing ichor. Some test groups, these days...

Anyways, I suspect that this is, in fact, the guy D was thinking of before.

(http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo106/BaronFelbood/AcidBlood.png)

I just realized I forgot to put in the smoke layer. Hooey! Without the smoke layer, conservation of matter is defied in a way that interferes with believability. More so than a guy with a clawed gauntlet made from his own purplish black, acidic blood, somehow.

I'm trying out a new shading technique again. Minimalist, but still there. Normally I use a layer like this, in conjunction with two others. I want to know what you think of it all by itself.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Dragyn on September 18, 2008, 02:42:00 PM
I dunno'.  The shading looks a little flat, to me, but I'm biased towards multiple highly transparent layers, in stead of just the one.  The highlights do help to round it out, but the clothing just seems...too smooth, especially the demon's clothes.

You should totally add the smoke layer, too.  I wanna' see how you make that work, and if it's faster than my method...
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 19, 2008, 12:01:00 PM
*Laugh!!!*   :D

You are quite a fan of violence.
But... yes, smoke would've been neat...   ;D

I like how you made the blood sparkly. Though the term "sparkly" might contrast a little with the general intent of the image...

What exactly is the incapable wing-like bit on the creature's back for? I've always wondered... assumed that maybe they had wings and then something happened to 'em.


Now I think I might point out some suggestions...

Perhaps this might go with Dragyn's statement, almost...
But the front of the shirt forms to his body in a bit of an odd way... first it's kinda tight, then expands too much at the shreds.

In one spot it looks like you made a shadow for the blood, over his leg. I'd make it more subtle, personally... it almost looks like more blood and makes the stream of droplets appear too consistent.

The background is better... but I'm not sure if it goes with the image all that agreeably. Close, but a little too... cheery... ya' know?
May just be my opinion, that...

Usually I'd say that what the armored individual is doing is altogether highly unlikely to be possible, and the length of that sword would be very inconvenient to its holder, at their height. However, in many fictional situations, the bigger the better, and impossibilities are, of course, regularities.
*Shrugs* Your call, there.

I know that looks like a lot of text, but it really wasn't that much when I was just thinking it...
Really, it's only 3 suggestions and one side-note!  >.<
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 19, 2008, 03:55:00 PM
Violence is hard to draw. You have all kinds of tricky things, at once. Two characters interacting, in three dimensional space, motion, momentum, possibly fluid effects, and a need for dynamic camera angles and composition.

The impossible will occur with alarming frequency, however a cyborg knight in power assisted armor (It is; you just can't tell, because it's pretty lightweight for power armor.) could be expected to heft a sword that size, particularly if it is a lighter weight alloy, than what we would think of as normal for metal.

Note that our armored friend's grip is slipping loose, due to the added weight of her demonic opponent.

His "wings" aren't functional and never were. While many of his kin get actual wings, he just gets bony protrusions that serve to keep things from pouncing onto his back. They also serve as a measure of ablative armor.

I did spatter a few drops of blood on his leg, but you're right, the pattern is far too linear, without a larger drop at one end.

For the shading: yeah, large surfaces look too flat. Note that the knight's flank has an inconsistently large shadow, in attempt to compensate for this.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 20, 2008, 01:52:00 PM
Hm... well, if they're sharp enough, I guess they could also pass as weapons, now that I get to thinking a bit more about it, in that sense...

What exaclty is his kin?
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 21, 2008, 01:05:00 AM
Your kin, would be your family.

It could also mean an entire species or group of similar species, but mostly it just means your family.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 21, 2008, 05:19:00 PM
Well, yeah... but what is he... or, what are his family?
I really don't know what his species is... >.<
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 22, 2008, 07:08:00 AM
Demon-spawned abomination.

Every breath he takes is an atrocity.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Fox on September 23, 2008, 12:51:00 PM
Considering last post in your art..I'll go ahead and voice my oppinion.

As an obsessed lover of bladed weapons, I take a deep interest in drawings like these. However, it seems the handle on the sword doesn't quite line up with the blade.

Other than that..I got nothin'. Everything else was mentioned by Faith or Dragyn.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 23, 2008, 03:00:00 PM
I've got a bad habit of cheating there.

If one character's stance doesn't quite line up with the other the way it should, I just twist the hilt, where the handle meets the crossguard.

The trouble is, my fellow sword lovers will always catch me.

If you're not going to take the time to do it right, drawing swords is probably a bad move. People notice when your swords are off.

Anatomy errors and funny faces you can pass off as an art style quirk, but a crooked sword is just obvious.

Still, I'm not drawing this stuff 'cuz I'm good at it.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 23, 2008, 06:48:00 PM
You're pretty good.
Thpugh not accustomed to using Paint. Net, maybe. But that's kinda part of what these experiments are for, like you pretty well said.   ;)

Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 23, 2008, 11:55:00 PM
While it's true that my speed shading and composition are much better with a pencil, I don't think my Layer Fu is really all that weak.

Certainly, there are a lot of people better than me, but I like to think I'm chipping it in for par, at least some of the time.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Dragyn on September 24, 2008, 05:25:00 AM
Better than par, considering...
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 24, 2008, 07:06:00 AM
Yeah, but you aren't compensating for Sturgeon's Law.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Dragyn on September 24, 2008, 08:05:00 AM
Sounds familiar.  What is it, again?
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 24, 2008, 05:21:00 PM
Well... all I can think about are really big fish found in the river near town... >.<

You're doing good. And making 'em quick.
I could never have a comic for that reason... XD
Well, that and I'm not that funny.   :P

But really... your pretty good at, um, Layer Fu-golfing, or whatever it is.   ;)
Really, that is just a strange thought...
Aside from that, how you used both of those to describe one thing while almost making it sound normal, I do not know.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 25, 2008, 10:42:00 AM
I think you just snapped the metaphor.

I don't think par is universally about golf.

I appreciate your complement. --Maybe even enough to try to make another one of these.

I got to get my new radiator installed first. The thing doesn't fit right, because of the way the chassis is damaged, so I'm not sure how to proceed.

Spurgeons Law:  "90% of everything is crud."

Those 90% don't bother with golf, so par is actually a bit higher than average human ability.
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: Faith on September 25, 2008, 07:35:00 PM
*Laugh!!!*   :D

Well, hopefully you do.
Then you can get whatever results you're going for and we can see the progress on its way.    :)

Hm... while a tad blunt, I think I've found agreements with his guy's (Spurgeons or Sturgeons?) logic.   :P    ;D

Hm... that's not good (not to state the obvious, or anything... which, I'm afraid, I just did)... how bad is the situation?
(Good luck, no matter.)
Title: Re: Caution: more blood.
Post by: bloodreaper on September 26, 2008, 06:06:00 AM
Well, he wasn't exactly in a position to be subtle. He was a proponent of Sci-Fi novels, back when they were first getting big, and people where claiming they would rot your brain and make children violent. (Sound familiar?)

Somebody told him that 90% of sci-fi was crud and drivel.

He said, "Sure 90% of sci-fi is crud, that's because 90% of everything is crud."

The point being, you shouldn't judge a genre from the worst available examples, or even the majority or it's contents.

Literature isn't respected because of the cheap pulp novels they sell at the drugstore. People respect literature because it produced the classics.

90% of all modern poetry is garbage, but enough of it is good that people still write poems, and great poems are still written, etc.

Maybe more than that with poems and comics, because those mediums are favored by beginners and adolescents, who tent to produce crud at an elevated rate.