[MoleculeMan]

Hi, i know this sounds like the generic "Woo this place rocks, and i dunno if i am good enough to post here, but what the hell" kind of thread, and well it is. This place is awesome. I've been a vouyer here for a few months now, and found inspiration and lots of great works to oggle. I finally sat down and finished something (and worked up enough courage to post something here). Oh well. This is my first finished computer colored thingie. I did it in Photoshop with a mouse, off of a pencil drawing i scanned. If the resolution is crappy, its cuz i had to reduce it to post on my poor connection.
(Its supposed to be a futuristic cop, based ever-so-slightly off of the ones in Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell Manga)



Any tips are welcome!

[hamilton]

let's dig in, shall we?

first off, take what i say only so far, it is only my opinion.

your hands are horrible. you really need to work on them. you have hands of your own, you should never want for reference. find a mirror, if it's on a wall take it off, look at how the hand is. don't draw what you think it would cute if did look like... draw what it looks like. draw lots of hands. you can never practice too much on hands.

the chest plate is a awkwardly large. perhaps making it smaller, (just... like pull up the bottom.) and then make some sort of mesh on the stomach portion. with... mechanical dealies or something... (i'm not good at technology art.)

don't be afraid to cover things up. i'm not sure if you meant the left leg to be really skinny, but it looks like you got scared to cover it up, and added in a gap between the leg and the gun. i would take that gap out. it doesn't work as well. also, in future, you should try to avoid problems like that altogether, the gun is really in a really straight, flat profile. perhaps tilting the nose down abit would add some much need dynamic to it, and would put it in opposition of the angle of the leg.

your line quality variance is almost nonexistent. it makes for a fairly boring drawing. adding a dark outline alone would improve this drawing immeasurably. keep thin lines on the wires and things that are small, but add a larger outline on things that are large, think or clunky. and add some varying line width especially where shadows might be.

i like your attempt to create some texture on the armour... it works.

i'm pretty sure you're just doing this for yourself. which means you are not under any time constraints. which means that you could've taken the time to work out some little details. like making the bolts on his chest plate actually circular. making that wand he is holding actually straight. and perhaps even a cheesy background. anything to give us a sense of atmosphere. as it is. we could have done without a lot of that white around the picture. one of my personal pet peeves is when people don't crop their images. that's just me though.

i like the color scheme, but lighting source is never truly clearly defined. it looks like you just shaded every piece individually and didn't think about the character as a whole (which is a mistake i, myself, make quite often). also, i'm not sure what that wand is, but surely it is a light source and therefore could have lent itself to some interesting lighting effects on the armour surrounding it.

all in all... i give it 3 out of 5 stars. it would be nice to see a background. work on your hands (and anatomy while your at it. you're never safe from learning til you're dead) do some practice work on light sources. take some pictures in a dark room with one or two extreme light sources like a flashlight that you can move around for multiple angles.

keep it up.

</critique>

[cybertoker2001]

Hamilton left a nice reply here. Pay attention to what he's said. I fully agree with him, so that's two peoples oppinions.
Keep it up. As artists we should get better with every piece.
Take it easy.
CT2001

[ July 13, 2001: Message edited by: cybertoker2001 ]

[MoleculeMan]

Thanks for the feedback you two! I appreciate any help i can get. Most of what you peep's said makes sense (especially the leg thing, wtf was i thinking heh). But most importantly *BUMP* .