>>8582
Thank you! I appreciate it. I think I focused on the close-up shots mostly because I was paranoid about the anatomy, and I wanted to focus more on getting one area right at a time. But I think I can afford to loosen up a bit now.

>>8581
Colored version!

>>8579
Finished version of this one. I wasn't initially sold on the yellow background, but it's growing on me.

Rough sketchy sketch of a TF2/Ghostbusters crossover.

Workin' on yet another thing.

Secret Santa drawing 2014.

Another color palette drawing.

Not art, per se, but working on a list of influences, to show where I'm coming from.

>>8007 I want you to stretch this exercise a little bit further and tell us not just who inspires you, but what it is about each of them that gives you inspiration. It's helpful to us critics because the more we understand what you're trying to take from these artists, the better we can help you figure out how to take it. It's helpful to you because being able to analyse what's successful about another artist's work is the first step to figuring out how to make your own work successful.

Lurker here has never commented on your work before (unless I did and forgot that I did) but I've been lurking and methinks there is improvement. Just wanted to mention that in case I die before my next comment.

>>8652
I'm sorry it's taken me this long to get to shading. My teachers were not very good at explaining how to do it, and I'm not sure how to blend the colors digitally (or in general), so I've avoided it for the most part.

>>8663
Thank you, Lurker. I'm still trying to figure it out. I grew up in an age where people were trying to all draw uniquely, and emulating anyone too closely was compared to plagiarism and being an untalented hack. But I'm starting to think a little more critically about it.

>>Venture Bros.
>>Moby Franke
I like Venture Bros., TF2, and Metalocalypse, because they're both relatively realistic in terms of proportions, even if they're exaggerated a bit. The characters feel like you could meet them on the street. They're relatable, they're not alienatingly gorgeous-looking. I feel like if everyone looks like a supermodel, it feels less and less like the world I live in.

>>Jamie Hewlett
Ditto. I think his art is sort of...beautiful in its ugliness, if it makes sense. Again, nobody looks like a supermodel.

>>Makani
I think her and Kate Beaton do hilarious facial expressions, and Makani's ladies come from all walks of life, and have different ages and body types.

>>Bruce Timm
>>Genndy Tartakovsky
I'm trying to get the thick line thing because I want to look like a comic book or cartoon.

>>Jhonen Vasquez
I like his cross-hatching in his comics, and the neon color scheme in Invader Zim. Also why I love the color palette in Psychonauts.

>>Disney
Fluid, good expressions that convey a lot, even if you remove the dialogue

>>8667
Shading's one of those art bitches that seem really simple and theory but are a pain in the ass to pull off in real life. Basically, you've got a light source, and if that light source hits anything it's going to light that thing up. That's like, all you need to know. There's some other shit involving surface properties and secondary light sources and atmospheric sorcery that will become relevant if you ever want your shading to be ultra realistic, but they're not really essential for most purposes, especially if you're a beginner.
Probably the best way to learn how shading works is just to look at stuff and try to figure out why the highlights and shadows look the way they look, then reproduce them. In art classes they usually make you start with some boring-ass simple shapes because a) they're simple and b) more complex shapes are basically just a bunch of simple shapes stuck together.

Observation is also key, imo, when it comes to achieving the sort of quasi-thematic realism that Metalocaplypse and TF2 are sporting. One of the shitty things about trying to learn art is that everybody's trying to teach you how to draw these idealised figures where there's basically one shape for men and two shape for women (big tits and little tits) and they're all hot. That's a pretty decent starting place if you're just trying to learn basic anatomy (ie; how long should a forearm be) but when you get to the point where you want your characters to not look like they came out of a cookie-cutter, you pretty much only have the choice of teaching yourself.
Right now you're still at the part where you should probably still be focusing mainly on getting your heads the right size for your body before you start complicating things with differently-shaped bodies. But that doesn't mean you can't be making observations and building up a collection of reference images for fatasses and skinnyasses and oldasses and prepubescentasses and asses with both legs blown off and asses on steroids, looking at them, saving them, drawing them. Once you have a good foundation in generic human anatomy you can start learning to make comparisons between the 'ideal' body and bodies that people actually fucking have. We're all basically the same shape underneath, so once you've got the basics down, learning how to draw all the millions of other human figures is really just a matter of switching around some fat and skin.

The rest of it, I guess, is just identifying what you want (you just did that!) and then not being a pussy about it. You like neon colours? Next dude you draw better have some lime green skin. If you're feeling really cocky, go ahead and open up a Jhonen Vasquez illustration and steal the shit out of his colours. Like don't even 'emulate' them, just go in with a colour picker and annex that exact shade of hot pink for your kingdom. Some goes for bold lines, and if you like cross-hatching then I don't want to see another smooth-shaded drawing for at least a month. The cool thing about drawings is that you'll probably make another one tomorrow anyway, so if it ends up being off or too much and looking weird, you can make adjustments for the next piece. You make faster progress when you go big and then scale back, rather than going small and only progressing an inch at a time, you can't improve shit that you never drew in the first place.

>>8668
I thought the heads were already the perfect size. Three heads for the shoulders, 2 heads from top of head to bottom of the chest. And I've already done a lot of different body shapes...

Practice sketch of different fictional doctors.

Color palette request.

It's good to see that you have a thread here!

>>8228
Ah, this is cute. It's rare that we see Gray Mann acting the part of the devoted father.

>>8502
I like the pattern you used in the background here.

>>8504
The Scout's head in this picture looks three dimensional; the shape of his wig really suggests a sense of depth. It's excellent!

>>8506
The twist of the Scout's neck here seems slightly unnatural - it might be more comfortable to have the head following the curve of the body, or vice versa. The picture explains it better. However, the use of colour is very aesthetically pleasing!

>>8515
Now that you mention it, there sure are a lot of smokers in the TF2 cast! It might just be the way I'm perceiving it, but Heavy seems to have three segments in his arm (see the picture). However, the round contours of his arm demonstrates his musculature very well.

>>8529
Hey! Who says you have to have a particular style to do illustration, comics or anything like that? It's true that using a completely inappropriate style is a bad move, like how CGI Smurfs fall right into the Uncanny Valley, or stories about horrible heart-rending life-ruining events drawn in chibis. But if you're more or less in the right ballpark, why not draw the way you'd like to draw? If you create something beautiful, funny, meaningful or useful, then you win regardless of the exact style you use to do it.

>>8579
>>8591
I chuckled. Who knew the Pocket Heavy and Pocket Medic's clothes were removable? Some nitpicks: there's nothing drawn incorrectly, but the overall layout could be spaced out a little. In this way, the speech bubbles would be better highlighted, we would be able to see the Heavy's full face, and also give him more room to make a full-body exaggerated gesture. I also like the way Medic is drawn here; his face is stylized, yet it's still recognizably him. Nice work!

>>8624
Adorable. I wonder how Pyro convinced Heavy and Medic to let them stay? Small detail: The height of the TV table's legs isn't uniform; at the height depicted, Heavy's head would be too far to the right side of the picture to see the screen. Very clean, precise colouring!

>>8644
Interesting, I can see you have a lot of cartoons as your influences.

>>8696
I'm glad to see this again. I didn't know Princess Bubblegum was a scientist, actually.

>>8710
Ah, lovely colours! I find that the Sniper's face here is quite similar to how you drew the Medic's earlier. I completely get it; Sniper is a right pain to draw. I hope the picture helps. I also like how you drew the Unusual hat; I recognized it straight away. Beautiful palette, very pastelly!

I don't think I ever uploaded this one.

>>8724
>>8722
>>8725
Thank you. I'm going to work on all of this. I can't take credit for the color scheme on the Scout pic, it was a color palette challenge (although I decided not to go with a color palette meme, I picked palettes from a website called ColourLovers).

I'll work on the backgrounds more, too. I know some artists don't do backgrounds at all, so I want to make up for that, I guess.

Kid Medic and his sister, from the "Kid Fortress" fan-comic on Tumblr. I really dig the designs, so I decided to draw fanart.

Another WIP. Engie singing to the team's birds.

>>8768
Fleshing this out a little more.

I'm eventually going to finish this with a background and full coloring and stuff.

There's a couple color tests for this over on my art blog (medaart @ tumblr), lemme know what you think!

>>8777
Background WIP.

>>8769
Hehe, I like how kid Medic is an implied bird. But I like birds in general so maybe I'm biased! What's the song?

>>8777
Checked out the colors, and I'm always partial to purple Pauling, but the BLU(e?) one looks nice too.

>>8760
Okay, I laughed.

>>8768
>>8769
It's intriguing see the different stages of the artwork here. The shape of Engie's jaw and nose could possibly be adjusted, as in the picture. In the background, the variation between the birds makes a great silhouette in the window. Engie's pose and expression are both just right, too; they fit the relaxed mood of the song. Finally, something subtle that you've done very well is the use of focus. There is a single focus to the picture (Engie and his guitar), and the background doesn't overpower that. Nice work!

>>8777
>>8779
I like the perspective on the furniture in this picture! It ain't original, but it's true: I like Miss Pauling being on Team PRPL. That said, all of the colour tests are in good taste. Also, the waistcoat and tie combo suits her surprisingly well.

>>8780
I'm confused by what you mean here. He's not implied to be a bird.

The song is "Blackbird" by The Beatles. It's off their self-titled album (sometimes referred to as "The White Album").

>>8783
I'd probably be a better TF2 artist if SFM worked on my computer. I've really got to rig up a way to get Windows to work on my computer. I do have some basic facial and body refs, but they're a bit small and low-res. I've been working from pictures off the TF2 wiki.

I'm glad you like the background and perspective, I've been trying to do that more. Some artists decide they don't want to learn, so I've made it a goal to do so.

>>8780
>>8798
I think it might be that Kid Medic appears at the bottom of the Blackbird picture.

>>8798
Hey, no pressure. Even on Windows, SFM is a big lug of a program. I usually prefer TFMV (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=158547475) since it avoids the trouble of loading SFM. There are also some great multi-angle facial refs here, including a goggleless Engie (http://imgur.com/a/qvZtR).

I like the colours! The reused colours help unify the picture, like how the lamp reflects the carpet. The piano pattern on the leftmost cupboard is also rather neat. There's a bit of an optical illusion with the carpet; I'm trying to imagine how the stripes would look from above, and how that would translate to seeing them on the floor in perspective.

>>8798

Ooh meda about that! I've never heard of the program that Nominel brought up, might give it a shot, but I'll tell you what I told Hosscatt a bit back: If you run TF2 and go to the Mann Co store, when you preview cosmetics there's a fullscreen option, and the model they give you there is fully rotatable and larger than the ones on the wiki (when fullscreened). Just something else to try (Nominel's thing sounds more robust though). Thanks for the song title.


>>8800

>Kid medic seen there
Kek, Nominel that's it. Sorry if I was vague.

Hey nominel, I've been working with your redlines/refs a bunch. How's this look?

I also drew this thing. Based on a real story of an OB-GYN who got in trouble for sexting as one of his patients was giving birth.

>>8880
Well I'm no Nominel but the Sniper with the owl on the shoulder is super charming! Did you draw these in order from left to right?

>>8881
Thirteen keks! Is that Scout's mom?

Small comment on the background anatomy images, I totes get that they're the background so I shouldn't focus on them as much, but as far as skulls go, don't be afraid to just rip the jawbone right off of the skull! (I am assuming that's a skull and not a people) It's not attached bone to bone like you might think.

>>8880
I'm very impressed, it looks great! I can see stacks of changes, like the nose angle and width, chin shape, cheekbone height, and eyebrow shape. The overall effect is that Sniper is instantly recognizable. His expressions are also on key - they look right at home on his face. Seriously good work!

I also like how the details of his clothes vary in thickness. For example, you can see that his gloves are skin-tight because they don't affect the silhouette of his hands, whereas the stitches on the side of his shirt appear more textured because they stand off from the main part of the fabric.

Finally, the different angles (front-on and orthogonal) map strongly to eachother; it looks like the same person at different angles, rather than multiple different people. Excellent consistency!

>>8881
Hahaha. I like the backgrounds here, they set the scene effectively! Something that especially stands out is how Heavy and Medic are outlined with a thicker marker, which creates a nice sense of depth relative to the narrower lines of the background. There's a small mismatch with the line of sight to the phone (picture). I also like Heavy's natural leaning pose.

>>8882
I did! And thank you, I love Sir Hootsalot!

I remembered about the jawbone being a separate piece, but when I was referencing x-rays for the background, the separation wasn't as visible.

>>8886
Thanks! I didn't want the background taking away from the foreground. I'm glad I'm getting better at faces, too.

I did notice the line-of-sight thing. Something I'm trying to fix in this next drawing a bit.

>>8902
Said drawing didn't upload, whoops. Here it is!

Annnd here's the fully-colored version of >>8881!

>>8903

Just a quick first impression--the instruments don't look to be the right size relative to the people, and Sniper and Engineer look like they're clipping into each other (which unless that's the joke, this should be fixed).

Detailed redlines to come later maybe, when it's not past midnight and I should be in bed.

(The red/blue lines are extremely rough; they're just there to illustrate my feedback.)

First, the good:
* The thick outline around the characters.
* The background poster really helps me focus my gaze on Sniper and Engineer.
* Proportions are solid and they have weight.

Now, the not so good:
* The smiles are still a little bit too wide for my taste.
* It might help the composition of the picture even better if Sniper and Engineer are also looking at each other. (I parse the instruments as pointing towards the edges of the picture rather than at the center--the cropping doesn't help the issue, either.)
* The one side of Sniper's glasses are obviously bigger than the other, even taking account of foreshortening. I also added some suggestions to help clarify the orientation of his head, as you've got his glasses going one way but the rest of his face going another and I find that more confusing than anything else.
* I moved them further apart so it doesn't look like they're banging their instruments together. I may have erred on the side of more space, so you might be able to move them a little closer (in that case, you may also want to turn the sides that are close to the other towards the "camera" more), but overall I don't recommend that the instruments overlap at all.
* Speaking of instruments, I highly suggest you search the internet for references. They're the wrong side relative to both of the characters, and they're also being held/played incorrectly.

>>8908
Ahh. Okay. I was actually using references when I drew this-- multiple ones for the characters, and one each for the guitar/banjo. I suspect I might just be really bad at using references, since I never draw without them.

I lined the nostrils up with the mouth. I assumed that was correct?

>>8903
I'm hella digging Sniper's middle three strumming fingers, they're super curly and aesthetically pleasing. Not to mention the stitching on Engineer's overalls, nice ATD! Attached is a (hopefully) helpful overall strap reference; which part is teh small metal piece on the left? aka RMD is dumb and trying to figure out buckles as much as the next guy

Also just a suggestion for when/if (might not be in the style but it's your style heck if I know) you ever draw the instrument strings is use a transparent ruler so you can see where to stop.

Based on this: http://a-bloody-fruit-shop-owner.tumblr.com/post/130671392706/ngl-that-post-with-heavy-and-medic-reminded-me-of

>>8910
I'm gonna do strings, I just wanted to get the instruments themselves down first. And I'm really proud of those hands, so thank you!

Buckles are hard, man.

>>8944
And this, for all the people who commented "omg Rick" on my last drawing.

That poor principal oh my gosh this

That was brilliant oh my gosh, they were touching butts and like, that was a beautiful form of protest. Or something was that even protest

Yes
Too close being in the same room is too close, that's the moral I'm getting.

That was adorable
Live commentary as watching folks

Also those pockets

>>8948
The wooshiest of Rick hair right here, let me tell you what.

Also dat outfit coordination, I want that tie.
It would save me a lot of TIEm b d d d d dum dum bum tssssssssssss

WIP of a spectral Miss Pauling.

>>8989
And the final.

>>8990

That comic was amazing holy crap, mercs playing DnD is basically a dream come true. Nice job with the colored lineart, too! Looks nice.

>>8991
Thank you! And yeah, it was something I always figured would never happen, but always wanted to see.

Bump.

>>9135

Dude so many baseball bats! I'm assuming this is an OC named Nate? (extrapolating from the filename lol)

>>9139
Yep! N00dl3gal on Tumblr requested I draw their OC, a Scout named Nate. I had a very detailed description of his clothing, but not of his weapon loadout-- and I rarely see Scouts that don't love BEISBAW baseball, so I just gave him ALL THE BATS.