DaCeronNine - Art School Journey

[carolcarrizales80112]

This looks very professional. The prop looks so clean too. Awesome work!

[daceronine]

Thanks! Still on the journey to improve and learn, but I'm very happy to hear it's in the right track!

[daceronine]

After finishing Nozomu chapter 24 (translation, final touch up, upload, scheduled, etc), and facing some incident tickets at work, I was pooped and took a breather.

So did a few exercices to continue the term 3.

Some 5 min gestures first. After the tips I recieved and tried, I've been enjoying making these a lot more, and I think I get more out of these exercices in return.

Muscle exercices, mostly did them to help some fellow term 3 artists, but it also helps me practice muscle identification in references more.

And then more muscle exercices. Dressing up skellys.

And finally came to the exercice to "Study (copy) a fully dressed character painting from an artist/show you like".

It's no secret I love Toriyama's work, and even though Dragon Quest 6 is far from my favorite, I do love the design of the main hero. This design is what I always aspired to when I was a kid. If I could make my manga look like this, I would be satisfied.

So here is the reference.

I decided to get my lazy ass off and try to do proper to this exercice. I tried to do fine linework inking, and fill with lazo selection like marc does, and try my best to use gradient maps as best as possible.

Took several hours, but finally finished it. I'm very happy how the study turned out.

I learned a LOT! I finally feel comfortable working with gradient maps, and I think I got better understand of when to use them, and when to add details manually. Going from auto fill/corrections to fill with lazo was also huge for me. and I even got a feel for proper resolution and details. So very happy with it all around!

No manga work for today, since I just wrapped up chapter 24, but now I jump to start work on chapter 25.

Have a great day! Cheers!

[mitsuki-youko]

noice!! this looks great!

Theres no better feeling than feeling proud of your own art!

[Pattu_w]

Holy crap, yours looks better than the reference. Awesome job!

[snakker]

Wow, that’s a great job all around!

[patrycja.lerch]

Great job!

[daceronine]

@mitsuki-youko, @Pattu_w, @snakker, @patrycja.lerch Many thanks! Tackling these challenges is always an interesting experience. I usually don't like making a copy exactly as the reference, but doing it as a study really helps understand a lot of what the original author was looking at when doing his work. Now I'll try to take this experience and create original works.

Well, at least until we get to the next copy study.

[daceronine]

Final exercice from Term 3! Draw yourself!

Very happy on how it turned out

And with that, Term 3 is all done! (Excepting z brush, we don't talk about that anymore)

And on to Term 4!

Or so I'd like to say.

Before doing the jump, I'll be reviewing the topics and studies done during term 3 to ensure I am comfortable with all lessons learned. I'll be doing that for the next few days, then I'll do the official jump to the term 4 lessons.

On the manga side, I took a brief breather after wrapping up chapter 24 ahead of schedule. I used that time to write the script and create the draft for chapter 25 though. Took a bit longer than expected

I'm now set to kick of with page 1, which I'll probably sketch and start off later today.

The grind never stops.

[mitsuki-youko]

(Excepting z brush, we don't talk about that anymore)

HA LMAO

Before doing the jump, I'll be reviewing the topics and studies done during term 3 to ensure I am comfortable with all lessons learned. I'll be doing that for the next few days, then I'll do the official jump to the term 4 lessons.

Noice!

On the manga side, I took a brief breather after wrapping up chapter 24 ahead of schedule. I used that time to write the script and create the draft for chapter 25 though. Took a bit longer than expected

Oooh you're a pantser I see
I'm a plotter XD so I can't start drawing til i have the script for the whole entire story written out in detail

The grind never stops.

Dat do b tru

Reminds me of when my friend in college jokingly said i was a masochist for planning to make such fancy animations

[daceronine]

Oooh you're a pantser I see I'm a plotter XD so I can't start drawing til i have the script for the whole entire story written out in detail

I didn't even know that word existed until right now xD

If I had to describe myself... it's kind of in between. I do have written out pretty much the whole story in a high level view, with the main beats and important lore pieces... it's ah... let me see (checks word doc), about 50 pages. I do think it's important to have a clear vision of the whole thing so things make sense from the beginning and tie well together along the way.

For example, the different relationships are kinda already set, how they will develop or change, pretty much all the story beats and even the ending is written.

However I'm also leaving leeway to adapt as possible. For example, the current "Fight" in the story against the robbed individuals was written as only a few lines. Literally it's 8 lines in the original script (I just found and counted them), however as things developed, in order for some things to make sense or to just pace it out, it just kept expanding into 50 drawn pages (oh damn has it been that long?)

And then there are the small questions I ask myself like, how old are these characters? What are their favorite foods? How do they sustain themselves? and then I fit some of these details into the scripts.

All in all, I'm personally still learning. I'm far from qualified to say if I'm using the best approach. But I can at least say I'm doing my best effort.

And even more important, I want all this to be fun and enjoyable to both do and read.

Wew, that was a long reply. I'm passionate about the topic, so it ran kinda long.

I'll head out to take some air. Cheers!

[mitsuki-youko]

about 50 pages

Ooh Noice!

And even more important, I want all this to be fun and enjoyable to both do and read.

Wew, that was a long reply. I'm passionate about the topic, so it ran kinda long.

Totally get u, I'm the same way about my project

let me see (checks word doc), about 50 pages.

If you ever need to expand as you write more, I totally recommend using Obsidian (Discovered its existence in the worldbuilding subreddit) (imo yo should check it out to see if it'd fit your needs )

https://obsidian.md/

I used to plotbuild/worldbuild/characterbuild across like a dozen different Pages Files (word for mac) and moving into Obsidian was the best thing I've ever done!!

Though its usefulness to you might depend on the scope of your project.

My project, as you've probs seen before is huge so using obsidian is a must for me but yea i think u might find obsidian interesting

All in all, I'm personally still learning. I'm far from qualified to say if I'm using the best approach. But I can at least say I'm doing my best effort.

Since you're just jamming out manga all the time, I'd say that approach works pretty well for u

[daceronine]

@mitsuki-youko Thanks! I'll take a look for sure. I'm always up to learn more, though I am quite comfortable with the current pipeline. I guess I AM a pantser for the most part.

As I look back and review the material from term 3, I realize how much i've learned not just from term 3, but from reinforcing what was learned in the previous terms as well.

I kinda wanted to draw a few pieces that represented some of this before jumping to term 4. Both as a bit of a celebration and also to serve as a checkpoint in this art journey.

First is a bit of focus on anatomy.

Still a WIP, but figured I would share progress. I usualy focus on men for anatomy, so I decided to go with a pretty girl for this one.

Still got a lot of work to do on it, but I'll need to switch gears a bit before I finish it.

It also helps me refine her design since she's set to appear in the manga in the following chapters (chapter 26 or 27 at the latest)

A strong willed, positive, confident and beautiful warrior girl who is honest to a fault.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Got a lot more manga pages to do first. Started chapter 25 with the first page.

At this point I'm fairly comfortable with the process, and aiming to improve some evident shortcomings such as manga paneling, dialogues, clarity, comic page composition and so on. I'm trying to watch as much material as I can while I continue to do Marc's course.

Feeling a bit tired, but satisfied. I'm off to bed and we'll resume work tomorrow.

Cheers!

[gregorya]

I like these faces and you have very good inking skills.
I like the skeleton muscle structure.
Good work on the character study. Gradient maps look a little challenging.
Congratulations on term 3.
I like the swimsuit girl and the page.

[Kaz_0]

uu the new girl looks cool ! Good job with the anatomy.

[snakker]

Loving your manga style

[daceronine]

Thanks @gregorya ! Gradient maps are certainly challenging to get used to, but I'm liking them more and more!

Thanks @Kaz_0 and @snakker for the cheers, and everyone else who has stopped by! It's always very motivating to know people appreciate the progress!

Finished potrait of Makena! (That's her name) Seems like anatomy is satisfactory so far!

Very happy how it turned out. Still feels like I can improve my blending, coloring, shadowing, lineart and many other things, but still very happy on how far we've come.

Been having a LOT of work at the office, but still pushed hard and managed to finish another manga page.

Thanks for stopping by! Cheers to everyone!

[patrycja.lerch]

Makena looks really good!

[cobalt_kat]

Love the colors on the Makena drawing, they really pop and complement each other very well.

[daceronine]

Thanks @patrycja.lerch and @cobalt_kat! and everyone else who has stopped by!

Finished the second final exercice as part of Term 3. With this, I'm now jumping to term 4.

Focus was on clothes, even though clothes on the character are relatively simple.

I tried to apply most of what I've learned so far. Lineart, gradient maps, use a forced perspective angle (borrowed some notes from @Pattu_w. Thanks!), played around with several effects.

I'll be honest, i'm not 100% satisfied (unlike with the Makena piece which I felt more satisifed with), I just feel like I can improve on the overall design more as well as other technical aspects.

I AM happy with it though, and will instead focus on making the next piece better.

It is also a Nozomu character (you guys know how obsessed I am with that ), no specific name just yet, but his appearance in the manga is scheduled for much later so I got time to continue refining the design.

And barely finished another manga page! Even if for some reason, this one took a LOT longer than usual. I will probably come back to this page to refine a few things, but I'll do it later after I can look at it with refreshed eyes.

Wew the grind got to me a bit, I feel like I'm rushing things. I'll go do a personal BBQ now and take a good breather. I'll continue the grind tomorrow.

Cheers everyone! Thanks for stopping by!