DaCeronNine - Art School Journey

[daceronine]

Thanks everyone! Especially @mitsuki-youko who took the time to explain the whole thing xD Still need to practice it in a new piece, but I think I found the root cause and have an idea of what to do.

That's the good thing about reaching out and being part of an art community, you guys help a lot and even just browsing your processes, progress and ideas has helped me learn and grow as well.

Term 4

Final post of the Makena anatomy piece since it's pretty much done and I think I posted it like 5 times now xD, not planning on changing anything else. Just did a few edits. The detail in the texture is.. kind of meh (need to get better at that), but overall I like it. Already posted it around social media too.

And now we move to the next exercice in the companion guide, "Study (copy) 20 hands in simple poses from photo references (lineart only)" , starting with a set of 10. Figurd I would use the opportunity to practice inking and a bit of shading as well.

I have to hand it to Marc, this exercice was quite the handful, even if it's a very handy thing to do. Still, I think I nailed down most of it!

Manga

One more page done!

1) The main point of the page is the awkward intermission from Gustav, Iris's fiance. Not the first time either. At this point I would assume the reader thinks Iris is not that much into her engagement or her fiancee, yet she still goes along with it, even if she seems to have something for our main protagonist. At the same time, Gustav seems to be a bit of a pompous fool, but not really a bad guy, doesn't seem fair for him either does it? No one deserves being played around with. The whole thing is intended to be uncomfortable. How could things possibly turn out well?

2) Luckily for Seki no one is holding him responsible for the building destruction... so far.

3) I liked the whole background values thing, it's easier to do than doing a detailed background and seems to work well. Works for random backgrounds, probably not good when detail in the scene is needed.

4) Middle frame is intentionally blank to balance the contrast of the page as well as to highlight the awkward moment.

That's it for now! thanks for stopping by!
Still a lot pending to do!

[garrok.dev]

great handjob

Is there a place where we can read your whole manga ?

[Pattu_w]

Looking hella good! Makena looks awesome, hands looks crispy and the manga keeps getting better with each page! Good stuff I say!

[daceronine]

Hey there Nilrem! Yea, the whole thing can be found through this linktree! (Spanish/English)

https://linktr.ee/daceronine

I'm still a bit of a noob-in-learning, but I think we've already come a long way!

[daceronine]

Thanks a lot!! To be honest hands have always been a weakness of mine, and I knew I would need to circle back to look deeper into them. It's true that practice helps, slowly you start to identify main "pieces" and lines around them. Still got another set to complete.

[patrycja.lerch]

Nice hands!
Manga looks great! You did a good job showing awkwardness. I like the use of blank page

[gregorya]

Nice work on the hands and the manga page looks great. Hopefully, no one will find out about the building.

[mitsuki-youko]

Thanks everyone! Especially @mitsuki-youko who took the time to explain the whole thing xD Still need to practice it in a new piece, but I think I found the root cause and have an idea of what to do.

eyy glad i was able to help!

I have to hand it to Marc, this exercice was quite the handful, even if it's a very handy thing to do. Still, I think I nailed down most of it!

I think you got a handle on punning XD

Nice work on everything!

[snakker]

Nice work on those hands! I like the way you played with the line weight and they all look really good.

Only one thing I note, something about the second top hand from the left, with the two fingers up, it looks kinda like the skin is twisting around but I feel it would rather kinda bulge out or stretch out towards the base of the proximal phallanx of the thumb (kinda like making the thenar eminence a pyramid if that makes sense XD)

cheers!

[daceronine]

Thanks man! I really appreciate the feedback! Wow you really know your hand parts!

I was having a hard time following though, so I figured I would try it once more.
I couldn't find the reference though, but I do have hands, so I tried to pose my hand as closely as possible and try it.

Left is original, middle is my chubby fingers hand and the right is the new one based on the new hand reference.

There are definetly some differences here. Some subtle like how the sking wraps and bulges, and some more obvious ones like the finger length or the thumb position.

That was very interesting, I'll have to continue practicing.

[snakker]

Nice! looking good, and glad I could help mate

cheers!

[gregorya]

Nice work on the hand study. Keep it up.

[daceronine]

Thanks for all the encouragement guys! It really motivates to keep grinding!

Busy week as usual, BAU.

Still, got time to make some progress!

Term 4

Hands down, this was quite the challenge! On the other hand, I finally have a good grip on this. I was able to hand-le it pretty well!

Puns aside, hands have always given me trouble, from imagination, it's almost impossible, but from references, I'm getting more and more comfortable. After these exercices it's like you notice patterns and start looking for some basic shapes and forms, like the 3 parts of the fingers, the palm structure, or the how knuckles are not "balls" but tendons over bones.

It was also great practice or inking and shading with ink. I really liked that part.

High-five!

Manga

One more page done!

Bit of a transition, few points to highlight.

1) Iris walking away from Seki in the middle frame has a bit of symbolic meaning to it, which will be elaborated on later. A bit sad that circunstances are slowly making friends part ways.

2) The switch to Iris perspective is intended to make it feel like we've left Seki behind, which is part of the theme for the first arc.

3) Might be worth noting that frames have been a lot more square and simple, with a few details to them, for example, vertical spaces are shorter while horizontal spaces are slightly bigger, from what I learned, this help indicate sequence (left right, then up down). Also, speech bubbles don't always need a line to indicate who is speaking or thinking, it just needs to be clear who is saying what, which can be done by sequence and position as well.

4) Middle background needed a bit more work, but honestly got tired and left it be. I might be relying on blur a bit too much to hide the abscence of fine detail.

5) White outlines added to the characters, since the page is a bit more busy than others, and I noticed the outlines were getting lost. At the same time I do want it feel "busy", like there's people and movement around, but still wanted to highlight the main characters in the scenes, hence, the white outlines.

That's it for now! I'm also late with this month's chapter, but I've simply had too much IT work. Nothing to it, we'll just keep trucking.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a very nice day!

[patrycja.lerch]

Hands are getting better and better!
Good job on manga! I like that perspective switch

[snakker]

Glorious hands 👍

[Pattu_w]

Great work on these! I'm also gonna have to do 20 hands this week, so to see a reference on how to approach doing them it's actually quite... handy.

[daceronine]

If it helps, I have a hard time sitting around and doing a lot in one go, i'll get burned quickly, so I actually did one hand at a time, then did something else (dishes, manga drawing, sometimes playing). When I came back it allowed me to see things fresh, notice any obvious mistakes and to keep the whole thing fun, since I got that feeling of "wanting to do more".
Of course some can grind out stuff by hours at a time and prefer it that way.

[JimSt]

Those hands! Nice!!!

[gregorya]

The handy work is amazing. The hands look proportional and the shading is great.
The page looks great. It's an interesting ballroom scene with some interesting new characters. I wonder what's going to happen.

[daceronine]

Thanks everyone! All you guys support is the fuel that keeps the truck truckin

A lot has been going on this week.

Rough time at work, had a big discussion with some managers, now I'm wondering if I'll still be at this job in a year xD.
Rough time with work outside of work, lots to do, little time for it, quite stressing.
Health not great, nothing bad enough to put me into bed, but haven't been on top form.
Cousin got a hearth attack, thank googness he seems to be recovering well.
Probably forgetting more stuff.

And it's not even Friday!

Jebus! Life just loves to randomly throw stuff your way sometimes. It might all sound rough, but I'm actually fairly well and in high spirits, just very busy.

Enough rambling though, still managed to sneak in some art works.

Term 4

Now I'm at "Daily Anatomy 3 assignment 1 - Draw the upper body muscles directly onto skeleton photos".

Fairly straightforward, but I love going and doing something else as well to keep things fun, so mid sketching the muscles I thought it would be fun to use an attack on titan character. Not a one to one reference, just face, hair, overal color schemes and what not, but left out some of the more muscley stylized stuff from the original femal titan design (like the armored abbs and so.

One thing led to another and this is where we ended up.

I'm also still testing and experimenting different stuff with lineart, inks and stuff. In this case I went for standard ink and ink coloring across the board, which I'm actually fairly comfortable with, however I did some filter stuffs on the lineart to try to make it more lean and discrete and played around with layers with hue/color/brightness corrections to use for shadows. Basically I set a layer with "shadow settings" and then color a mask on the layer, which results in an animeish shadow but with better values.

I can undoubtly refine the whole thing a bit more, there is no terminators editing and the low resolution hurts some lines and gaps, but for the most part I'm happy how it turned out, and it was only supposed to be a muscles over skeleton excercice anyway xD. I plan to do a few more of those. Maybe one more...? I dunno, we'll see what's next.

Oh snap I just noticed the right arm deltoid looks weird. Oh well, I'll take a closer look next time.

Manga

One more page done! Feels like it took longer than usual. Probably because all the stuff going on.

1) Small reference to one punch man with the made up exercice routine.
2) Feels like I'm never fully satisified with backgrounds, but for the most part it works out, and this is just a transition page to a point, so it's fine. What I call transition pages are pages the reader will probably skim through, usually for pacing, but are not intended to hold the reader's attention for too long, hence they usually have less detailed compared to more elaborate shots. The only exception being the middle frame which has a bit more detail since there's little text around it, so it retains the viewer attention a bit more.
3) Another character comes into scene in the last frame. Obviously a girl. A little obsure to create a bit of anticipation as the reader turns the page.

Sari reappears on the next page, so needed to refine her design a bit.

Overall the design is intended to turn some heads, specifically, Seki's head. She rarely fixes herself or dresses up, so it's supposed to be a nice change of pace for her, while still keeping usual elements like the bangs and hood, but more "arranged". The hood is based on a french renaissance tudor headpiece, which in retrospective also kinda looks like a nun piece. Either fits the character though.

The dress itself is partially based on a fates character (don't remember her name to be honest... one of the purple haired ones...), with some adjustments to simplify and add contrast. The gradient was added to give off a more elegant feel.

Story wise, the dress was chosen by her father, who is now kinda trying to set her up with the main character xD. There's a bit more to it but we'll leave it at that for now.

That's all for now! Thanks for stopping by! Off I go to turn off a few more fires and to keep grinding! Cheers!