DaCeronNine - Art School Journey

[JimSt]

Dang. I hope you have a chilled out Friday and a restful weekend then!
Interesting anatomy study for sure.
Manga is clear and reads well. I was just reading about the difference between backgrounds and environments, and this seems to be a good blended use of the two: the windows being the background plane and the tables providing enough details to create an immersive environment for the scene.
Dress looks great. It has a nice flow to it and nice shading.

Nice!

[snakker]

Phew, you really need a break from life-stuff, I totally feel you too, it happens like that, it can't just be one thing, no has to be a million XD and you'd think how hard can it be to have some time for a couple of sketches?

Anyhow, glad you're in high spirits and that your cousin recovered! Your assignment piece and that character design are both really cool! I think you really nailed the attack from titan feel too

cheers!

[mitsuki-youko]

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.

Oh my! our company just had a bit of a layoff so yikes.

Rough time with work outside of work, lots to do, little time for it, quite stressing.

RIP

Health not great, nothing bad enough to put me into bed, but haven't been on top form.

Hmm.. take care of yoself...

Cousin got a hearth attack, thank googness he seems to be recovering well.

My my! Wish him a speedy recovery!

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.

Haha that's nice! It's amazing how you grind out so much art even tho ur so busy.. my forum's been reduced to text updates now XD

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

Female titan looks great!

1) Small reference to one punch man with the made up exercice routine.

The part where the guy is like "sounds made up" is hilarious XD

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.

Looks great for a transition point!

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

Interesting she looks way taller than i remember XD

I feel like maybe her thighs are a BIT too long or just the legs in general compared to her body?

maybe its just me lool XD

In any case great work!

[daceronine]

Thanks @JimSt @snakker and @mitsuki-youko !

I hope you have a chilled out Friday and a restful weekend then!

Much appreciated! Still got lots to do, but I'm feeling better and I think things are piping down a bit. so it's all good.

Manga is clear and reads well.

Thanks! this has been a big priority. At some point early when learning manga, I read somewhere that clarity of sequence and art was one of the most important points to focus on, more so than the quality of the art itself. Once those components are well done on a page, you can add details to enhance the whole thing, but never at the cost of clarity. It's a challenging balance at times.

I was just reading about the difference between backgrounds and environments

Yep, you got all of that right. Backgrounds is something I still struggle with a lot to this day, but we're slowly improving. Not just in making them, but know when to add detail, when to just leave it blank, or when to add contrast for balance or mood.

you'd think how hard can it be to have some time for a couple of sketches?

Incredibly hard when the house is on fire xD Luckily fire is under control for now.

our company just had a bit of a layoff so yikes.

I had to let go some people myself not long ago. It totally sucks. The industry in general is in a rough spot right now.

I feel like maybe her thighs are a BIT too long or just the legs in general compared to her body?

Took a closer look at it. In the end it seems to be ok, just the classic anime proportions, where boobs and eyes are a bit bigger and legs are 70% of the body. I usually use this little chart to help me when I feel my proportions are off, as long as the head count looks about right, then it's usually ok.

Though it does seem I lifted the groin a bit. Welp, it is under the dress anyway.

Granted the dress do seem to hide things a bit, but I highlighted what it should be like under the garmet. The sketch on the right is the one I'll actually use for the next page, so far it seems to be ok, though I need to trim down those thigs a bit.

Added sailor moon just to show how funny leg proportions can get in anime xD. I think it usually the effect of showing off too much leg + the foot being stretched out (because of heels or otherwise)

Many thanks for all the feedback though, it's always good to double check to see if we're drifting off.

Cheers!

[mitsuki-youko]

just the classic anime proportions, where boobs and eyes are a bit bigger and legs are 70% of the body

Ohh i see XD Reminds me of Tsubasa where the ppl have super loooooong legs XDDD tho urs is average anime length XD

[patrycja.lerch]

Oh that's rough. I hope things will work out. Take care of yourself

Good work on female titan. Love the made up excercise routine
Oh Sari looks lovely!

[Pattu_w]

Sorry to hear that stuff man, but for all it's worth those look really good. It truly stuns me your consistency even when life stuff get in the way. Keep on truckin!

[daceronine]

Thanks for all the kind words everyone!

Weekend has gone farily well and peaceful. Had a chance to rest and do some more art stuff. All's well ends well!

Term 4

Did another muscles over bones exercice. Since last time I used the female titan as a reference, figured it was only proper to use a male titan this time. Specifically the armored Titan.

Last time the idea to use a titan kinda happened mid work, so there where some point I could have improved on. I tried to resolve some of those points with this one since I knew what I was going for.

Still, the idea is not to to copy the design one to one, since the armored titan is covered in... well... armor. Just to use the design as a base and borrow the color scheme, while still sticking to the exercice objective which is to see how the muscles wrap over the skeleton.

It's more like a guy cosplaying as the armored titan xD

Instead of experimenting, I tried to refine some lessons learned as well, such as lineart, color adjustments, resolution and so on. I'm also fairly comfortable with male anaotmy more so than female, which is why I've been focusing on girls for the last few pieces.

It was actually a lot of fun to do this one, and I'm very happy with how it turned out!

Manga

One more page done! Also enjoyed doing this one more. Probably because I was more relaxed over the weekend.

1) What can I say, Seki is just a young guy. Eyes tend to drift.

2) Tried to play a bit with the layout. Usually when characters appear there will be an extended frame to get a clear look at them. Same happened with other characters before. Works well to set the image in the mind of the reader, even if other pages only show a limited views of the characters. Similar to how initial pages will have more detailed backgrounds to set the scene.

3) Keeping balance across the page or pages can be tricky. If all frames here had backgrounds it would probably be too much. The opacity is also lower in some frames to bring more attention to the characters. I'm still not fully convinced with the balance, but it seemed to work ok, so decided to wrap it up and move to the next page.

That's it for now! Starting to get late, need to get to bed and ready to resume work tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you all also had a good weekend and have an excelent week! Cheers!

The grind never stops!

[mitsuki-youko]

1) What can I say, Seki is just a young guy. Eyes tend to drift.

LMAOOOO

lookin good

[JimSt]

Good grind.
The Titan looks great!
So does the manga page. His reaction is great and made me laugh. Nice!
The only thing that wasn't clear to me was "Bigger." If it was meant to be a thought or an exclamation. Probably just my primary influence of western-style comics and having to take an extra second to process that it is likely a thought. Maybe making the balloon a little bigger so the "scallop" effect is a little more pronounced?

[daceronine]

Thanks @mitsuki-youko and @JimSt!

I think you're right about the though ballon, I originally had it bigger, but wanted to emphazise the expression, however it's never a good idea to sacrifice clarity for impact (at least I don't think so). I'll change it a bit to make it clearer.

[Kaz_0]

Uuu drawing titans for the muscle exercises is an awesome idea, They look good! And the manga page as well. I love it when full character is shown like this.

[gregorya]

Sorry to hear about your cousin. But glad he's better.
Nice idea of using the muscle study to make the female titan.
I like the manga page. The backgrounds look pretty good as well.
I like Seki's design.
I like the Armor Titan study as well.

[daceronine]

Thanks everyone! Hope everyone is doing well!

Another week, another chance to grind a bit more!

Term 4

Final piece of the muscles over bones excercices, for now at least. Following the same theme, figured I would use the colossal titan this time, featuring muscles from the back.

The colossal titan design is fairly simple and lends itself well to this exercice, since he is the one with the most muscles exposed. There are some key differences here and there, like the enlongated arms, wide torso and so on, but for the most part it's basically a guy with no skin.

As usual, not intended to be a one to one, but close enough to see the resemblance.

I'm also happy to report I think I have eliminated the white stains from my work pipeline. No more need to go back and correct little gaps manually! So thanks for chipping in!

In turn, I'm understanding adjustments to color, hue, saturation and luminosity better. Still got much more to experiment with, but so far I'm enjoying this hard ink/color style.

Manga

One more page done!

1) Well, yes a reward was in order, but for who exactly? I think it's very obvious, hopefully the reader gets the joke xD.
2) Played around a bit with contrasts and balance, for example, there's a significant contrast shift in the panels with the father smiling to highlight the little shine in his teeth. It also helps to keep balance with the text bubbles.
3) I noticed mangakas actually draw their own speech bubbles and onomatopeyas as part of frame layout instead of using generic ones. I'll see if I can try that for the next chapter, see how that works out.

Now that main pages for this chapter are done, all that's pending is creating a piece for cover art, preface and postface, editing, spanish translation, wrap up and finally upload.

The grind never stops! Have a nice weekend everyone!

[snakker]

Nice, love those anatomy studies, the back can be a tough creature to tame

You seem to have a great grasp of all the major muscle overlaps, it looks really good with the cel shading

Just a couple things I notice in this one, I think the occipital portion of the frontooccipital muscle would have vertical lines rather than horizontal (pulling the scalp backwards) and would tend to be a bit wider in most people, the temporal muscle would be a bit taller and more anterior and the fibers would be pointing infero-anterior (towards the coronoid process of the mandible). Finally the external obliques as they overlap the internal abdominal oblique point inferolateral toward the middle portion of the iliac crest making a small triangle rather than an upwards arc

cheers!

[daceronine]

Holy moley you really know your body parts! Thanks for all the notes! I'll take a close look at all of these a bit later tonight.

[mitsuki-youko]

I'm also happy to report I think I have eliminated the white stains from my work pipeline. No more need to go back and correct little gaps manually! So thanks for chipping in!

noice!!

LOL the dad is so funny XD i see he ships them already XD hope he doesnt die in the story - would love to see more Seki + Iris + Iris's dad moments guy seems to know how to have fun lolol

) I noticed mangakas actually draw their own speech bubbles and onomatopeyas as part of frame layout instead of using generic ones. I'll see if I can try that for the next chapter, see how that works out.

ooh would love to see that!

man this is so awesome, u make me wanna take a random piece of my story and make a mini comic loool.. originally i did a fight scene before but never showed it since it was one of the major fight scenes so spoilers... but i do rly wanna show some hahah gotta pick a good scene to show someday

[daceronine]

Haha, really glad you like it! Likewise, love her dad. There's much more still pending, but everything in due time.

And well, if you feel like sharing or making a mini comic, I really think it's worth to try it, if only for the learning experience. I'd love to see it.

When I started uploading manga stuff, I was also kinda concerned about spoiling some of what I thought were great story beats. However, hearing feedback for what has been made helps shape up things better for what is done next, and I hope new readers eventually benefit from a better work.

[catsforsnacks]

Holy crap - Attack on Titan anatomy studies. That's brilliant haha!
The call shading looks awesome.

[daceronine]

Thanks everyone for stopping by! Small update for today, still got lots to do!

Term 4

Did some corrections as per @snakker feeback (Thanks a lot for that!!!). Also tried to smooth out the shading and use some varying shading for the shadow terminators.

For the occipital portion of the frontooccipital muscle I checked back on the colossal titan reference and noticed they indeed stretch the scalp back, pretty much how the muscle works.

Though it's also worth noting the white part is kind of like a skull OVER the skull, hence containing the muscle inside. You can see it buldge at the sides.

For the external obliques, this time I took a double look at some references from behind and tried to match those.

Different references show varying degrees of muscle, so I also took a look at how the colossal handled it.

I think now it should be better now!

Porbably the last iteration of this exercice. And I do feel the goal to refresh and practice muscles was met!

We'll see what's next now!

Manga

With the chapter main pages done, figured I would share some of the other work in progress stuff. I usually don't post this one here, but this would be the preface:

It's purpose is to serve as a refresher to the reader, a collage to quickly provide context for what the chapter is about.

And the cover work

Just the sketch with colors to kind of indicate the idea. Still need to ink, color it properly and render and all that stuff.

Chapter title is "Celebrations", since both the characters go into a little party, and in a meta way, it's a celebration for me for having completed a year and a half of work on the manga as well as wrapping up this small arc. Granted I still got a few more chapters until it's fully wrapped up, but where getting there!

That's all for now! I'm off to the grinder once more!

Thanks for stopping by! have a great rest of the week! cheers!