So I just uploaded my first 'serious' drawing.

post #1155948
What I mean by that is that I actually spent time trying to make it look good and also draw the viewers attention around the image (rule of thirds, nothing in dead center) and I also made a fairly simple, yet substance-y background (for once).
I'm looking for any criticism or advice that I can get as I really worked hard on this one. I'm really trying to improve so no criticism is too harsh or to-the-point; I'm actually attending school to become an artist so I want to really focus on improving my skills and work as much as I can. Seriously. Tear me a new asshole if you can.

To get the ball rolling I noticed that I reaaaallllllyyyy fucked up on the perspective of that gameboy; it looks pretty weird.
I tried to make a simple background for two reasons
1 I suck at drawing backgrounds, so I'm trying to take baby-steps
2 I thought it would fit nicely with the composition I wanted to do
I think it looks kind of neat how Blue (character on the right) kind of pops out like a 2D paper character, but I'm not sure I totally like it...
I'm wondering if the answer would be shading or just colored/softer outlines on the characters to change that pop-out effect. I'm honestly kind of wondering how the shadows play into the whole thing, like, did I fuck them up? Is there a better way to go about them?
And I guess finally I should talk about resolution...
I think I don't actually know what I'm doing. When I started doing digital art I just kind of went "Oh, I want it to look good, so I guess I'll do all my stuff in hd (1080x1920)" then I went "Oh, but then if you zoom in it could loose detail, so I guess I should make it bigger than hd, then, even if you zoom in, it'll still be in hd."
I'm pretty sure, like, 99% sure, that that is waaaayyyyy too overkill and I could probably scale it down a bit. Problem is that i'm still not too sure how to go about finding what resolution I should be doing.

...

So yeah, first forum post I've ever done, let me know if I did something wrong.

It's good, the only thing I would have to say is that it looks empty (too much blanks space, its not rly blank, but too much background, sky and grass, I think scaling it down so I don't have too look left and right across my monitor to come across something it would look better)

Thumbnail is much easier to look at though a bit small, so try maybe 720p maybe 600.

I like the style of the characters for sure. Line quality is good as well. Overall composition seems good too.

Actually my biggest grip about the piece has nothing to do with the art...I just don't know what the hell is going on. He's angry because...she is offering him a flower? Did she...somehow interrupt his game? If she's interrupting him why is she so far away? Shouldn't she be closer? An annoying person is usually also an invader of personal space. I think it would be much funnier if he was playing and she shoves the flower between the game screen and him, that would probably warrant this angry reaction. Right now she isn't even close enough to him, nor is she even running towards him...so his reaction seems a little weird.

So yeah, the art is great...the actual situation is a bit confusing though. Art is a visual medium and should speak for itself...you will have text in a comic series to aid you, but the art should still be understandable without it.

Don't have time for lengthy criticism, but the overall gist of it is that it looks good. Anatomy doesn't look bad, neither does the colour.

Only negative is the perspective/framing of the drawing, current perspective creates a lot of empty space, lower right corner especially.

Like lurk said above.

I like it. The only criticism I have for it is if you're gonna add shadows, you gotta shade the characters so it doesn't give the impression that they're cardboard cutouts. Other than that, I like the style and the characters are cute

seems fitting the first genuine request for critique i've seen comes from a very talented artist. the style itself is very simplistic, but you've got it down to a t. all it needs are tweaks to the shading

You don't need to use rule of third most of the time in art. A lot of popular, amazing artists don't use it

OP: Aside from the shading, which I agree is the major issue (you can have none, or you can apply it to everything, but any other option may cause problems).. what is the intended height of red character? I am hoping it is shorter than viewpoint character, since red character's eyes are noticably below the horizon line.

The gameboy -- aside from the obvious perspective problems, foreshortening also seems like a potential problem (check the features on top of cartridge.. dark 'chunk' on far side seems like it should be significantly smaller than near side dark 'chunk', since it is so close to viewer)

TheKatYouNeverWanted said:
You don't need to use rule of third most of the time in art. A lot of popular, amazing artists don't use it

I'm not sure how you would have the evidence to conclude that a lot of popular, amazing artists don't use it, but I agree you don't have to use it. Postage-stamp sized thumbnails are one less-formalized way to work out the same type of foundation.

Whoa, thanks for all the kind words and good advice guys! I was worried my post would go unseen, but the amount of feedback is great.

DelurC said:
the only thing I would have to say is that it looks empty[;] too much background, sky and grass, I think scaling it down so I don't have too look left and right across my monitor to come across something it would look better)

Thumbnail is much easier to look at though a bit small, so try maybe 720p maybe 600.

Yeah, that space in the lower right corner was a bit annoying, I wasn't sure what to do with it, but I guess in hindsight I could have moved the character on the left up more in the composition and just snipped off most of the lower 3rd half of the image.

Dyrone said:
[M]y biggest grip about the piece has nothing to do with the art...I just don't know what the hell is going on. He's angry because...she is offering him a flower? Did she...somehow interrupt his game? If she's interrupting him why is she so far away? Shouldn't she be closer? An annoying person is usually also an invader of personal space. I think it would be much funnier if he was playing and she shoves the flower between the game screen and him, that would probably warrant this angry reaction. Right now she isn't even close enough to him, nor is she even running towards him...so his reaction seems a little weird.[...] Art is a visual medium and should speak for itself...you will have text in a comic series to aid you, but the art should still be understandable without it.

^This, definitely. I poorly conveyed what was going on. It was supposed to be the character on the left being embarrassed that his sister was trying to show him a flower she picked. I was going to have him blushing, but I guess I just forgot while I was coloring it. The reason he's looking at the viewer is that I was initially going to have the image framed so it looked like it was from a video or picture, so the source of his embarrassment was not only from his sister trying to show him a flower, but from one of his parents trying to capture the moment on video/camera. I guess I kind of gave up on this idea when I realized I didn't know how best to represent the image being on camera or as a picture; which was a really bad move seeing as how it was an important element of the image.
I should have had the left character blushing and either saying something, like "mom, stop recording me!" with a date stamp in the lower left and a [REC] display somewhere along the boarder, or as an image perhaps I could have zoomed the drawing out and had the corners blacked out with triangles on a white background as if it was in a photo album.

TheKatYouNeverWanted said:
You don't need to use rule of third most of the time in art. A lot of popular, amazing artists don't use it

Well a lot of rules in art can be intentionally ignored or unknowingly ignored, its not like the 'rules of art' are any kind of law. The 'rules of art' exist only to further aestheticize a piece of art or make it interesting. Rules can always be disobeyed sometimes to great yield, but knowing them and why they exist is still important. The rule of thirds exists because it forces a viewer to look around at all the different elements of a drawing, whereas something in the center can draw too much attention and diminish the effects the rest of the drawing has. this drawing has two characters with equally important roles so I found it fitting that they should be in separate 3rd's of the image so that they don't steal too much focus from each other. If I wanted to though, I could make one of them the central focus by putting them directly in the center. Again, you can break any art rule but knowing it and why you're breaking it is still important.

savageorange said:
OP: Aside from the shading, which I agree is the major issue (you can have none, or you can apply it to everything, but any other option may cause problems).. what is the intended height of red character? I am hoping it is shorter than viewpoint character, since red character's eyes are noticably below the horizon line.

The gameboy -- aside from the obvious perspective problems, foreshortening also seems like a potential problem (check the features on top of cartridge.. dark 'chunk' on far side seems like it should be significantly smaller than near side dark 'chunk', since it is so close to viewer)

Yeah, I definitely think if I was to do this drawing again I'd drop the shading entirely to fit with the simplistic motif of a line-less background and low detail characters.

The characters are supposed to be the same height, I didn't realize you could compare their height using the horizon line! I'm still learning so I'm glad someone caught that, I'll have to remember that for future works.

And yeah, I totally screwed up that gameboy. If I was to do the image again, rather than just lazily drawing it with 3d dimensions i'd draw it in perspective starting with drawing the side touching his hand and then drawing the rest of it with lines that extend to the vanishing point.

Learn the fundamentals. This is very important. If you really plan on getting into art, first learn the fundamentals and read books and watch videos, don't do it all by yourself.

I'd suggest you to watch Sycra. This is his playlist for starters, it's extremely helpful https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV2X3tgajVlEAo91iOj8w5YizC_fLULzu

I'd also suggest you to read "Fun with a Pencil" (Andrew Loomis) (skip the excercises of pages 1 to 36 but read everything still and make all the rest of excercises in the book). And then "Design and Figure" (Michael Hampton)

Your drawing is too simple and amateur to give it propper and actual helpful specific critique. Don't get me wrong though, you are not bad, you have potential, but first start on covering all the fundamentals basic knowledge and draw as much as you can while reading proper books and watching videos like Sycra's.