Retaining proportions between characers can be incredibly difficult, especially if height difference is either very dramatic, or subtle but visible. As you grow as an artist, you’ll pick up thumbrules about height ( how the length of certain limbs correspond to the length of another, or how the full height of a character corresponds to a certain set of heads ), but while practicing these anatomical thumbrules, which happen to fluctuate between characters as well ( which is why you sometimes might feel like you have to start over, when learning the height and proportions of a new character ), there’s a few methods and tools that you can use to reference the height of your characters.
Mr Initial Man
This tool can’t show you any characters in motion, but it’s a good and quick tool made for you to gain a quick overview over the height difference between characters, based on their height in numbers. Through here, you can type in their height either in inches or in cm, and it will be converted to a very simple graphic. This is a tool i use a whole lot when constructing height chart sheets. And let’s talk about model sheets.
A lot of animated shows, movies and productions make these height-chart sheets. This particular one is from the Hellsing anime, where the height-difference between characters is rather dramatic. If you’re planning on drawing two or more characters a lot, i’d recommend making model sheets, especially if you’re planning storytelling projects. Once again, this chart can’t show you how to retain proportion when drawing the character’s in action. But it can give a rough idea as to how the basic difference looks, from which you can make adjustments as neccessary.
Terawell Designdoll
Posing software is probably one of the more versatile and easiest ways to set up a reference that you can use when drawing your characters. However, naturally this software needs to have customization available for your reference dolls, so that you can tweak them to fit the size difference you need. Terawell’s DesignDoll has a selection of tweakable features and a posing software that should help you get started with that.
Other than that, it’s just about going through the process of laying out your characters and their poses again and again, while keeping their proportions in mind. You know the drill, practice, practice, practice. ‘’
As always, it’s good to do your own research, and check our tags (though I know tumblr isn’t the best for tagging :( ) to see if we have any helpful past posts.
- Mod Future
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Mod Future here! You can definitely find a ton of alcohol marker brands in the market that won’t break the bank like Copics. I personally use Blick Studio markers, which are a mid-range type of marker. They are limited, and normally I would recommend going into the store to test out markers, but obviously that isn’t an option during a pandemic.
In my personal opinion, there are some very good options for cheap, such as the popular Ohuhu markers. Copics’ “brand name” quality rises in their color selection, durability of the casing, and refillable/replacement parts which are also added durability. Many other marker brands lack ink refill bottles, BUT you can probably just refill them with any alcohol marker refill ink and it will work just as well (until the nib wears out).
Blick Studio has refills for their greyscale markers, which are super cheap and I have used them for years, but obviously if you’re not doing greyscale renderings for product design or anything, you don’t really need them. Still, a good staple to have.
You can find a ton of alcohol marker reviews on Youtube. Here are some of, what I feel, are the most informative ones:
This one is very good to start with. Jazza buys quite literally every brand of marker on the market and tests their ability, ranking them by their usability.
In the follow up video, Jazza compares price points (price per marker) of the top markers. Pause the video and take notes if you want to see what might be affordable for you.
I would recommend you buy a limited set from ANY brand if you’re new to the medium, because you may not use them after a while, and it would suck to have 100 markers that you never use. Make sure you know WHAT you’re getting before any purchase, and practice safe online shopping.
(P.S. You can also wait for these things to go on sale. I bought a 24 pack of Blick Studio markers for only $10 on a Black Friday sale, so watch out for all those deals!!!)
- Mod Future
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I would like to focus on the water, the anatomy of the pinkish dragon, and facial structure of the man - particularly lips (which are currently rather lacking).
The water is supposed to be cloudy, and I don’t know if it really looks like water right now.
For the dragon, it’s supposed to have a base shape like a greyhound, but stretched out a little bit.
The man is supposed to have a mostly expressionless face with a little hint of content. He’s a bit more on the androgynous side. Soft cheekbones. I’ve tried multiple things with the lips, but I cannot get anything that looks remotely decent.
Hello! I know you’ve been working on this for some time so I’ll give you more feedback on its current form.
First, I needed to search up some photo reference for people laying in water. Doing some study painting at first can help you in your final, actual painting.
Then, I’ll apply what I learned from my study! First, I’ll lay in the color of the water. I made things a lot darker to give it contrast.
Next, for the foamy part. Water wants to fill a space and will create currents of flow. When things are on top of the water, they can show this current! Water is never still, unless that is what you want to exaggerate!
Foam tiiime. I added a lot more foam on one side of the picture since that’s what is in my reference, but you can add more or less. It’s better to have one area of HIGH and other areas of LOW. Having equal amounts across the entire picture can make it look flat.
FACE:
Some notes on the face. I made him a little more chiseled in the jaw, but you can totally smooth that out. The important thing is the placement of the features.
I would also recommend a less saturated green for the eyes if you want something naturalistic. There is a way to make eyes seem vibrant without going fully into the high saturation range. Eyedrop and colorpick some green and blue eye photos and see what I mean!
One last thing: I think overall the anatomy of your dragon is solid. One thing that stood out to me was the folding of the skin along the top of the wings. If you look at bat wings, the skin doesn’t fold because it is being pulled in by the muscles. The skin is elastic so it is always taut and in shape - no saggy skin!
I hoped this helped! Thank you for being so patient and for submitting your work to us.
Hello! I was wondering if you could redline basic anatomy and other issues like that for me? This was done on ms paint! The grey one is my drawing, green is my reference. Thank you!
I think the main issue may be line quality. If your hand is shaky, or you’re drawing with a mouse, it may be better to draw on paper first to really hone your skills before you can invest in some kind of digital drawing utensil. Analog (traditional, on paper) drawing helps build hand-eye coordination.
A basic tip is to focus on the symmetry of the body. This is most apparent in the legs, as they become different widths at certain points, when they should be about the same width at any point in the leg. The legs go really skinny, so make sure they connect up to the hip in a comfortable way!
We will be taking submissions for redlining until the end of August! After that, submissions will close while we work on this batch, and will reopen after we finish.
Hello Redline Crew! I just finished this piece and I’m having a bit of problem with the anatomy. The arm feels wrong but I can’t tell what needs to be fixed, and I think the perspective of the shoulder/collarbone needs some work, but again I don’t know what to do with it. Also I’m not positive if the hand I drew clutching the bottle is the best.
Of course, if you wanted to add any other criticisms you’re definitely free to, and I wanted to thank you guys for the amazing service that you give! ♡♡♡
Redlined By: Mod Todd (With commentary by Mod Future!)
This is a great piece! I love the Colours and use of foreground elements!
Mod Future chiming in here on Mod Todd’s great redlining: It looks like what Mod Todd is saying is that the use of a simple perspective tool like the horizon line and vanishing point can help you lay out your environment, such as the buildings in the background, to make a more believable 3D space. Perspective grids can also help you place a figure in the space they’re in, as well as set the guide for the perspective in the rest of the figure.
So, by first establishing the angle at which we’re looking at the character (from below, from above, at eye level) we can determine how the features will be placed. Take this page from “Successful Drawing” by Andrew Loomis (You can find all Loomis books for free at http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ ):
You’ll see in Mod Todd’s redline that this is now a more straight-on ¾ view. The line of the collarbone is lifted. The arm has been shortened to be more proportional to the body. For the hand, she sought out reference, and also grouped the two middle fingers for a more appealing shape language. In your initial picture, the fingers were too short overall.
Mod Future: If this was more of a sliiiight top-down shot like in Mod Todd’s perspective drawing, the collarbone follows the line of the shoulders. This is why it’s important to know a few guidelines to be able to check your work. If the shoulders were more defined, this also reduces the chance of the arm looking too long. Notice in my redline and in your picture, the elbow is pretty much at the same point, but it’s the angle and position of the shoulder that makes the difference.
Hope this helps! Perspective is a doozy, so give that Loomis book a read if you can! Stuff like that can help build your knowledge exponentially, even if it’s just by reading it.
First thing to start off with is drawing hands in general! To make this easier, I want to explain how I personally break down hands:
Drawing floppy and stretchy hands is great, but if you’re going for realism, try to remember the building blocks - the hand is made of basic shapes. The palm can be represented by a box, and I like to think of the fingers as cylinders.
Now, given that, here comes the absolute most pivotal piece of advice I can ever give:
I don’t know if you already have one or not, but if you don’t - PLEASE DO! Always try to draw with a reference if it’s a pose you’re unfamiliar with. It will help immensely, and it’s not cheating!
Now, looking at this reference, we can already go over some common mistakes people make when drawing interlaced fingers of any kind.
The most common thing I see is people drawing the palms parallel and then forcing the fingers to twist around one another instead of allowing them to rest with one lower and one higher so the fingers slot naturally.
Next, let’s explore some varying ways of building your hands. For this, we will be using the same hands-laying-on-table model as the reference photo above.
I have two common ways of drawing these types of complex hand positions - one of them is the more constructive approach where I study my reference, even trace over it to get an idea of how the shapes function - and then I go in and try to recreate that by building the shapes back together.
As you can see, I literally start with the palms and draw each finger in, trying to imagine how it would fit as a 3 dimensional object, and how much give the skin has and how they bend around each other.
However, this method is a bit long-winded and involved, so I have another option for you, which is my cheat for when I just want to plan something believable:
This option is quite literally called ‘the squiggle’ (or sqwiggle) because I just draw a squiggle with 4 turns on each side and then use that as a guide to draw in the fingers.
This method works, but of course it also has to be adjusted later on - I can’t approximate good finger rations with a squiggle, so I sort out things like finger length and palm position later, when I do lineart.
There are probably other ways of doing it - but these two are my personal favorites! Of course, there are other perspectives to consider, but I think the first rule applies here: Get a reference photo! Everything else will follow. :)
Hi! I drew this sketch of the blue doll room from the game “Ib” where i tried to make the big creature on top look intimidating and frightening, while the little doll should be creepy. I tried to do a fish lens perspective, but i feel like the perspective is wrong, especially the little doll. It also feels like there’s something missing composition-wise. So it would be really great if i could get help on the perspective and composition!
I did this in 3 parts - the first is dissecting what, specifically, is registering as ‘wrong’ when we look at it. :)
Here’s my take on how it COULD be fixed (keep in mind, there are several other alternatives - you could also make the creature a focal point.)
And as a final note regarding other elements:
Hope that helps, and happy fish-eye-lens-ing! This drawing is a great idea, and I love the concept you’ve come up with, and I really think with a few tweaks to fix the alternating distortion is will come together into something truly horrifying. :D
Submissions are STILL open because we have not hit our cap, so there’s still a chance to submit your work to be redlined and critiqued by our wonderful mods!
-Mod Future
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Expressions themselves wouldn’t be any different for people with lazy-eyes. While the muscle inside of the lazy-eye is weak, this shouldn’t effect the mouth, nose, and brow. Try drawing the expression first, and adding the misaligned pupils last!
I think establishing the character with consistency will be the best way to inform the reader where the character is actually looking. Usually the lazy-eye will always be looking in the same direction (although my research suggests they can move over time, this is not fast enough to change between frames). The reader will be able to easy figure out where the dominant eye is looking so long as the lazy-eye is kept consistent. You can remind readers which side is which with asymmetry in the character design (i.e. a half-shaved head, heterochromia, asymmetrical clothing etc.)
Here’s some other ways, besides design, to inform the reader:
A) Shadowing the side of the face with the lazy eye can help draw focus to where the character is looking.
B) Desaturating or darkening the lazy-eye. A lazy-eye is not able to see very well, so it may be true that the pupil is usually very dilated and dark.
C) Good, old-fashioned avoidance, haha. You can always design the character to be self-conscious about their lazy eye, or occasionally throw in a profile shot of their “good eye” to move the scene along.
D) This is a combination of A and B, except the eye if the eye is the dominant eye in the frame.
Sometimes the expression of the character reacting to whatever they’re looking at is more than enough!
Additional ideas for characters with TWO lazy-eyes:
1) Having a character standing next to (or turning around with) your lazy-eyed character to infer to the reader they are looking in the same direction. Even without a second character, you can use curves and body language to infer the direction of the sight.
2) Framing the object in-front of the character (i.e. drawing the character’s back and the scene in front of them)
I feel like there’s a lot of potential in intentionally letting the reader interpret your character for themselves, also. Generally treating their eye an integrated part of the character, rather than a cosmetic design choice, will greatly help readers be mindful of it in the long term!
Have fun!
(With love from Koikro55)
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Hello!
Submitting the same piece twice is not currently permitted. While we are interested in helping you out with your art- multiple passes on one piece can, unfortunately, make one piece incorporate more work from our side that we feel is responsible, considering that this is a self-help blog.
Hope that makes sense!
- Mod Wackart
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When we open submissions, you will be able to go into the blog from PC or mobile and click the SUBMIT button on the blog. This button will not be available until the aforementioned time, so you cannot see it right now. Don’t panic.
Submit a piece that you think needs the most help in a specific area, that way you can get the most out of the redline process! We discourage time-sensitive redlines, as there is no guarantee your submission will be worked on first. If you do not follow submission guidelines, you will be contacted to re-submit and your original submission deleted.
We will make another announcement once we open, and another stating when we’ve closed. Looking forward to seeing all your work!
-Mod Future
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Many of you have noticed that we’ve been fairly inactive lately. We’d like to apologize - first for taking so long with the promised submissions - and also for the radio silence regarding our status.
The blog is still running, and we’re not planning on going anywhere for a long time!
Now that we’ve cleared out most of our inbox, we’re ready to take on new submissions!
Many of you have noticed that we’ve been fairly inactive lately. We’d like to apologize - first for taking so long with the promised submissions - and also for the radio silence regarding our status.
The blog is still running, and we’re not planning on going anywhere for a long time!
Now that we’ve cleared out most of our inbox, we’re ready to take on new submissions!
Hi there! I’m a big fan of your work! And I hope you can help me with my anatomy!
I drew this a while back on my dA and I’m pretty proud of it! But do you think you can help with the anatomy/pose? IDK why, but I just could not get the arms to look right. Plus, the hands are supposed to be “clawing” at the face, but I couldn’t find a decent reference for it, so I just drew them holding the head.
Submitted by pinkasketch
For a simple pose like this, you could probably take reference from yourself in the mirror! It would also help with figuring out how the face looks when it’s being clawed like that. I just used this stock photo:
I think the hands themselves could be bigger. An open hand for the average person should be the same length as the face. If you want this really tense emotion, the fingers get scrunched up, and you can see the folds of the skin when the finger curls.
I added dynamism to the pose by flaring out the arms and tilting the shoulder opposite the direction of the head. Avoid parallel-ish composition, since that is static and calm and doesn’t convey the tense emotion.
You could also push the emotion even just by furrowing the brow more and adding those crease lines. If he’s clawing his face, you could even exaggerate and pull down his eyelid, for a more spooky effect!
I hope this helps. One of the ways I make up poses is using a simple skeleton to try out the pose first. See what works for you! Thanks for submitting. :3
I have tried using perspective here but it looks off but I used a clip studio poser to help so I followed that but it still looks weird especially around the hands. Also she is meant to look wild eyed as well but something about her expression has thrown me off. Thank you!
Submitted by 11isnotanumber
In general, I’d recommend taking your own photos and referencing those instead of using digital posers, as they can allow you to manipulate the figure into some pretty improbable contortions, like what happened with the wrists here.
Thanks for submitting! - Mod goji
Mod Future here - tacking on a little bit of my own comments. Definitely either search for reference or take a picture / look at your hands in a mirror for the pose. Adding lines of the palms can help make your hand look more real. Also remember that there tends to be a curve of the fingers / knuckles as you draw.
-Mod Future
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Many of you have noticed that we’ve been fairly inactive lately. We’d like to apologize - first for taking so long with the promised submissions - and also for the radio silence regarding our status.
The blog is still running, and we’re not planning on going anywhere for a long time!
Now that we’ve cleared out most of our inbox, we’re ready to take on new submissions!
When we open submissions, you will be able to go into the blog from PC or mobile and click the SUBMIT button on the blog. This button will not be available until the aforementioned time, so you cannot see it right now. Don’t panic.
We have updated a lot of things since the previous submissions and we will not be accepting anything that doesn’t comply with the rules. If your submission doesn’t follow the rules it will be deleted without warning, so please look it over!
Quick refreshers:
- You can submit ONE piece of art.
- You must give us a specific set of things (the limit is two) that you need help with. For example - “anatomy, specifically with hands, and shading”.
- Animals, fantasy creatures, humans, cartoons, typography, caricatures, landscapes - YES, it’s ALL OKAY. Please make sure to add your reference image where possible.
- We will NOT accept inappropriate content, submissions containing hate speech, slurs, etc.
Any asks about submission guidelines will not be answered if they are already answered in the Submission Rules and Guidelines post. READ IT.
How many submissions will you accept?
Due to our past experience with having an extreme load of submissions (in the hundreds) we have decided to curb our current submissions at 50. That means that as soon as we get 50 submissions, our inbox will automatically be closed. If you miss your chance to submit this time - don’t worry! There will be other times to send your art. :)
- Redline Team
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I think if you poke around the internet you’ll find that there’s a lot of tutorials that addresses white skin ( at one point that was sadly the majority of tutorials at least ).
Though the undertone problem you speak of is pretty common across a multitude of colour-subjects. Including hair.
Distinguishing your undertones and knowing how to work them ( or work against them ) will help you adjust your tones to your desired spectrum.
This takes practice and a little bit of knowhow. And - admittedly, it is much easier to do digitally ( using functionalities such as Hues/Saturation or Curves to experiment and alter the undertone ).
If you’re mixing colours analogue and manually, there’s probably a point in making very small tests of your pigments and paints to make sure you have the dosage of each colour down properly, so that the final tone will match your desire.
If you typically end up with a colour a little too yellow for what you envisioned, i suggest adding a red to veer the yellow back a bit. Then you can try and inch out on the yellow spectrum again and see what that gives you.
Sometimes artists will also share their skin-colour swatches online for others to reference. If anything i recommend taking a bit of inspiration from those, perhaps even try to break down the different tones and colours used in the mix.
Hey!
I’m left-handed too, and I work with the Wacom MobileStudio that also happens to have the buttons on the left when it comes packaged.
As far as I know, at least some of the tablets I’ve encountered has a screen-rotation function, which makes the interface of the screen turn accordingly to your orientation. So that you can flip the buttons to the other side and still have the tablet itself function without mirroring.
I know that for the Cintiq models there are driver-functionality that allows you to manually switch your screen rotation too.
Per se I don’t think that are many tablets made for lefties like you and me, but I would google around and see if there are any tablets that feature any functionality like screen rotation.
With my DND PC Tandrii, who’s an elven sorcerer with draconic ancestry, I’m trying to push her character design a bit more - I want her to look a bit more monstrous, but I always feel like I’m going too far. Elves are supposed to be ethereally beautiful, but I don’t want my character to be conventionally attractive - her nose and teeth are too big (she keeps her mouth shut most of the time so they don’t show,) and she had silver scales from her bloodline. I suppose I was wondering if you could help me achieve balance.
I love this character she looks so tired and done! You say her nose is bigger than average but honestly i think you can push it a bit more especially since you have a loose cartoony style. or if you want her to look more monstrous you could go the opposite and make her nose small and snake like, kinda like elf Voldemort lol!
another way you can add to her monstrous effect is to make her silver scales more pronounced and textured like the Voldy demo above. Adding some features inspired from animals in nature can also help, especially with the eyes since they can get pretty wild with out completely straying away from humanoid
I noticed she doesn’t have eyebrows and while that will add to her alien monster look it could also limit how well her facial expressions read. This doesn’t mean you have to give your eyebrows but its just something to think about when designing characters.
