Metalmeat's Cruel Art

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umm yeah

hmmm...
In the first one the shoulder is very pointy, and the head looks a bit awkward, I think it might be her jaw.

The second one is pretty good actually. It looks like you tried my technique maybe? Although there are some flaws...
first of all her eyes are much too large, even for anime. I know you probably want them to look cute, but you have to realize they are still human eyes. Those look more like insect eyes XD So try and draw the eyes a bit smaller and more human like, and they should be lookin good.
Another thing is that she looks like her waist was bent over to the left. The positioning of the legs doesn't fit with the upper body. You'll see what I mean if you look only at the upper body and slowly move your eyes towards the legs (best way I can explain LOL).
I can also tell that you drew this from your own imagination without any sort of reference. While I commend your efforts of trying to be original, you would get a WHOLE lot more out of your drawings if you drew from a reference. Not simply copying what you see, but trying to redraw the form and what not and applying it to your own character.
Trust me on that, it definitely helps.

Well, I hope that helps you, and happy drawing.

yeah sure i'll make sure i study before i draw

i want leo or knux to see this and tell me if its okay or needs more this is just a test

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I think it looks okay except maybe for the eyes.
Stop with these KAWAII DESU~ eyes, they're not cute, at least not for me. Make them smaller dude.

That's it I think. Oh yeah, the shape of the collar bones isn't quite right, they're not shaped like that.

Yeah, I agree with leo about the eyes.
I think your starting to get the hang of it, just keep practicing and you'll get better.
your hair could use a bit of work too, add some more hair to the back of her head and make it a bit more.... spontaneous...?

Yeah, be more loose with the hair. Don't be afraid to get really messy with your sketches. You're the only one that really needs to be able to understand them.

So be loose, draw rough, and don't be afraid of messing up, that's a part of the learning process!

leo i just want to know do you want me to shrink the iris of the eyes or all of them?

Shrink the iris and the eyes themselves. I don't mind anime eyes, I take them as inspiration myself, but they are smaller.

okay i'll do it

here is another test this time the eyes are a little smaller dont tell me to shrink them more

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Dat pointy chin.
Asides from that, is lookin' pretty good.

@Leo wrote:So be loose, be rough, and don't be afraid of messing up, that's a part of the learning process!

Leo, I think you just described sexual intercourse.

But that last thing you just drew looks WAY better.
You made the eyes work actually. I think they should still be a tad smaller, but well done.
For the hair, I think you should make it more... wispy. As in, more flow to it. Yours all goes in one direction. And this looks good on some characters, and looks bad on others. I think the wispy look would be good on the character you just drew.
Oh and, keep working on the structure of the head. Your getting there ;D

@Knux wrote:

@Leo wrote:So be loose, be rough, and don't be afraid of messing up, that's a part of the learning process!

Leo, I think you just described sexual intercourse.

But that last thing you just drew looks WAY better.
You made the eyes work actually. I think they should still be a tad smaller, but well done.
For the hair, I think you should make it more... wispy. As in, more flow to it. Yours all goes in one direction. And this looks good on some characters, and looks bad on others. I think the wispy look would be good on the character you just drew.
Oh and, keep working on the structure of the head. Your getting there ;D

Drawing works the same way lmfao

And just shrink the iris now, no need to shrink the eyes.

umm leo are you sure that i should shrink the iris down cause in anime the iris sometimes is big well not too big but...

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That looks better.

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The body looks fine and the left (for us) arm too. The fingers on the right hand looks like sausages.
And um, I don't think the shading on the clothes are good. They look metallic, clothes don't have too many highlights like this.

Ok, I know hair is hard to draw sometimes, so I'm gonna try and help you out to the best of my power.
1. How to start drawing hair.
Well when you first start you probably already have an image in your head of what you want it to be right? Well don't draw exactly what you see quite yet. More times then not, you won't even be able to draw it perfectly from your head. To make the process a whole lot easier and better, start off very simply. As in large chunks of hair. At this point, all you really want to do is figure out where the hair is going.

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After you have the rough sketch done, then you can go back in a new layer above that one and shape it out a little better. Turn those big chunks into smaller little bundles of hair, but not quite the final product yet. Be sketchy with this. Don't expect to get it all right your first time, because you probably won't. I don't get it right, and I'd be willing to bet leo doesn't either.

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Now, once you got all of that figured out, you can go one of two ways. By this point I'm usually ready for my lineart, but you can do another sketch layer if you need to. Smoothing it out would help a lot for drawing the lineart, but if your confident enough in what you've drawn already, then go right to lineart.

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2. Shaping it with the head.
It drives me crazy when I see hair not drawn to the contour of the head. It just looks like theres a huge chunk missing out of the characters skull. So to avoid this, ALWAYS draw the head before the hair. I usually just draw an ark shape a couple of centimeters above the top of the head, kind of like a helmet and draw the hair around that. Its proved to be a useful tactic in the past.

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3. The direction of the hair.
This is really important. To draw hair well, you have to know what kind of direction it is going in. So what I sometimes do, is draw the direction of wind or whatever on the canvas. This helps to show you where the hair is going to be going. And once you do this, you need to stick with it. Hair doesn't just blow around randomly, it needs to be pushed or blown in a certain direction.

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If you can't figure out how the hair is going to be exactly, try and find a reference picture. Hell, a JC Penny catalog would help. You may not always have wind in your drawing, but if you do, you need to make sure that its done right or it will just be a mess.

4. Drawing hair to fit your character.
Hair is a crucial component to the personality of your character (or at least I think it is). Even though this isn't really "how to draw it" I still believe this is just as important as drawing the hair itself. Usually a more serious character will have a very serious haircut. As in straight cut, and not a whole lot to it. Really bubbly, happy characters usually have hair waving all over the place and what not. They have curls, and pony tails and waves and ALL KINDS OF COOL STUFF.

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So its a good thing to think about how the hair would look on whatever character your putting it on. Like say... you have Ichigo Kurosaki from bleach. Now give him Goku's hair. Does that work? Not really. So think about that.

5. Other Tips
Oh boy. This list could go on forever. I'll just point out some major things that should be avoided.
1. Even hair. If not done right, it looks awful. Theres only a few instances where you see people with perfectly straight hair, so try and avoid it.
2. CRAAAaaAAaaAAAaaaaaAaaazy hair. Avoid this too. This is the same thing as straight hair, if its not executed right, it just won't look good. And this includes such as, hair shooting straight up in the air, random curls in random parts of the head, awkward circle like shapes (its been done before d:) and many more. Use your own judgement to figure this out (along with the above thing too).
3. Keep the hair flowing. There should really never be any straight lines, it should all be moving together. Unless the hair is short, it will all move together.
4. Don't forget the hair in the back. Its wrong to not draw it because it IS there. If there really isn't any back there, it needs to be indicated somehow or it won't look right.
5. Experiment. You won't learn anything new if you don't try new kinds of things. Try drawing different hair styles, more wind, less wind, all kinds of things. You'll get better if you do.


Well thats all I could think of for now. I hope this helps, I spent a significant amount of time on this, so your welcome.

Look at mah boi Knux, helping this man.

@Leo wrote:Look at mah boi Knux, helping this man.

I aint yo boi.
And I thought this would be helpful for him. I wish someone did this for me when I was starting d:

I wish someone would teach me all the crap I had to learn on my own : |
but yup
you're mah boi

knux thank you because i think ive done all of the steps you wrote except for the hair flowing if you didnt wrote this either way i wouldve still learned about the hair stuff but knux your the best and leo too heres a big THANK YOU

Well your very welcome. I'm sure you would have learned it all in time, but I wanna see you improve faster then what it took me ;D

What Do You Think?

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