MeganMosier

  Thank you for the watch!

Hi! I'm here with the OCT critique task*v*

Character:

Seth felt like a very real character. I appreciated that he acted his age (which is sadly uncommon among fantasy YA protagonists). I was able to clearly see that he is at a transition point between childhood and adulthood in his tasks; able to act independently but still in need of parental guidence and support (good thing he has Roc!...sorry Brad...). I have a nephew who is 12 and I can totally see him reacting to things in a similar manner as Seth so nice work on making things realistic!

That said, despite following all of his tasks, I still don't feel like I know Seth as well as I would like. Like, I think there's some missing context to his story and character that you may have explained in earlier rounds through other characters but did not reiterate in this round. I found myself struggling at times to make sense of the story timeline and world and I think it might have been helpful to include maybe a little paragraph in his profile explaining the world the story takes place in and maybe a bit more about his mother and her strange absence throughout his other tasks.

Art:

Seth's Guess Who, Anger, and Fear tasks were all exemplary portrayals of how mood and color palette can really lend themself to a piece. I love that you went beyond basic cell shading in these tasks to really give us a feel for the vibes of the story that you are creating here. Often times, writers with artistic abilities can make the mistake of writing a story and then just drawing pictures to go along with it without considering that art is also a form of storytelling and every element used in a piece should work together to promote the story you are trying to tell.

 In the anger task in particular, the gnarly tree roots, scratchy lines, thick shading of pure black, placing of the ravens, glowing windows, and the illumination of the streetlamp was just an absolute storytelling masterpiece! It really pushed the urban dark fantasy vibes of your story. I am absolutely in love with that piece.

I would encourage you to really hone in on those artistic storytelling elements for future artworks in this story world and keep sharpening your basics such as anotomy, color theory, and perspective.

Totally feel free to reply to me with any questions you have if you find anything in this critique confusing or unclear or would like me to further expound upon something I said:)

I’m here to give a feedback assigned within @OC-training.

VIBES

At first glance your art-works brings me vibe of “young adult fantasy” because of variety of quite vivid colours in half of submissions, body proportions and also shoulders slightly raised as character were a bit uneasy (which might be because of living in dystopian, postwar place). I mean: “profile”, “wardrobe”, “wish” and “enjoyment”.

Then other half of submissions has dark tones, eerie backgrounds and raves, that I also enjoy. They are: “guess who” and “fear”. I find “anger” to be perfect blend of both mentioned vibes.

Half-shifted silhouettes nicely complement all mentioned qualities as unique and appealing signature mark of the entire lore. The setting seems to have been maturated and well established.

STYLE

I find your drawing manner to be comic style stylization, due to characters’ expressive faces and gestures and also subtle shading.

From this point there is no universal advice how to further improve, because comic stylization depends on your artistic choices.

Nevertheless I believe that developing strong grasp of realistic portraits may give you even more freedom in styling your characters.

DEVELOP STRENGHTS

There are three areas for exercise that comes to my mind. You may try to practice noses from different angles. The way you draw them is unique to your style, so polishing this strength may give your satisfaction and also take to next level of awesomeness.

The same about ravens. Shapes of Seth’s raven shift in “profile” look beautiful and magnificent. Therefore I believe exercising by drawing ravens from stock images to get even deeper understanding of their features may keep your skills refining.

Then mentioned before shoulder gridle. Seth keeps his shoulders quite raised toward his neck, as he would like to hug himself and get smaller. That perfectly correspond with his tough situation being separated with both parents and dealing debuting into adulthood. However if you like him to appear relaxed and confidant, he need to open the gridle.

CONSISTENT BLACK SHADING

Certainly raven motives call for black.  That is a challenge to shade it efficiently and still keep audience perceiving the color as black. I can see that you succeed with cloak in “guess who”, Seth’s “hands” in “profile” (though I don’t like lousy strokes on his entire body shift) and his entire body in “fear”. Moreover I find appealing your technique to keep art-line light grey and then the bird or jacket solid black. I like both ideas!

Thinking about what I find appealing, I get to conclusion that consistent shading within an art-work or a comic panel. Let’s look at Seht’s wish. First panel in almost no shading (but a strong light effect!) so black jacket nicely blends into the scene. Then last panel has carefully places shades on both: Roc (!) and the t-shirt. Still entire comic seems harmonious.

LETTERS THAT I LIKE

I experience two issues: English is my second language, so I read and grasp slower than in my mother tongue and also I think it’s time for me to acquire glasses. So I highly prefer even letters that help me read speech bubbles smoothly. So although your handwriting is neat and readable, I still prefer text added with dedicated feature within digital app.

BTW If you ever want to do something super nerdy and cool, consider creating a digital font out of letters handwritten by you.

SUMMING UP

If anything above is unclear or you have questions, please ask!

Although I pointed some areas that you might like to focus, you show great skill and talent. You can evoke a certain mood in your art-works. Also you're efficient in style your characters the way you efficiently tell stories through your art.

I wish you great time and satisfaction developing the lore and its audience to grow.

Personally I’m curious about Seth’s further story: will he get control over shifting? How will look line his relations with people who hurt him? Will he ever meet any of his parents again?

So I'm looking forward to enjoy your upcoming stories and art!

Happy birthday!!

ThanXXX  for the “Forgotten Battle! Fav, Megan!

 This is an A3 Sepia Drawing!

It is inspired by a Battle which took place between the Scots and the English, not far from where I live!

Cheers!

Hello! Finally doing my critiques!

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to say this in the least complicated way, so bear with me:

When you draw characters with clothes on they look significantly more stiff than when you draw them without clothes on. Using your drawings of birds (excellent, by the way, you are REALLY good at drawing birds) and especially your recent art of Moon as a point of reference; it's clear you have a good grasp of anatomy and it isn't necessarily why your poses feel stiff. I think you're main weakness is clothing folds, and how fabric lies on the body.

As I am writing this, I'm looking at that one picture you did that is a spotlight on your page (The Ghost Forest). You did a very good job with the sleeves, those look perfect. There are gaps, and they don't look tight on the body (while also not being super billowy). This gives the impression that the shirt is of a lighter, looser fabric. However, as you move further down the shirt becomes very stiff looking as it perfectly contours to the character's body. As a result you loose a lot of motion in the pose, and it ends up looking very stiff.

Another example is in Larry's profile. His shorts are almost completely aligned with his skin, making it look like the fabric has no thickness to it. You can also see this in "The Ghost Forest", on the character's right (our left) arm. You can see the line of his arm that is the sleeve and the line of his arm without the sleeve are parallel. If the fabric has any thickness at all, it should not be parallel (like how you've done with the left sleeve in the same drawing). I think I know why this is happening, because it's something I used to do.

When you draw characters with their clothes on, you draw the characters with their clothes on. This sounds silly, but it makes clothes harder to draw. To get a better grasp of how much "bulk" to add to a character's clothing, it's better to draw them (or at least, briefly sketch them) naked. Once you have blocked out their body, then sketch the clothes over top. I find it easier to figure out what parts of the clothes will wrinkle, and how thick the clothes should be compared to where the body is if I already know where the body is.

I did also look at LadyLing's critique and I want to echo what she said about Senshistock! I wanted to add that they have actually rebranded as Adorkastock (here is their website: AdorkaStock | Stock Photo References for Artists, By Artists). They have a "sketch" function, where it will provide a random pose from their stock library to practice "life drawing" with. I've been messing around with it myself and it has helped a lot for me! Their models have a wide variety of body types as well which is great for art practice.

I wanted to also add, that in your art you have a very good sense of color and lighting in conveying mood. There are times (in your darker drawings) that it starts to look a bit muddled, and might benefit from using a smaller brush size when shading to help refine the shapes more. Whatever you did in your Moon art for your shading, keep doing that! That one looks really really good!

I love your characters and art and wish to see you improve! Sorry this was a bit long, I hope my advice can help in some way. Good luck in your future art!