Tony's Work - Please comment and critique >_<

[Fleyz]

Hey everyone! I'm still pretty new to the community! I just got back to drawing recently. I used to draw a lot back in elementary/middle school and kinda stop for a long time xD

Im trying to create a manga of my own, so these are my possible characters that i created xD

Please comment and critique!

[The_shaman]

You first problem is your drawings anatomy everything on our body are actually indications and imprints of what is happening under our skin. Things such as bends and movement of our arms and legs are stretches and pinches of our muscles. To correctly recreate a representation of a persons, one especially such as anime which is a very.......verrrrrrryyyyyyyy stylized drawing style, you need to understand how the body works. Our muscles doesn't sit on our bones, they actually go in and around each other. This picture is a decent visual of the working s of the muscle structure.


The head itself is divided into planes, while i can't remember them all these are; Frontal, temporalis, the obicularis oculi, mentalis....there is more to this but I sucked when it came to the vocab part of the head but the rest of the pieces are, nasalis, levator labii superioris, zygomaticus minor, zigomaticus major, masseter, risorius, depressor anguli oris, depressor labbi inferiors, procerus, occipital, trapezius, and sternocleidomastoid.

[Fleyz]

alright! thanks! ill definitely try to reconstruct it base more on human anatomy!

[The_shaman]

here- this was done by Michael Hampton, this picture is a nice view of all 4 planes.


I am not a fan of anime at style so I am trying not to be to aggressive about how i go about this. The problem with anime ultimately is if you take eye all the eye candy (accessories, and clothes), it is all actually the same drawing, ultimately the same structure and this is 90%b of anime. One of the biggest truths come in when drawing the heads, for example, the eyes (like in your drawing) are just placed on the head. Look in the mirror, your eyes aren't just on your head, but inserted, their inside your skull witch all your eye lips actually being is empty space. everything on top of our body (muscles and skin) is pushing forwards while things underneath our skeleton is pushing backwards.

[Matt]

@Shaman - So you're not a fan of the anime style, yet you're a member of a site called mangatutorials and critiquing a guy who's drawing in the manga style? I don't mean to discredit you, because you're right about the need to study real anatomy/musculature, but don't use a manga site to rant about a manga style. Eyes "just placed on the head" look good in a ton of cases, and some manga styles (i.e. Gantz) even imply the depth you're looking for. And the bit about all anime being the same minus the accessories/clothes? Maybe in more amateur styles. But in manga like To Love-Ru (which I didn't like, but serves a good example), the girls all look somewhat similar in hair shade and even color, but when their clothes are gone (happens a lot) and their accessories get knocked off (also happens), you can easily tell who they are. Manga characters are characterized by more than just clothes and accessories, i.e. hair, build, height, eyes, complexion, facial shape, etc.--the same as real people.

Tony, while your drawings actually look fairly decent, some of the folds in your sketches shouldn't be there, and some of them don't look right. Don't worry about getting them perfect. Folds are one of the hardest things to draw without reference--which I highly recommend to you. If you want to draw folds from improvisation, it will help to understand gravity, anatomy, and the material that makes up the clothing. Gravity pulls stuff down. How the body is working under the clothes affects how the folds appear. What the clothes are made of affects how the folds look and how many of them there are. For example, looser stuff (i.e. T-shirt) will tend to have more folds than a stiff leather jacket will.

Use reference a lot. It will definitely help. Your drawing so far are looking good, and you define each character well (ponytail, glasses, spiky hair). You should post a finished piece for critique, too.

[The_shaman]

@Shaman - So you're not a fan of the anime style, yet you're a member of a site called mangatutorials and critiquing a guy who's drawing in the manga style? I don't mean to discredit you, because you're right about the need to study real anatomy/musculature, but don't use a manga site to rant about a manga style. Eyes "just placed on the head" look good in a ton of cases, and some manga styles (i.e. Gantz) even imply the depth you're looking for. And the bit about all anime being the same minus the accessories/clothes? Maybe in more amateur styles. But in manga like To Love-Ru (which I didn't like, but serves a good example), the girls all look somewhat similar in hair shade and even color, but when their clothes are gone (happens a lot) and their accessories get knocked off (also happens), you can easily tell who they are. Manga characters are characterized by more than just clothes and accessories, i.e. hair, build, height, eyes, complexion, facial shape, etc.--the same as real people.

The reason why im still here is because its one of the few places I bother to even post any of drawings, this is actually do to my past history being on this site, nothing more. Not to mention you don't and will not find me outside of this area of the site let alone I rarely post outside my own topic which in itself sometimes see 3 posts a day and won't see another for a few days in its own. Secondly it was not meant as a rant or a attack on anime, but to further push the artist base abilities, I did not yell "Stop drawing this crap and actually draw a real person." and I did nothing to imply that the artist should stop at all, and the eyes were simply meant to serve as a example. Now if I wanted to discredit or go into a argument about anime, their are plenty of creditable arguments I could use, but again that was not my purpose and I would view such as a waste of my time, your time, and anyone else offended that someone doesn't like the art style time in such a pointless argument. Plus it would be more interesting having the argument with my roommate since he fucking loves anime and is always trying to get me to watch some new anime every now and again.

Edit
To just some it up nice and pretty like, to be able to exaggerate the human anatomy correctly you must first understand how it works, the same goes for anime as well. Alot of people jump head first into anime without that understanding. Some people naturally get it, but most do not.

[Psy]

Matt never said anything about you saying for the OP to stop drawing manga and start with realism first syn. Even when drawing real people the base is the same. You change the hair style/colour and the shape of the eyes maybe and you have a different person just like you can do in manga. The only difference between the two styles is that with manga we simplify things or exagerate them more than in realism. Drawing an arm realistically involves getting the shape of the bone protruding at the shoulder and elbow to show more and look real where in manga it could be a plumped up version of a tube with more curves.

[Fleyz]

@ Shaman - TY for the awesome picture! It gave me quite an idea of how the anatomy should be like

@ Matt - haha thank you >_< I do realized the folding of clothes or any of that sort are really really tough T-T I do find my self try to avoid it many many times haha. I'll try to go check out some reference and see what i can find