Harsh Appraisal of the Inadequate Novice: 13 CBS's Touhou Project

[13_CBS]

...in which I, 13 CBS, beginner "artist (in only the loosest sense), try to create OOTS style stick art of every major Touhou character in the Windows generation, exhibit them here, and by doing so publicly humiliate myself. I'll be doing them in the following order:

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Hakurei Reimu
Kirisame Marisa
Rumia
Daiyousei
Cirno
Hong Meiling
Koakuma
Patchouli Knowledge
Sakuya Izayoi
Remilia Scarlet
Flandre Scarlet
Letty Whiterock
Chen
Alice Margatroid
Lily White
Lunasa, Merlin, and Lyrica Prisimriver
Youmu Konpaku
Saigyouji Yuyuko
Yakumo Ran
Yakumo Yukari
Ibuki Suika
Wriggle Nightbug
Mystia Lorelei
Kamishirasawa Keine
Inaba Tewi
Reisen Udongein Inaba
Yagokoro Eirin (tasukete!)
Houraisan Kaguya
EX KEINE
Fujiwara no Mokou
Shameimaru Aya
Medicine Melancholy
Yuuka Kazami
Onozuka Komachi
Yamaxanadu Shikieiki
Aki Shizuha
Aki Minoriko
Kagimiya Hina
Kawashiro Nitori
Inubashiri Momiji
Kochiya Sanae
Yasaka Kanako
Moriya Suwako
Nagae Iku
Hinanawi Tenshi
Kisume
Kurodani Yamame
Mizuhashi Parsee
Hoshiguma Yuugi
Komeiji Satori
Kaenbyou Rin (aka Orin)
Reiuji Utsuho (aka Okuu)
Komeiji Koishi
Nazrin
Tatara Kogasa
Kumoi Ichirin + Unzan
Captain Minamitsu Murasa
Toramaru Shou
Byakuren Hijiri
Houjuu Nue
Himekaidou Hatate
Morichika Rinnosuke
Tokiko
Maribel Han
Usami Renko
Sunny Milk
Luna Child
Star Sapphire
Hieda no Akyuu
Reisen II
Watatsuki no Yorihime
Watatsuki no Toyohime

For each Touhou character I'll be doing up to 3 pictures; a standard shot of them standing around doing nothing, an action shot of them doing something, and a meme shot of the character involved in some kind of meme that they're known for. For a lot of the characters, there may be less than 3 pictures; Hieda no Akyuu, for example, is a non-combatant as far as we know, so an action shot of her would not be applicable. A significant portion of the characters also don't have a meme associated with them, so I can't do a picture for that, either.

Why am I doing this? For two reasons:

1) I'm dabbling in the visual arts, with the eventual (and far off) goal of being able to draw manga-style art by myself, and I figure that OOTS style stick art is a good place to start for learning artistic skills that aren't strictly the act of making lines on paper (things like perspective, drawing things in a way that makes them look like they're moving, etc.) without getting too frustrated at my utter lack of drawing skills.

2) I like Touhou. A LOT. Not the games, mind you, but I love the characters (as simple as they are in terms of personality), and I especially love the fan material about them. Some of the best manga I've ever read were Touhou fan works.


So, to start things off...


Untouchable Shrine Maiden of Paradise: Hakurei Reimu:

Standard Shot

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Action Shot

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Meme Shot

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Commentary:

Good ol' Reimu. Touhou's flagship character, and a pain in the arse to draw thanks to all the red/white stitches on her costume (the red ones on her detachable sleeves, the white ones at the bottom of her skirt and at the edge of her hair ribbon). If it weren't for them she wouldn't have been so irritating to draw. The stitches were actually the biggest problem for me when I was trying to draw Reimu--I just can't get them to look right for some reason. I tried bending the stitches, but that didn't work, so I left them as straight rectangles. If someone has any tips on making the stitches look just right, I'd highly appreciate it.

In any case, Reimu's costume design here is from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody/Immaterial and Missing Power, the games in which the character art is actually good. ZUN can draw clothes, but he sure as heck can't draw people. Her ofuda (paper charm in her left hand) is simply the Kanji of her last name--I don't think her ofuda normally say this, but I couldn't quite make out what her ofuda are supposed to say on all the other official images I could find so I decided to make one up.

The action shot here is my (crappy) imitation of one of Reimu's spell card poses in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, most easily seen here. The inside of Reimu's skirt is apparently white, but I decided to go for red because I only just noticed the difference still liked the red. I made the inside slightly darker to indicate that it's in a shadow! Aren't you proud of me? >.>

The meme here is, of course, a reference to the "fact" that Reimu is constantly poor. The Kanji on the front of the box says "donations" and it is indeed empty. Poor Reimu.



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Criticism is much appreciated, and is half the reason why I'm making this thread--to become a better artist. What works in a given picture? What doesn't work? What could be improved?

[13_CBS]

Archive Post

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Hakurei Reimu

[Maximum Zersk]

Oh hey, cool.

The Reimu art looks good. Though in the meme picture, her eyebrows could be thinned down a bit.

I've only played one Touhou game, though.

[Thrawn183]

Well, I can't give much advice on the stitches other than curving them which it seems like you already tried. I do think you might want to look at the shoulders. It might be because I'm partially color blind, but I really can't make the "stick" part of the shoulder/arm out from her hair. Sometimes it looked like the sleeves were just floating away from her body.

As a comparison, look at today's comic (744). Not counting pauldrons, every stick arm is clear where it goes into the body, unless there are sleeves, in which case those are firmly attached to the torso. Right now I'm seeing floating arms.

[13_CBS]

Woah, that was fast.

Oh hey, cool.

The Reimu art looks good. Though in the meme picture, her eyebrows could be thinned down a bit.

I've only played one Touhou game, though.

Hmm...good point.

Well, I can't give much advice on the stitches other than curving them which it seems like you already tried. I do think you might want to look at the shoulders. It might be because I'm partially color blind, but I really can't make the "stick" part of the shoulder/arm out from her hair. Sometimes it looked like the sleeves were just floating away from her body.

As a comparison, look at today's comic (744). Not counting pauldrons, every stick arm is clear where it goes into the body, unless there are sleeves, in which case those are firmly attached to the torso. Right now I'm seeing floating arms.

I noticed that, but I couldn't figure out a proper solution. The character has long black hair that reaches down past the shoulders, and the stick arms are, of course, solid black. Miko at least had the advantage of having grey colored pauldrons that allow the attached arm to be seen fairly clearly, but Reimu here has no such luxury; her sleeves are detached as you can clearly see here. So I'm at a loss as to how to make her arms stand out from her hair without making her arms a different color.

[Domochevsky]

Well, you could always cheat a bit and make her hair off-color, like a dark shade of grey. (And add a bit of shimmer to her hair as well.)

The standard shot looks a bit off-balance, with the head attached too far to the left. Protip: If you're not sure about anatomy, flip the image. That usually helps to see what's wrong with it.

[Prime32]

Thank you for making me seem less crazy.

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What are you using to draw these? Because Flash has an option for dotted or dashed lines.

[13_CBS]

Thank you for making me seem less crazy.

What did I do?

What are you using to draw these? Because Flash has an option for dotted or dashed lines.

Inkscape.

Well, you could always cheat a bit and make her hair off-color, like a dark shade of grey. (And add a bit of shimmer to her hair as well.)

I did actually make her hair a dark shade of grey, but alas her arm is still difficult to see.

I have no idea at all how to do a shimmer, though.

The standard shot looks a bit off-balance, with the head attached too far to the left. Protip: If you're not sure about anatomy, flip the image. That usually helps to see what's wrong with it.

Fair enough. Thanks for the tip!

[Domochevsky]

...
I have no idea at all how to do a shimmer, though.
...

Something simple like this is already sufficient.

[Prime32]

Something simple like this is already sufficient.

*snip*

If you want more detail, trace the rough path of the first line with a larger transparent brush.

And for the stitches, is it possible to put blocks of solid colour over lines in Inkscape? Draw a line and cover sections of it.

[A Rainy Knight]

And for the stitches, is it possible to put blocks of solid colour over lines in Inkscape? Draw a line and cover sections of it.

It's actually possible to just draw dotted lines in Inkscape. If you right-click the line and go under Fill and Stroke > Stroke style, you can set a dash style for the line.

[13_CBS]

The trouble with simple dashed lines is that I'd have to go back and bend them to make them follow the contours of the clothing's folds...

I guess the ultimate problem I'm having is drawing realistic-looking folds in clothing.

[Elder Tsofu]

I walked in here and got positively surprised - it looked a lot better than I thought it would.
And that doesn't mean that I just walked in with low expectations.

You'll have an interesting journey ahead of you if you draw all those characters, if nothing else style-wise.
When I did my Fate-project (seriously a lot less characters) I had to redo the first half of the characters 2-3 times to keep them up-date with the second half.
And then I had to redraw (to a larger or lesser extent) everyone at the end anyway.

Positive:
Large clear areas of clothing, nothing cluttered.
You've got the hair nicely done, most new (and some old) people seem to have a real trouble drawing it well.
The action-pose looks good, although I'm not a fond of the proportions. (see below)

But time for criticism:

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Are you aiming for Giant Oots or an own twist of Oots?
* Personally I like my stick figures with large heads; the head is traditionally as high as the body, and the legs are one head high too. Easy rule of thumb.
* Hands & feet; be bold and dare to draw large hands and feet. In the standard shot her hands are especially small.
* Use rounded edges on the fingers, there is an option for it below where you set line-thickness.
* Uniform line-thickness; try to keep the line-thickness in about the same area whatever you do. Now the thickness of the hair is much thinner than it is for the body, as an example.
It's all too easy to use very thin lines for all those details you want to cram in, but the best images are those where the artist have managed to prioritize with the details and made an uncluttered image without large fluctuations in line-thickness.
* The figures are usually in 3/4 profile (or something like that), so generally you want her left side (if she's facing to your right) to be more "in" the image. One way is to set the larger eye as her right (if facing right) and that her left leg is slightly shorter / foot slightly smaller than her right one.
* I'd move the scarf slightly to the right in the image to help the illusion of her facing somewhere to the right of the viewer.

But I really like them, they are a bit unpolished but promising. Try to continue like this.
I will even steal the way you've made her sit down in the last image, I always have great trouble with sitting people in dresses.

Edit:
Regarding folds:
Nowdays I'm always drawing the lines, and then draw the fill behind it. It creates two objects on top of each other, but it simplify when you want to add lines (like the dashed ones). Then you just draw one line between each fold and hide the ends between the fill and the contour line (so that the end of the line is below the contour line).

[13_CBS]

Updated Reimu pics uploaded. Major changes include uniform line thickness, adjustments to Reimu's collar, feet, and eyes to improve perspective (thanks @ Tsofu ), and some other minor adjustments.

Next up will be Marisa. She'll probably be uploaded sometime over the weekend.

[Gullara]

To fix the floating arm issue (though I don't really think its that big of an issue) you could make the outline of the hair dark grey as well.

[Elder Tsofu]

*Peers in*
... Hows it going?

[13_CBS]

*Peers in*
... Hows it going?

Slowly. Classes have started, so I'm trying to figure out how to juggle schoolwork and other giantitp duties, on top of working on another personal project.