Ponythread Learns to Draw II

[Derjuin]

I can never get a "diving for cover" pose quite right with ponies.

Spoiler

Show

I like the little "bang! bang!" sound effects

The dive still looks good though, like a rough tumble behind cover.

---

Though I assume most of Ponydrawthread has seen the first three pics I did, I just finished another for the poster thing I'm trying to make. Hopefully it will be ready before Bronycon comes...

Spoiler

Show

[DigoDragon]

I like the little "bang! bang!" sound effects
The dive still looks good though, like a rough tumble behind cover.

Thanks. The sound effects were just a spur-of-the-moment addition because I wasn't sure how well I conveyed bullets flying around her. ^^;

Though I assume most of Ponydrawthread has seen the first three pics I did, I just finished another for the poster thing I'm trying to make. Hopefully it will be ready before Bronycon comes...

Spoiler

Show

I just noticed that tiny little bit of mane between her forelegs. Nice bit of detail to show hair length there, instead of leaving it completely obscured.

[Madcrafter]

Hello people.

----

Days 705-10:

All just some bad sketches, wasn't feeling super motivated that week for some reason.

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

----

Days 711-2:

There's that thing with starting a sketch from random scribbles, I decided to try from random brushstrokes. Put down squiggles in different colours (or all browns in the second one) and went through again to emphasize and define some sort of image. Second one was a lot better before I went ahead and ruined it.

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 713-5:

And finishing off with a lemon and mug, which led to some looking through of the different interesting features I haven't been using.

Spoiler

Show

[Sean Mirrsen]

Hello people, likewise. :)

I'm not sure what's up with my art engine, but it refuses to cooperate with me much.
Even then, I don't know if I should be posting here, seeing as I don't seem to be learning much as I go along. :P

Still, I suppose I can at least reaffirm my presence. Let's see, what all did I manage to draw since last time...

Some pictures I made of one Lotus Wuxia, the rather ill-fated character from an RP I'm following that I think I mentioned before.
In an attempt to regain some old skills, tried drawing in both the digital and the traditional mediums.

Spoiler: Lotus Wuxia

Show

A flight suit I'd finally managed to develop in the Einsteinian Roulette game on Bay12. I'm not particularly happy with its arms.

Spoiler: MCP-Aero

Show

A very tangentially pony-inspired robotic support unit, "Artee", probably third and hopefully final iteration of design. Including close-up of smiling face. :P

Spoiler: Artee

Show

Actually an integrated mechanical cutter/crusher. Still, look at them pearly tungsten-carbide whites!

And a quick sketch of a random pony to test the latest version of MyPaint.

Spoiler

Show

Speaking of which, the latest version (1.2.0) of MyPaint finally works for me, and finally fixes (most of the) issues with Drag&Drop on Windows 8. So you can actually manually rearrange the interface and the brush libraries now, if you're on that OS.
And, that's all I have for now. Until next time! ^_^

[Thanqol]

Hello people, likewise. :)

I'm not sure what's up with my art engine, but it refuses to cooperate with me much.
Even then, I don't know if I should be posting here, seeing as I don't seem to be learning much as I go along. :P

Still, I suppose I can at least reaffirm my presence. Let's see, what all did I manage to draw since last time...

Some pictures I made of one Lotus Wuxia, the rather ill-fated character from an RP I'm following that I think I mentioned before.
In an attempt to regain some old skills, tried drawing in both the digital and the traditional mediums.

Spoiler: Lotus Wuxia

Show

A flight suit I'd finally managed to develop in the Einsteinian Roulette game on Bay12. I'm not particularly happy with its arms.

Spoiler: MCP-Aero

Show

A very tangentially pony-inspired robotic support unit, "Artee", probably third and hopefully final iteration of design. Including close-up of smiling face. :P

Spoiler: Artee

Show

Actually an integrated mechanical cutter/crusher. Still, look at them pearly tungsten-carbide whites!

And a quick sketch of a random pony to test the latest version of MyPaint.

Spoiler

Show

Speaking of which, the latest version (1.2.0) of MyPaint finally works for me, and finally fixes (most of the) issues with Drag&Drop on Windows 8. So you can actually manually rearrange the interface and the brush libraries now, if you're on that OS.
And, that's all I have for now. Until next time! ^_^

Your images are broken for me, do you have alternate links?

[Balmas]

I can never get a "diving for cover" pose quite right with ponies.

Spoiler

Show

Hmm. The size of the head looks off, compared to the size of the body.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Your images are broken for me, do you have alternate links?

I use Dropbox for everything, so if that's broken that would be a problem.

My net access is shot, but I suppose I can try and see if Imgur will reupload from DB.

Hm. Apparently not. Uploaded the hard way.

Lotus Wuxia:
http://i.imgur.com/QyQy5CW.png
http://i.imgur.com/0XMsQ4W.jpg

MCP-Aero:
http://i.imgur.com/JASjmGi.png

Artee:
http://i.imgur.com/4cFZa7G.png
http://i.imgur.com/chpqA7C.png <-Smile!

Random pony:
http://i.imgur.com/fpPOGUK.png

[DigoDragon]

And finishing off with a lemon and mug, which led to some looking through of the different interesting features I haven't been using.

Spoiler

Show

Oooh, still-life. I like this one. Very oil-paints in feel. You might be on to something here.

Some pictures I made of one Lotus Wuxia, the rather ill-fated character from an RP I'm following that I think I mentioned before.
In an attempt to regain some old skills, tried drawing in both the digital and the traditional mediums.

And a quick sketch of a random pony to test the latest version of MyPaint.

Lotus has a cute face. The snout area feels like it was inspired by the older gen ponies, but you seem to have fixed my issue with those faces looking too wide. Here, Lotus' head has a better, round construction that feels about right.

I envy that you can draw cute, thin legs like that. All my ponies keep ending up like they've been eating too much cake.

Hmm. The size of the head looks off, compared to the size of the body.

Yeah, it does. I'm going to give it another go after finishing up a commission this week by changing my references out. See if that helps me.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Lotus has a cute face. The snout area feels like it was inspired by the older gen ponies, but you seem to have fixed my issue with those faces looking too wide. Here, Lotus' head has a better, round construction that feels about right.

I wouldn't say they were inspired by the older gen designs. I haven't seen a single whole episode of any older gen ponies, just the various snippets and the occasional fanart. I'd say rather that in my attempts at making the snout more "realistic", i.e. biologically plausible, I've managed to stray towards the same overall direction as the artists who designed the older generation ponies did. My solution to the "broad face" problem is to borrow more heavily from a humanoid face, in terms of jaw/cheek proportions especially. Though I must say it's only a recent development of mine, I've had my drawings compared (unfavorably :P) to the older gen designs many times before.

In other news, I actually managed to draw something neat in short order! An upcoming adversary for the group of adventuring ponies that Lotus Wuxia works with.

Spoiler: Changeling Princess Maxilla

Show

Imgur link
Still a WIP, but I am quite fond of the design.

edit: more complete version: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..._m_limered.png

[Sean Mirrsen]

I am also achieving progress with this Megazord picture.

Spoiler

Show

Link form

Comments welcome, so I can still fix any major errors I overlooked since last time, before I move too far ahead with coloring.

[Dexam]

In other news, I actually managed to draw something neat in short order! An upcoming adversary for the group of adventuring ponies that Lotus Wuxia works with.

Spoiler: Changeling Princess Maxilla

Show

Imgur link
Still a WIP, but I am quite fond of the design.

edit: more complete version: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..._m_limered.png

I'm not the only one getting ST:TNG Borg vibes from this sketch, am I?

[Madcrafter]

I am also achieving progress with this Megazord picture.

Ah, you've fixed up the sword. Looks good.

I'm not the only one getting ST:TNG Borg vibes from this sketch, am I?

Nope!

----

Day 715-21:

A prompted request from Ponythread. Took a little longer than I thought.

Spoiler

Show

[DigoDragon]

I am also achieving progress with this Megazord picture.

Snap, that sword looks good with the foreshortening. :D

[DigoDragon]

Do we like WIPs? I hope we like WIPs, otherwise this will get awkward--

Spoiler: Fallout 3 Inspired Art

Show

Drawing my protagonist from Fallout 3 watching a sunrise over the DC wasteland. The bottom orange space is just blank spot as I haven't drawn on it yet, but maybe I should turn it into the Potomac river and make a reflection effect of the city skyline?

[Sean Mirrsen]

While I cannot focus my attention on the ongoing drawings, I can apparently still make a new one. Or a sketch, at least.

Spoiler: Attempting to make an Artee look cute

Show

Link

[Thanqol]

I am also achieving progress with this Megazord picture.

Spoiler

Show

Link form

Comments welcome, so I can still fix any major errors I overlooked since last time, before I move too far ahead with coloring.

This is looking rad, dude.

[DigoDragon]

[Attempting to make an Artee look cute]

Yeah, I think that's a pretty cute-looking critter. I think if the eyes were more rounded it could push the cuteness boundary, but I don't know if there's a limit you had on the cuteness.

[DigoDragon]

Having gone back to my old jumping pony image and redoing it from scratch... I feel it's getting better.

Spoiler

Show

[Derjuin]

Having gone back to my old jumping pony image and redoing it from scratch... I feel it's getting better.

Spoiler

Show

I like this one a good deal better :3 especially the look on her face, and the general flow of the piece feels smoother too - rather than tumbling down, it looks like she's jumping in a specific direction.

[Madcrafter]

Yeah, a lot better flow on that new version, old one had a much more splayed and chaotic look.

----

Day 722-32:

At some point along the line here we passed two years, so that's cool. What's not cool was my tablet driver acting up and causing this picture to take forever, even this version is only half of the intended, and it's missing things like armour decoration etc.

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 733-4:

A bit of a grotesque. Trying out a more "painty" brush.

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 735-6:

Short order commission for a family thing. Only looks as good as it does because I was copying a photograph instead of merely using them for reference. Unfortunately the printer can't actually print such discrete colours as the screen can display so it came out looking kind of wonky anyways. (It looks bad here, but that's because it's about 50% bigger than it's supposed to be. Like always, shrink it down and it looks better.

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 737-8:

Another more painting one, starting from one of those scribble sketches. It's always weird doing a face that looks this wrong, I get some intuitive sense to "fix" it, make it more normal. It takes conscious will to think that no, people can actually look this weird, and it doesn't need to be some sort of more standard looking face. Though I guess I could have fixed the eyes a little.

Spoiler

Show

[DigoDragon]

I like this one a good deal better :3 especially the look on her face, and the general flow of the piece feels smoother too - rather than tumbling down, it looks like she's jumping in a specific direction.

Yeah, a lot better flow on that new version, old one had a much more splayed and chaotic look.

Thank you both. :D

At some point along the line here we passed two years, so that's cool. What's not cool was my tablet driver acting up and causing this picture to take forever, even this version is only half of the intended, and it's missing things like armour decoration etc.

Spoiler

Show

The blue mane has a nice hair texture to it. His left eye seems a bit off. Maybe it's too round? Perhaps a more oval '0' shape instead of 'O' shape would work? Otherwise the construction of eye is good, like how you added texture to the iris instead of leaving it a flat color. It's a nice bit of detail.

Another more painting one, starting from one of those scribble sketches. It's always weird doing a face that looks this wrong, I get some intuitive sense to "fix" it, make it more normal. It takes conscious will to think that no, people can actually look this weird, and it doesn't need to be some sort of more standard looking face. Though I guess I could have fixed the eyes a little.

Spoiler

Show

That facial hair... you really have a good grasp on making hair look like hair.

[Madcrafter]

The blue mane has a nice hair texture to it. His left eye seems a bit off. Maybe it's too round? Perhaps a more oval '0' shape instead of 'O' shape would work? Otherwise the construction of eye is good, like how you added texture to the iris instead of leaving it a flat color. It's a nice bit of detail.

I found a nice way I like for doing irises, which is nice since ponies have such giant eyes. You'll notice the same thing on for example, that picture of the doctor I did a while back.

That facial hair... you really have a good grasp on making hair look like hair.

Actually, I really suck at hair, it is a well noted flaw. That is actually some photobashing, though I could have probably done it a bit better if I had spent some time actually getting a matching photo. I watched a video of a concept artist using the same technique to do some nice flowy hair, and decided to just throw it in, since at the time the beard was little more than a brown blob. I anticipate trying it a bunch more in the future, it has nice results.

[Madcrafter]

Day 739-42:

Had to preserve my one battery life here. Tried to very crudely hack out a watercolour brush from the airbrush, still way too opaque though.

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 743-5:

This poor fellow has the dubious distinction of being one of the top image search results for "ugly". No photobashing here, you can see the hair is not nearly so nice, though I didn't spend very much time on it compared to the rest. Another one almost completely done with the default round brush.

Spoiler

Show

[Sean Mirrsen]

I continue to be completely useless in regards to continuing longer-term and larger-scale projects.

On a whim, instigated by the character leaving the party (with any luck, temporarily), decided to doodle a picture of Lotus Wuxia spectacularly destroying a skeleton in the last battle.

Spoiler: Delayed Cut

Show

She ran up to the statue the skeleton was on, leaped nine feet in the air, rolled enough damage to kill the skeleton three times over with a cutting weapon, and stuck the landing perfectly. In GURPS. The GM basically told the player "go ahead and describe that however you want" once the rolls landed.

Link.


And on a different whim, the prompt for today's Artist Training Grounds is "Draw a pony on a quest". It just tickled my punny bone.

Spoiler: My Pal Quest Does Whatever I Want

Show

Link, different link.

Link for context.

edit:

A recent scene involving Lotus (she hasn't left just yet) had her being woken up in bed, described as looking through the mane of Slimjim, her romantic interest (as much as such is possible given who either of them are). One convoluted and probably hilarious thought process later, I had the idea to draw this.

Spoiler: The Predator in the Tall Grass

Show

Link

[Sean Mirrsen]

I am on something of a Lotus-drawing spree. She's just a very memorable character to me, and even if she does come back she would be gone for IRL years, so I guess I want to make sure she's not forgotten. :P


She hasn't left yet, and I don't know what it'll look like when the party sets off without her, but I still decided to sketch my best guess.

Spoiler: Separated

Show

Link.


And this is an even further hypothetical. Lotus is staying behind in the mountains of Neighpon to resurrect her order, the Wuxia, which is going to take her a long time. In the meantime, there is an NPC who is actively intending to marry Lotus's romantic interest, Slimjim, and there's been some ship-to-ship combat that, until this point, it seemed like Lotus was winning. This is a glimpse into a darker future where the NPC married Slimjim, depicting when Lotus, years later, appears on the steps of her old home at Canterlot as the master of the new Wuxia, while the Neighponese army burns the city to the ground.

Spoiler: I am home, Slim. Did you wait for me?

Show

Link.

edit: the character's player prefers this version, so I'll post it too for comparison.

Spoiler: HDR shader plus poster-edges

Show

Link.

[Madcrafter]

Like the armour. What'd you do on the second one, some sort of edge detection and lining?

----

Day 746-57:

long and unfinished, but was kind of fun doing the shallow lighting. Also probably needs some serious colour adjustment to make any kind of sense, but that's a challenge for another day.

Spoiler

Show

----

Day 758-60:

Now living near a marvellous building feat. Still have yet to go, but I think it will be very cool.

Spoiler

Show

----

Days 761, 762:

Just sketches.

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

[DigoDragon]

long and unfinished, but was kind of fun doing the shallow lighting. Also probably needs some serious colour adjustment to make any kind of sense, but that's a challenge for another day.

Spoiler

Show

That's not bad! Nice big scene at a port. I can see perhaps some orange adjustment to make it feel more like dawn, but you have some fine details. Like the ship rigging.

[Madcrafter]

The ship rigging was probably the fastest and easiest part, though it might help that I know a bit about it. Still looks too simple though, even with all the large unfinished flash stretches.

It was also originally going to be a sunset, but the colours are even more off for that. Had trouble finding a good reference of buildings in sunset though, seems everyone wants to point their cameras towards the sun for some reason.

----

Day 763:

Just a quick thing with some new brushes, that actually turned out rather nice for the forty minutes I put into it. Hooray for good art days. (As always though, looks a lot better at like half that size )

Spoiler

Show

[DigoDragon]

I suddenly have a craving for roast beef.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Like the armour. What'd you do on the second one, some sort of edge detection and lining?

Kind of, yes. It's a photoshop filter called 'poster edges'. I rather like its output most of the time. :)

Day 746-57:

long and unfinished, but was kind of fun doing the shallow lighting. Also probably needs some serious colour adjustment to make any kind of sense, but that's a challenge for another day.

Spoiler

Show

This is nice. Neat details, nice colors on the terrain and shadows, but something's off with some of the angles. And I can't shake the feeling that the sky is on fire. :)

----

Just another Lotus pic. Moderately motivational. :P

Spoiler: Row, row, fight the power!

Show

Link.