The VG Resource

yeah I thought I went a bit OTT with the breasts, heres an update though the issues are probably still there if a little lesser, I'll keep working at them over time, past 2 days I've been dealing with family stuff and ofc todays mothers day servitude of taking care of my mother, so I've not had chance to give the pic a good look,
thanks for the crits at the rate I'm visiting this pic I may have skipped over that stuff all together,

1 thing in particular I may need a bit of expanding on is the guys face, what should I do to fix the flat face problem? I've shifted the mouse and nose, but the problem is still visible in the eyes.

My biggest issue with your work is how you make everything so straight; this means they aren't very expressive, or what you want to express is stifled.
I tried to make the characters more expressive according to the critique I've already given:

What can we say about this character's personality from her body language?

I've added some more possible poses for the enchantress. Don't be afraid to try several poses if in doubt!

I think I got a bit carried away, a short blast of blind optimism hit me, I've learned to just run with these bursts as they usually land me a few days of productivity (which truth be told during this burst I've made a small platformer I'm particularly proud of) I'll hold off on the comic thing while I get some dynamic poses in my drawcabulary (hurray for made up words)

heres a quick sketch, I obviously need a second opinion (hence it being posted here) but I feel like this one has more expression as you mention, if I do a good deal of these then I hope to get a grips with it.

I think the thing I like most about this sketch though is there was little to no calculating, just by eye and feel which somehow just makes the entire thing feel more accomplishing.

i didn't like the body features nor the pose (I can see what you tried to do), so I tried it myself. I am not as good as Chris when coming to anatomy and posing, but I hope you can learn a thing or two from this.



>I shortened and curved the legs. For calm poses such as this, a relaxed leg placement would look better. Also, I shortened them so they aren't Sailor Moon legs. The knees are also more defined.
>The breasts don't always stay on the body's sides, as you drew; depending on the perspective, one of the breasts may be in profile. also, the breast is connected to the armpit, making a single curve.
>Changed arm placement. The original one was kinda awkward (imagine yourself holding a sword like that) and unfortunately, the sword's handle was going over her crotch. In order to make things more readable and relaxed, I made her hold the sword a little far away from her body. Also, this new placement inclined the sword a little, making it more interesting to see.
>Body perspective. Now you can clearly see that the body is in 3/4 view.
>Chin. People's heads aren't perfect ovals, so a slight angle for a chin can make it look better.
>Ear placement. Now they are evenly spaced.

I like Gors's edit, but I want to go over dynamics again (I'm no professional so bear with me):

Several things puzzled me when I looked at your picture: what is happening to the leaning arm? Is it leaning on a surface (as the black line I drew suggests), or on the pommel of the sword? If it's leaning on the sword, why is all the pressure in the wrist?
I'll re-iterate on the legs: they are both perfectly straight lines, which conveys a tenseness or a rigidity. This is mostly what is hindering the liveliness of your character.
The third edit is a quick demonstration on how to simply create dynamics: creating a dialogue between curves and straights, a to and fro. From this dialogue your pose becomes dynamic.

I hope it helps and don't feel discouraged!

Edit: you can actually use the lines in the third edit as the final lines because of the power they express. Mike Mattesi talks about force for animators, and I learned from his book about dynamics, so I'd recommend you check out some of his websites :

• http://forceddesign.blogspot.fr/
  
• http://www.drawingforce.com/
  
• Youtube channel
  
• Second Youtube channel
  

so after a bunch of raging trying to think up poses I finally got ideas flowing and tried out some figure drawing, hopefully figure drawing should help me get over some of my bad habbits of stick limbs, stiff / bad poses and off proportions, I've already at the very least learned 2 helper techniques from this that may save me some trouble in future,

funnily enough what got my brain started up again was some toony chibbi-ish figure drawings (I know that kind of defeats the purpose of figure drawing, but it was quicker and easier to throw them in poses so I could get an idea of what shapes I'm looking at)

EDIT: I'd just like to say thanks again for the help, being told where I've gone wrong is helping me learn from my mistakes a lot quicker, I'd still be drawing toothpick knees if not for you guys XD

Yes, those are definitely an improvement!

I started doodling yesterday and got to doodling character designs for Speedo Joe, an idea I've had for a while for a game / comic.

here is an older design sheet for joe himself

and here is the original design, behold the eye burning colours!

more doodles, I may make a small game out of "Flurry's Panty Crusades"
I'm not afraid to admit I may have drawn it out of a little perversion
(note, the first 2, the legs are meant to be tense, I've not finished the second part but she is swinging that massive hammer so I doubt she'd be relaxing.)

another bit of random doodling which I quite enjoyed,
GUMMY FRIENDS!

Shiny!!

Their shadows don't really match their general lightsource, though!

yeah I goofed them up, a picture I did before them establishing the style I drew the shadow before the details and it looked fine, but I forgot with those so the shadow was a last minute rush.

been inactive a while, I'll be posting something big soon, but until then I've given drawn animation a try (I still need to do a lot of work but I think I'm off to a good start in comparison to the last time I tried)
I did the animations for one of my friends who live streams, so they don'ft exactly make lots of sense XD

The first animation doesn't exist apparently o:

sorry about that ran out of space on my imgur and had to start wiping stuff.
Anyway I'm back trying to get dynamic poses. I've taken an interest in animation but it means jack crap if I can't draw movement, I've seen a bunch of techniques but I've come into something thats helping me I found while experimenting.
I'm not drawing anything gold but I'm starting to see the way the body curves as a result of actions.

Anyway onto what I've done, I'm basicly drawing bigger ends of curves for the force and smaller ends for less force, so I can try and feel where the weight will be pulled / placed.

So its nothing amazing, but its definitely an improvement, hopefully if I keep working on stuff like this it'll become second nature, it'll certainly help add life to my characters.