Concept Art! And Just Art

Hey everyone I wanted to share some of my artwork with you guys, just for fun! Hope you like them, I'll give you a little info on it under each image! :D

Flames of Autumn

By Machogrubba14(me)

Inspired by my joy of autumn, this picture was drawn in about 1 hour and well, i tried to express my favorite things about Autumn in this picture, the colors and the leaves and stuff! This was created on a program named Colors3D on my sisters 3Ds, so the image is drawn in 3D, but can no be viewed on a regular computer screen.

Concept Art For my Game in Development! IN COLOR

UPDATED STUFF!!! -Thanks for all the criticism guys :D

This is Concept art for the main character of a new game I am creating! :D

This image is for a title screen aka logo for a game I am creating, actually both are, making these two symbols was very fun, it is an interesting process!

And of course more concept art! :D

Pretty cool.

thanks, these aren't my best but I try

You did a good job here. Pat on your back here buddy.

no. guys, this isn't deviantart. don't blindly say that stuff is good when it clearly isn't. we should work towards helping people improve.

these are honestly pretty bad.

i would suggest that you begin by studying up on the anatomy of real-life people. take a look at actual faces, and study their features. copying anime isn't going to make you a great artist.

you need to understand the basics before you can stylize. good luck!

This art is perfectly fine. I see very few anatomy problems, but I'm not a professional. These aren't bad at all - I would like to see the characters for your game computer-colourised, but I really like the look of them. Posts like these are just blergh :/

@ needles: You got halfway through your post here... before you ACTUALLY tried to benefit the OP at all... when you get halfway through something before you 'attempt' to make it constructive, you're doing it wrong. Did you even read the Original Post? The person said it was 'for fun'... they're not trying to be the very best and all your post did was make them regret sharing a piece of themselves with the community. I don't know that anything anyone can say to you will change your actions, but in the "just for fun" threads you should keep a little more... decent. cause your post was kinda tactless. I'm SURE you have good qualities, but they certainly didn't come through at all in your reply.

Now, about the pictures. I like them, but more importantly, I like that you're comfortable enough with them that you posted them in the first place. Be proud of your developing artistic side, and use people's criticism (however rude it may SEEM) as a way to improve.

This isn't a day care center, you want to share your work with people you should expect, nay, crave criticism. Needles made some good points in order for this person to improve. The first one was decent, as it was a nice scene shot and the crayons helped make it look pretty nifty, but as soon as I saw human faces in the following pictures, it looked like 5th grade art class. Some studying of anatomy and trying to do something that isn't an anime offshoot would benefit this person in the long run.

Don't pat them on the head and tell them a good job, that doesn't help at all. Offer ways for them to improve, that WILL.

Ok guys, this is a problem that I'm getting somewhat tired of.

Criticism is good.

Stop treating it like it isn't.

Accurate criticism is the BEST THING an artist can receive. And whatever you may think of needles as a person, he is always top notch on his critique. Encouragement is good, too. But BLIND encouragement is not, it is damaging. People being told how great their work is when it isn't just PROMOTES BAD ART HABITS.

If you can't stand criticism, and to my knowledge the person who posted has no problem with criticism, its just a bunch of people sticking up for a guy because someone tried to help him out with some advice, don't post your work.

So I wanna talk about this.


And first I wanna talk about the mouth, because there are the roots of some really bad habits there. One thing that sticks out at me above all else is that, well, you've got the beginnings of the flounderface.

What's the flounderface? The flounderface is a mistake commonly made in amateur illustrative art when it's trying to emulate an anime style, where the mouth in a character profile will migrate inwards -- giving the appearance that the mouth is actually stuck onto the side of the face.

Thing is, this does not happen, either in real life or in professional illustration. It's something you see in anime quite often, but here's the thing: it's an animation shortcut. By moving the mouth inwards, you make it easier for the animation team to draw frames for speech without worrying about things like lips.

That's it. It has no reason to exist outside of cheap animation. Doing it in an illustrative piece is both very obvious and very wrong to a viewer. It might work for now, but you're going to find yourself very limited in terms of expressions if you only ever think of the mouth as a small black line and not the empty space between two lips.

It really can't be overstated how necessary it is to know structure and anatomy before you begin stylizing your work. Manga-style might seem superficially simple, but unless you know at least the basic shapes that compose the human body you're going to be restrained to a few "stock" poses and angles, and remain incapable of any real dynamic posing or action (or even things like close-ups and reaction shots).

It's a long, hard road, and there's no doubt about that. The benefits are immense, though -- there's no describing the satisfaction of a piece coming together the way you envision it.

I think that is the most constructive criticism post I ever seen someone do yet. But yeah, the best thing to do is work on the anatomy, and possibly clean up the leaves(petals leaves I don't care). I know you did these for fun, but with the advice you are getting now, and the skills you already have, you can make something really great. ^-^

Short post compared to that thing up there, but I've been looking for this and I finally found it again.

There are a series of building-block reference sheets for basic figure drawing that I've held on to for a while. They were originally meant to accompany a lecture, but I think the basic points regarding structure are still pretty evident. Also keep in mind the question-mark shape of the ear! They look complicated and weird, but if you start from that (some other artists go from a lower-case y inside a question mark, which I personally prefer) you'll have a lot less trouble.

@Runaway Bro

If more people did critiques the way you do, the world would be a better place for artists my friend. Even though this isn't my work, I still learnt something from that post and made me feel like actually getting into art.

That said, If this work seems like that of a 5th grader, then by that measure my artistic talents must compare to that of a 5 year old. ;_;

Long road ahead.

Again the best mindset to take is to know that your work can always be improved, and figuring out in how this is will greatly help you out in the long run.

Wow... this kind of makes me sad how everyone is being mean to each other about criticism, we all see things a different way I guess. Anyways thanks for the criticism, it helps out loads. I'm not a professional and I'm trying my hardest, art is what I want to do, and I understand the face on that picture is bad and just completely throws off human anatomy, and I thank you for that wonderful picture that tells of the human head. This image was created on a 3Ds, and it is very difficult to control the accuracy of where the line appears as to where you truly made the stroke. Again I appreciate the criticism and all these things will only make me stronger as an artist! Thanks everyone! :D

@needles, its all good, its all about making someone a better artist! :D

@Runaway Bro, I see where your heading, when I was drawing the image I was very unhappy with the head shape, which is why i splattered the drawing with all the other stuff, it is definitely one of my less favorite drawings. and what you said, "t's a long, hard road, and there's no doubt about that. The benefits are immense, though -- there's no describing the satisfaction of a piece coming together the way you envision it. " made me want to improve even more, I will most definitely take your criticism to heart. Thanks.

@TouchFuzzy: "Accurate criticism is the BEST THING an artist can receive. And whatever you may think of needles as a person, he is always top notch on his critique. Encouragement is good, too. But BLIND encouragement is not, it is damaging. People being told how great their work is when it isn't just PROMOTES BAD ART HABITS." this is very true, althought I think it is important that we all realize that every person sees things in a different way, to some people, these drawings are amazing, to others, they just don't see what the others see.

@Raynord Frost: Your's hurts the most... :( I promise you that many 5th graders could not be capable of drawing a face like that. But still, criticism is good. And yah, I'm positive that any art style will take people far, not just anime will block the road, I know how to do other art styles, its just that I like anime style just a tad bit more...

I posted another picture, you guys should critique it more, I tried to do a full body post picture now. I drew this way before you guys gave me all that advice, so don't be all "DID YOU LISTEN TO ANYTHING I JUST SAID!?"