Oh - one more random note...

[telophase]

I spent the first few hours of today's art endeavors generating potential poses. I did this by going through an approximate metric buttload of Mello fanart that I got from keelieinblack and every time I found one whose pose I kinda liked, I'd flip to Photoshop and sketch it. Now, obviously, I don't want to copy anyone's pose exactly - not to mention somethng that's perfect for Mello would not necessarily look good for someone else. But I happen to know that as I work and rework a sketch, it moves around and things pop up. So once I got the basic proportions down, I'd stop looking at the fanart and as I refined, my pose would end up looking nothing like the original. This worked so much better than my usual method of sitting around and staring at the screen when trying to come up with poses that I think I'll incorporate it into my artistic vocabulary from here on out.

I'm going to attempt to do a bunch more between now and the con. They were an awesome warmup, and are a good reason why today's pics turned out so well, plus I cna print them out and bring them to the con to use as pose reference.

Oh - if you're interested, I sketched by doing something that ursulav mentioned she did when sketching - no erasing. You start with sribbling in the basic shapes with a color, getting as messy as you want, and then you hold down the ALT key, which turns your cursor into a paint dropper in Photoshop, pick up white, and work back in. Then you pick up the color and work in, and so on, so your pictures is messy and scribbly and has lots of little stray colored pixels lying around when you're done. :) Much better than erasing non-perfect lines: it frees you up to not worry about perfection and jsut be messy. And a lot of your picture is formed by using the white to work into negative space, so you often have a better 3D feel to it.

Anyway, Photoshop can make a contact sheet out of files in a folder, so I told it to make one of all the poses I did. You'll recognize two of them from the pics I posted earlier. There's some that didn't work and ended up the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You'll also note that while a few started suggesting characters to me, and I went with that, most of them didn't, so they're currently Generic Bald Guy, and this it looks like I have a folder full of Rude from Final Fantasy VII and that bald kid from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

ETA: Feel free to suggest characters for the various poses. :D Won't gurantee I'll use 'em, but any little bit of inspiration helps at this point.






And now I really am going to bed.

Comments

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

(actually, most of the bald ones make me think of Ikkaku, because of the lighter build XD)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, you know all them bald guys look alike.



(I was going to add "much like Asians" but the idea that maybe someone not on my friendslist would happen on this and not see the sarcasm kinda wigs me out...)

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Oh boy. Now I'm going to have to flip back through the folder and see if I can figure out which piece inspired which pose, like a cracked-out fanart matching game.

[has no life]

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Muahahahahaha! For the record, I was looking through the folders in the Mello folder starting from the bottom, as sorted alphabetically, up. :D

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

i never understood how you could "copy" someone's pose

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Doing it exactly, or with minor variations, such that someone who's familiar with the original work spots it immediately. :) You can't copyright a pose, but it gives the impression that you're lazy. Luckily, if I stop looking at the original after the base sketch is loosely in, it'll change normally as I refine it.

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

yeh yeh, but i mean, hrm, i dunno, thats like stealing a sentence. or a variation of a sigh. i just always found it funny when someone says, "zomg they stole my pose" as if they had been around when human were invented (HA!) and made it up.

♥ your work lately has been really nice, i haven't had a chance to say much, but its really good :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D Thank you!

croaky got accused by fanpoodles a year or two back of stealing a pose from someone's artwork that, IIRC, she'd never seen before. People are stoopid.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* Oh - the other reason to alter whatever pose you're stealing inspired by - for some reason, unless you're an awesome genius, yours always looks not quite as good or as dynamic as the original, especially in comparison. But if you change it, yours looks just as dynamic. :D

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

hahah see that makes the most sense of everything.even if yours was as good, you'd still feel it pales in comparison because there is something you replicated it from.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D For me, and for many artists, any refinement or copying takes away from the feel of the original - if you look at the Jin thumbnail above and then compare it to the inks, you can see where there's an appealing roughness and dynamic sense in the pink roughs that's completely missing from the inks. :D

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

man, art is hard. hahaha.

with that note, since i was on my writing journal (swimminginblood) i added you there, so if you ever ever ever ever ever have NOTHING to do and you're SO BORED

you can read. haha.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest Ikkaku as well. With a bit of a hair-fan you could do Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi as well. Renji's over the shoulder pose looks hawt. (always loved that pose)

My artistic endevours last night ended in frustrated stabbings and pacing around the house.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks. :)

I think these three days were the most productive three days in a row I've had in a *very* long time. And last week I had one of those 'burst into tears of rage and frustration because nothing is turning out good and you're convinced you'll never, ever draw a human figure that doesn't look seriously deformed again' days.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Head on hand (in first row) could be Shikamaru. The one you have labeled "Renji" could be Manji.

[seajules]

Sitting glaring is such a Sanzo pose. Stand and twist looks like Aya to me (Fujimiya Aya, for clarity), but I don't know how well Weiss art would sell these days. I could see Midou Ban doing standing pointing or sidelong glare (I could also see Kurosaki Hisoka doing that last). Sitting sidelong would work for Amano Ginji.

Head on hand could make a lovely bored!Konzen pose.

That's all I got, except I really love the sense of movement in all of these.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

*randomly comes back to this post*

The pointing looks like a very Gojyo or Goku pose to me while 'sitting sidelong' could well be a Hakkai.

Screaming and 'sidelong glare' could both be Ichigo, or could work for another shonen character like Inuyasha.

I had ideas for some of the others and now have no idea where they went. So...uhh...nevermind.