Saturday 7 May 2011

HTDM art trade - Franz


My half of an art trade with =Pharan on the HowToDrawManga group at DeviantART. It's his character Franz from "Purelight" fighting an alien robot (which currently doesn't have a design so I made one up).
For his half he drew my Soulsnatchers character Alusius, which is pretty damn awesome (I was especially excited since no one else had drawn him before).

Since one of the goals of the HTDM trades is to practice drawing skills, I decided to go all out, especially since I haven't done many backgrounds/ environments as of late.

I also went for an action piece in an effort to continue improving anatomy and foreshortening with my figures.

There's definitely a lot that needs work in this piece, given the time to work on it.
I suppose the main things I've noticed are as follows.
I realise that Franz's arms look a little disjointed compared to the rest of his body, and I don't think the angled plane of the cape is helping. Trees and rock texture really need some work and I'm not terribly convinced by the sunlight effects or the cloud and foreground shadows either (they don't seem to mesh with the colouring style).

However, I definitely feel that I'm still carrying on with the improvement streak that I've had as of late and I'm certainly not as afraid to try new stuff as I was a couple of years ago. I think the weekly drawing stuff has helped a lot in that regard.

Anywho, critique away! Any helpful advice would also be very welcome. : )

DeviantART link