Hnil's Buncha Stuff

[Sinitron]

make mistakes, move on to the next drawing, ballpoints are good

markers are cool if you can sketch first, otherwise i wouldn't bother

[Hnilmik]

January 27th/28th, 2012

Tried finding designs for characters again, starting from the left. My efforts were embarrassing... Then I accidentally drew what looked to me like a rider on horseback trying to escape something. I got started on a monster's head, got an anxiety attack and drew the rest of it out to calm down, and liked what I got.

I think I got myself a design for, or at least the beginnings of, one of my antagonists. Not sure which arc, likely the second one, but the aesthetic for the antagonists are beginning to unify. The fire phantom has a wonky horse/croc skull. This fella has a badly foreshortened cat-like skull. Without the rest of the body (to determine WHICH character this one is), I'm already diggin' the tongue. Long tongues are fun to draw, especially more flexible and prehensile ones, but I always worried about them getting bitten somehow... And I think this is the solution. Perhaps a tongue spirit-thing wearing a skull?

In other news, I need a better way to learn volume to stop getting my planes(?) confused. I also need to heed the advice of "taking breaks to not grow accustomed to mistakes".

[Hnilmik]

pretty good im sure the industry could really use some more garbage anime doodles keep it up

Oh. You're a joke account.

Ok.

[rtil]

the sketches dont seem developed enough for me to make any remarks about the design. like they are half finished doodles of a concept. to form a character you really need to go through pages and pages of development, making minor tweaks here and there until you assemble something you can say is a final form. and even afte rthat it will mature as you paint and draw them in different emotions and movements

[Hnilmik]

Definitely got a point there. I'm a bigger fan of the design serving the character's function in the story (as much as it can, anyways), and the more I think about it, "tongue-skull" is not all there yet.

The closest character I could "assign" the beginnings of "tongue-skull's" design to would be the "feathered serpent" I tried to draw a long while back and didn't like any of the designs for... 'Cause snakes don't scare me. And cat-like skull with freakish prehensile tongue (+ potentially massive scale) aside, floating heads don't scare me either--RPG fodder, not "bosses". More drawings (and experimenting with color, at last) will be in order to hopefully eventually create the final form of the "gargantuan, secret-listening, invisibility abusing monster".

[rtil]

well it certainly sounds cool in concept :P

[Hnilmik]

A quick study of wolves/canines, as I said I'd do.

...I am broken. Why was drawing wolves harder than drawing horses. Usually, horses are THE hardest creatures to draw—If you can draw a proper horse, you can draw anything, so they say. And I've been drawing wolves my entire life (along with horses and other creatures, but still). Turns out I was likely drawing wolves/canines wrong the whole time, 'cause none of it felt familiar and if anything, I was drawing them like horses.

At the bottom, I tried applying some of the stuff I learned to how I usually draw wolves. It confirmed it; I did/do draw wolves like horses. Whoops. If horses are much easier for me to draw, why not make one of the protagonists of my story a horse instead of a white dog/wolf? Good question, since it'd give the main protagonist a method of transport for the majority of the quest... Unfortunately, due to consideration, it'd be a bad idea. Trust me, it'd ruin a huge chunk of the story/surprise.

Gonna do more wolf/canine studies after I get more work (especially voice work) done, since it's piling up. Did this to practice. Need to practice getting the structure down instead of guessing along too.

[rtil]

If you can draw a proper horse, you can draw anything, so they say.

who the hell says this

[Hnilmik]

An art student who took several animal drawing classes and paraphrased her professor, though I think it's more implied because horses have a reputation for being hard to draw. If you can draw something ridiculously difficult, it's assumed that anything easier would be a cake walk.

...Then again, people have said "if you can draw animals, you can draw anything" to me and I still suck at drawing humans, so...

[rtil]

i would disagree with both sentiments and say that the hardest thing to perfect is the human form, because humans are most familiar with every nuance of the body and the face.

[Hnilmik]

A thousand times YEEESSSS

I totally agree

[Hnilmik]

Keeping up my pattern of "head stuffs" and "study/learn stuffs", here's some "head stuffs", HOPEFULLY applying some of the study stuffs that sunk into my head, but I'm gonna need to study more humans period.



Every time I do something like this, I think "Man! It's the closest I've got to drawing a 'group' picture or something showing character interaction instead of a bunch of dudes floating in empty space!"

Then I remember that she has 2 forms and I'm technically just drawing her over and over and over. And spotting new problems/mistakes each time—Awkward/stiff pose and wonky hands/wrists, in this case. Tried to challenge myself drawing a pose I never did before, but wanted to try "once I knew what I was doing" (but can only know through trying).

I need to practice drawing more actions and get back into drawing other recurring characters that I used to draw a lot but forgot how to.

[Sinitron]

it's too damn messy to make out and pass judgement tbh

i don't like the angle of her mouth though

[Hnilmik]

Taking a step back, yeah, I'm not diggin' her mouth either. For the longest time I've been trying to figure out a way to be a teensy bit more subtle in the "I want to wreck you and I'm gonna enjoy it" department when it comes to her expressions. SMIRKSMIRKGRINGRINTEETHTEETHTEETH I'll figure it out eventually. Hopefully.

'Cause I voice act waaaayyy more than I draw. Right now I'm clocking 3-5 projects a day and I honest to goodness can't wait 'til I have more drawing time!

I'm not sure how many MLP fans there are on this forum, so I might enrage some people with this, but I auditioned for Mane6, which is essentially a fan-made MLP fighting game.

[Mane6: Fighting is Magic] Rarity Audition

Since I have friends who never really pinned me as the Rarity type, I also recorded some footage of me recording a chunk of the above lines. Note my distance away from the mic and room echo. I REALLY had to back up from the mic and turn the gain WAAAAYYY down to not destroy the audio quality while performing Rarity the only way I practiced.

OMG LIVE RECORDING - Mane6 Rarity Audition

...Then I got called back for another round of trying out. I got a whole mixed bag of critiques, ranging from "Your voice is too high/low" to "Your pacing was too fast", but the biggest thing I had to fix was showing more of Rarity's calmer side. I also DID get quite a bit of feedback of my audio quality because of the aforementioned room echo, peaking (DESPITE my lower-the-volume efforts), and a need for normalizing. So, I practiced Rarity in a way to hopefully slow down her pacing and NOT destroy the mic to show her calm, lady-like sophistication that she's known for. A friend helped me find lines, while another friend took care of mastering my audio.

[Mane6: Fighting is Magic] Rarity Audition Redo

And then, I got cast as Rarity in Mane6. Yay! I think over 34 people tried out (which is the number I saw when I submitted my first pass) and they also include some honorable mentions to give you an idea of what I was up against. Some people are still clinging to their respective favorite fan voice actresses, but hey, if Rarity's "Art of the Dress" song taught everyone anything, you can't please everypony!

http://www.mane6.com/2012/02/rarity-va-chosen.html

From a professional standpoint, voice-matching IS a marketable skill, but more for celebrity impersonations than character impressions (ex: Hollywood stars being unavailable to voice their character for toys and video games). It's a small market to boot, so while voice-matching anime/video game/cartoon characters is all kinds of awesome on the fan front, the opportunity to do so on the professional end doesn't happen too often.

As a bonus, me voice matching Fluttershy and Ed from Cowboy Bebop.

Fluttershy Approval

Gemini Rue - Cowboy Bebop cameos

Lucy Van Pelt and Nanako are floating out there too somewhere in the wild, wild web. The only real celebrity voice-matching I'd have a chance of doing, based on assessment of range, would be Ellen Degeneres/FINDING NEMO!Dory. I'd need to practice her mannerisms to confirm this though.

And that's my thingy on voice matching!

[rtil]

nice job on the ed voice. cant say much about the rarity one cuz i havent seen enough to really know what she sounds like. but congrats anyway

[naturally]

the ed and rarity ones are pretty impressive.

[sev]

nice job on the ed voice. cant say much about the rarity one cuz i havent seen enough to really know what she sounds like. but congrats anyway

agreed, the faye voice was also ok too. the spike and especially jet were kind of abysmal :[

[ZennyPLUS]

I like your voice acting insulation box, aren't those things just best homemade contraption ever?

[Hnilmik]

That box is supposed to take care of the room echo, which works for other roles where I'm close enough to the mic, but not the first Rarity pass!



February 14-16th, 2012

So um... Humans aren't my comfort zone. Especially faces. To me, unless I'm taking my time to look at them, humans are the most BORING thing to draw. Ever. They start looking the same and crap like that. Fortunately(?), I have a huge inspiration folder on my computer where I save pictures of people who don't look as boring to reference.

Every once in a while, especially closer to the bottom, I start trying to see how I can incorporate what I'm learning into my style/how I usually draw people. It's funny whenever I revisit the way I used to draw people and see how... Wrong it looks. And frustrating, since I see a whole lot of bad habits I'm gonna have a tough time unlearning, especially while redrawing some of my characters.

I'm still having the toughest time figuring out the structure of the faces themselves, so I'm probably gonna try to PROPERLY study blocks and cylinders creating a human form and hope it sticks.

[lenko]

your humans have improved since i last saw them, and all you really have to do is study them like you did with your animals

http://www.mediafire.com/?ngyieunhmnn i dunno if you already have this, but it helps a LOT with how the head is structured together and provides a lot of rules/tricks for making them have a solid foundation