[090521]
In the last entry, I commented on how the ToV/PS3 illustration represented what I was typically capcable of putting out these days. I then made a reference to how I thought I could make it linearly better with an exponential amount of effort. Well, what I didn’t describe was the criteria for what I consider to be better or worse these days, and/or how I thought I could improve upon these pieces.
One big factor in overall quality is lineart quality. I still maintain that it is harder for a good paint job to make up for a poor lineart than it is for a good lineart to make up for a poor paint job. That being said, I’d say lineart is somewhere between 25% and 50% more important. I don’t really consider lineart something I can improve too much just by hacking away at it, though. If lineart is bad, I generally feel the need to completely redo it rather than making incremental changes here and there. It’s possible to improve lineart by cleaning stuff up, but this brings amount like next to nothing in terms of overall global improvement.
So much of what I feel like I can improve upon lies in the paint job, and almost all of that lies in colors. When I was drawing ToV/PS3, I actually based those speakers next to the television on some speakers I saw online. These were made of wood… and mine turned out to be grey. Because choosing colors is really time consuming. It’s hard to get shit right and I usually reuse colors from previous pieces. A lot of colors from C080930 went into ToV/PS3 with little or no adjustment. So getting off my lazy ass and actually getting new colors would add to the piece(s).
Furthermore. there’s a lighting element. The ToV/PS3 has a pretty bland, hard light source, as do a lot of my other faster illustrations. Something like C090129 on the other hand, has a couple, and takes a bit more care to do. Taking into account the various colors of the various sources leads to some nice effects, and ultimately I think accurate lighting contributes a lot to the entire quality magnitude. The mixing of the various light source colors usually adds a fair amount of complexity to the to end colors and a good amount of detail here and there.
Many of the pieces which have held the best artwork position on my DeviantART account should (if I recall correctly) be pieces that conform to these standards. I wish I knew which ones had that distinction, but my memory is not very good; I know like the current best piece, DMG, Yuki, and so on have all had what I considered at the time to be good linearts, comprehensive color choices, etc. Yuki had a strange painting methodology applied, and even though I tried to move away from it, I don’t think it ditracts much from the piece itself.
So there you go, another mediocre-lengthed entry. I’m actually typing this at the booth at Fanime, and J has not gotten his update up yet. Tried to draw a comic yesterday, but I just can’t draw at the booth. Ok, that’s all for now.
