A bit late on this critique, but above are Kyndra’s hand and arm drawings for this week’s assignment. Kyndra’s drawings are showing strong volume and the hands are expressive and give us a clear sense of the emotional state of the character. My visual notes are written in green, up above. When drawing the closed hand (aka fist), my suggestion to Kyndra would be to avoid parallel lines for the fingers. The other minor suggestion is to watch the finger sizes – the middle finger is usually the largest finger on a person. (Think of the fingers together as a wedge-shape).

All in all, Kyndra’s work is really shaping up. She notes that she used references to inform her design, and that really does show in her illustrations. Great work, Kyndra!

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• The Mentor Experiment: Week 4: Kyndra’s Critique
• Attitude Poses: Kyndra’s Critique
• Assignment 2 Critique: Kyndra
• Mentor Experiment: Head Design
• Mentor Experiment: Week 3: Barry’s Critique

The prints below will be exclusively available at Megacon in Orlando, FL two weeks from now. If you’d like to commission me to make a custom print for you, I’m open for business! Custom prints, depending upon the size, take up to two weeks for me to produce. Multiple sizes are available. (…and you can see the process work along with a few other surprises, too.)

As always, thanks for your support!

-Krishna

Megacon, the largest comics convention in Orlando, Florida, is but a mere two weeks from today, and I’m scrambling to make some new prints. I’ve sketched a few ideas out on my Tumblr page – maybe you can help me decide which ones are worth inking and coloring. There’s a bit of something for everyone, including Dr. Who, Mario, Superman, Batgirl, and more. Take a look and share your feedback. Thanks!

-Krishna

This week, we’re going to look at drawing hands. Hands are incredibly expressive and add a great deal to a character’s pose and attitude. Hands can be complicated to draw without an understanding of the underlying forms that make it up. The palm can be thought of as a wedge. The fingers can each be thought of as a set of tapered cylinders.
The knuckles of the fingers, when looking at the hand face up or down, form an arch. In the male hand, the knuckles are usually emphasized. In the female hand, the knuckles are usually de-emphasized to heighten femininity.

The arm itself has three points of articulation: the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist. To make the arms look volumetric, I consider the tapered cylinders to have a curved side and a straight side. Playing curves against straights makes the arm have depth.

Study the visual notes and practice drawing hands by breaking them down into simplified forms. You’ve got two great references right in front of you: your own hands!

The assignment this week is to draw a total of 10 expressive arms. You can represent the torso, but the focus should be on the arms and hands. The arms can be male or female – ideally draw 5 male versions and 5 female versions.

Apprentices: Don’t hesitate if you have any questions! Good luck!

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• Week 2: Understanding the Torso with the help of a Flour Sack
• Mentor Experiment: Oskar van Velden Critique
• Assignment 2 Critique: Kyndra
• Mentor Experiment: Head Design
• Character Design Tip: The Power of the Symmetry Y Tool

My visual notes for Barry’s critique are in the drawing below. Click to embiggen.

Barry is showing the horizontal axis line in his drawings, which is good – but the eyes and nose need to rest on the horizontal axis line. In the case of a long nose, the stem of the nose should originate from the intersection of the horizontal and vertical axis lines. All of Barry’s characters are confined to a simple circular / elliptical shape. This is a good starting point, but additional tweaks are needed for the characters to exhibit a clearer silhouette. Try moving the horizontal axis line (the eye line) up to the top of the head or towards the bottom. Exaggerate the position of the eyebrows to make the character’s expression more readable.

Noses are just as unique as fingerprints – take a closer look at the nose and break it down into a cylindrical shape – this will give the nose form and anchor it better on the character’s face. Eyes are the windows into our soul – and they should be expressive and unique as the character itself. Barry’s using the same eye shape for all his characters; my suggestion would be to experiment with different eye shapes and their placement on the horizontal axis line. Also, ears in a 3/4 view should be further back on the character’s head.

Chins and cheeks make the character more visually interesting, and the best part is, they can be built right ontop of the round shape Barry is using. Here are three characters from Barry’s submission that I’ve provided additional notes on.

More practice and study in head construction is needed, but I am confident Barry will get there. Keep it up, Barry!!

-Krishna

Today we’ll look at Kyndra’s submission for the week. She did a really nice job with this exercise, starting off with exploring volumetric forms on the top.
Next, she varied the eye-line height, keeping the male character’s features the same. I really like the variety in her head designs – particularly when constrained
to using the same shape.

The one bit of advice I’d suggest is to keep the character’s eyes resting on the eyeline. In a few of her drawings (4th row), we can see the foreshortened eye a little lower than the eye that’s closest to us. All in all, Kyndra did a great job!

How did you do?

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• Mentor Experiment: Week 5: Kyndra’s Critique: Hand and Arm Studies
• Mentor Experiment: Head Design
• Assignment 2 Critique: Kyndra
• Attitude Poses: Kyndra’s Critique
• Mentor Experiment: Week 3: Barry’s Critique

This week we’ll look at heads. Heads come in all shapes and sizes, it’s up to us to find a method to break the shape down into a basic form. Start with a primitive volumetric form, like a sphere, oval, or even a flour sack. Remember that the head is not flat – it has volume!

Once you have drawn the volumetric form, the next task is to establish the character’s eye line. In the top row below, you’ll see that event though the head shape and features are all the same, by establishing the eye line (horizontal axis) at different levels, we can get characters that look similar, yet different.

Volumetric surfaces have contours (lines) that follow the form. It’s important that you place the eyes on the eye line, but also adhere to making sure the eyes, nose and mouth follow the form of the head.

This week’s task is fairly straight-forward:

1) Draw 5 heads with different volumetric forms. Establish the contour lines for each form.

2) Draw 5 heads using the same volumetric form, but vary the eye line. Keep all the features identical.

3) Take the same volumetric form from #2 and now develop 5 distinct characters (young, old, male, female, anthropomorphic, etc.)

Good luck! And feel free to share your progress by way of a link in the comments below.

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• The Mentor Experiment: Week 4: Kyndra’s Critique
• Assignment 2 Critique: Barry
• Mentor Experiment: Week 3: Barry’s Critique
• The Mentor Experiment: Week 5: Arms and Hands!
• Mentor Experiment: Body Proportions

(Click the image above to embiggen.)

The Mentor Experiment critique continues – are you keeping up?

Today I’m analyzing Kyndra’s character designs. Overall, she did a terrific job! Let’s dive in, shall we?

1. Her mad scientist character is a blend of sharp and smooth lines – my suggestion – use sharper angles for the arms if you’re playing up his ‘evilness’, or just go with rounded shapes / forms if he’s the nonthreatening, bumbling type. I really like how Kyndra lowered the horizontal eye line to emphasize the character’s braininess.

2. Her slender, evil queen design is solid – very clear silhouette – I really like this one.

3. The clumsy pirate – I like the pose and the overlap of his shoulder against his head. My suggestion to enhance this pose would be to bend the back a bit more – push the foreshortening of the arm closest to us, and to move the other hand back, to make the silhouette read better.

4. The shrewd / cunning but heavyset police officer. Love the pose on this – she nailed it! Minor suggestion – have a gap between the upper arm and the chin to make
the silhouette read even clearer.

5. Love the lazy cowboy figure. Rounded shapes show that he’s really not a threat – the hat over his eyes gives us a sense that he’s not particularly sharp, and his pose suggests laziness.

All in all, great work!!

-Krishna

Above are my visual notes for Barry’s third assignment, focusing on body proportions. I think Barry did a solid job making the silhouettes for the characters read, by incorporating props to make the characters identifiable. In my notes, I have included some suggestions on exaggerating body proportions.

To convey intelligent characters, try lowering the horizontal axis line on the head, allowing more room for the “brain bucket”. To convey unintelligent characters, move that horizontal axis line closer to the top of the character’s head. With slender or tall characters, try making the legs long, or alternatively make the body and legs both long, with a slender (thin) face to compliment the overall figure.

For muscle bound characters, my suggestion would be to really place a visual emphasis on the chest and arms, making the other elements (head, legs, etc) smaller. You can exaggerate one part of a character’s anatomy to draw attention to their dominant trait, whether its intelligence or strength. How did you do on these exercises? Questions? Concerns?

Sound off in the comments below.

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• Mentor Experiment: Body Proportions
• Assignment 2 Critique: Kyndra
• Mentor Experiment: Oskar van Velden Critique
• Attitude Poses: Kyndra’s Critique
• Mentor Experiment: Head Design

The full comic is now available on the Other World Computing blog. As always, I’m very grateful for Other World Computing‘s sponsorship. They make great hardware products (and have been since they started way back in 1988!) and I’m honored to have them as a sponsor.

-Krishna