Armory of a Heretic: Think it’s over? It’s just beginning!

[Heretic]

You know what, I’m trying something new with this. It’s not really a technique so much as a personal approach. I’m trying not to let my pride get in the way. So rather than defending or justifying what I have drawn, I’m taking people’s advice and changing it.

With that in mind, I’ve moved her mouth and nose up, then shrank her jaw line to make it less long as Strike Zero mentioned. Then I moved the whole head down which helps fix the look of her neck being too long. It also has made her eyes look bigger.

Other alterations, I’m changing the look of her boots a bit, as well as redrawing the long hair braid in order to keep it more in the style seen in Nanoha. Most notably from the character of Vita. At the moment I’m not sure if I want to risk making her head larger.

Here’s the changes so far, Link

[Strike Zero]

Very cool--it looks better already!

Any plans for a colored version? If so, I'll be eagerly awaiting its arrival.

[Heretic]

So I’ve set my Darkness Bound character designs aside since I’ve applied to college for a Theatre Production program. I have to show that I am creative so I’ve got a new sketchbook for the New Year and I’ve got one sketch nearly ready for photoshop. But first I’m going to see if anyone here can spot any glaring mistakes so I can correct them first.

Space Captain Hero WIP
I’m having some issues with the unfinished arm and I may just redraw it to get the pose I’m after.

[Seraphic]

Howdy, sir. Sorry to be late to comment. I've been fighting with a few computer issues. T_T I hope this isn't coming too late.

His proportions seem pretty much correct, though his feet may be too short. His left foot is not lined up properly with the rest of his leg. It's a difficult angle, but go ahead and try the foot facing forward instead of facing right.

Those ball joints on the elbows are a little too circular, and kind of make it impossible for him to have actual elbows. Then again, he might have mechanical arms or something like that. For the kind of pose I think you're going for, I think his left hand is wrong. The knuckles should be pressing against the hip, and shouldn't be visible the way they are now. You might be able to cheese a fix by making him hold something instead. Otherwise, you might need to redraw this hand, or even move his arm further out because the hand looks like it is resting on his front instead of on his hip. Yeah, you probably need to redraw the right arm also because it is not far out enough to the side.

Did you give him earphones because you were avoiding his actual ears?

This is actually a pretty decent drawing, but you asked me to point out fixes, so I did what you asked. It looks like you're getting better with each try, so no sense in stopping now, right? =)

[Heretic]

Okay, making a second attempt at Rachael Vester from my Darkness Bound Nanoha Fan fic.

Since most of my problems seem to arise in the areas of proportions and positioning. I think it’s time I took this step by step. This is the rough wireframe, it’s meant to give the basic form and pose. WIP

She’s meant to be flying, as if suddenly pushed back and holding her sword in her right hand. I know there’s something wrong with her arms but my mind can’t decide exactly what that is. I’d like some outside opinions before I take this to the next step.

[Seraphic]

Her shoulders are set too close together, which is the main thing. The arms are likely too thin, but just a slight adjustment will fix that. Be VERY careful with those fists, or they'll end up too small again. Just compare your own fist to your forearm and you'll know. You'll likely want to make those thighs slightly longer. I think VR says the knees should go exactly halfway down a leg's length.

A quick reminder to everyone that Rachael is supposed to be a kid, correct?
Pretty fast response, hm? =)

[Heretic]

A quick reminder to everyone that Rachael is supposed to be a kid, correct?

That is correct, for now. I have plans for a more adult Rachael but I’ll hold off on starting that artwork until the story starts to near that point.

I’m going to move her left shoulder farther out from her center and redraw the arm, then thicken up her right. I’m sure you might be able to tell that I took some of your advice from you comments on my last attempt, such as making her chin rounder and more childlike.

Thank you for your swiftness. If you stick around a little longer you might be able to see how the changes turn out.

Edit:
Here it is

[Seraphic]

Good work on this fix. The shoulders look a lot more natural. I know her coat will be covering her arms, but be careful about the round shapes you use to construct them. It might look like this little girl has bulging biceps. =p I'm not sure if you caught it before (I have a bad habit of editing/rereading my posts at least 7 times each), but I still recommend that you lengthen her thighs some. It's hard to say how much; you'll just have to eyeball it. Maybe end her thighs halfway down to where the kneecaps are right now, and lower the kneecaps/shins accordingly. Also, be cautious not to make her ankles too thin. I know she's a kid, but she shouldn't be a twig, either.

That was Strike Zero advising you on faces, I think. I shouldn't steal credit for that. You don't have to post up another wire-frame fix if you are doing another adjustment, but if you're going about this as carefully as you can, then I'm sure there's no problem in us accomodating you. I wish we had better people consulting you than myself. I'm probably the last person on the forum that should be giving art lessons, but it's hard to motivate people around here to help each other out.

[Strike Zero]

That was Strike Zero advising you on faces, I think.

That was indeed me, and I must say you've made a great improvement over the first attempt.

That's not to say it's not without flaws though. I won't nit-pick over the little details this time around (having completed a life-drawing class this year, I could go on and on about body proportion until you hated me for it). What I am going to address is a flaw that seems to stand out above all else:

She’s meant to be flying, as if suddenly pushed back and holding her sword in her right hand.

If that's supposed to be the case, then the pose you've drawn her in makes her seem far, far too stiff. As it is, she appears as though he's just standing/floating in place while staring down her opponent. If indeed she's supposed to be recovering from being blown back from a deadlock or something similar, it needs to be more apparent that she is actually attempting to recover. Her body posture needs to be more animated. It needs to depict motion.

Examples of how to do this: Put the legs at more of a drastic angle at the hips and bend them a little more at the knees. Spread her arms out a more -- she'd look as though she's trying to maintain balance. Have her leaning forward just slightly -- that can be accomplished by curling the torso and lowering the head down to the shoulders.

Can you see what I'm getting at? Maybe Seraphic can help me out a little...

[Heretic]

That was Strike Zero advising you on faces, I think.

That was indeed me

Serves me right for not reading back through my own thread…

I’m going to ponder for a while just what adjustments I should make and see if anything comes to me later tonight.

[Seraphic]

D:
Like I said, I'm probably not a reliable consultant. I haven't taken any formal classes (worth mentioning) so everything I know is self taught. That means everything I say is liable to have flaws, and I'll have a hard time articulating my understanding into words.

I wasn't going to bring up posture since this is something I'm still trying to get straight myself, but now Strike has obliged me. He IS correct about her posture not being quite right for what I think you are going for, Heretic. As it is, I think she might be drawn in the moment where she is first knocked back. I think Strike is trying to describe when Rachael is trying to recover from the blow.

My understanding of balance comes only from my understanding of physics and (an admittedly superficial) knowledge of martial arts, so please forgive me if any weird ideas come up. If Rachael is being knocked backward, she would naturally recover from this by trying to balance forward. That's why Strike advised to learn her head and torso forward.

I'm going to suggest that Rachael wants to lower her center of balance. If her center is too high, she's going to tumble backward as soon as her feet manage to stop her. To accomplish this, she needs to bend her knees and lower herself that way. Her feet need to be spread out to distribute her weight evenly. (Yes this still applies if you are airborne.) Her arms would also need to be spread out sideways for better balance, and maybe set behind her slightly to offset the fact her torso is leaning forward.

What Strike is trying to get you to depict is what sort of motion Rachael is in, but also what motion she wants to make. This is what determines her posture and center of balance. If you're being blown backward, you stop yourself by moving forward. To move forward, you move your center of balance forward. For strong balance (which you'll need during a recovery) you lower your center. It helps a lot to think about how YOU would naturally act in these situations. It's normally not something that people consciously think about, but they do it naturally, so try to observe this behavior in yourself. How would you move in that situation? What is your posture like?

I don't have a lot of good examples of posture/balance since I haven't done a specific study of it yet, but I guess the best example I have is this. Flawed, I'm sure, (and DON'T GIVE RACHAEL MOBILE SUIT PROPORTIONS) but it gives me something visual to discuss.

The Leo-G is making a high speed "hook-slash" attack here, similar to a stab, so his momentum is extreme in the forward direction. His head and torso are leaned very far forward, and the right arm is extended as far as possible. To offset that, the left leg and arm are pulled backward for better balance. The right knee is pulled forward and close to the body to lower the center of balance, and the center actually occurs somewhere underneath the Leo's head, I think. The main limb he'll use to control his weight is the right leg, since it's the closest to the center. I'm not sure if any of that makes sense, but are you getting a feel for it?

I'm thinking either Crash or VR would be better help here, or possibly Strike since he's just finished that class. VR is constantly fiddling with proportion and posture, and his work is consistently good. Crash never states that he practices this literally, but his drawings use a lot of very dynamic posture, so he can probably give a few pointers on balance and stuff. You seem to know what you're talking about, Strike. How about looking at my stuff some? ^_^;

[Heretic]

Okay, did this a few nights ago but haven’t gotten around to posting it up.

WIP again

Repositioned her left arm so that it’s angling back a bit and changed the set of her legs. I think it gives more the impression that she’s either just come to a stop in mid air (She’s a sorceress, yes she can do that) or that she’s just rebounded and is about to charge forward with a lateral slash or something. I like this positioning much more and I’ll likely not change it unless someone points out a glaring flaw.

It should be noted that she doesn’t get any formal sword training until she’s older so swinging the thing haphazardly is common for her.

I’ve also added the details for her hair and the shape for her eyes. I think it helps give more of an impression of where she’s looking and of her mood.

Same as always, what are people’s thoughts?

[Seraphic]

We've been waiting! Jeez.

This one's looking much better! Rachael sure isn't very girly, is she? Does she grow more womanly qualities as she ages, or will she still be rough and mean then? =p

When you get to drawing in her left hand, have the fingers fanning out, with the palm facing back. (Kinda like she might be trying to use her hand like an air brake or something. You would make the same kind of posture if you were leaning back against a wall.) I would also change how she's holding her left arm from how it is now, but it's a little difficult for me to describe. Like, her elbow should be out further, so it should looks like her upper arm in horizontal. And if this arm is trying to balance, the hand should be on the same level as her center of balance, so the forearm is basically pointing down or something. With the fanning hand, of course.

I can tell you're on the right path in how you're posing the legs, but something doesn't seem correct. People's legs don't actually just swing in the same direction like that. The hind leg is fine. It's the forward leg that's at an improper angle. And her feet should be on a bit of an even plane. You could say, you should try to change the angle so that it looks like her foot is going a bit behind her instead of just swinging to the side like it is now. God, I hope you are good at thinking in three dimensions.

I have no idea why I did not notice before, but this is actually very close to the posture we are trying to describe. (I would have just posted the lineart instead, but the whiteness of it was burning my eyes for some reason.) Here, the Red Feng has a strong forward balance and a low center of gravity. The body and legs are pretty much in the posture you are looking for. Notice how both Rachael and Feng have their hind leg the same. Notice how Feng's forward leg is at a different angle than the other. I know the swords are obscuring it a bit, but you should be able to see what kind of angle the knee and foot are in. Basically, the head, torso, and legs are right, and if you just change the arms from how they are now, it'd be the perfect posture you're looking for, Heretic.

Be careful about how you place the sword. I can already tell by the line you've drawn that the sword is resting on the heel of her palm in stead of in the middle. Watch out for that kind of stuff. I constantly mess up handheld items, too. It gets annoying, especially because when you fix it, you have to redraw all the stuff that used to be overlapped.

Heretic, I have to ask if any of this is helpful at all? Are these explanations helping or making sense? Are we saying things that are obvious to you already, or is it all stuff that doesn't mean anything to you? I can tell by your changes that you can pretty much tell what we're trying to say. I'm just wondering if these explanations are written well enough for people to make use of them.

Anyway, happy sketching. I'm going back to watching these GvsG videos, haha. And by the way, how's that other project** going, the one you talked about in PM?

[Heretic]

Taking a brake from character stuff to do some engine work on my pride and joy Star Ship. I probably got a little over detailed on this one, my computer was starting to twitch at me when I put these together in sketch up.

First, an up close look at one of the Fusion Engine assemblies, or “Burner” The alternating blue-ish green and red components are the super conducting magnets. It’s a little hard to see but there is a second larger coil assembly around the twelve inner coils. The black holes at the far end are the outside ends of the mass injector system. (I’ll explain how all this works in a second) The dark blue fin things in the foreground are the first set of magnetic “Rudders” that help to both focus the thrust and provide some steering.

Here’s pulled back a bit to show all four of the engine Burners As you can see each is the same with twin injector ports and its own set of horizontal rudders. You can also see a bit of the second set of vertical rudders taking shape. The point of this configuration is so that Burners can be shut down for maintenance or for low powered cursing while the others are operational.

Now, since I just ranted on about making things reasonable, I suppose I should explain the basics of this ship’s “sub-light” propulsion. (I put sub-light in quotations because trying to explain the background information for Hyperspace travel would take me more time than I feel like spending on it tonight.)

The fusion engine. As the name implies, it uses nuclear fusion modeled after the process found in a star. Instead of gravity crushing hydrogen, helium 3, and other gasses, this engine uses super conducting magnetic coils to make a powerful magnetic field. Some of the power is generated from recycled heat produced from the engine, the rest is supplied by the internal fusion reactors which are capable of higher output since they are dedicated to power output instead of thrust.

Simple, easy, no different from the basic theory. Where this engine gets a little more unique is what happens within the burner. Instead of just magnetically charging gasses, compressing them and spiting them out the back end, this engine retains most of the Hydrogen and Helium 3 within the burner. The magnetic field compresses these gasses into a core that is essentially an artificial micro-star. This allows almost any matter to be used as “Fuel.” I’ll explain. Matter-- usually gasses collected from planets, comets or what have you-- is stored in internal tanks, then fed into the injector assembly where it is magnetically stripped of electrons, broken down into base elements and forced into the active core inside the burner. Once inside the burner, the core superheats and super charges the elements, sometimes fusing them into heaver elements then through fine manipulation of the magnetic field, it is ejected at high speed to provide thrust. Because of this system, a ship’s engines can be refuelled with nearly any matter, heaver gasses like argon are preferable but when desperate raw asteroid material can be broken down in the injectors and used for fuel. As for the hydrogen/helium mix needed for the core, even though most is contained, some of this material is lost when a ship is accelerating thus it is necessary to dock at a Helium 3 refuelling station from time to time. Fuel efficiency is contingent on the size of ship. Smaller ships can go farther without needing to stop at refuelling stations, larger capital ships might need to refuel constantly.

The ship I am working on is a destroyer, on the smaller end of capital ships. Its fuel efficiency is roughly in the middle of the scale. I’ve never been the best with the number crunching so I’m not inclined to do any estimates right now.