Chess-Man on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/chess-man/art/Redraw-This-meme-503902636Chess-Man

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Redraw This meme

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This meme isn't my idea, but I decided to do it this way because the original template didn't agree with me well ^^;

Anyways, here you can see how my art changed in six years.

Old pic: Girl drawing practice
New pic: Girl drawing practice Redone
Image size
811x742px 217.99 KB
© 2014 - 2024 Chess-Man
Comments5
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JoeEngland's avatar
Hmm.  With respect, would you mind if I critiqued this?  I'd like to give you some honest criticism.

Your shading and coloring have definitely improved, and you've gained a greater knack for detail, but I think that your older style showed a better sense of proportion.  It just seems more "solid," not to mention a little more unique.

The newer version is more "manga," which isn't bad if that's the direction you want to go, but it looks like you've adopted certain quirks common in the genre which favor style over shape.  I don't think you're quite at the point where these can be accepted as stylistic flair rather than flaws.

For example, there's the "tiny head" syndrome.  I see this all the time in anime and manga.  Compare the size of her face to any other part of her body... her breasts, her hands, her neck, even her feet.  It's like the head of a small child is on an Amazon's frame.  The version on the left seems far more reasonable.

While the figure on the right seems far more bendable... her little head looks painfully bent behind her shoulder, her neck meets her spine at an extreme angle, her right leg is awkwardly flipping away to the side, her left leg might be elongated... she's downright rubbery, at least compared to her earlier incarnation.

And getting back to the face, closer examination reveals that it's a bit skewed.  Her left eye is higher than her right and her upper lip is larger than her bottom lip.  The pointed chin is drawn too close in to her neck, slanting it to her right.  And to be honest, I miss the nostrils.  It's not always easy to give a cartoon character nostrils, but the girl on the left... it works.

A good technique I'll suggest is to hold your work up to a mirror, or flip it against a light source, just anything that you can do to see it reversed.  Try it while you're drawing, you might start seeing things you never noticed.

And then there are things which aren't so technical, but which I'll comment on as a matter of taste from my personal perspective.  First impressions which you can take or leave, included only for the sake of complete and honest input.

To me the girl on the left looks down to Earth...  She strikes me as an affable adventurer, there's a light in her eyes which I find appealing.  Her pose is relaxed and stable, and she's iconic enough so that nothing about her seems all that questionable.  Her right leg's a little misproportioned, but I can't care very much.  It's an easy drawing to get along with.  Her modern self, however...

To be terribly frank, I'd describe her as generic.  She resembles a thousand other anime-esque fantasy girls I've seen contorting in exaggeratedly feminine poses.  Her winking sexuality comes off as trite.  That belt should fall off the instant she stands up straight, if not for that single loop attaching it to pants which also look like they should be collapsing.  And now that I think about it, those pants seem simplistic compared to her counterpart... I miss the seams and realistic pockets.

Again, I don't mean any disrespect, you've certainly got talent.  Feel free to ignore anything and everything I say.  But my advice from one artist to another would be to revisit your old style a bit and see if there's anything you've left behind that you might want to pick back up.