W32Coravint's Attempts at Art [NEW PIECE 20170901]

since no one posted after your previous until the 4th I'll go ahead and claim this as well! :0

 

Claiming my 10k for the Vocalotrainer art! A little explanation:

The android trainer was drawn with very close reference to a MMD model, while literally everything else was done without much reference beyond the Sugimori official art. As for each individual Pokemon:

Joltik was initially there as part of the original design, so that's why it looked slightly better. Porygon-Z wasn't planned to be in the picture until I realized just Miki and the Joltik would be a little sparse. (also I didn't use GIMP but I think MediBang Paint has an oval tool so you're not too far off there) Flareon was kind of a rushed addition.

 

Heyo coravint, I can clearly see that you have taken a reprise to your previous work! I think putting some sort of direction and style into your work has proved a benefit. It is *miles* better than your previous works! There is a great variety of values, you are intelligently playing with text, and I think the whole design fits together as a working whole! I think you should work more in this style as you clearly have more confidence working in this reduced palette and simpler, crisp shapes!

Overall Design + Balance:

In the previous work I was a little upset about that there was an awkward arrangement of your subjects, but in this one, I don't see that at all! You're clearly playing with 1 major object on one side and a bunch of smaller, duller objects on the other. I'm a little bothered how everything is split down the middle, but that is minor. Things split along a horizontal or vertical lines tend to be a bit more static. I think you would benefit greatly from playing around with more diagonals in the future! But otherwise there is a lot of movement in the decorations and in the tingy figures swarming that sun.

Objects + Variety:

While I like there is a lot of things going on, as I can see most of the shapes were cookie-cutter, copy paste. Sometimes it might be hard to work in individual quirks into this style as it demands things are so clean cut, but I do think introducing some variety of the forms and figures would take this work to the next level. Perhaps have differing sizes of each baltoy, or have them each wearing something different. Perhaps changing the star shapes in the background. Maybe have some look like stars or others look like seven-sided, others being four etc., rather than keeping everything at a very standard 5. The stars are fun and all and add an extra element to make it sing.

Granted, though this style is helping you plan out how to compose your design. I do think that while the little figures lack individuality, it works as a whole. You have placed all of the little stars in a way that it adds a bit of movement in the composition. I think when working individually on each subject, it can be easy to lose track of the artwork as a whole, but I think in case of this design you had it in mind.

The Big Baltoy:

Baltoy is kind of an odd pokemon; it is one of the pokemon based off inanimate objects as a little clay psychic golem thing found in Hoenn's desert but I do think it is an interesting design. It is simply composed--with only three major sections, two which are spherical. The arms don't quite line up to be of even length, but they're bending.

I'm not really sure what the six circles over its body is supposed to represent, perhaps its markings? Perhaps he is the king Baltoy? I'm not really sure. But in the case of this drawing not knowing is better than knowing what it is. It adds an air of mystery.

Text:

Compared from your previous work, I think your use of text within this drawing is much better considered than in your previous work when you were just copying the design style of that album. My only real qualm is that your Japanese text is strangely sketchy while you have a clear font in your English text. I think there programs that converts english text into Japanese? I would recommend that you research ways to type in Japanese text on the computer. I'm sure someone has made an extension for that in GIMP.

I do find it really creative to incorporate your signature into its design! Nice, classy touch!

This clearly demonstrates that this design is a work of love and labor! There is a good balance of forms with clear crisp shapes, but I do think some of them can be a bit too cookie-cutter. This almost wants me to downgrade me one 1 rank becuase it is difficult to make a complex level work using only flat objects in grayscale, BUT I love your use of text in your design, as it works so well with it. I would definitely work on in your next work to bring out some variety. Nevertheless, I think the overall quality merits a hard award. I was really torn between hard and complex which means that I can only award you 15k. You can edit in more individuality and variety if you really want that extra 10k. For now, however, I can award you 15k 60/55.

 

On the Japanese text being sketchy: I took the designs of the Japanese text directly from the PV for バケモノダンスフロア (the song on which this piece is based on). I'm not quite used to Inkscape, so I made the katakana in GIMP and converted them to vector in Inkscape. The ン in particular parallels the ノ in the original, which appears more like a brush stroke.

Anyway, claiming my 15k!

 

Here's another cash attempt. This one will actually feature in a story, along with the document.

Anomaly E.352

E.352 constructing E.352.b.13 out of fallen twigs.
Image was reconstructed manually by Agent Sigmathetical
from a photograph taken on █████ Route ███.
(Click for enlarged picture.)

E.352 is an incorporeal being taking the form of a Mareep that manifests at random locations in order to construct instances of E.352.b, which are geometrical symbols made of primitive materials
[Please enter credentials to view remaining section of document]
​

​

DISCLAIMER: may not actually feature in a story

 

clams

 

'Eyo Coravint! I know you've talked a lot about the fanfics you write and it is pretty interesting that you're sharing it with us! I do think your artwork, however, is a little simpler than some of the other art you submitted. Generally speaking, your work is very straight forward and when seen in a vacuum I see a mareep hanging out in a tree in a meadow. What's odd, however, is the pentagram-like design and the general fuzziness of your work. Upon reading the design has to do with your fanfic which is quite clear. It is clear that you've used something like photoshop to draw this image and you used mostly a very limited set of brushes.

The colors are also rather simple--you have the bright aqua green sky, the bright green grass, the hazey gray mountain in the distance... But there's something interesting with your choice of colors in this digital painting that skew to the cooler side of the color spectrum.. I'm not quite sure what the deal is with the strangely colored sky. It makes it feel like I'm veiwing the scene through a blue filter almost or perham am in an aquarium. I looked into what you have said about the scene, but I couldn't really find an explanation. Were they on Uranus? Was the camera that recorded this image not sensing the sky correctly? Was the pentagram releasing some sort of chemical that changed the color of the sky around it? Really, the only warmness I get from the whole work is the pelt of the Mareep. Because there is so much green, having those little red details in its tail bring out and have it pop against the surface.

Since your pentagram is so important to the scene I wish it were a bit darker, right now the lightness of the pentagram shape, which I assume is made of twigs (and why it is presumably so scratchy), makes it so that blends almost perfectly in with the grass which is much brighter but about the same lightness. I'm glad that you hinted at its shading under the tree and you've drawn it in such a way that it does sit back in 3-d space! Good job on you!

I kind of wish you carried that level of shading onto Mareep; though, by having her stand in the direction of the light source you put yourself in a difficult situation because her body is lit like a cup with a lid and there really is no flattering way to put place it. I am going to say that you should watch out for her cast shadow--which I'm glad you included!-- it should skew a might more to the right like the tree! Consistency will pay off!

I am a little upset how rushed the overall feel is like. I know Gun6 did a drawing where he fuzzed every outline away. That's ok, but when you have every object fade into each other like you do, you have to keep a watch out how the fuzziness of the object interacts with its surroundings and how it comes together as a whole. Right now everything looks sort like they're balloons squeezing up against each other, when the meadow is probably supposed to be vast and beautiful and the mountains are supposed to be far away from the subject. I see that the fuzziness does work on the tree, as it gives an impressionistic idea of the the tree (even if the color is a bit generic).

Coravint, I think you can do so much more with this drawing, BUT considering that you are submitting this for cash, I do believe that this scene will merit a simple ranking. 5k. I've seen much more detailed and complex works come from you, so this grade shouldn't be a surprise, but please do keep drawing!! I can tell there is a lot of improvement from some of your earlier works!

 

Here's another piece, also for cash. Also, the story from the Mareep picture? That story's cancelled, I can't write decent anomaly fics without relying too much on SCP format.

wishiwashi02.png​

 

Spoiler

Cancel the fic if you want, but I wouldn't worry about whether or not you rely on the SCP format. Great artists steal, and if you're stealing components from more than one place, you're golden. Seeing as how it's already a pokemon fan-work... well, you could either count that as one component (and SCP format being the other), or say it doesn't count and find some third thing to add to the mix.

IMO the mareep submission looks more like an underpainting in places. The mountains and Subject and Symbol could be much better defined, but the groundwork is all there. It's like you just need to come back in with a small brush and add in the details. The final step. The Finishing Touches. And idk if they'll let you resubmit it, but I'd definitely try to negotiate if I were you, after making the following changes:
*Add definition to Mareep's form. This is solidifying it slightly (transparency is fine, but this is, as Julio says, "fuzzy,") and possibly adding a slight border of highlight or shade on the edges where it's appropriate to make it stand out from its background.
*Paint the details into the mountain. This needn't be terribly finely done, as it's far away, but you can still see details on a mountainside in the distance. IMO the trick is to be extremely detailed, then to wipe the whole thing with a low-power blur tool, then touching up (either re-defining or extra blurring) where need be.
*Draw out each of the sticks already placed on the ground. The stick Mareep holds is very solid and one of the only things in the piece that is. The sticks on the ground are smears. Like I said, that's a fine groundwork-- like an underpainting. Paint on top of it the arrangement of sticks that are as well-defined as the one Mareep is carrying.


But yeah it was prolly a quick one and I get it if you don't want to go back. I think there's a lot of potential there if you do though.

 

Claimed!

 

Hey, W32! Thanks for submitting this Wishiwashi. I think they're really cool, and I've barely seen any in URPG. This definitely has to be the first Wishi in the Art section! Good job!

So at a glance, we seem to have a Wishiwashi in School Forme who looks to be stranded in some rainy shallows. It definitely does not seem happy. Right off the bat, I notice that this is a pretty monochromatic work, with various shades of blue and blue-gray. I'll start there!

One thing I think you did really well on is keeping good contrast and making things still nicely recognizable in all of these blues. You di this with a mixture of line and a variety of shades. Even near the tail, where Wishiwashi's blue starts to get darker, you still make it stand out from the background by making the background a gray-blue instead of a blue. This is a great way to create contrast and keep your subject in front. These colors also help set the rainy mood.

As for the Wishiwashi itself, I think you got a lot of its basic features down! You got the sectioned body and its shift in color as it goes toward the tail, as well as its glowing lights. I see you've indicated things like its fins and the two fishy bumps at the top of its head. Things with weird, kind of fleshy and blobby shapes like this are sometimes harder to draw than more complex Pokemon because then it starts to rely heavily on proportion, which is a little more difficult to grasp.

Now that you've got the colors and its general shape down, I think this is where you start trying to refine it a little. Start looking at different angles, poses, and references to try to see how big something is. For example, canon art says that Wishiwashi's School Forme has huge eyes, almost as long as that entire first section of its head, while you've drawn them really small. Be careful on where you place the fins, too--the front side ones and the large top one usually start right where the first head section ends. Small variations from Pokemon to Pokemon happen and are fine, but shifting fins back that far usually changes the structure of the Pokemon's anatomy a bit too much to let slide without a clear reason. I think I'd go back and really look at how big and how small some parts of Wishiwashi are to get a better idea of its form.

When we have simple backgrounds, we really want to look at the subject more than anything else, so it's important to take care with how it really looks to give our viewer as familiar and interesting of an experience as possible! This doesn't mean to be extremely detailed but rather to make sure that the details we do put are correct. When we draw something, we want to convince that viewer that we really know what the thing we're drawing looks like, and accuracy is a big part of that!

Speaking of the background, I like what you've done with it! The reflection is a nice detail, and lets us know that it's in some sort of shallow water, perhaps stranded. My suggestion would be to move that reflection layer up until it touches the Wishiwashi itself. It doesn't look like it's floating on anything that would keep it from touching its own reflection. The clouds up above make us notice the little streaks of rain, though I think they could be a little stronger, as I barely noticed them. Overall, though, I like your treatment of the background and the way you used color in it.

You've got a little bit of shading on the tail and on the top fin, but it's hard to see much else. I see a bit of light on top of the body, but it doesn't seem to follow the curve of its form like the light would. Rainy days have a vague light source, so I wouldn't expect anything too drastic, but I think some gentle, dark shading on its underbelly and beneath its fins would still help cement the roundness of its body. Right now, because of how little shading is on the color, it's not looking very round. You have a lot of nice shading in the background that gives it some depth, but our subject here is looking flat because of how unbroken those swathes of color on its body are.

Since this is a digital work, technique gets a bit more... well, technical here! I've worked with graphic programs for a while, so I hope I can give you some tips in this area.

You've free-handed the rain, which is fine, but I have some tips that might make doing the rain easier next time! These tips will also help you I'm going to put these in spoilers so they don't clutter, but some of my favorite ways to make rain are:

Spoiler

These work if you're using something like GIMP or Photoshop. If you're using something else that's fundamentally a bit more bare-bones (like Paint Tool Sai or FireAlpaca), let me know. I've just started using Paint Tool Sai and I'd love to experiment with some ways to do rain that could help you! These are just the ones I've come to like in my personal experience with digital art and realistic photomanipulation--there are plenty of others out there, I just wanted to give you the two I've come to like over the years.

Noise/Motion Blur!
This technique is a way to do it, but might not match your style if you're going for something more simple. It's a little on the realistic/mechanical side. Try it out, and if it doesn't seem like it matches your art style, feel free to try the next one, or to look up some other cool ones!

• Create a new layer. Fill it with white by either using the Edit > Fill command or the paint bucket tool.
• Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. In the dialogue box, there should be a checkbox to make the noise monochromatic to remove the random colors. You can play with the "amount" slider to make it more or less intense.
• Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Change the angle of the blur to the angle you want the rain to be going. You can change the length of the blur to whatever you'd like.
• Set this layer mode to something like Soft Light or Overlay and see how you like it. Adjust the opacity to how you'd like, also.
• If the rain is a bit too uniform for your tastes, take a huge fuzzy eraser and turn it on really low opacity. I like to brush away parts that obscure my subject too much and other places where it starts to seem too dense.

Draw and Erase!
So this is a bit of a homegrown technique I didn't really discover until I did rain for a recent capture attempt. This is what it looked like. This matches a lot more with less detailed, gritty styles. Here's what I did!:

• Create a new layer.
• Either
  • (if you're using a tablet with pressure sensitivity) freehand a line as straight as possible if you want to keep the faded ends of the pen's pressure at the end of the line. Make this line in the direction you want the rain to be, or rotate it there once you've drawn it.
  • (if you're not using a tablet with pressure sensitivity) while using the brush tool, click the spot you want to start the rain streak. Then, hold shift, and click the end of where you want the streak. You can then erase manually to taper the edge of the line, or you can do it later.
  No matter which of these you do, I'd recommend using a small brush with either 100% hardness or something a little softer, maybe 80% hardness or so. I'd also make these pretty long, maybe two or three times longer than you want your average little rain streak to be. We'll trim them down and seperate them later. It also doesn't matter what color you do it in. We can also change this later.
• Do this again five or six times. I'd stagger them--put some higher, put some lower, put some a little more apart. You can do this in a fairly small area until you have a few nice, long streaks.
• Duplicate this layer in the Layer menu, or just do Ctrl + A (select all), Ctrl + C (copy), then Ctrl + V (paste). I'm pretty sure you know these since you seem pretty tech savvy, but just making sure others can follow along too if they're interested! Drag these repeated drops into several other spots. Don't wory about how repetitive they are. That'll be solved in the next step. Do it until you've spaced it out across where you want the rain. After that, merge all of these rain layers into one. You can do this by going to the top one and doing Layer < Merge Down, or you can select the top one, hold shift, and select the bottommost rain one. This should select those and all of the ones inbetween. You can then go to Layer < Merge Layers.
• Take an eraser tool, 80%-100% hardness at 100% opacity. Streak it randomly across the rain. I'd suggest doing it at a variety of sharp diagonals so that it gives nice, long, tapering edges to your rain. What this does is that it divides up the rain a bit sporadically while also giving it an organic, hand-painted look.
• As a last touch, create a new layer. Go to Layer < Create Clipping Mask so that your canvas is cropped only to the rain layer below. Fill that layer with whatever color your rain would be reflecting (in my case, it was a light teal). Alternatively, you can also do a gradient of two similar colors (for example, light blue and dark blue) if you'd like to make it look a bit cooler.
• Grab a large, fuzzy brush and set white as your foreground color. Set it to an opacity somewhere in the 40%-70% range (adjust to your tastes). Color across the rain how you like. This gives the rain a bit of variation in its highlights while still keeping it to a gentle gradation from color to white.

Some other things on your technique here, since you use mostly digital medium! One good way to do a glow here would have been to create your bright blue markings on a seperate layer, then duplicate that layer and do a small blur/gaussian blur on it. If you set that duplicated and blurred layer to overlay, soft light, or lower the opacity, that usually gives you a nice, uniform glow. It also keeps you from missings spots, as it seems you forgot the glow on the spots on the mouth.

I really hope these tips help! I like this work a lot. You did really well with your colors and with setting the mood of this one. I think it's sitting at a 29/100, 3k cash awarded. While I really liked the depth of your background on this one, I think that your subject needs a little work on mirroring that depth. I think that a little bit more attention to detail and shading on your subject would bring this one right up. I'd double check some bits of Wishiwashi's proportions and where its fins start, and also throw in the shading I'd mentioned.

Love your work, W32, and it's suepr great to have you around the section. I can't wait to see more from you.​

 

did someone say more vocaloid trash
no?
screw it have some more vocaloid trash. i want the money

the song is re-education by neru ft. kagamine rin and len
just thought i'd let you know

 

Tryna ease the art backlog rip. Claiming for curation.

 

I did a quick Google search of the song you mentioned (I have barely an inkling of what Vocaloid is) but I did see some screenshots of the video and it’s clear you’re parodying it here. I love art crossovers so thumbs up for that!

SUBJECT
Form and Detail
Filling in the role of the two figures are Gallade and Gardevoir, both of which you’ve drawn in such a way that they’re immediately recognizable, and their color schemes are right on. However, it becomes evident that this piece suffers from misses in form, or how you depict objects in space.

The shapes constituting Gallade, for example, look off and inconsistent, which results into disproportionate anatomy. In most cases, something to keep in mind when dealing with figure proportions is taking on a holistic approach—you may produce individual components like, say, a limb, which look good on its own, but if it doesn’t mesh well with the rest of your figure then it’s not going to work. Let’s work from the head down. Gallade’s green cap should ideally cover all the way through the middle of its face; I’m unsure if you kept it short just above where a nose would be to make its face more humanlike. The teal crest stripe running down the front of the cap wants to be thicker, too. The eyes aren’t balanced with respect to each other, and this extends to the placement of the pupils. This does give Gallade a kind of disturbed look, which is cool in a way, though I feel like that might be unintended? Either way, it’s still good practice to have eye size on point. You dropped the highlight on the eyes for both Gardevoir on Gallade, which isn’t a hard The (ear?) tufts on the side of its head are a bit short and askew in your drawing—taking both sides together and from a front view, they should have a flattened starlike shape (minus the point that goes upwards, of course). There’s only supposed to be two of them as well; the addition of a third tuft that jags downwards is a curious detail.

Judging from official media, Gallade’s neck should be thinner relative to its head and chest. Its shoulders are positioned awkwardly and the thickness and overall shape of the forearms are haphazardly drawn. The blades are decent, but the placement of the fingers on Gallade’s right is the opposite of where I’d expect them to be—supposedly its fingers are on the flat end rather than the pointed one. Notably, fingers are absent on Gallade’s left. The chest spike is placed a bit low, and the way you’ve drawn the tip of it suggests a half-diamond shape; the front half of Gallade’s chest spike should be closer to something like a quarter-circle.

Continuing downwards, we get to Gallade’s waist, and this is probably the most blatant part that looks off in terms of form. Gallade has what I can describe as a Tic Tac for a waist, so it wants to be curved as opposed to having a flat base.

Gardevoir, on the other hand, you’ve drawn a lot better form-wise. There’s stuff on it that could use improvement, such as the placement of the chest spike and the width of the torso, but it’s really executed better when compared to Gallade.

Line
Pretty basic lines on your subjects, and a bit shaky in some places. The hairlines on Gardevoir are noticeably rough. Steady hands lead to steadier lines, so it’s all about practice.

Color Choice & Shading
No problems with color choice, as mentioned previously. I appreciate that shading is present, and individual areas are done pretty well, but again you have to take into account the whole subject. The shading on Gallade is wildly inconsistent, such that I can’t really tell where the intended light source is supposed to be originating from. Gallade’s green cap tells me it’s somewhere from above, but its crest implies that the light is coming head on, and then we get to the torso and the arms which suggest still more different light sources. You managed to keep shading pretty consistent with Gardevoir, though! Only nitpicks about it is that the shadow on its skirt should extend upwards to the left side (or Gardevoir’s right), and there should be shadows on the bend of its right arm.

BACKGROUND
The background is fairly simple but it does a good job of referencing the song animation with the geometric patterns. You even got the graying transition on the text, too. I like the color scheme as well; the muted, earthy tones allow the more vibrant greens of your subjects to stand out. One detail that I like is that the diamond behind what I’m assuming is the title text is layered in such a way that it overlaps on Gardevoir, further establishing it as a secondary figure and subtly providing extra depth to the image.

SUMMARY
The overall composition of this piece is pretty neat, but there’s a lot of areas you could improve on. Look up and always have references at the ready so you have less trouble with form and posing. I suggest tinkering with stroke options in the program you’re using, if it’s available, so that your lines are firmer. Most image editing/drawing programs have it labeled as “Smooth Stroke” or something similar; playing with those settings can help a lot. For lighting, practice learning how shadows work; start with a basic light source hitting simple objects and work your way up more complex ones. Again, it’s all about practice, and you very clearly have the potential to do even better.

THE VERDICT

Spoiler

I have to confer this piece an Easiest Rank for now, meaning you can claim $3,000. If you want to re-do this piece to aim for a higher rank, I suggest fixing the above problems in form, line, and lighting. Any questions about this curation may be directed to me via DM on Discord!

@W32Coravint;