HOME | DD
Shadowhedge1001 — Maria Robotnik
Published: 2012-06-06 12:35:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 1006; Favourites: 24; Downloads: 8
Redirect to original
Description
I have to say, I loved this picture.
After so long of fighting with it, I think I finally found a human style I'm happy with. But enjoy! 
Art (c) Me
Shades (c)
Maria (c) SEGA
STOP. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO USE THIS ART. IF YOU DO USE IT, YOU WILL BE REPORTED AND BANNED FROM DA, BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL TO RE-USE SOMETHING YOU HAD NO PERMISSION TO DO SO WITH.
Related content
Comments: 22
First off, don't take the low star ratings as an insult. It just means there's a lot that can be improved in your technique, not necessarily that it's a bad piece (which it is not).
I like the very dynamic shading. A problem I have with a lot of OHS artists is that if they do shade, it's very light and barely adds dimension, whereas yours is very powerful, even if it's not always consistent (mainly the hair, I'll get to this later). Additionally, the colors are coordinated very well with the background, and the colors in the character are consistent and do not clash.
I'll start with the face, because that's really where the most problems are - compared with the rest of the drawing, it's simplistic, flat, and unexciting. The eyes are heavily misshapen and off-angled with each other - even for something in a Sonic style, it can be very helpful to draw guidelines to place everything in the right perspective and size. The whites of her eyes aren't shaded, either - if you look at the professionally done Sonic-style drawings or even the CG characters, you'll see that the eyes are shaded surprisingly heavily, which allows them to really 'pop', whereas here they appear to be almost pasted on the head.
The heavy highlighting of the iris sure does give a shiny effect, but as a result it almost feels less three-dimensional. In my personal experience (and you can see this in the works of professionals as well, which I certainly am not) a single small well-placed shine can have a MUCH more dramatic effect than a large number. Shading of the eye would also extend to the top of the iris as well, so keep that in mind.
The hair is shaped nicely. I would advise against drawing individual lines underneath the bangs spaced out as you have - they give more of an effect of 'segmenting' the hair rather than creating the effect of hair strokes underneath curving up. If you're going to use lines, either use many small lines, or none at all. You also have extraneous lines in the longer tufts of hair - whenever possible, try to make as few lines in the hair as you can: outline the shape, and use sharp shaded edges to define the hair inside the clump instead of individual lines. Try using low-opacity layers with full opacity brushes instead of low opacity brushes for shading - you brush over your own shading in the hair at times and it looks blotchy. You can use a soft (or hard, when desired) eraser brush to shorten and sharpen shading, since I see you are not working with pressured lines. I will leave you to your own devices to discovering methods for how better to shade hair.
The hairband looks flat and in line with the hair, whereas it should have some dimension and poke up above the head an amount.
I'm not sure what purpose showing the knuckles of her hand serves in this picture, and considering how flat it is compared to the rest of the intensely toned and highlighted image, it should be omitted.
But in all, an excellent start. Good luck with your future works!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thank you for the long critique. All is true what you said; I do make my features a bit "flat", but I'm beginning to think that's just my style. I hate it too. I suppose the "popping" features come with time, but as of now I am in no way a professional artist, which is pretty obvious. I agree with the eyes and I could've done better and gone with a simpler style of shading for something like this. Though, the shading was done by . And if I believe by looking back that I was supposed to do this picture my myself. I will remove and rename it if so. Also, the top of her hand is there because her whole hand was there to begin with her arm showing as well, but it was cut off because of editing problems. But I thank you again for the critique.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Glad it was of help. :3 And I definitely did not say I disliked your style. All art can be improved with practice and time. And yes, you will definitely want to practice shading and toning on your own. If you're still working on the techniques, I would advise against putting yourself on time limits as per One Hour Sonics, and work on just learning the techniques and developing the style. Timed exercises like One Hour Sonic are really meant to improve existing styles, not so much to develop a base style, as you seem to be doing. It takes time, so don't be discouraged. Just keep working at it, and try to improve something every time you do a new drawing. You will get better.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh, I have a style... it just takes a long time to use it on a fully-colored picture when I don't have much time to use to begin with. :/ But yeah... Thanks for the critique.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is awesome! ^.^
I love your art style for humans!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
^^ Thanks. It means a bunch!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I do too! I recently got an attachment for her!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
