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[Accidental Rebel]

The character in the drawings look really stiff. Also, listen to Iamthejuggler.

[TheShard1994]

@Iamthejuggler:
Of course it's okay to be "harsh", if u just go soft it doesn't sound as serious as it actually is As long as it's constructive criticism, I'm okay with it :D Oh and I always draw on paper, im better at that than digital xD Still not good enough of course, haha. I just ran out of paper so i thought let's try digital. Didn't wanna go buy paper >.< XD

Uhm,, I did some study on anatomy, think it has improved but it's still not perfect: i have a problem with the legs, every anatomystudy-tutorial shows the bottom legs are bent a bit, but if i do that it looks like it's broken. any way to solve this but still make it look realistic?

[Iamthejuggler]

You're never finished with studying anatomy (listen to me preaching, i'm terribla at motivating myself to study anatomy, but it doesn't make it any less true!). Even pro artists have to keep studying it, it's the bread and butter of drawing and improves every aspect of drawing, not just anatomy. Also, it's cool to play around with digital if you're also drawing on paper. Digital art is great fun

Neo makes a good point too, the drawings do feel like you went straight into detail without laying out the pose. Creating the pose first out of simple lines or even geometric shapes (spheres and cylinders) will help get away from the static boring poses. It's also a really quick way to do lots of fast gesture drawings, a great way to practice. Posemaniacs have a great page where it shows random poses for a short period of time (30 secs, 90 sec, etc) so you can quickly sketch them before the image changes. This can help train you to focus on the motion and general shape of a pose rather than getting bogged down in details.

re: the bent legs thing. Don't overdo it. If your talking about the bowing of the bottom bone it's not particularly pronounced. Again though, there's really no solution other than google image search legs and draw lots of them.

Keep practicing

[TheShard1994]

Haha yeah about the pose stuff, I didn't really pay attention to that with these drawings, since I wasn't really aiming for realism. which is a bad thing xD

when i draw doodles in class im normally more sketching poses first and then drawing details. since ive started studying anatomy, I noticed my doodles have improved, so yes it's true what u say xD

of course i'll keep practicing anatomy-study is a difficult thing but it's worth it.

[KM]

One trick I learned from my time as a webcomic artist was to over draw the line. By this I mean don't stop where you'er supposed to stop, but draw past that point and erase the extra bits of line that are left. This can give you a better looking line that can be a lot smoother and makes drawing curves a little easier.

Also, get used to doing ctrl-z with this. When I'd do lines I'd keep redoing them in broad strokes until I got them the way I wanted. Give it a try, you might like the results.

[Accidental Rebel]

Probably the best trick I've learned is to copy existing works. As in copying everything line by line. If you want, you could trace over it.

By doing this, you would notice stuff that you don't normally notice when drawing by yourself. For example, you might notice how the lines curve on one part of the body or how thick and broad the shoulders should be, etc.

There's nothing wrong about copying as long as you do it for learning purposes. Believe me, you will learn as long as you keep in mind what you are drawing.

So go ahead and look for your favorite character drawing and copy it! 

[TheShard1994]

Sounds good. Will try that aswell.

I won't be posting any works soon however, because I don't have any paper left and my scanner broke. Yay. >.<

[bvanevery]

Not sure how brutally honest you want this, but if it's art crits you want here goes.

You need to practice drawing from real people. The anatomy is so off that no amount of line quality will help.

I disagree.  Who cares?  The pirate is recognizable as a figure.  If it's quick to bang out then it has a production advantage.  Whether this pirate art will hold up in a game, depends very much on whether the background art is consistent with this character style.  We don't all have to march to the drum of realism, you can waste a lot of time on that.

[Renton]

Not sure how brutally honest you want this, but if it's art crits you want here goes.

You need to practice drawing from real people. The anatomy is so off that no amount of line quality will help.

I disagree.  Who cares?  The pirate is recognizable as a figure.  If it's quick to bang out then it has a production advantage.  Whether this pirate art will hold up in a game, depends very much on whether the background art is consistent with this character style.  We don't all have to march to the drum of realism, you can waste a lot of time on that.

This is such bad advice on so many levels.

You can put a triangle hat on a stick figure and it will be recognizable as a pirate. Being recognizable doesn't change the fact that it looks so, so wrong. The volumes, the proportions, it all looks... broken. It won't hold up in a game, or anything for that matter, particularly for that reason. It's not something that will have good results when used with consistently styled background art, because it doesn't look like a style of art so much as... a really bad drawing.

All the advice on realism here is because of that. None of us here is expecting/demanding some crazy hyper-realistic photocopy like this:

But you will see that even simple cartoons have some root in realism. Let's check out some sketches from the king of cartoons, long time Monkey Island artist and Sam & Max creator, Steve Purcell:

As you can see, while the amount of realism depicted in these sketches all vary from very cartoony to somewhat realistic; all the characters, at their very bases have somewhat realistic figures. Their skeletons, the way the limbs bend, the angle at which they stand, proportions of body parts, curvature of the bodies, flow of the stances, all are drawn with realism and actual human anatomy in mind.

Refusing to study and continuing to draw like this; you won't be saving time. You'll be really, really wasting it. Not only that, you'll deny yourself some very invaluable experience and improvement. Saying drawing like this has more production advantage over studying and drawing better and with correct anatomy is like saying Plan 9 From Outer Space is better than Blade Runner because it took less time to make.

tl,dr:
anatomy is very important.

[KM]

My smartass answer: Anantomy doesn't count when you're drawing space blobs!

Striving to improve your skills in your trade is always a good thing.

[bvanevery]

You can put a triangle hat on a stick figure and it will be recognizable as a pirate. Being recognizable doesn't change the fact that it looks so, so wrong.

It doesn't look wrong if it's appropriate to your project, such as The Kingdom of Loathing.

Is it too much for me to show up in a forum for artists, and make the bold claim that there's more to a game than the art?

But you will see that even simple cartoons have some root in realism.

Oh you mean like South Park.  Would hate to be financially crippled like those guys.

Let's check out some sketches from the king of cartoons, long time Monkey Island artist and Sam & Max creator, Steve Purcell:

Historically the adventure segment of the game industry also died, because of too much increase in production values for not enough of an audience in that era.  Grim Fandango was one of the last great production value games that was also a commercial failure, at least in the USA.  Can't remember if they made up some of their sales in Europe.

Refusing to study and continuing to draw like this; you won't be saving time.

Part of the problem of other people's educational advice, is that most people think everyone is supposed to have exactly the same education and training that they themselves had.

[Squiggly_P]

It doesn't look wrong if it's appropriate to your project, such as The Kingdom of Loathing.

There is a difference between functional representative art made for a specific purpose by someone who doesn't care what it looks like, and the sort of drawing that a guy who says "I want to get better at drawing" is trying to do.

We don't all have to march to the drum of realism, you can waste a lot of time on that.

Studying anatomy and drawing from ref does not equal 'realism'. It's called 'practice'. No one else on the planet can teach you how to draw. You have to teach yourself. Telling someone to not do their best or try harder because they do OK right now is terrible advice. The guy wants to get better. He's not satisfied with where he's at right now. Your advice is to just quit, effectively, because you don't think it's worth the effort.

Well, you're obviously wrong because it's worth it to him. End of argument.

[KM]

You might just be right, bvanevery.

But wouldn't you agree that a South Park character does have the shape of a human being, in turn rooting it in realism?

And wouldn't you agree that the art wasn't at fault for the lack of sales but maybe it was a lack of marketing to the right consumers?

And also might you agree that if a person so chooses to, that they should continue their education in one fashion or another to increase their skill to reach a position of talent that they may want to see themselves at?

[bvanevery]

But wouldn't you agree that a South Park character does have the shape of a human being, in turn rooting it in realism?

So does the pirate sketch that someone lambasted.  The pirate is drawn considerably better than South Park art, and the latter is worth multi millions of dollars as entertainment. Why?  Because South Park is FUNNY.  Game art is for GAMES, not a museum.  Bear that in mind when angsting about whether to chase some bugaboo like realism.

[junkboy]

Is it too much for me to show up in a forum for artists, and make the bold claim that there's more to a game than the art?

No, it's just a bit irrelevant? The guy wanted advice on his art, not your opinion on what is production efficient. And on that note I'm gonna second the advice given here: study real life, it will improve all aspects of your artistic output. It will also give you whiter teeth, darker tan and nicer pecs.