next »

[maruki]

Generally speaking, those characters look very kafkaesque (hoping that you are using Kafka's works go get inspiration to make a game about his life), but they still lack something that would make them more tired, exhausted and surreal (because Kafka's works are a bit surreal). There is always this distance from the reader to the characters; I think you could express this by working a bit more on the shadows on their faces.

BTW, the white part of the bald guy with orange apron is smaller in the right eye than in the left eye. Take a look at that.

And finally,

You don't have to respect the anatomy to draw.

Indeed, but knowing anatomy and all those "boring" art principles and fundamentals helps you understand what you are doing yourself. It's similar to make a game about Kafka: you can't expect to make a good game about him without reading at least once all his stuff, at least the most famous ones.

[CodyLReadinger]

I love the kids smoking cigarettes.

It looks very good, man!

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

it's just tracing.

[alfoux]

I'll change the picture with the kids smoking. It was one of my first pictures and yes it was tracing. Now I refused to use this technic so I'll redraw that for the final product.

Thanks for the white part of the man with the apron. I didn't notice that...

I worked a lot since the beginning of this post to learn anatomy so I think I made some progress and I'm much more confident now with my style.

You're right for the shadows. I've to think about that.

And yes, I read several novels and short stories, or documentaries, about Kafka.

[alfoux]

New character with the new background : the cook

[gimymblert]

Shadow isn't the only way to create distance, I'm not even sure it will be the best here, that's also why I preferred the older less expressive face, because of the subject you tackle. It's a balance to hit anyway. I would say the art is already rather "drab" compare to typical treatment. In fact the fact your art isn't stable help a lot conveying the atmosphere IMHO, it's one of teh time where it makes sense, there is a kind of fragility to them right on point with the absurdity.

[alfoux]

Thanks for your remark Jimym. For me, I prefer the actual faces because it was probably not enough efficient for the emotions. I think we have to see clearly the difference between the happiness and the sadness for example. But you're right, I try to create and atmosphere because we try to adapt Kafka so it can't be juste a normal treatment for the characters and the backgrounds.

Well, another character : the governess

[alfoux]

Another character : the reader.

[[friends]Ro$$]

Your art lacks of consistency and the good looking ones looks like traced drawings. Overall there is a lack of volume and no personality.
This one is like really bad. you're not 10 years old right?

I don't think that working on projects with other people is a good way to progress.
To be honest you're not good. You should take some art class and learn the basics first.
You're far away from being a 2d artist... so don't say that you're a 2d artist...

This isn't a useful response. This topic is asking for constructive criticism, hence the title. You didn't say anything constructive.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with tracing something, especially when you begin. Doing so allows you to register useful patterns and techniques other people use to effectively express whatever they're trying to. The next step is to put your own spin on things, which is what you're doing. I usually only do pixel art or pen+paper drawing, so I don't have too much advice to give you.

One thing that did stand out to me is that some lines in your backgrounds look very pixelated; for instance the bed frame in the image below. I think the attempt is to make them look drawn, but I'd clean them up a little bit since to me the effect looks a little too overdone, to the point where the bed frame looks a little bit like it was resized.

Another thing I noticed is that you're using the same saturation and value (someone correct me if these are the wrong parameters, I still need to study color theory) for the characters and the background. Usually you want to use brighter more saturated colours to draw the eye of the view towards important details. In your case I would think this would be the characters. Although, you are managing to accomplish this eye-grabbing thing somewhat with the thickness of the lines.

[alfoux]

Thanks for your message. Very precise and interesting.

[alvarop]

Hey Alfoux, although there is constant improvement on your part, I still find the colours to be lacking somewhat, and the details that you put on the characters draw too much attention, at least to me.

Have you researched maybe some references and created a look book so that you can kind of get some guidelines and make the art consistent even character per character?

It's getting better, but I think you can do even better :D