Anybody want to discuss random drawing techniques and such? Have some free time coming up so I want to do a few more drawing pieces, not necessarily yukkuri related of course... but I figure if you draw better normally, drawing yukkuris would be easier overall. Could also just open up discussions and such.
Found a site for practicing poses which is sorta nice:
Reminds me of a few things I did back in art class but it's really for practicing perspective and motions, which I'm terrible with.
Technical drawings though escape me completely. I've wanted to draw armor forever and could never get anything resembling functional armor. For the most part, armor is fairly simplistic as their main function was to protect, not decorate.
Well there's a couple of questions you have to ask yourself when you want to create something like armor. Questions such as "Do you want more protection or more mobility? Do you want it to be made from weak or strong material? What kind of weapons can it defend against? Is it designed for someone important or is it a uniform?" etc.
Do you have any rough sketches you can show? I can probably help you out better if I saw what you need help on exactly.
I've only gotten back into drawing a few months ago so my technique is still pretty rough.
There are two things I keep in mind while I'm drawing.
First, don't try to hide from your weaknesses. Alot of the time self-taught artists tend to be weak on proportion, perspective, and on drawing hands/feet. Consequently although their faces and costume design may be excellent, they tend to have flat, static poses that are always drawn from the same angle, usually with the hands or feet hidden. I try to challenge myself with cinematographic camera angles and by trying to be expressive with faces and poses.
Second, keep a consistent, steady workload. There is a saying in the game of Go to play and lose your first 100 games quickly. Rather then focus on working on a single drawing for a week, I try to maintain a pace to expose myself to as many situations and drawings as possible. I pause sometimes to refine my technique but I find that my technique and proportions begin to match up to what I imagine while maintaining the same pace.
I've also found that working at a quick pace with a pen forces me to improve my technique.
The areas I need to work on the most right now is hair and doing life drawing from nature.
Everything I suppose, but I'd say more sci-fi personnel armor first and armored vehicles second. I'd lean more towards functional body armor I suppose?
Don't have anything worth posting, will try my hand at a few things tonight and post up sketches.
This picture shows components of a Japanese armor. It shows certain layering and kind of how they are applied onto the body.
I'll just post this pic to see if it helps you. I was trying to write something but found it difficult finding the words on how to explain it because frankly the helmet seems fine and the arm seems alright too. I think the armor around the bicep looks wonky since I'm use to shoulder pads overlapping on top and if we're talking about making simple armor I think a bicep plate's a bit excessive. Usually people would wear something that'd give more mobility like chainmail or something of the sort but that's also why it's difficult to explain. I feel like that's more of an appearance thing than functionality. To the standard you have it down: you got a shoulder plate, you got arm protection, and you left the joint unconnected; giving mobility. It's not entirely simplistic but it's functional.
I guess I also find it difficult to explain since I'm not seeing the problem you're claiming other than the layering issue which I hope the pic I sent will help.
Banded plating is used to create a flex joint, it doesn't make sense for it to run the entire length of the forearm. Basically there should be plates running alongside inflexible sections and banded mail or chain mail at the joints. The other possibility is to float an overlapping plate over the entire joint like pauldrons on the shoulders.
The thing to remember is that except for floating plates, armor is form fitting.
*Edit* I reconsidered, another reason to use banded plates is for ease of construction, in that case they would be bound together by strips of leather or rings, or rivets, they probably wouldn't be riveted together on the sides like that.
Thanks, I thought something looked sorta weird about the shoulder piece and the forearm.
It probably makes no sense to have it as the top piece, but I suppose the banded piece could be under a bigger full plate, which is the shape of most gauntlets.
Then there's the realm of the space marine armor.... where everything's pretty much huge.
I'll plop a few more things down here and there and post up something after I draw some yukkuris...
Well astartes are still "humans" to some degree despite all the alterations with the geneseeds.
I meant big as in the armor doesn't resemble any sort of medieval armor scheme and don't conform to the shape of the astarte's body. (unless their legs are shaped like mega man...) The leg armor for example are like pillars.
... though I do want to draw yukkuris in terminator armor. >_>
Has anyone else had like where they were drawing something, but it looked wrong for some reason you couldn't really figure out, and you didn't quite know how to fix it?
And then you walked away from it for say, a few hours or a day or so, and then when you looked at it again, you could instantly see what was wrong and how to fix it easily, and then you fix it easily?
One thing I find that helps is if you flip the drawing horizontally/vertically (depends on what you're drawing). Aspect problems will be immediately apparent.
If you're focused on drawing the whole time it might be difficult to see the mistakes you're making because you're too focused on the details, so much that you're seeing what you WANT to draw instead of what you actually drew.
poweryoga said: happens a lot to me in both writing and drawing.
One thing I find that helps is if you flip the drawing horizontally/vertically (depends on what you're drawing). Aspect problems will be immediately apparent.
If you're focused on drawing the whole time it might be difficult to see the mistakes you're making because you're too focused on the details, so much that you're seeing what you WANT to draw instead of what you actually drew.
That's a neat trick. I'll start using that in the future O_O
