Help me improve my drawing of semi-realistic cartoons

[SomethingElse]

So, I've been trying to get my drawing skills up to the point where I could eventually start work on my own narrative webcomic thingamajigger. Right now I have almost no skills, but I want to get up to the point where I can draw cartoon figures that look at least somewhat human. At the moment, I think I have the shape stuff at least vaguely under control, but shading is giving me trouble. I can't seem to figure out a good way to do it in Inkscape, and I hate using the GIMP... not to mention that I don't like importing .svg files into the GIMP.

Here's an example of what I have so far...
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg77/Vox-Xeno/male-politician.png
I'd like this eventually to look a little better, with shading and better features, especially on the face and clothes...

[Lyinginbedmon]

My first thought is either to spoiler that image or press Cntrl + D while you're in InkScape and click "Fit to selection", which should crop the page down to the drawing.

[Yeril]

Thicker lines, you can do that by right clicking the 1 down the bottom left next to the colours and changing it to say, a 2 or a 3.

Smother lines, the easiest way would have to be to hold CTRL+L for a second or two.

For shading what ive heard most people do is put a black shape over the top where you want it darker with like 20% alpha (80% see-through, you can change this with the number that says 100% near the colours)

Hope it helps alittlebit.

I just realised your not using inkscape, my bad ><

[JasonDoomsblade]

My first thought is either to spoiler that image or press Cntrl + D while you're in InkScape and click "Fit to selection", which should crop the page down to the drawing.

Yeah that definately has to be spoilered.

[SomethingElse]

Okay, that seems to work pretty well... next up, a woman...

[Nameless]

That's not so bad. :smallsmile:

Tray adding the same ammound of detail to the clothes as you have do done for the face.
Inkscape isn't the best program for realistic drawings because I think it's vectore based or something.
The best program is obviously photoshop, but if you want to go a bit cheaper, use Micromedia fireworks, It's fantastic for realistic drawings and it really gave my ones some nice affects.

[SomethingElse]

Well, I'm a Linux user so for my Photoshop clone I pretty much have to use The GIMP, which is very powerful but unfortunately not very elegantly designed (and it has a massive learning curve.) I kind of need to use vector graphics at least to make the shape, because I have no inherent artistic abilities, and so have to have the natural forgivingness of the vector platform to correct my errors and get the proportions right (and I know these are very flawed, so I'm going to follow some advice and look at an anatomic drawing.)

So would the best idea for me be to do the initial outline as a vector drawing and then color in the GIMP? (shudder)

[Bryn]

This is going to be a very critical post. I'm really sorry if it causes offence, and I mean no insult :smallsmile:

The main problem that I see with this image is the proportions; both of the body and of the face. I would suggest getting an image of human proportions, either from Google, an art book, or one of many online drawing tutorials. For example, this (http://www.animatedbuzz.com/tutorials/proportion.html) (which was one of the first results on a google search for 'human proportions'. Wikipedia gives some mathematical relationships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_proportions). Looking at your image, the arms would be too short, the eyes to high up on the face, and the head too large. :smallwink:

In addition, your lines seem to have too many nodes. It looks likely that you've used the pen tool and simply drawn the shapes as if it was a paintbrush. This is inadvisable, as it creates rough and irregular lines - you'd be better served by drawing longer individual lines then using the node editor to tweak the curves into the shape you want. With what you have now, go to the Path menu and click 'simplify' a few times to smooth them out - this might leave some of the shapes misshapen, however, so you would have to move the individual points to correct it.

There is also the problem that you have your arms as a seperate object from the torso, and the legs as a seperate object from the hips. In some places you have left gaps between them - this is jarring, and damages the effectiveness of the picture. There are a couple of solutions you could try: either remove the vertices at the end of the arm/leg, thus removing the black line and making it appear to merge into the other object, or select all the objects in one item of clothing and go to the Path menu, then find 'Union'. Make sure they overlap when you do this.

As it is right now, your image is somewhat 2D. By this I mean that the pose and the flat ends of the arms and legs make it seem that he is standing in a 2D plain. Perspective is good too, as long as it is not overdone. I would suggest making the body angled somewhat away from the camera, and having the arms and legs overlap.

I would write about shading but I really need to go - I hope this helps!

[SomethingElse]

Yeril, I actually am using Inkscape at the moment, so your post was helpful. I should have been more specific.

Z-Axis, yours is exactly the type of feedback I wanted - this is, after all, not a "tell me how wonderful my drawing is" thread. I want to get better. Your links were certainly helpful, and I'm working on that proportion stuff as we speak. Making it "3D" is my biggest concern - should I do that with lighting, or by adding background objects, or what?

[SomethingElse]

Okay, so here's my second try at something, this time with a female face. I drew it in Inkscape, then exported to .png, used the GIMP to add some blur effects and the makeup, then reimported and added the shadow, which I'll probably end up taking out since the GIMP does shadows better... how does it look?

By the way, I used some anatomical references on this one, so hopefully the proportions are better. Supposedly the head is wrong according to one thing I saw, because of how I made the chin, and therefore made the head shorter than it should be - but it doesn't look bad to me... what do you folks think?

Also, is the face feminine enough in appearance?

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg77/Vox-Xeno/girl-heroine.png

[drKarling]

Okay, so here's my second try at something, this time with a female face. I drew it in Inkscape, then exported to .png, used the GIMP to add some blur effects and the makeup, then reimported and added the shadow, which I'll probably end up taking out since the GIMP does shadows better... how does it look?

By the way, I used some anatomical references on this one, so hopefully the proportions are better. Supposedly the head is wrong according to one thing I saw, because of how I made the chin, and therefore made the head shorter than it should be - but it doesn't look bad to me... what do you folks think?

Also, is the face feminine enough in appearance?

Hmm...
Eyes a bit closer and a bit bigger.
Longer eyelashes.
Make sure you add a bit of light in the eyes (very crucial!).
Eyeballs should be white.
Nose a bit too high.
Nose too small (unless you're just trying to show the tip of the nose, in that case it should be lighter)
Mouth too high. Too thight lips.
Shadow's way off.

Protip, use several layers (when you work in Gimp)
Top layer: outlines.
Second layer: Shadows (use greytones and set layer mode to "multiply" or something like that)
Bottom layer: colors.

Then you can color all you like, and add and edit shades later without messing with the rest of the drawing.


When you want to draw a female (especially in a comic) don't be afraid to exaggerate facial traits a bit.
Look at the following pic:
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c306/drKarling/cyclops.jpg
Took a only few minutes in MsPaint. Not really very realistic, but there's no doubt the eye and mouth belongs to a female.
Hell, even with just one eye and a mouth I should be able to convince you that this is a sexy female cyclops.

[Eita]

Curved lines. If you drag when using the pen you can then have the lines curve.

This is mainly a nitpick on the hair.