[Other] Anime Art Tutorials!

I decided to start an art tutorial thread since someone asked me to.

I and hopefuly other artists will share with everyone our basic and special and maybe even some of our secret techniques.

If you're willing to learn, we're willing to help.




Here's the basics to being an excellent artist.

First and foremost, before you even start drawing, you need to study and practice with an art tool first.

My specialty tool is the pencil, so that's what I'll have you all start with.


Proper grip is important. You need a comfortable and secure grip to reduce possible cramping in the hand.

Grab some paper and practice making slashes on it with your pencile.

Make long slashes, short slashes, quick rapid slashes, and slow precise slashes.

Work on the amount of pressure you put in the slashes. Make soft light slashes, hard crisp slashes, and everything else in between.
Try to get comfortable with your ability to manipulate the amount of force you put into the pencil.


After you get comfortable with that, start forming shapes. First work on circles and straight lines, then move on to more complex shapes when you get more comfortable with your skill.


Take your time and practice alot.




If you feel that your level is high enough, you can take on this challange now.

Here's an image made up of nine stages. Don't worry. I'll guide you through it.

*note: information and advice will be at the bottom of each stage. Feel free to look at all the stages first to get a good idea of what you're working on*


Image 1: Girl

READY...

GO!


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Stage 1




Ok, here you'll need to make a circle and a line. Don't worry about it looking neat and clean. These are only guide lines and will be removed later.

Use several curved slashes until you have a good circular shape.

Use several straight slashes until you have a nice straight line.

Don't worry; they're supposed to look rough.

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Stage 2




Draw the shape of the chin/jaw line (Remember, use several slashes to refine lines). Then draw two lines across the face.

The space between those two lines is where the eyes will go.

Draw a cylinder-like shape for the neck. Be sure to make the neck narrow.

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Stage 3




Draw oval-like shapes for the eyes. Be sure to leave a space between the eyes that would be able to fit another eye of the same size in the middle.

Draw faintly where the mouth and nose will go. Remember, the mouth and nose are very small and made up of simple lines.

When drawing the ears, be sure that the top ends of the ears are lined up with the top of the eyes, and the bottom ends of the ears are lined up with the bottom of the nose.

Draw in the eyebrows. Make sure to draw the Eyebrows longer than the eyes.

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Stage 4




Draw solid thick shapes for the eye lashes. Then draw circular shapes for the pupil/iris of the eyes.

Refine the mouth and nose (remember to keep them simple).

Refine the chin/jaw line.

Draw a slight little shadow below the mouth to represent the bottom lip.

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Stage 5




Draw a shape to represent the upper torso. Be sure to draw the upper torso narrow and a bit on the small side.

Draw to circles to represent the shoulders.

Draw a line across the torso from the tops of the circles/shoulders. This line is a guide for the collor bone.

Draw a rough shape for the hair.

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Stage 6




Refine the shape of the hair.
Don't waste your time drawing strands and strands of hair. Draw them in clumps. Keep it simple!

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Stage 7




Start to refine the body. Draw in the arms. Refine the collor bone.

Draw a line across the torso from the bottoms of the circles/shoulders. Then draw another line below that line with enough space that you can start to see square-like shape made up of that line, the collor bone, and the sides of the torso.

Draw in two curves between those two new lines. These curves represent the breasts (Hey! Get that smirk off your face!).

Now, lightly draw a small oval on the top of the head (wear the hair would spread from the center) and draw a curve below the oval. The space between these two new lines is where the shine of the hair will go.

Start to do quick slashes in the hair. Start from the tips and move up towards the crown of the head. Don't worry if some of the lines cross over each other. It will make the hair look more realistic.

Also, do quick slashes from the center of the hair (top of the head, slightly on the right side) down-wards.

Draw a curve in each pupil/iris and fill in and shade the space below the new curves. Leave it light at the bottom.

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Stage 8




Continue to draw in more and more slashes in the hair.

At this point check to see any Permanent lines that me be fading. Re-touch them if you have to.

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Stage 9




Keep adding more slashes until all the hair is filled and has a nice ring of shine around the head.

Draw in a neck-hole for a shirt.

Carefully erase the guide lines (Don't bother erasing all the guide lines. Some will be difficult to reach. Anyway, by this point, some of them should have faded away by now).

Refine the whole picture and add some detail. Add some light shadow on the neck below the face, on the sides of the torso and inside sides of the arms, and under the breasts. (Hey! Now what did I just say a while back?)


*Here's a full size pic that will fit on the screen*





FINNISHED!


Ahh, now that wasn't so bad, was it?


Ok, well we're not exactilly finnished just yet.

Please show us your pic so we can examine it. Don't be shy! Remember, we're all here to help. It's important that we see how far you've come so far so we can help fine tune your skill, techniques and abilities.


Also, please let me know what you thought of my tutorial. Was it helpful?

That's amazing. Somehow, between stages 3 and 4, something magic happened, and a circle with a bunch of lines became a girl. How do you do that? You make it look so easy ... when I know that it is not. But you set up your tutorial very well. Maybe I'll give it a try after all.

Vermillion

Thanx for makin tutorials

Your tutorial makes it look easy! I will have to give it a try. Thanks!

Pygmalion

Wow these are awesome! I love how you draw the eyes in. Its nice to see that some artists still map things out using the prespective lines. XD Awesome work!

-Beth

I am a terrible cartoonist/animator (despite what some of you older members might say having seen some of 'finer' work).

I am, however, an incredible classical artist (ie. still life / perspective / reference / real life ((whatever you want to call them)) sketches and painting). What everyone needs to understand about technique is that it is entirely a MECHANICAL and KINESTHETIC act. EVERYONE can see what they want to draw in front of them (and, with enough practice, in their head). So, the question is: why can't people reproduce it on paper (or canvas)? There are only two main reasons (of course, technically it is impossible for some people... but that isn't an issue with which I can deal): they don't know how or they don't practice enough.

I'll assume you practice enough and know enough to be satisfied with your level of skill. [[[[[I recommend this technique for aspiring artists only, as it will only frustrate even the average hobbyist!]]]]]

There is one big step that turns good [fine] artists into great artists--and, obviously, this step is evident in the quality/accuracy of their work. The step is an increase in hand/eye coordination that most people do not grasp intuitively. To make this jump you only have to practice one SIMPLE (yet extremely frustrating) technique: contour drawing. So you ask, "Huh?" Well, it means you draw what you see without looking at your paper. Start by drawing what you see without lifting the pencil. After you've practiced this enough, try to lift the pencil and draw other lines (it is OKAY to SOMETIMES look down, but when you are conciously practicing this DO NOT MAKE A HABIT OF IT.) "Whiskey tango foxtrot?", you may ask. To improve your hand/eye (and, in a sense, mind) coordination, you use this process to take out the middleman (your memory) temporarily so you are better able to do two things: 1. Study an image or scene and be able to more accurately take in what you are seeing, and 2. Increase your natural ability to accurately produce lines on paper that mimic reality.

Sadly, even after having done this a million times your drawings will never look satisfactory. The process is long and tedious. The results, however, are -incredibly- palpable and tangible when you return to normal drawing (or any such rendering-type art).

Good luck and happy drawing!

Wow! if i do say so the original pic is quite the excellent drawing and Ryona is quite the excellent artist. Actually ive made an attempt at it but i don't draw so good . At any rate since animating is my specialty i have used your character design and have begun animating it. The final "starting" picture for the animation took roughly 5 hours to complete. however it turned out nice so the amount of time it took to complete is not that bad. With a single shot such as the one posted i should be able to make her wink or do a multitude of other facial expressions .I will post what i have in a little if any one wants to see it.

Thanks for your time,
Ace378
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Well here are some base shots of what i have. Almost identical to the original except for:
1. The hair (way to detailed on the hair for animation)
2. The eyes (tried using the eyes you originally had but they didn't look so good so I used some other eyes)
3. The highlight in the hair is not a ring as it is in the original (i have seen a ring highlight in many animes just thought it would look a little bit better with wavy highlights)

One of the hardest things to do was choosing her shirt (not to mention whether or not to make her shirt long sleeve or short sleeve), hair,skin, and eye color ><

I think she's gonna need a little tlc. And a lot of mousse. Things kind of got out of control in the hair department, and I wound up giving her a bit of a bob, but for someone who doesn't draw, I think it turned out all right. The tutorial was very helpful, and gave me a lot more insight into the process. Comments welcome, especially from those members of paradigm more skilled at wielding a pencil than myself.

Vermillion

Looks good, Vermillion! Especially if you "don't know how to draw".

This tutorial is awesome. After reading through it, I doodled the girl in my agenda the next day. Of course, it didn't come out nearly as well, but the fact that I could remember the shapes and line strokes says something!

Hey, that's really cool. If you can show us the page from your agenda without giving away any top secret government access codes or anything , it would be neat to see what you came up with. The tutorial IS really well done. I hope others will use it, and post the results. It would be neat to see other people's work, and it would also improve our chances of getting more lessons in the future.

Vermillion

(who now kinda sorta knows how to draw -- well, more than he did before)

Well, I think I got frustrated with it and scribbled it out.

It was only a doodle anyway. I used to be able to draw pretty well but now I just make doodles. I can draw if I'm copying another picture but I can't freehand worth a crap.

I have a similar problem. I can copy pictures, and I can do still life type work, but I can't draw anything that I imagine, which was what I really wanted to do. I tried very hard for a while, but it was like running through water. I could improve, but I didn't feel like I really had a talent for it. Writing, on the other hand, came very naturally to me, so I decided to pursue that avenue instead. This tutorial gave me a lot of insight into how a drawing can be put together, but I still felt like I was in someone else's workshop. I don't know if I'll ever be an artist. At this point I've invested so much time in writing, I don't know that I could or should try to switch gears. It would be so much work to learn to draw all my different characters, much less how to put them in different postures, and then do backgrounds and all of that. I may be better off sticking to what I'm good at, and letting other people do what THEY are good at. At this point, I still have a lot to figure out. But that's part of the fun. If we knew it all, it would be boring.

Vermillion

Yep, I became a writer too. I'm good at a lot of things. Drawing just isn't one of them. Oh well, we can't all be artists, like you said.

I'll stick to my doodling of swords, pirates, and ships during class.

Just a random tip: NEVER forget to develop your own style, this is very importiant.

quote:

Originally posted by Lost_Cyborg Just a random tip: NEVER forget to develop your own style, this is very importiant.

*claps hand over head like a little kid* Yeah! Yeah! Style style! ha ha. I have my own style too, but alas, I have no scanner. *sigh* I'll try drawing on paint, but I doubt it will be very good. T__T

Crap...It takes a really long time to draw on paint. Her hair looks all jumbly...

Okay, here's my drawing for it:
(She's actually and RP character I use. Or at least...she looks like her. Rika's the name. lol.)



Edit: Here's the final version of it, where I erased *cough*tried my hardest*cough* all the lines I didn't really need. I finalized the collarbone and stuff like that.



I suck.

Later days:
Rev

Actually, considering the medium, I think it turned out rather well. There's a whole style like that of sketches done in pen. It's not a realist form, but then, that's not always the point. The way all the lines in your picture come together to suggest shape and form is very interesting to look at. I like it.

Vermillion

-To keep the tutorial thread going-

So, is anyone going to color (i.e., in a paint-type style) this?

I'll do it if no one wants to...

Alrighty then lets all say hello to the girl.

Hello

Its not much but its a start >.>
Animation may be a little bit choppy since I didn't spend to much time on it but I don't think it turned out bad. I gave her an accessory, which I think turned out pretty nice for the time I spent on it. Enjoy!

Thanks for your time,
Ace378

This is some cool stuff I'm seeing here. I just wish I hadn't given up on sketching; I may get back into it one day.

If I might make a suggestion, for outlines and perspective lines, you might want to use a blue photo pencil to rough stuff out. That way when you scan your drawing in or make a photocopy, the rough lines and outlines don't show up.

Hey, would anyone be interested in a lesson in 3D?

quote:

Originally posted by DJX Prime If I might make a suggestion, for outlines and perspective lines, you might want to use a blue photo pencil to rough stuff out. That way when you scan your drawing in or make a photocopy, the rough lines and outlines don't show up. Hey, would anyone be interested in a lesson in 3D?

Woa thats pretty cool i didn't know there was something like a blue photo pencil out! At any rate I would most assuredly be interested in a 3D drawing lesson so please post it when you are able to DJX Prime.