/jp/ - Otaku Culture

theres a reply

>>9014900
>Should I have picked up a better draw pad (it doesnt feel as fluent as when I'm using paper)
i dont think that has anything to do with the quality of the pad

More important than tutorials is practice.

>>>/ic/
http://www.succubi.org/db/perfectlyuseless/anime/how_to_draw/index.html

http://alexhays.com/loomis/

Do these books, they're actually quite fun and you'll become proficient both at drawing and using your tablet through the practice

Draw from pictures until you can replicate them. Then draw from life.

>Should I have picked up a better draw pad
No. It wouldn't have mattered if you bought a Cintiq. If you suck at drawing, you suck at drawing.

Go pick up an anatomy book or two, horde photos of 3DPD and check out whatever resources interest you. Most importantly, draw every day.

Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists by Joseph Sheppard and Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators by Michael D. Mattesi are two books I really suggest. The latter is perfect for learning how to make your drawings less stiff, and is a great resource even if you have no interest in animating. Loomis is also great for beginners.

>>9014926
>Loomis

FUCK THIS BULLSHIT IT'S SO FUCKING GAY AND DUMB FUCK EVERYONE WHO LIKES OR RECOMMENDS THESE BOOKS THEY'RE THE SICP OF DRAWING

>it doesnt feel as fluent as when I'm using paper
This should be obvious. Bamboos are good, there's nothing wrong with the pad itself.

I remember how crazy it felt drawing with a pad for the first time. You'll get used to it if you keep drawing with it.

>>9014942
What's wrong with SICP?

>>9014926
Someone please email this to ZUN.

>>9014900
Are you copying me? I just ordered the same pad...
STALKER

>>9014900
If anything you should have picked up something not-wacom.

Its like 80% cheaper and just as good, especially for beginners.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10841

>>9014994
>just as good

Not to sure about tablets but, keep drawing man.
Draw stuff that you see in your room and once you've done 10 or so objects draw them again you will see the difference,
or rather you will remember how you drew that piss bottle and how hard it was to draw the reflections off the plastic, and slowly it will become easier to draw stuff.
Well thats what I did with pens pencil and water-paints, if that helps. Still a long way off drawing Touhous.
Pic is leftovers under the bed, sage is for /ic/.

>>9015095
Are those intestines? Are you a cannibal?

There's no need for expensive shit, really. I draw on my floor with pencils and paper. Start with the basics until you can draw good, then you can buy digital tools if you want (it's not necessary though).

Buy or download an anatomy book, copydrawing will never make you a good artist.

And just like >>9015095 said, draw different things with different perspectives with different tools.

>>9015112
I'd use walls instead, drawing on horizontal surfaces tends to enforce bad drawing habits(like resting your hand on the paper and only using your fingers to draw)

But yeah, pencils and paper are generally enough for a first couple hundred hours of drawing.

Though I'd personally recommend using pen and ink sometimes as well, it encourages good line quality and drawing entire lines instead of whittling them bit by bit.

>>9015192
Oh, and: use a large format!

A3 is good, but you can use even larger one if you have an art supplies store nearby.

It's one of the really important things to help you improve exponentially.

What's with the analog suggestions? He bought a tablet, he should use it. He can still learn the basics either way.

>>9015192
Not OP, but I can't draw/write if I'm not leaning on my hand, it looks like it's written by a retarded person with the wrong hand.

>>9015204
Drawing is more than knowledge.

Drawing is also a physical skill.

Starting with small, mistake encouraging medium is just going to hurt your progress in the long run.

>>9015221
Exactly, you need to get rid of that habit.

How hard is it going to be?

Extremely.

Is it worth it?

Every single one of the hundred hours it's going to take you.

Use your entire arm to draw. Maybe look into some calligraphy resources, the first good description of how to do that I found in an article about that.

If you're not a hikki, look into a life drawing class with some hands-on instruction.

>>9015224
I think many of us feel more comfortable when they are on a computer.

>>9015230
How is it useful?
I can understand with circles, anything more than that is a pain.

>>9015237
Line quality, drawing speed, encouraging holistic approach to composition.

No, seriously, it's the best thing you can do to make your drawings look better.

>>9015236
You actually hit the nail on the head with this - you will never get good if you don't go out of your comfort zone from time to time.

>>9015241
But I can't even draw when leaning on my hand.
Drawing with my arm isn't going to be accurate at all.

>>9015254
The first time?

It's going to be so bad you're going to want to cry.

Keep at it. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

I had the same problem. I'm left handed, and I developed crazy fucked up drawing/writing posture. I tried and tried but my lines were looking shitty and I had nowhere near the control over my drawing I wanted.

Until I completely changed the way I did it. It wasn't instant, but it allowed me to actually improve immensely.

>>9014900
>Should I have picked up a better draw pad
Bamboos are good starter tablets.

Buying a better tablet won't make you a better artist.
Go read Loomis and practice, don't even attempt drawing anime styled art until you have a decent 3DPD body down.

OP I recommend you actually NOT use your tablet and go for pencil and paper.

Tablets and digital art software allows for too many conveniences, don't shoot yourself in the foot.

>>9015349
>don't even attempt drawing anime styled art until you have a decent 3DPD body down.
Why do people keep saying this when it has never once produced decent looking western anime styled art?

>>9014900
If you want to have fun, just draw, replicate and learn from experience. Any of the study anatomy or read books bullshit is a waste of time, and will make it feel boring and nothing more than a job. You think any of the artists on pixiv actually do that? Hell no. Most of them just draw for fun and eventually get better with experience over the years.

>>9015377
Yeah it's like saying "don't make classical music until you've mastered making dubsteb" or something.

If you want to get really good at drawing anime girls, then you need to study others who are really good at drawing anime girls.

>>9015377
99% of good Japanese artists study proper anatomy.

>>9015442
Cool source.

>>9015431
It's more like saying "don't make music until you know something about chords".

this is what happens when you dont study anatomy

>>9015431
>¨then you need to study others who are really good at drawing anime girls.
This is terrible advice.
You should never learn to draw humans from stylized art, never.

At best, the only thing you can learn from good artists is the way the render their work.

Please don't suggest this to anyone else who's trying to get into art, you'll cripple them incredibly long term unless they want deviant art QUALITY.

>>9015431
>don't make classical music until you've mastered making dubsteb
This is a terrible comparison.
Congrats on the marriage.

>>9015377
THIS is what happens when you don't study properly.


You're seeing too much shitty western anime art. You know, the kind that looks like it was made by someone who normal draws western comics.

There are tons of non jap artists that can do good anime styled art.

>>9015451
What happens? You make money and people accept your art anyway?

>>9015468
>people accept your art
Sure they do.

But everyone knows he's a hack and can't draw proper characters for shit.

>>9015466
>You know, the kind that looks like it was made by someone who normal draws western comics.
You mean the kind of art heavily based in learning proper anatomy so they can properly draw muscles through spandex?

>>9015476
I like him

>>9015466
dats cute tho

>>9015452
>>deviant art QUALITY

Actually this only happens to people who simply draw without studying a single thing at all.

OP look for the 資料 tag on pixiv. Stick with the pics with a lot of bookmarks. I recommend reading (if you can) and/or drawing everything this guy has to start with:

http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=59317

>>9015496
tfw your pixiv account contains such horrendously embarassing art that you don't even want to login

>>9015496
You're telling him to study someone's stylized interpretation of the human body, this is bad advice, anyone who's serious about art knows that.

>>9015496
This artist can't even into proportions, recommend something decent at least.

I bought a "learn to draw manga" book and it helped me--- the author is japanese
I think if you read enough of these you can get decent. That's how japanese neet faggots that release shit at comiket learn to draw, right?
This kind of book contains anatomy and stuff.

>>9015521
You conveniently forgot to mention that 80% of the stuff released at conventions is such utterly ugly shit that I wouldn't even PIRATE it. Only few people can draw decent doujinshi, and I highly doubt they started off with ``DRAW ANIMU FIGURES IN 12 HOURS, FOR DUMMIES EDITION''

>>9015532
Why do you doubt it? I actually doubt the opposite.

“I want quick-fire, infographic solutions designed to be read and understood in five minutes, created by teenagers for teenagers. But they can't be from DeviantART, lol!”

hurrrr durr art is so hard! I have to make it elite with all my rules!

OP just wants to draw some touhous, you wanna draw touhous OP then draw touhous. The best experience is what you experience, it's not out of a book or from watching a video or tracing. It's from what you draw and the mistakes you make doing it.

Can those other things speed along the process or make your work more acceptable to the masses? Yeah. But unless you wanna make a career out of this and/or sell out to what all the mindless sheep want that won't take the time to create anything themselves, then I'd suggest just drawing and accepting it with all the failures. Throw it out afterwards, but acknowledge what you've done and improve upon it.

And whether you have a tablet or not doesn't matter, use what feels comfortable. The weird feeling will go away eventually.

>>9015550
ENTERPRISE TURN-KEY SCALABLE SOLUTIONS ALLOWING YOU TO LEVERAGE YOUR CORE SKILL SETS WHILE MAKING USE OF TEAM SYNERGIES ALLOWING YOU TO TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL.

>>9015555
Stop stealing my posts.

>>9015557
I'm sorry.

>>9015553
Why WOULDN'T you want to speed up your process? What kind of retarded logic is that?

And the masses? The masses are easy to fool. It's YOU who is going to suffer because of being disappointed with your own art and the nigh-inexistent progress that just copying without understanding is going to net you.


The point of advice in this thread is to allow faster improvement and more conscious control over what you draw.

Unless you have a mentality of a child who finds randomly scribbling on a piece of paper fun, avoiding putting effort into what you draw isn't going to make it more enjoyable, much the opposite.

>>9014900
I started by copying akamatsu's style from love hina then derived my style from it

now i draw tits
and ass
tits and ass
and thighs

>>9015581
Looks like a man standing under the shower to me.

>>9015625
I see it but that's a far stretch

>>9015581
ass ass titty titty
ass and titty

>>9015625
It's like that Chun li screencap

>>9015625
What.

>>9015509
What? I don't even. His strokes are simplified and stylistic but 0033 has a pretty impressive grasp over composition, posing, perspective and proportion. He wouldn't be the be-all-end-all to learning animu art, but he's definitely a good source to study, stylized or not.

>>9017325
Shows how much you know.

>>9017436
You don't seem to be giving better examples while shooting him down, though. Loomis is great, but so is 0033. Despite being far more informal than Loomis, there is little wrong with his proportion. Studying from both sources would be great.

I just wanted to draw 2hus too OP. I didn't buy a tablet or anything but I got so frustrated at myself after about ~60 hours of drawing and seeing no progress that I got really depressed and stopped.

I just wanted to draw Alice and Shanghai/Hourai ;_;

Best of luck OP.

This whole thing about starting realistic sounds very western. Do Japanese artists recommend this too? I'd much rather do the same as Japanese artists do for obvious reasons.

Another reason I'm skeptical is that I see a lot of art by western artists that looks like it's done by someone who has mainly been trained in western art and never quite succeeded in the transition over to the anime style. Something just seems off about the art. It looks dull and kinda unappealing. First example that comes to mind is Katawa Shoujo. It's especially noticeable if you compare the drawings that inspired the whole thing to the actual art in the game.

>>9017522
Nah. Japanese anime artists study their favorite Japanese anime artists. Especially mangaka.

Makes sense though, doesn't it?

>>9017522
thanks

you just made me realize it's a good thing I've never learned to draw

>>9017522
For all intents and purposes, despite how good their art may look, very few anime artists understand proportion and anatomy on the level the average western artist does. What they DO understand is appeal and stylism, and taking what they know to another level that way.

Learning from Loomis is great; it's tried and true for a reason. The problem with recommending it to those wanting to draw anime is that it will teach you to draw perfectly anatomically correct, well-proportioned, very -boring- figures. What many people don't seem to understand is that few need to understand the workings of the body to the level that Loomis did; it's just not necessary in animu. Understanding basic proportion and placement is a must of course, but beyond a certain point it becomes impractical knowledge, unless you actually plan to map out bodies/do art instruction for a living.

The reason I find 0033 just fine is that you can see his understanding of the body in his strokes; there is an incredible amount of fluid motion in just one of his 30-stroke figures; this is something Loomis was extremely poor at, and cannot convey in his tutorials. Again, he is fantastic for comprehension of the human figure; terrible for understanding what makes a style appealing to the eye.

With manga/anime style all you really need to learn is basic anatomy and then work on developing a face (the most important feature in this type of art) like CLAMP did.

>>9017534
Raita seems to like Amazonian girls.

And so do I.

>>9017545
>Loomis
>anatomically correct
Thanks for showing how little you know about what you're talking about, now get the fuck out.

>>9017553
>loomis

Why do I never actually see any art from all the experts around here?

>>9017553
There you go no providing examples again. Jesus, nothing must be correct to you.

>>9017569
shit, forgot the iamge


anyway, loomis is loomis

>>9017570
They're experts but they're still learning.

It really really feels like /ic/ here

I use reference all the time.....

>>9017522
KS artists aren't bad because they're western, they're bad because they are bad.

Raita is a particularly ridiculous example though, since a ton of study and understanding of real life anatomy is extremely apparent in his drawings, but people who never tried to understand it can't even tell.

Knowing how something works in real life doesn't mean you CAN'T stylize it, it gives you the power and flexibility to do whatever you imagine instead of just copying the things you've seen other people do.

It's sad that you don't realize that.

All the really good Japanese artists studied anatomy at one point or another.

The DA-tier artist didn't come from study of anatomy and life drawing somehow limiting the western artists(seriously, knowing MORE is never going to be a liability), they came from just the retarded copying without understanding the underlying principles that you people advocate.

It's pathetic.

>>9017600
>knowing MORE is never going to be a liability

I used to believe it when I was like, 14

then I discovered old people

it's funny because ZUN and takeuchi are responsible for some of the most popular /jp/ character designs and they can't draw for shit

KS artists have bad coloring styles and the nose and eyes are borderline "totally spies".

The only talented artist is Raemz and she is quite a lazy bitch.

>>9017630
ZUN can't draw, sure, but I don't think he ever went out of his way to learn one way or another.

Takeuchi? You sure you didn't confuse him with Ryukishi07 or something? Because Takeuchi most certainly can draw. He started mediocre, but by now he's pretty fucking good, and other than the occasional slip-up caused by time/not giving a fuck, he most certainly displays solid understanding of anatomy.

>>9017600

I know nothing about art or the KS staff, but I like Raide's art. Going through his profiles and stuff he seems to be a jerk, but I thought the character sprites in KS and Analogue were pretty decent. They were clean and cute.

Fuck this picture though. I don't know what's going on with those gradients.

>>9017630
>Takeuchi
>can't draw for shit.
Derp

>>9017600
Nothing wrong with copying those who are better than you. You can learn music theory without ever opening a music theory textbook if you just sit down and copy/transcribe the music of good musicians.

Just like how you can learn proper anatomy from an anime artist who already knows proper anatomy. No need for a Loomis textbook in this case. I know this method of learning annoys "real artists" and "real musicians" to no end, but it's just how it is really. You're crazy if you think every excellent artist/musician out there has taken the exact same path of self study.

>>9017684
Why the fuck would you go out of your way to take a way that's slower, harder, and ultimately providing shallow understanding in comparison?

Can you do it? Yeah, sure, ultimately.

But why the flying fuck would you hurt yourself and your progress so? Because trying to understand how and WHY things work is too much fucking work?

The people who learn by doing and mimicking don't do so because they choose to, they do it because they started doing whatever they were doing and ended up doing it so long that they got good at it.

Well, this discussion is more or less pointless anyway, because anyone who actually, you know, put any actual effort to try and get good at drawing would understand why it's bullshit.

I just hope no beginner takes the lazy way out just to realize halfway through that he's making a mistake, or worse yet give up because he doesn't get the results he hoped to.

>>9017643
Why call raemz a bitch? She's lovely

>>9017724
She sucks horse cocks.

Go read raemz blog she is like a mix of the worst /a/ and /vp/ posters and she uses the horrible 4chan slang.

Plus the "woah is me" tone of lots of her entries

She really doesn't even seem to care much about the stuff she draws either.

>>9017712
>>slower, harder, and ultimately providing shallow understanding in comparison?

Perhaps for you, but not for others. Remember everyone has different learning styles and such.

That's really my whole point with this.

>>9017751
>woah is me

>>9017751
To be fair, few people type properly outside of 4chan on their blog/facebook/whatever the fuck you got. I can vouch that she cares very much about what she draws, she just doesn't have the time to draw a lot/put a ton of effort into something. She is a student, after all.

KL is a good western anime artist.

>>9017763
Whatever, it's correct for all intensive purposes.

>>9017817
That's fucking awful.

Just fucking look at that arm.

>>9017893
>let me blow it totally out of proportion to make my point seem more valid
It's hardly that bad. Lengthwise it's fine, and it doesn't look like it's put on the wrong way or some shit. it's barely defined is the only problem, but that's honestly part of the style; KL definitely knows her shit.

>>9017893
15274 people disagree.

Like I said this thread is full of /ic/ people who can only judge a work by the anatomy,style,and medium used (they are highly biased towards traditional art) so don't expect anything else

>>9017915
hurrrrrr

>>9017630
>Takeuchi couldn't draw
Fixed.
He improved, his arms aren't the size of buildings anymore.

>>9017893
Are we supposed to take note of how nice it looks?

>>9017893
This is autistic tier nitpicking.

And this is coming from someone who's incredibly critical about these things.

>>9017762
Not really.
It's like teaching a kid how to write without teaching them letters first. Just look at all the idiots who can't draw on dA because of their "super unique" way of learning.
There's already a way that has been paved by artists over the ages and that's the study of anatomy to develop ones visual library. If you want an example of why copying other artist's styles is a bad idea, look at the baroque artists. They tried to copy the style of the rennaissance and add their own flavour. Sounds familiar, right? 99% of the art from that period is complete shit as per say from professional artists/historians.

I hope I can be good at art someday.....

I like to think I'm pretty good at drawing, I've been drawing since I was a child. My greatest leaps in progress have only come recently, when I decided to actually study how to do shit. So yeah, study. Don't get bogged down in drawing anatomy studies, though. Draw stuff you like, draw while looking at artists' work that you think is good. If you only focus on the technical aspect, I think your art will come out looking incredibly bland.

>>9018013
But I love baroque...

>>9017684
Music is the same thing as drawing; whatever you produce will be shit if you don't have the same minimal understanding that your favorite artists had. Have you noticed that the only pop albums worth a cent are the ones recorded by musicians with a strong, self-admitted appreciation for classical?

No one ever got successful just by listening to The Beatles and thinking "I'm gonna make music that sounds like THAT!"

>>9018620

>Anonymous 05/16/12(Wed)03:50 No.9018620
File: 1337154605342.jpg-(635 KB, 743x800, 1328582023058.jpg)
635 KB

>>9017684
Music is the same thing as drawing; whatever you produce will be shit if you don't have the same minimal understanding that your favorite artists had. Have you noticed that the only pop albums worth a cent are the ones recorded by musicians with a strong, self-admitted appreciation for classical?

No one ever got successful just by listening to The Beatles and thinking "I'm gonna make music that sounds like THAT!"
Oasis

>>018630

Can't quote worth a dick.
But yes, Oasis.

>>9018632

Ahahaha

Capture - make shitpst

>>9015532
I'm having a hard time picturing my favorite h-artists going to art school. Hipsters go to art school. They don't make doujins about frogs raping cirno.
I think it's much more plausible that they just bought "learn to draw manga" books from their local comic book store when they were 12 and copied their favorite artists a lot.

I just glanced through one of those loomis books "fun with drawing". More like "unfun with drawing". Why would I torture myself drawing horrible things I hate? I'll have to unlearn a lot later. It doesn't seem much different than my go office books (more comprehensive, yes), except go office actually allows me to draw weeaboo things from the start.

>>9018440
can't you study anatomy just by looking at naked people a lot? unless you're drawing guro you should only need to know what bodies look like on the outside.

>>9018644
>I'll have to unlearn a lot later.
What? No. It's not like learning a style somehow locks you into it for the rest of your life... or if you're planning on just that, you should give up before you begin.

Have you people never heard of "you have to know the rules before you can break them"?

>>9018632
>>9018634
You guys lost me.

>>9018632
Tracing art != copying art

I wish I could talk to an artist that actually makes money one day and see what they did and not just the opinions of self-proclaimed "good" internet "artists"

Seriously though. If you want to draw a human body, an animal body, or an apple, go look at those things and draw them. You don't need 110% ultra realism, but you do need to know how they are shaped and how the various parts are attached to each other.

All that time reading up on anatomy would be better spent reading up on perspective, foreshortening, and shading.

>>9018676
>Tracing art != copying art
uh, yes it is

Check out The Artist's Guide to Human Anatomy by Joseph Shapherd and Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from life. Bridgman's style is kind of boxy and reminds me a bit of muscular superheros but all his stuff on hands, noses, feet, necks, etc is great. If you want a crash course in learning to draw quickly I'd recommend just copying the studies from these books by eye. That's what I did for a life drawing class I took last semester (in addition to life drawing, of course) and I saw a huge improvement in my art. Even the kids who started out with next to no skill came out at least competent by the end of the semester.

>>9018679
I live with an artist, and honestly, from what I've heard from her complaints is that "good" and "bad" are really relative terms a large part of the time.

What you address in your post is probably the best way to make yourself a good artist--you have to train yourself to see things a certain way, and to at least recreate it in some cohesive way.

In the end, if someone is going to draw in a specific style, all the power to them--just that there are confines in which you're going to have to work within that a lot of people aren't visually trained for.

That's why I stick to the idea of "atelier method = best method" for learning--but shit if you're going to find something like that in this day and age.

>>9018658
That's like saying I should learn english with an american teacher when my goal is british english. I'm going to have a very hard time when I finally try to switch to british english. It's not going to be british at all.

That kind of "learn to draw for real first" advice sounds like something an animu hating faggot would say. Nobody that says that actually draws anime styled. You need to have the basics down that's true, but you don't need to be fucking michelangelo to draw your keions. Basic anatomy, perspective and lighting should be enough. It's kinda obvious that if you want to get good at drawing anime style, you need to draw anime style a lot.

>>9018691
>atelier method
I looked this up and it was tl;dr, but it's like when manga artists have assistants that help them draw stuff and then those assistants branch off and become their own artists?

>>9018695
None of these threads are made by people who have the basics down. The advice given has consistently been "get the basics down, then do what you like."

>>9018695
>I'm going to have a very hard time when I finally try to switch to british english.
Why? All you have to do is add extra vowels into your words and stuff your mouth full of dick before you start speaking.

Seriously though, there are people here who seek to learn Japanese as a second language. How would learning British English after American english in any way be difficult?

>>9018697
I think it's just an studio where people who want to draw in a certain style gather and help each other, and they accept alumni. Basically a guild of artists?

>>9018700
Taking analogies literally is one of the telling signs of autism.

>>9018701
There's an atelier that goes on in the summer at my college where everyone draws nude models in natural lighting for six hours a day. It's a really intense program. I'd love to do it but it costs over a thousand dollars...

>>9018697
It's like what >>9018701 said.

I wouldn't really consider the manga artist-assistant thing much like an atelier, just because the assistants are usually well versed in manga creation to begin with.

It's really more like an apprenticeship.

>>9018709
The price is usually what does it in. I was thinking of finding a studio in my area, but Christ, I don't make enough money as it is, let alone one to fuel a dead passion such as 'art'

>>9018620
>>No one ever got successful just by listening to The Beatles and thinking "I'm gonna make music that sounds like THAT!"

Actually yes, an amazing amount of acts got famous by doing covers.

Transcribing music works extremely well for learning music, just like how copying your favorite good artists works extremely well. This is because it takes a lot of work to do it accurately. It isn't easy, so it forces you to learn.

Everyone ITT should literally go transcribe a song if they're a musician, or copy (not trace) a drawing by their favorite anime artist instead of arguing or something. I'll do the former in the morning.

>>9018736
>>Actually yes, an amazing amount of acts got famous by doing covers.
Hey, that's not what I meant!

>>Transcribing music works extremely well for learning music
Irrelevant to everything I wrote. Transcribing and learning *solely* from pop music will never make you a proficient songwriter. Tracing and learning *solely* from deviantART will never make you a proficient artist.

>>just like how copying your favorite good artists works extremely well
Tastes vary.

>>9018752
> Transcribing and learning *solely* from pop music will never make you a proficient songwriter.
I dunno, I mean, The Beatles did write a lot of songs that broke certain musical conventions that were long in place since classical music.

>>9018763
No they didn't. The compositions were a step down from classical conventions and the arrangements were dumbed down versions of what everyone else had been doing years before them.

>>9018763
No they didn't. The compositions were a step down from classical conventions and the arrangement styles were dumbed down versions of what everyone else had been doing years before them.

>>9018768
OK fine you've officially won the argument and earned yourself a grotesquely large amount of kudos.

>>9017664
The only good part of TYPE-MOON art is the colouring, which Takeuchi doesn't do. It has been done by Koyama Hirokazu, a far better artist, since the CGs of Kagetsu Tohya.

Can't attach picture because upload failed, but he did the artwork for Mahoutsukai no Yoru for example.

>>9018013
>professional artists/historians
wwwww

>>9018763
>The Beatles did write a lot of songs that broke certain musical conventions that were long in place since classical music.
lol

LOOMIS.

People that say "PRACTICE" are the ones that have always been atleast OKAY at drawing.
They don't know what it's like to be utter shit.

usually, no matter how "good" western artists(including koreans) are at drawing, their manga-styled art can always be discerned from japanese-made one


link related.
his backgrounds are nice, but the characters are still manghwa-grade
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=202175
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puRNQbSMEwo

It's not like people are just magically good at drawing. Everyone practices. Some may be better at it than others but you still have to practice. This kind of applies to a lot of things in life.

>>9018824
Always at least okay? So they could draw okay straight out of the womb or what?

Okay, that's probably not what you meant, but no one has "always been at least OK". For example, I'm not half-decent even now, but I've been drawing more than other kids from kindergarten age or so and I started practising seriously with the intention of becoming better in 2nd grade. People tell me "you've always been good at it," but in reality I've been shedding tears and sweat to become better since I was a small kid. No one has ever been always okay, they just started practising very early.

And unlike many other things (sports, music, language) drawing doesn't even have a sensitive period where it would be easier to learn as a kid than later on in life. I can't remember any names, but for this reason there are many awesome professional artists who started in their 20s.

Personally, I'm still crap though.

>>9018835
>sensitive period
lol
biggest lie ever
the only advantage a kid has when learning anything is free time. an adult is a better learner in every single way, kids are dumb

>>9018856
>biggest lie ever
There are sensitive periods for a few things (language, for instance) but I agree with the sentiment. The idea of sensitive periods has really been overgeneralized and overblown.

>>9018856
... for example, a 20 yo musician that started learning at 8 is better than a 20 yo that started at 18. no shit sherlock, that's 10 years more of practice.
and because of diminishing returns and because he's learning things with a smarter approach, second guy will end up catching the first at some point.

>>9018856
I learned to read before I learned to think consciously or to remember (as in, before the age of three.) I have not had the same luck in learning Japanese.

>>9018898
A three year old has spent over ten thousand hours of his life immersed in an English-language environment. How many hours have you spent learning Japanese?

>>9018898
Now go to Japan and spend 3 years there surroundend by native speakers talking to you all the time, having to ask them for food and shit, using 0 english.
I guarantee you that you will speak fluent japanese. Or at least the same fluent japanese as a 3 year old babby.

Like it was pointed out earlier, I've never seen anybody that says you've gotta learn the rules to break em' draw anything other than boring or annoying western garbage. "Real artists" want to build up art to be horribly difficult, almost unattainable so that they can feel special and belittle everybody else who doesn't adhere to their biased standards.

If you break to art to it's base elements, isn't it just creating something from your mind?

You can either be a butthurt, tortured soul of an artist who's never satisfied with their work and one that has to condemn another's work just to feel good. Because there will ALWAYS be something you can do better, no art is perfect and it never will be.

Or you can just have fun with it, mistakes and all, and learn from what you've done in the past. Because there will ALWAYS be something you can do better, no art is perfect and it never will be.

>>9018997
Did you read your text before posting it? It makes you sound like a faggot. Are you?

>>9018997
Even as someone who usually recommends building up from technical knowledge, I think there's some truth to this.

I used to be pretty creative, but I think due to taking other people's critique too seriously I became way too technical, and now I can't really draw anything with originality and style. The things I draw may be more anatomically correct than your average dA or OC thread artist, but at least those people can achieve atmosphere and feeling in their work. I wish I could be like those people, though I know I can't probably return to what I used to be.

Especially on the Internet, there's a culture of butthurt surrounding art/drawing. You'll never be good enough, and the better you get the more people start nitpicking about ridiculous things and details. If you care about the nitpicking and try to live up to people's expectations, you'll end up like me. I have no inspiration, style or soul.

It makes me wonder why it's the art culture that is like this.

>>9019021
Most people are able to learn skills without selling their souls. I'm sorry it wasn't the case for you.

>>9019026
Heh, I didn't really mean soul that way.

It's a drawing-specific thing though, I've never encountered something like this learning other stuff, creative or not. It's probably partly because of the places I went and the people from there, but I've seen this happen to other artists too, so I think it's also about the general western attitude/culture surrounding art.

>>9019039
The western attitude surrounding art for people like us should be ignored.
"I want to draw like a manga artist" is met with "lol noob lern2draw 4 real animu suxxx" which in more elitist/pc circles turns into the condescending "learn to draw real things first..." which is just another way for them to say that manga/anime art is derivative inferior subart. I wouldn't take advice for someone who doesn't follow my goals.

>>9019057
>"learn to draw real things first..." which is just another way for them to say that manga/anime art is derivative inferior subart.
Where the hell are people getting this from? Personally I draw pretty much nothing but animu and animals, and I'd tell you the same if you wanted to draw fucking Spongebob. A decent understanding of anatomy is vital with animations (or just conveying movement in still images) exactly because when you're working with simplified bodies, you need other visual cues (what to exaggerate and what not) to communicate your intent.

>>9019073
In other words, if you're content with drawing mugshots, that's fine, but if you want to draw pictures with things happening and people in different poses, you need to know where body parts DON'T go.

There's a variety of ways to draw anatomically correct, and that's usually just simple consistency and clear intention. You can draw noodle people, but if their legs' heights change every second panel, that's a mistake.

I understand that you could improve the quality of your art by studying anatomy. What I don't understand is why you have to start out with it. There's this general principle of "learn the rudimentaries before tackling anything else", but that only makes sense in contexts where what you ultimately want to learn builds upon the rudimentary stuff (like in the expression "learning to walk before you learn to run"). And please note that just because anime is ultimately inspired by real life, doesn't mean that the skill to draw it has to build upon the skill to draw from real life. All musical harmony is ultimately derived from medieval and Renaissance counterpoint, but that doesn't mean you have to sit down and study the works of Palestrina in order to figure out what chord progression to use for a pop song.

Therefore, until I see someone demonstrate clearly how the skill of drawing any stylished art builds upon the skill of drawing realistic art, I'm going to advocate focusing all your energy at first on drawing stuff you like, so that you'll actually enjoy doing it and be motivated to going on. Diving head first into all the technical stuff is a good way to convince yourself that drawing is too hard and not rewarding enough. You can always get into this later when you feel motivated to improve your technique.

>>9019282
> but that doesn't mean you have to sit down and study the works of Palestrina in order to figure out what chord progression to use for a pop song.
Oh look, found the reason why pop music sucks right there.

>>9019282
>I'm going to advocate focusing all your energy at first on drawing stuff you like, so that you'll actually enjoy doing it and be motivated to going on. Diving head first into all the technical stuff is a good way to convince yourself that drawing is too hard and not rewarding enough. You can always get into this later when you feel motivated to improve your technique.
Of course. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It's how I did it.

Just be prepared for the criticism.

>>9019328
If you don't show your work, nobody can critizice you.

You can even show it on DA and get praise!

>>9019337
Well, yeah. That just doesn't sound like someone who wants to improve.

>>9019282
Personally, putting my effort into stylization, seeing how shitty I am and going back to square one to improve would be more demoralizing than starting shitty at realism and working my way up to being good at stylization.

Maybe I'm just odd, though.

>>9019347
Is improvement all doing arts should be about, though, and at what pace should one try to achieve it? There's nothing wrong about just enjoying drawing, and depending on what kind of a person you are it may help you improve faster than getting frustrated by taking things too seriously.

Not that there's anything wrong with trying hard to improve constantly, it just may not be what all artists want or what is the best for everyone. I don't think there's anything bad about artists who prioritise other things over improvement.

>>9019282 All musical harmony is ultimately derived from medieval and Renaissance counterpoint, but that doesn't mean you have to sit down and study the works of Palestrina in order to figure out what chord progression to use for a pop song.

Counterpoint is a method of writing music, with strict rules. Harmony is an observable effect between frequencies.

The only problem I have is trying to draw with a tablet. I've pretty much only done artwork traditionally, and even with taking a photoshop class I barely have any idea on how to use the program to draw or paint. Coloring especially is my issue. In the end I just always wind up fiddling in Sai and make crummy ten minute doodles that look like they should belong on Tumblr.

Are there any decent books that can help me get an understanding of everything in the program? I downloaded one about digital painting but the instructions are pretty much only
>take a picture
>paint over it in photoshop
>congratulations, Michelangelo Jr.

>>9019376
I guess I could say homophony if you're going to nitpick, but harmony is a far more accessible expression and means the exact same thing in this context.

>>9019372
I don't see where you get "going back to square one" from. You're not reverting your progress by shifting your focus a little.

>>9019375
You're basically saying that it's fine for people to not improve if they don't want to. That's of course true, I'm not denying their right to that, but... what of it? I thought the whole subject here was people who wanted to improve. I would think that talking about people who don't care about the quality of their art is pretty irrelevant in this context.

>>9019472
That's not what he's saying at all. He's just saying that it's perfectly acceptable to prioritize enjoyment over improvement (which makes sense, since there's not much incentive to learn how to draw other than your own enjoyment), and that just drawing for enjoyment may lead to improvement automatically (which also makes sense, since the best way to get better at something is to do more of it, and you're more likely to do more of it if you enjoy it).

My hands hurt after trying to draw more detailed hair for my 2hu sketches.
I'm useless at hair without a reference and can't progress beyond doodle-tier hair like in pic related.

Also, a question for tablet users. Do you have you tablet infront of you monitor or where your mouse should be?

>>9019499
My r key decided to to shit itself for that last sentence, I apologize.

>>9019468 All musical harmony is ultimately derived from medieval and Renaissance counterpoint

See this? This is wrong. Counterpoint uses harmony, but harmony is not counterpoint.

>>9019486
Oh. Clearly this is all too crazy for me to understand, mostly because improvement is enjoyment for me. Personally I'd feel very frustrated if I just drew random half-assed scribbles all the time, not being able to draw exactly what I had in mind to due to lack of skill.

Actually, it's not "if", it's still "when" too often.

On that note, if improvement through study is detrimental to your enjoyment, well... not all people like practice, but there's a reason you do it. If you really simply enjoy drawing without a care as to what your art looks like, good for you. I'm jealous of you.

/jp/, /jp/, creativity~

Some general advice for OP:

It is fine to keep manga/anime in mind when learning to draw. Its even find to try and emulate the style. But at the very least you need to supplement your learning with anatomy and drawing actual people. The reason for this is pretty simple. If you learn by only drawing anime/manga, you'll only be able to draw that one thing, in the one way you've seen it drawn. If you suppliment with traditional methods, you'll be able to draw *anything*.

From what I gathered from your post, you expected to be decent, or at the very least "not bad" right away. Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth. You will need to put in YEARS of hard work to get even close to being considered a great artist. I have a friend that is already way better than me, and he fills a hundred page sketchbook every single week, and he's still working hard to improve himself.

There is a silver lining, though. As long as you put in a decent amount of effort, it is possible to make significant progress in only a few months. Now, what we define "effort" as is very important. You will NOT improve by only copying another artist. Period. That is not how learning to draw works. You will NOT improve by drawing only what is comfortable to draw. The harder something feels to draw, the more likely it is that you'll see some improvement from it.

cont'd from >>9019898

Some things that help:

* Find PHOTOGRAPHIC reference images of faces in various expressions, and try to copy those. And by copy I mean look at the screen and draw them, not "trace over". Someone earlier in the thread equated copying with tracing, and the two could not be more different in terms of artistic improvement. Its perfectly fine to draw people with simplified anime expressions, but actually knowing how the face moves will allow you to decide for yourself how you want to represent certain things, rather than blindly trusting someone else's style.

* Draw characters from many different poses and many different angles. If a pose seems difficult to do, then it is almost certainly worth your time. If you're too lazy to go looking for poses, http://www.posemaniacs.com/ has tons of rotatable anatomic models in various poses and angles.

* Try gesture drawing. It helps immensely. Basically, you try and draw something as fast as you possibly can, in order to develop better ways of constructing the figure. Posemaniacs has a great "30 second draw" page that will swap out poses on a customizable timer. (non)Protip: Don't try to draw the outline, you won't have time, you're basically going to have to scribble.

There are dozens of other things that could be said on the matter, but these are things that really helped me improve.

I've been working at drawing with my entire arm, with better and more confident strokes and all the rest of it.

But I either do it by resting my hand on the paper, but there's friction between the paper and arm and thus the strokes get jerky. I can also hold the hand over the sheet, with only the pencil tip touching the paper; The lines become fluid, but my upper arm begins to hurt after thirty odd minutes, depending on the kind of drawing.

Examine enclosed illustration for further detail. What to do?

>>9019861
I love that song~~~