Added 1 new A* page:Today I learned--a little belatedly--that this no-liney polygonal approach is trickier than it first appeared yesterday, where I had the advantage of working in silhouette; when you have the light on the side, on the other hand, you actually have to, like, define surfaces instead of just shapes, and also you don't get that magical eclipse glow that sort of masks a lot of things for you. The glow had also let me carve off the edges of the figures with light, slimming them, and I liked that result--but now I have to learn how to do it when the light is at a wider angle; with the light coming from the side for this page I didn't have that eclipsing glow to trim the figures for me. Of course, if I learned to draw the figures how I wanted them in the first place instead of letting my pencil and pen lines sort of bulge all over the place, this wouldn't be a problem. : P I've been aware for some time now that I haven't been getting the leanness and angularity I'd like in my hand-drawn lines, but I haven't really been able to figure out how to make it come naturally as I draw. Maybe I should just pretend that everything I draw is eclipsing the Sun!
I realized also after defaulting to doing it that with this approach you don't want to use counter-reflection in most cases, because that just complicates everything; keep the highlights just on one side of the figure. I default to drawing counter-reflections in, and once I realized this wasn't working well in this I had to spend a lot of time editing the left-side highlights back out. And sometimes for legibility you'll have to do something that doesn't strictly obey the light source: in page 4 here for instance I ended up having to put some outlines to the right (illuminated) side of this new character on the right, and I had to leave her face a little more illuminated than it should be, in order to show her eye looking at Selenis. Maybe if I planned this stuff out better I wouldn't have to cheat like that. I also had like sand in the background and stuff but in the end it just seemed either dull or distracting. So hm yeah composition is gonna be extra important with this style, apparently.
|
