Thread:TheBeautifulNarcissist666/@comment-31710423-20190621060356

Hello again, Hamad,

As you may have known that I, along with many other contributors, have taken interest in your drawings of characters. I, too, draw and design characters. As much as I admire your artistic creations, I can't help but speak out on some advice regarding drawing techniques. (So get ready for a long comment). Just so you know, these are just my analyses and criticsim, I have no intention to be mean or to force you to draw EXACTLY like Pretty Simple, it is up to you what to do.

I know that this advice has not been asked and, to be frank, these are mere suggestions said from one artist to another. If you want to be much excel more in your artsitic skills, then please hear me out first, try it out and, if it doesn't satisfy you, then proceed with your original techniques.

My first advice would be about the hair. I noticed how you designed the hair of your characters, they appear to be quite clumpy and chunky, there is no 'flowing effect'. If you study the original Criminal Case characters, you notice how they have a natural 'flowing' look on their hair.

A good example would be Julia Brine's design – you can clearly see the waviness of her hair through the patterns the designers have made: the swirling technique creates the wavy form of the hair and small streaks gives more of a realistic detailed look, despite it being a cartoon character. In Christian Bateman's design, you can see repitition of wavy lines in the middle of his hairline, giving off that neat, combed look. Another technique that I've noticed the designers did was to use three shades of colours to shade the hair to give it form – the light hue is the original, the dark hue is the shadow while the darkest hue is the outline. Sometimes, the designer uses black to outline, but it's more for the outer appearance. My tip: use more lines and, if you want a wavy look, use the swirling and curving technique

My second advice would be about the clothes. I have noticed that your character's clothes don't have the right proportions. My advice for this would be to research clothing designs and carefully analyse the proportion of each area of clothes. For example, if you want your character to wear a suit, then analyse how the suit fit the wearer in real life. Another detail I've noticed is that you make the clothes too wavy, giving off that unironed, baggy look. Messy, unironed designs are OK if you want the character to have a 'messy' personality, but it wouldn't look too good on a clean and professional character. My tip would be to use less wavy lines on the clothes itself and don't put too much shading on the clothes.

My third advice would be about body proportions. I've seen you draw shirtless characters and I've seen a couple of mistakes – you make the chest area too big and the shoulders too broad. Again, to fix this, research body proportions and try to make decent measurements on the character's body. Remember, clothes add layer on the figure, so they appear bigger. I'll be using Christian Bateman as an example again – you can see that his shoulders are very broad while wearing the suit, but try to remember that most suits have shoulder pads on them, so try to minimise the shoulder's broadness, otherwise the head would look too small. On an average person, the chest and the abdomen almost have an equal amount of space on the torso, so try not to make either the chest or the abdomen to dominant.

My final advice would be to decrease the boldeness of your outline, it makes the characters too bulky.

You have an artistic talent, Hamad, and you have the potential to improve it and I think these advice that I've given you will help. In other words, "you are good, but you can be much better". I, too, have made these mistakes before and I found massive improvement to my character designs after looking more into it. Once again I'm not trying to be mean. Try them out some day, and if it doesn't please you then don't use them. I hope that I have helped you in any way.

By the way, good luck for the rest of high school. I've been there, just sit tight.

Sincerely,

Fatal 