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Pix3M

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Everything posted by Pix3M

  1. Everfree 2013 was pretty cool, but I feel that I need to be more than just an attendee because I do a lot more in the fandom than just 'enjoy' things. So, the handle I'm known by is Pix3M. In this fandom, I'm a couple of things - an artist, and an art critic. As an artist, I've been heavily specialized in pixel art. Outside of the fandom as an artist, you could *probably* say I'm a professional. As a critic, out of every pony-centric group on deviantART, I mod the toughest one out there and it's much tougher than Equestria Daily's drawfriend. I know I'm very early for poking around about 2014, but I do hope to be able to take on a bigger role for next year. I hope to become a vendor for the 2014 convention, but if that isn't quite an option then I can hope to at least volunteer somehow, preferably in the artistic department somehow. I can guess we're short on art panels if the drawing tutorial was jam packed. Everyone wants to make good stuff but sometimes we don't always know how. I'm also a local here. I live in Seattle proper. I hope to be able to poke back occasionally to see if anything pops up because I'm currently all fired up to move somewhere in life. Anyways, hope to see you all at 2014!
  2. Even if art is about expressing yourself, again, sometimes an artist doesn't always achieve what they were intending. I think I should make it clear that I already think the mere ability to draw is already a gift. I think it's funny because I have a different idea of what a good critique looks like. It seems that people have varying ideas of what a good critique looks like. On one extreme, some think they should be just asspats. I can name somebody with that mentality. There's the other extreme where others think they should be more straight forward for the sole purpose of letting an artist know where the critic feels there can be room for improvement. I can name a couple of people with that sort of mentality. I think the biggest issue is knowing what exactly people expect out of a critique. Some times, people take offense and don't like it when I critique, but I will tell you that there are others who practically kiss my feet when I do share my thoughts. Plus, my pictures aren't as nice as you think they are. They're subject to the same tough standards I put everyone else's work. Some of my works, I don't even want to see again. If anything, I'm harsher to myself than I am on others. I don't think 'not perfectly drawn' means 'bad'. I don't actually think they're bad. There's more than enough things done well enough to not deserve that horrible label. If you want my idea of 'bad', 'bad' anatomy is horribly misshapen and has absolutely no illusion of anatomy. These drawings definitely do have an illusion of anatomy so there's no way I can call it 'bad'. 'Bad' coloring is super-saturated with horribly clashing colors that it throws your focus in places that have no merit. Your drawings aren't colored in such a way, at least with how it's presented on my monitor. I think there needs to be a huge distinction between 'bad' and 'not quite perfect' because that's not how I see art.
  3. I've seen many worse pieces and this critique is probably coming from one of the harshest brony art critics you'll meet (I'm an admin of the Best-of-MLP-FiM group on dA). But, I think opinions of all sorts are good to hear. Having your own style does not necessarily mean good. I believe that what's more important is whether a style achieves what it intended is what makes or breaks a style. At its very best, every minute detail of a person's style should be conscious and intentional. Anything which an artist have no control over, like not knowing how lighting works, will make them fall very short from what they're going for if they want realism. For example, what if an artist wishes to draw a stylized pony that has some of the simplified charm of FiM-style but wants to add realistic anatomical features, but ends up drawing their faces to resemble more like dogs than horses? What if that was totally unintentional due to the artist not fully understanding equine anatomy? What if another pony artist aimed for 'beautiful' but ends up drawing their faces vaguely lopsided? I can't say i know everything about what the artist was doing with this particular art style, but I think there are a few things we can bring up. Shading is actually not done correctly. It is hardly there, but for something where shading is more visible, look at Celestia and Luna. They are pillow-shaded. You do not shade by darkening around all edges of a shape. Look at the moon - you will not see this sort of shading on the moon; only one side of the moon will be darkened/lit. Pillow shading is only correct if you have a very, very close light source. We should also be very careful about the direction the ears are pointed at. For AJ and AB, it appears they are pointing their ears to their sides, but what little I've read about Equine behavior suggests that the direction the ears are pointed do not carry the message the art is intending. By not pointing ears in the direction to their sisters but to their sides instead, the effect I see suggests that they're not interested in each other or are really boring each other. And as for AJ's back side, I do not recall seeing hind legs reaching higher up than the back. The tail is also breaking the illusion of anatomy because it is bent very, very far up. The tail is an extension of the spine. FiM-style likes to have tails raised up very high as it creates something more interesting to look at, but I think the angle they raise their tails is about the farthest they can go without breaking the illusion of anatomy. Again, many worse pieces, and even the best of the best brony artists have room for improvement.
  4. Do not offer money for a desktop pony to be made. The desktop pony team has been very aggressive to people who do not listen to them when they ask people to not make any profits off their work.
  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts) ^ Knowing how to compose an image will help you in so many ways I literally mean what I say. There's plenty to learn, but the nutshell of what you ought to consider when making a sig is consider where you want the big focus to be, where you want people to look first. Then, consider other things you want the viewer to look at next. When you do enough research on composition, you should then be able to know how to create a more interesting, more professionally-done signature.
  6. Definitely one of the best anatomy studies, but an aspiring artist should be aware that the eyes are stylized from FiM style. Eyes are not vertically elongated - they're diagonally elongated. I've written a couple myself, but be aware that it's an incomplete WIP: http://fav.me/d5lfjb1 http://fav.me/d5lbq5e http://fav.me/d5lwqfl Do not look at how-to guides too much. They can show you a workflow with intricate guidelines, but not all workflows will get you what you want. You have to understand the anatomy to even make guidelines usable. Studying how parts work and knowing how it compared to RL horse anatomy be far more helpful than even my guides that are written basically as a response to how I felt about all the pony guides out there.
  7. First, it never needs to look jagged. Here's a pixel art avatar I've found from one of the more elitist pixel art forums: I can find no jags, but neither can I find any on my own avatar. I think the one big thing keeping my avatar (not the outdated version on the first post) is that I don't know how to make sure my work is smooth on ALL monitors. Different monitors for some reason do weird stuff with my buffering colors and expose my pixels more than I want them to. At this point, I will need somebody to literally redline where the jagged pixels are.
  8. I didn't keep track, so maybe two hours? But, I spent plenty more hours for super-perfectionism only to realize the reason why this might not look smooth to some is because people seem to have different monitors that display colors differently.
  9. I've made a few changes since I posted this and it looks super-vector smooth to me... but it seems that I'm having issues with gamma on my monitor so on other monitors, the lines will look rough... and I'm not talking about the eyelash area which I will admit was very lazy with.
  10. Be aware that body parts can cast shadows on other body parts, so the lighting is not as accurate as it can be. The lighting suggests a light source that is farther away from us than Fluttershy, but if that's the case, the mane should be casting a shadow on the wing. Especially with the shorter layer of feathers, there should not be any highlights because her head and mane is blocking the way. It's great to see people help out, but be aware that there's always somebody better at what we do.
  11. Here's my point of view. Here, we have two edges. The left edge is perfectly clear. If you zoom in, you see two clear bodies of color. If you zoom in on to the right edge, it is significantly blurrier. If you zoom in to that edge, you see two clear bodies of color, but there is a gray line running down between these bodies of color. What this gray line is effectively doing is drawing an edge that is not perfectly aligned to a pixel grid. By adding and removing this gray line, I'm basically moving the edge a distance of less than a pixel. As far as I know, vectors will not change their proportions to better align to a pixel grid. A pixel artist will always consider the very pixel grid used to display pictures. If a vector is adding extra buffer pixels, it's because their proportions aren't perfectly aligned to the grid. If we're still disagreeing, I'll give you permission to do a vector trace of my work. I've already posted a comment in the MLP-vector club on dA asking if I can have a vector trace of this work for the sake of comparison.
  12. Not very clear? That's like saying my drawing has bad anatomy because I traced from a photo. Hand-pixelled or hand-optimized vectors will always look sharper than raw vectors.
  13. ^Here it is in case you're dealing with silly cache issues. I feel this piece will cause quite a bit of controversy because it's hand-pixelled, therefore it's pixel art. Yet, this looks like a vector
  14. Sounds like a bunch of butthurt loners with nothing better to do. Seriously... they're just ponies. If there's anything worth making hate groups about, a harmless fandom is not worth the time.
  15. No seriously, in order to use guidelines correctly, you have to understand faux pony anatomy and how the parts work and function. The very same skill and sense of proportions to put guidelines in the right places are the exact same skill and sense of proportions to draw from memory pretty easily.
  16. Too good to critique? I am not sure if there are gonna be very many people at THAT level. You just need another good artist to be able to point something out. Such as... the OP shaded the 3/4ths mare nose which is actually a side-view nose. Adding shading on that nose will make the perspective error easier to spot. Plus, I'm a dedicated pixel artist. IMO, desktop ponies are really, really simplistic in style (like, beginner-tier) and isn't very much to show off.
  17. If you ever referenced a picture of an actual horse in 3/4ths perspective, the belly curving into the leg is 100% anatomically accurate. In something I've written, there's a reference that shows exactly that: http://fav.me/d5lwqfl I also don't think this seemingly mathematical approach is gonna work out. I think one of the better ways to learn anatomy is to try to copy stuff by eye quickly, not trying to fix mistakes but draw over them instead. It will help get proportions into memory so you don't need to rely on mathematical constructions and at some point, you'll be able to draw from memory without guidelines.
  18. I still think those legs are awfully filly-like for a grown mare. Ever wondered what the legs look like if you stretched them out and compared to a vector trace of a mare in front-view?
  19. And for some reason its counting less than a hundred characters for this post without this paragraph. Dangit forums, stop toying with me. I think the OP was definitely going for a bit of show-style. Anyways, I found a vector to reference: http://fav.me/d5ma6d3 That one is a bit less than three heads, but it should be exactly from the show. I measured your leg from the top of the rump to the hoof and counted a bit less than two heads but more than 1 1/2. Looking at this vector, that appears about 1 1/2 from top of the rump to the hoof. So, I guess your leg while fine if we wanted a proportionally smaller head, but probably not necessarily entirely perfect for show accuracy.
  20. The red lining for the leg isn't the most correct if we wanted a style that resembles show accuracy. A mare is about three heads tall but your leg appears almost two heads long.... yeah.
  21. Kinda funny when I hear 'pony' and 'anatomy' in the same sentence as when you think about it... they have no proper anatomy. They're literally a bunch of flat shapes put together to create the illusion of having anatomy. I dunno if there's a more proper word though. I think it's more important to observe what you see and look at what their shapes are and where they're placed. For example, if we're dealing with 3/4ths perspective, the closest eye of a regular mare is ovals with a slant, with the bottom placed below the top of their nose. The eye slants back as far as the ear. If you have proportions like these memorized, you'll be drawing more accurately. Also, a funny thing about the nose. I think it looks off because your lines are very thin. In the past, I have confused myself wondering if the outer edge of the outline is part of the nose, or the inner edge of the outline being part of the nose. At some point, I realized that a mare's 3/4th nose is totally nonsenseical and I started considering coming up with an anatomical style that is easier to work with. Don't dive too deeply in drawing your own style as you'll be drawing better if your observational skills become good enough to emulate FiM-style to begin with.
  22. Be careful that you did not change the leg proportions. You gave Fluttershy filly legs. Its a funny observation if you ask me.
  23. ] ^ I thought this piece of my own was funny and cute at the same time. .... I think I ought to make that my new avatar right now.. Hahaha. Hah.
  24. Wow, these are some uncannily accurate drawings I've seen that is far better than some of my first pony drawings. However, I think you forgot to trace Lyra's teeth.
  25. Oh, why not? Not like there's a whole bunch of other stuff I gotta make. I seem to be giving myself a bit too much to do lately. I only have so much time.
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