visual art Practicing my art

[GreenGreenWhirlWind 161]

Alright, so there's 3 things that bother me about my art:

1 - I don't know how to draw backgrounds.

2 - I don't know how to draw poses.

3 - My shading is pretty limited.

So in an effort to fix two of these problems, i decided to spend the whole weekend practicing by drawing a character of mine that i have recently grown to like a lot: Alric "Fun Fun Fun" Edsel.

I like all of the characters i make but there's something about him that sorta makes me my favorite, i can't quite grasp what...

Anyway, this is where i'm gonna be posting the results of all my practice(Some of it might be a bit questionable, but i'm not sure, either way this is the warning):

 

As you can see, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a pretty big inspiration to me.

Tell me what you think and whatnot, and feel free to make suggestions as well.

Edited October 3, 2016 by GreenGreenWhirlWind

[Dreambiscuit 9,691]

Nice artwork! I think the poses are really nice. A lot of artists are stiff when it comes to making good dynamic poses, but yours are very well done. 

I would not call your shading limited either. But if you're interested, I'll tell you what helped me a lot with my shading and shadows. If you make the edges of the shadows a little darker than the bulk of the shadow, it creates a sense of reflected light within the darker shading that adds a sense of depth. 

Keep up the great work! 

[Bazz 57]

These are pretty neat drawings. What's the character's story? I would really like to know, it looks that good.

[GreenGreenWhirlWind 161]

These are pretty neat drawings. What's the character's story? I would really like to know, it looks that good.

I`ve been waiting for somebody to ask this, actually!

 

First, let`s talk about Alric himself:

His name is Alric Edsel, currently 19 years old, blood type B. He`s thin, tall, has long blonde hair and a large pair of front teeth. He has two pairs of ears - two normal ears on the sides of his head and two squirrel ears on the top of his head - and a large and bushy prehensile squirrel tail that`s a continuation of his spinal cord, meaning that if he were to break his tail he would no longer be able to move said tail. His nails too are prehensile, they`re long and sharp yet very clean and well kept, he even paints them from time to time. There`s a pink "F" tattooed under each of his eyes, he claims that the "F" stands for "Fun", a word that serves as a reoccurring motif in his clothing.

Personality wise, Alric is naive and too quick to believe in people, intelligence is clearly not his forte. Passionate, confident and impulsive, Alric tends to do and say unpredictable things - but also has a tendency to have honestly good intentions, or at least intentions that he believes to be good. What Alric lacks in intelligence he highly makes up for in his courage and loyalty, never being afraid of helping out those he cares about, which in itself is a double-edged sword: Yes, he`s loyal and dependable as long as you don`t ask him to use his brain too much, but he`s also too trusting, he`ll do whatever you ask him to do without questioning it, making the guy easy to manipulate, this unfortunately isn`t due to being "too nice", he`s just...Dumb. That is the way he is. He`s bad at planning ahead of things or making hard decisions or solving complicated problems, but still honestly tries his best at everything he does.

Alric`s simplistic outlook in life, however, makes him see things as more straightforward: if the issue he`s facing is simple and direct, then he`ll do more than great at tackling it.

He has a liking for things that would be considered feminine by others: makeup, fashion, the color pink, so on and so off, but Alric still sees himself as a man and is very clearly angered when others refer to him as a female be it by mistake or as a form of mockery. Alric sees himself as masculine despite his likes and dislikes, he holds an unbreakable confidence in his manliness and in his own words:

-"Don`t talk s*bleep* because of what i wear, i`m still twice as manly as you`ll ever be!"

Alric is an extreme extrovert and takes a deep and personal joy from interacting with people and talking to them, valuing other people very deeply even if they don`t value him back. He`s very open about his emotions and will show them without exitation, having little to no fear of crying, laughing or otherwise showing intense emotions even when he`s in front of other people.

He is one of the high percentage of people who are born with superpowers, in his case, he has all the powers of a squirrel: he is as strong, fast, durable and agile as a squirrel would be if it was 1,55 meters(or 5 feet and one inch for the eaglelanders out there) tall and weighted 45 kilograms(or 99lb), which are his height  and weight respectively(yeah, he`s a bit of a twig, a pretty strong twig, tho). His teeth and nails are super durable and his jaws are super strong, his smell and hearing are beyond human capacity and he`s really good at hiding and fitting in small spaces. Not only can he communicate with squirrels, but also pretty much any kind of rodent.

His powers influence on his personality: Alric is afraid of large wild animals like bears or wolves, has a tendency to hide whatever spare food he has around,gets kinda sluggish and sleepy when the weather gets too cold and his weight tends to shift from 45kg(99lb) to 55kg(121lb) during winter, he then proceeds to surprisingly easily lose the weight he gained in winter once spring comes along.

His favorite food is peanut butter squares and his favorite color is pink.

 

Now on to his backstory:

his parents were infamous mobsters who were caught and arrested shortly after his little sister - Ernesta - was born.

Raised by the gang his parents leaded, Alric grew up surrounded by bad influences and his naturally less than impressive wits didn`t exactly help.

Meanwhile his sister was the exact opposite of him: While Alric was pretty slow and absent-minded, Ernesta was a borderline genius, while Alric tried not to think too hard about their parents and didn`t really know what to think about them, Ernesta was obsessed with them and - due to a misplaced sense of honor - wanted to "succeed where they failed" and "Continue their legacy", while Alric had almost no idea of how to talk to people and just kinda said whatever he had on his mind, Ernesta was a master manipulator and always knew exactly what to say and why.

That difference was caused by one person`s influence: 

Mason I. Lacerta.

Their parents` right hand man and the one chosen to replace them knew that Alric wasn`t smart enough to fill in the shoes of his parents, so he taught Ernesta - who was already showing signs of her above average intelligence even as a little girl - everything she needed to know to become the perfect replacement for her parents, while Alric was being taught by the other members of the gang, who just told him about normal everyday street punk things.

By the time Ernesta was 17 and Alric 19, Ernesta hatched a plan that was certain to allow her to become what she always wanted ever since she decided to continue her parents` legacy: A criminal that was impossible to catch.

One by one she ratted each and every single member of the gang that raised her, Mason included, and once everyone who knew her - except for her brother - was in jail, she convinced Alric to start a gang himself that he would name "The Polka Party^[1]"(Yes, like the Al Yankovic album). The trick here was simple: To let Alric think that HE was the boss by letting him take all the decisions that on the surface looked important but were actually irrelevant(like the gang`s name or how its members would dress and what their symbols would be) while Ernesta was the one actually pulling the strings and making all the important decisions, all while never, ever, ever seeing or being seen by anyone other than Alric(made easier by the fact that their story takes place in a futuristic setting).

Eventually, the gang was taken out by the story`s two main characters: Nerissa "Aquamarine" Jurmala and Timur "Tsiklon" Aristrarkh, two superheroes(In this story many humans are born with superpowers, plus monsters exist, those two facts combined made it so that "superhero" became an actual profession not very different from a police officer or a firefighter. Think "My Hero Acadamia" if it was influenced by "JoJo`s Bizarre Adventure".) who find and defeat Ernesta^[2]. Alric himself was beaten up by a socially awkard eastern-european cyborg(that`s Timur) 

and saw no choice other than to go into hiding.

While hiding, he took on the alias "Hot Pink" and built his own team of vigilantes with one goal in mind: bring to justice all the super-powered crime bosses in the area he was hiding in - who were too powerful for the police or even most superheroes to take on - and giving himself in to the authorities once the job was done.

He did so and - due to willingly giving himself in and admitting to regret the wrong things he has done, along with the fact that he was being manipulated for a good chunk of the time - was thankfully only sentenced to a standard rehabilitation process.

Now Alric is successfully reformed and has become a superhero who occasionally works alongside the two main characters, the three even live in the same apartment building.

 

[1]As in both a political party and an actual party.

^[2] BTW, the latter wasn`t all that hard, she did literally never leave her room, ever

 

A question that served as a base for this character was: "what if i took Squirrel Girl(Powers-wise), Giorno Giovanna(concept-wise, a little bit aesthetically-wise and a little bit personality-wise) and Timmy Turner(aesthetically wise and a little bit personality-wise) and made them into a single character?" Then i just kinda went nuts(*badum, tss*) with it.

 

Edited October 9, 2016 by GreenGreenWhirlWind

[Middleness Collar 94]

о_о your oc's clothers  very similar  on clothers my girlfriend