Participated in ArtFight again this year. I was on Team Fossils.
Characters featured:
Cultra by @askhenrymorris
River by Mondo05
Zyra by @miss-spixx
Lizar by @kat-katticus
Cockatrice by @brazen-art
Wistle by Ember_Dino
Shy Snail by me
Emerald by EmeraldParrot
Lex by me
Ion by Decervi
BA-4 MET by me
Pixel by @imnotnameless
BLINKY by Germberry
Phi by me
Mary by me
Aurgus by @ash-karter
Kai by me
Did ArtFight for the first time this year (I was on Team Stardust). Here're my attacks.
Characters featured:
Eras Bold by Skyddo
Wren by arodude
Uroboros by Goaterible
Marion Desmots by Idiotic-n-Chaotic
Damian by CorbinSylv
Dimitri by mokeonn
Bird by Mr-Hexagon
Synapsid Fighter by me
Thera by butchbara
A digital painting of Aiba in the shape of an egg from several years ago.
[ID: Two digital paintings of Aiba from the video game AI: The Somnium Files in the shape of an egg. The left one is looking to the side and the right one is looking towards the viewer. / End ID]
My DnD character, Quiverspit. He is a copper Dragonborn Rogue-Cleric who casts spells using the severed hand of a fallen archmage.
[ID: A digital drawing of an orange Dragonborn with cyan markings with two short horns on his head, floppy fin-shaped ears and a prominent underbite with a large sharp tooth sticking out. He is wearing a blue sleeveless one-piece outfit, green frameless sunglasses, golden bracers, a belt holding a satchel and quiver, a Cloak of the Manta Ray and Boots of Striding and Springing. He is struggling to hold up a withered severed hand bejewelled with rings. A quill glyph on the hand is glowing blue. There is a red gradient background behind the character. /End ID]
if you are an artist just trying out commissions for the first time as holidays come up, my advice to you to avoid burnout is have a clear ToS that states what you do and do not want to do.
not what you can and cannot do, but what you do and do not want to do. don't try to be the cheesecake factory of commission artists and take every single commission even if it doesn't suit your style or preferred subject matter. don't write a little disclaimer about how you aren't very good at backgrounds or vehicles but will do your best; that's how you get a client that for some reason wants a full brooklyn cityscape from you and suddenly you have spent five months stressed out and guiltily avoidant of other projects. just say you aren't offering backgrounds.
if you're not interested or confident in concept and design, be clear in your ToS that you need specific references for things like clothes and features. coming up with design ideas is a completely separate skill from rendering them; figure out with what you are comfortable before accepting the task. a lot of clients themselves don't understand that saying "do whatever" is basically tasking you to design for them, something for which you are well within your rights to charge accordingly.
pick your niche and hone it, and stretch your comfort zone with private work. you'll figure out as you go just how far your comfort zone stretches and can update what you offer accordingly.
a little informational guide on trying to find skintones from 3d refs :)
i know that finding skintones from 3d characters is tricky and can result in accidental whitewashing and this isnt to make fun of those ppl! this is simply to inform and help other artists out :)
If you google Line Mileage you'll see relatively few search results. Why this term has come to be so obscure to the public is everybody's guess. Regardless; it is an incredibly important concept for artists working with visual storytelling to understand, as it informs them of how labour-intensive a design or composition can be.
"Line Mileage is a term that means how much line you have to draw. if you were to take a traditional drawing and stretch out the lines end to end, you would see what your Line Mileage is. Every millimeter more of pencil or digital line takes more time to draw. Intricate character designs may look good as still images, but the reality of animating such a character is time consuming. A long, curly headed character wearing a wrinkly overcoat, multiple ammo straps over his shoulders, and a striped shirt has extra Line Mileage. It is difficult to keep so many lines moving well without them seeming to crawl, pop or distract from the animation"
Tina O'Hailey: Hybrid Animation: integrating 2D and 3D assets
As O'Hailey mentions in her book: Hybrid Animation: Integrating 2D and 3D assets, Line Mileage is the total amount of time it takes for an artist to draw a character (and by that extension prop, background, etc). Animators have used this term to deduce whether or not a design is adequately balanced in its amount of details in terms of artists being able to reach their deadline by drawing it the amount of times necessary.
Line Mileage is most commonly used in the world of 2D animation. The use of the term has fallen somewhat out of favour now that the entertainment industry has skewed heavier towards 3D animation, but it's still a concept well worth grasping if you work in 2D, particularly in disciplines such as comics, animation or serial illustration where the volume of drawings you need to produce exceeds more than just a handful of images.
It sounds simple enough to consider whether or not your character design is too complex to draw multiple times. But you will find, especially if you're just getting started, that your stamina drawing your character will drastically dwindle once you've been through with it a few times. If you've committed to a comic project, the first 3-4-5 times of drawing your character might be perfectly easy and motivating in enough of itself. But when you get to frame 10, 20, 40 - your design will most likely have lost a good bit of its excitement to you. Now you're in for the long haul of gruelling work, and if you have not made the design suitable for that kind of long-term labour, it is going to be absolute hell to pull through. Moreover your lack of motivation will surely come to show in the final product.
There's not one 'correct' amount of detail or Line Mileage for anyone or anything. But is understood that the average artist can undertake a certain amount of Line Mileage without overworking themselves or even worse, causing themselves long-term injuries. Yours will never be like anyone elses, so never rely on what other artists might be able to manage, you'll end up hurting yourself (I've been there and that injury still sometimes keeps me from working for days on end).
How to account for good Mileage
Milt's rough animation drawings from Thumper's famous scene: "If you can't say something nice..."
Check your medium
Accounting for your Line Mileage in a sustainable way comes down to researching and making conscious decisions about the complexity of your design. This decision should be made based on your own speed rather than anyone else's, as you will be the one drawing your character again and again. So forget what industry professionals or other hobbyists can do. You're the illustrator/animator/storyteller, you make the decision (unless you're working as lead of a team; naturally you'd want to get a feel for your teams capacity first before making any decisions in that case). Your design's complexity should also be based on how many times you're supposed to draw the character. It's logical to assume that a character that you're supposed to draw once or a handful of times can be a lot more complex than a character that needs drawing dozens or hundreds of times.
Be honest with yourself when making a decision on how high your Line Mileage should be. Always give yourself a little less work ( in this context: a little less detail) than you think you can manage.
Trust me; you will thank yourself later!
The following examples are based on my capacity as an artist and is not indicative of yours or any other industry professionals.
Pay attention to the difference in detailing between them and notice how their complexity lessen significantly the more frequency the character is supposed to be drawn.
Illustrations
Drawings: 1-5
When it comes to designs that I'm not supposed to draw a million times over ( say, a random character or creature that will pop up in the occassional leisure piece ) I don't hold that much back on the detailing for the sake of Line Mileage. Though, compared to other artists, I'm still somewhat conservative to details. Though this has all to do with my own personal stylistic preferences rather than Mileage.
In this design, meant only to be drawn very occassionally; The ribcage takes up a majority of the total Mileage. Drawing exposed bone structures is incredibly time-consuming, as it does not only take time to apply lineart to, but the construction of it and the sketch phases take a long time too, as every rib has to be lined up properly as to not break with perspective. I personally try to include as little structure that would require a lot of respective, when it comes to designs that are supposed to have low Mileage. Perhaps also a by-product of my less than stellar grip on perspective. I would recommend it for anyone who's not 100% comfortable with drawing perspective too. It's just really time-consuming from the onset.
You'll also notice that every single leaf in the mane of the creature has been drawn in pretty meticulously. I would never do this for a design that would only need drawing occasionally. You can definitely simplify the likes of the mane down to a more uniform green mass though to lower your Mileage.
Storybook
Drawings: 5-12
When we get into storybook (and later comic book and animation) territory, I will personally start scaling back on details majorly. Instead, I'll focus heavily on incorporating large, dominant, and interesting shapes into the design. Seen here with the tall, lanky anatomy, the big trench coat and the furry collar. The bag was added to pad out the silhouette and give a secondary shape as well. This bag and the gasmask are the only elements that require somewhat thorough construction in the sketch phases. The machinegun is drawn using a hybrid method of 3D and 2D assets, more on that in a later essay) Therefore, the majority of the design can be freehanded pretty easily with little need for reference.
Comic
Drawings: 15+
Now we're getting to the more scarce designs in terms of detail. Once we reach comic level, I personally like to scale back the designs almost to the bone. Keeping only the most major shapes intact and generally simplifying the design down to its core ideas. In this particular example, that meant scaling the details down to a simple robe and overcoat/vest, along with a relatively simplified version of a sword. The character has a few details in the form of facial stubble and two scars, but aside from that, he is pretty simple when compared to the designs above. Just like the gun from above, the sword is worked into the illustrations by applying 3D and 2D assets in order to expedite the process. Therefore it isn't considered an integral part of the design itself from a Line Mileage standpoint.
Animation
Frames-
2D animation is among the most laborious disciplines of 2D visuals and storytelling that you can do. This makes it incredibly expensive to produce as well. Many newer shows tackle this incredible amount of labour by simplifying their designs ( see Steven Universe, Adventure time, etc ). If you're a single artist working on something, I highly recommend you think about the economy of your details through a very conservative lens. At least if you want to animate long-form sequences. Disney and Dreamworks had success in animating relatively complex 2D characters back in the 2000s by organising in teams of up to 30 working on characters alone (in the case of The Little Mermaid) working full time to produce over one million drawings before release. If you're not Disney, you don't have 29 other people with you and enough money to pay yourself full-time along with your other animators, then you need to think very critically about how you spend your time. Granted, you can absolutely go as detailed as you want as long as you plan your animations legnth and your time-frame for making it accordingly.
Anyway: Above is a very basic idea of what a design for an animation could look like. Many indie-artists currently lean towards these highly simplified by effective designs. though, we are seeing a resurgence of semi-realism in adult cartooning ( See Netflix' Castlevania. The Boondocks, The Legend of Voc Machina. Technology is allowing artist to draw more complex designs more efficiently ). You'll see that many of the structural details of the character's anatomy ( facial features, toes, etc) has been removed completely or simplified down to very minor shapes and volumes. The majority of the character is covered in one shape (the cape) and the texturing on the leaves and flowers is random splatters of a brush. This design is almost as simple as it gets, but still clearly conveys a few ideas. I'm by no means saying that you have to go this scarce with your detailing for animation, I would personally maybe shoot a little above it as well if i was to make an animated project, but from a pure Mileage point of view, this design would be very optimized for animation.
Take breaks: even with good Mileage
No matter how low your Line Mileage is, taking care of yourself should be at the forefront of your mind when drawing characters multiple times. Drawing takes a huge toll on your hands, your elbows, your posture and your overall health. I'm not going to preach too much in this particular post (though expect it in a future essay) But being conscious of your Line Mileage is not only going to save you time, but spare your body from excessive repetitive work, which can cause RSI's (Repititive Strain Injury). These can completely mess with your scheduling and in worst case scenario become chronic.
So don't even try it. I can personally attest that giving your projects a little more runtime is going to suck a lot less than being unable to draw for long periods of time. Certainly suck less than dealing with chronic pain and deformities because of being too ambitious with your Line Mileage.
youtubers love to say “i hope i’m pronouncing that correctly” while recording themselves in a video that they upload to the internet, which they have access to
and its close sibling, "I'm not even going to try to pronounce that one," while covering a foreign culture in their video. Girlie, this is your job! Try at all at it!
I created this digital painting of the infected sauropod from Primal a couple of years ago when I was in a digital painting phase.
[ID: A digital painting of the infected sauropod from the animated series Primal. It is green with a red tail, with its skin bubbling and melting from the infection. It has an exposed bite wound on its left foreleg. It is roaring in pain with tears streaming from its red and yellow marbled eyes and snot trailing from its nose. It is running in front of a maroon gradient background. / End ID.]
jacobvanloon
snowghoul
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
