hi cogmented! love the art. do you have any tips for beginners? thanks and have a good day
HI YES YOU TOO i think most of these are applicable to beginners and non-beginners
i learned these tips from two low level art classes based on charcoal so i find some of these a lot easier through traditional means, but the skills learned from them should be transferable through any medium
i wont be touching on color or perspective too much, here's a past post i did on colors.. more so values, but it didnt go in-depth as i would have liked
shape and form are fundamentals for visual art. you need to think of form to get your shapes around it
mass and additive are kind of the same thing, just the filling of the shape, no lines involved. gesture is more so for the feeling of the same, and line gets further definition
here are some of my digital examples:
mass, gesture, line
subtractive
the top left drawing started as mass, where i formed the two people's positions into one blob and then colored over it
once you start getting those down, you can start applying it. but, you may want to look at what other artists are doing too
tracing, doing master copies, and using references are all fair methods of learning off of another, just dont pass off traced or copied art as your own
tracing tends to make your lines appear stiff, especially if you are tracing a more gestural drawing. you don't get the same motion as when you are simply referencing
mastercopies are replicas of the art work, made to look exactly like it in an attempt to emulate the same techniques the original artist might have used. i find this personally the most tedious, but beneficial method, but it may not be the easiest thing to do as a beginner who is not used to quick hand motions or confident lines.
this mastercopy sucks because mimicking traditional on digital is not the easiest thing in the world, and i on god just fucked it up, but you can see how that form and shading is much more similar than the other two
using an image as a reference is the most widely known method, but it may not look exactly how you want it to at the start! you might simply not know how line weight, textures, or line methods work yet, which is something figured out through practice and observation
and speaking of observation,
this looks okay, doesnt it?
but there is something much more structured to this, right?
it is hard to not assume you know how things look. you see things every day! your reference is right there! but really think about what you're drawing, and what it looks like.
references are always helpful, be sure to glance back frequently and really look at the distance between things, how things are rotated, how things curve around each other, and where shadows add definition
and even the bottom drawing does not capture everything correctly (the top left is not pointed enough, the middle is too high, the bottom right back fabric is too low, the bottom left is missing a fold, etc etc) i gave myself 5 minutes max for these, but it certainly looks more correct and it is not just more well developed shading
(the box is something i do often to get the size of shapes down, or to see how much space something will take on the canvas)
and always always always experiment
you do not have to draw every line, you do not have to put every detail in its right place, you are only trying to get visual information across in a manner that you enjoy
if you have an idea, but dont think you can do it, the most important thing is that you try it anyway. if it looks like shit and you dont like it, try again another day, just dont stop drawing because one day you will be able to do it
dont be afraid to erase things, to start over if you dont like it, even if you spent time on it, because you can always redo it better the next time and each time it is another thing learned or whatever. or keep it cause it looks funny or interesting who cares, as long as youre doing something
how do you come up with your designs for mcyt’s? theyre so creative and cool so i thought id ask
THANK YOU AND THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION
now entering yap city tihs will be a long post
my steps are basically
voice
personality
og look of minecraft skin/branding
player movement
other ppls fanart (if any)
things that happened/cultural associations
i start with a bunch of random sketches to get the feel of the person.. that's why so many of my early posts were doodle pages. to me, character design is more based on what the person is like rather than what they look like. i think a lot of people do that
I do this with all of the above and shape language, but in bigger art pieces outside of lineups i also use color and perspective (as in youll see more of someone like spepticle in large, sweeping scenes while someone like zam in closed, heavily perspective-based ones) to indicate personality. ill change designs when suited for this too (spoke with or without a gas mask, vi with or without a mouth, etc etc)
my first iteration of lifesteal designs heavily relied on the look of the skins and were gradually tweaked over time. my most prominent example of this is my spoke design, so i'll use him at least once in the examples for continuous comparison.
i watch a couple of each person's videos first, understand their voice, personality, and what they do, then focus on them in other people's videos too to get a full story, their movement, and what others think of them (helps with personality and things we might not see). streams are the most helpful because they're less biased and you see so much more of their antics. huge stream fan.
i get into the how after this
this process doesnt go in order for some designs and others have a more prominent focus on particular parts of the process that override or effect other parts
Voice
starting off with not spoke here's a problem i encountered when designing wemmbu
I based him a lot off of spoke and ashswag due to not knowing much about him besides the fact that he schemes (spoke&ash-esque) and he doesn't move his character around too much when talking (ash behavior). he didn't match the left one because his voice doesn't have the dramatic, flamboyant fratboy flair that spoke has, so I shifted it to be more friendly yet still dangerous with curved square shapes rather than triangles. i made his scheming, diabolical nature more evident through his clothing that's pretty jester-like and sharp, but with a smoother middle that spoke doesn't have (and to match his eyes).
voice also impacts character height. i dont know how to describe this. mapicc and zam are similar heights because their voices are similar, same goes for parrot and vortex, but leo and vitalasy are close to the same height (due to vitalasy's huge fuckass ears) despite having wildly different voices, with leo's bold text voice and vitalasy's higher-pitched jumbled kinda speech they still take up the same "amount of space" in conversation. they stand out. and even though spoke's voice also stands out an incredible amount he is still only slightly taller than average. this is where personality overrides voice in my designs.
Personality
spoke is sharp in every sense of the word, but is also able to mold himself around to get what he needs.
my first attempt at him was pretty lackluster. i didn't know much of him at the time, only his wither video, and thus understood him mainly through his association with parrot. he seemed a lot more evil and more serious at first glance. like woah! fully fledged mouth and nose?! not anymore.
i cover certain expressive parts to also depict more of their personality in some abstract, holistic way. after watching streams and whatnot, spoke doesnt actually speak (excluding his random sounds and yips or whatever he does) too terribly much, except when the spotlight is on him or he's trying to get something. so, i tweaked his design to encompass that when i understood him better.
i take away his arms to allow his hands to stand out more (character movement thing, he moves around a lot when no one is paying attention to him, punches the air when ..not talking but making a point ig. he's a big fan of hovering menacingly), i give him a slinky-like outside skeletal structure to both capture his affinity for withers (i made him a wither thing because of the wither sounds in his video.. and the withers in general) and to give him the feeling of more freedom with his movement.
i also just really like gas masks so. basically, spoke is someone that hides away until he chooses to stand out. thank lord heaven he looks like some shadow creature.
later on i gave him more magenta highlights, especially in the wormhole era because 1. magenta wasnt heavily included in his rainbow look, making it stand out on his whole being, and 2. because magenta is really really cool and people should use it more.
og minecraft skin/branding
hi spokeis here. this will be quick because his branding is so heavy. lightning, rainbow, black. boom. character. withers and white eyes? easy. causes a lot of anarchy? again, lightning and withers.
planetlord on the other hand is someone i greatly differed from the og skin and branding. i saw the design in a vision idk. i shift his colors all the time in different pieces but i use more of his pfp colors now because there's too many purples in this world. his branding, personality, and voice all connect very well. a bit misleading, he's a bit of a weasel.
Movement
i never used to look into movement, but pvp styles and conversational movement of lifesteal is intriguing. unfortunately it was only something i started paying attention to during the end of s4 because vitalasy's movement was so interesting. he's a big fan of getting in people's faces.
ill be real, i didn't really notice spoke a lot during things because he was almost always never alone, and when he was it is always at a distance or you knew he had people to back him up.
spoke's movement isn't actually too abnormal. he's goal oriented and tends to always be doing something, and when he does he finds the most efficient way possible. pretty basic. his design choices are based mainly on voice and personality.
someone like mapicc on the other hand has very particular movement. he spins around people when fighting and gets right up in their face (in nethpot pvp mostly), so i made his clothing tighter to the skin with looser parts to accentuate that movement: practical clothing for close combat battles. it was also noticed (by the lord) that he tends to look straight forward instead of the slightly down that most players do.
zam fights differently, but i made him with the og branding (he's princezam) and what he does in mind. his body language in my art is more indicative of his personality.
Other people's fanart
shoutout the community, a notable amount of ideas were from the mid-late 2022 lifesteal community.
dog leowook and leather jacket mapicc were from gen, jackalope rek from aoi i think, "croptop" jacket spoke from saints-blade, snail terrain from navy-leader, tv ashswag from kish, sock puppet red definitely from someone i dont remember, 4 armed squiddo from seri, and old cartoon jaron was from bucket
Things that happened/istarted talking about cultural inspirations
spoke and his connection to godhood influenced his redesign greatly. this section affects what the character wears most of the time.
i give both spoke and vitalasy painted palms (alta) due to their connection with godhood and destruction, with spoke in particular reminding me a lot of Kali Ma, thus i gave him a skirt (due to nppp too). vitalasy's clothing is based on Indonesian cultural clothing. wemmbu's also takes inspiration from Indonesian and Bhutan cultural clothing.
indigenous cultures inspired some designs too (i do a lot of ethnographic anthropology work with some of the tribes i base the clothing off of), with woogie having Yupik and Inuit inspiration. polar bear = cold climate in my head. and leo has Haida and Yunnan (minority Chinese providence, not a tribe) inspiration.
bacon's... not bacon strip design's clothing was based on Bangladeshi clothing (im Bangladeshi, i also added alpona patterns to ash's design), nomadic cultures, and some german pilgrim thing?? idk not my best design. i specifically looked for nomadic inspiration because of his willingness to flee at any moment lol. i didnt do this for rek despite his fleeing reputation because i dont watch rek content too much and he already had hybrid traits that took care of that presentation.
poafa's design is a goat because of the medusa trials where he was used as a scapegoat. makes sense i think. his horns are from past associations with jepex that infected mapicc as well (devil trio s1). zam's design is very much from s3 empire and s4 castle.
planet's design changed slightly, mostly rounder shapes, but also the number of "spikes" on his scarf, now stuck at three because of 3ht.. and easier to draw than five. minutetech has a bow instead of a bowtie from jumper due to s5 happenings. the gem on his crown has wemmbu's highlights from his gem's main color.
roshambo's design was also heavily influenced by medusa where i gave him a snake body. in my art that depicts before medusa events he doesn't have the snake body, and same goes with before s4 spoke where i draw him with full pants. in some sketches ive depicted mapicc with a muzzle only after the destruction of s4 spawn due to quix's mapicc dog influence shoutout.
mapicc and ro have matching things that persist seasons (mapicc periwinkle collar, ro red painted ring finger... head finger?), as did subz and vitalasy with matching shoulder pads (beginning of s4 subz had a bandana and vitalasy had a bell that traded between them through artworks of mine) Vitalasy also gained sun and moon earrings. mid and 4c have matching hoods/cloaks ^_^ marriage or something.
hope this made sense and covered everything you could have ever wanted forever... feel free to ask me questions i love explaining processes
How do you character studies? Do you just do what you feel is right, or do you hyper analyze that guy like a crazed scientist
hi redtheria 1247 for designs i do sketch pages on sketch pages on sketch pages on sketch pages on sketch pages and for lifesteal it's very very easy when you have problems because you can just watch a lot of streams and gather what theyre like through analyzing ..behaviors as i did here.. so yeah i guess crazed scientist is right
ecorridor sketches for examples of less thorough sketches it's all about movement and shape really
if youre doing character studies for art or writing, what you look for might be different than me .. i hardly use expressions and express most of my characters emotions through body language or lineweight, color, etc etc you get it, so im more willing to cover the face or have designs that dont follow human facial structures.. or human structures in general
for things outside of lifesteal... ive really only participated in the warrior cats fandom and jreg "fandom" and those ..kinda already had fleshed out personalities? or at least more solid designs so drawing for it didnt really require much analysis.. or the analysis was more in the clothes and cultures of things rather than actually designing the characters
hey wsg cockmented! what are your tips on colours poses and shit
Hello Hist Histo Gold Historix . this is a really hard quesitons
im not very good at tips and tricks but here's what i do:
fiurst i really like pinterest here's my 2000+ pin board for art inspiration
for colors there are some things that seem right according to the Cogmented Guidelines which is just tone, atmosphere, feeling, balling, ETC...
out of the three art classes ive taken in my life all of which were in my most recent school years has been in charcoal, so a lot of what i pick is based on values too: ill turn the canvas black and white using hue blending mode, or take a picture on my phone and turn it black and white for real life things
my main goal for character pieces is to make the focus stand out but also be cohesive with the background, so ill use different values to differentiate those if colors are similar. red is much darker than yellow, even at the highest saturation, u get it. the rest is just using opposites on the color wheel
i also tend to use blending modes.. usually around 2-3 layers?
these are my base colors
kinda hard to distinguish zam in the values, yeah? and planet's shoes are far too bright, i want planets face and arms and closed fists to be their focus
i use a wide variety of the blending modes, but here both of these worked to darken the characters while increasing their saturation
the similar qualities on the characters make them cohesive with each other despite the wildly different designs and colors.. this could also just be a "style" thing that makes it cohesive but that gets more into shapes and how i draw and i dont think i could even explain that
there's also just general inspirations.. i chose a light blue background for this probably because i was subconsciously inspired by an 8 year old pmv of hawkfrost and ivypool by m0zarts using the song that is in the caption (personal by stars) AND because it's a softer color outside of planet's intense pinks and zam's yellows
this is called like triadic color palette i think i cant remember
there are always exceptions to rules and based on the atmosphere i will make the character blend in more e.g.:
for poses jii dont know i have visions in my head AND pinterest boards: 1 2
a lot of my art is expressive through poses instead of expressions because most of my designs dont have the capabilities for human expression; you're left with actions and body language (im also mad alexithymic so that's probably another reason why)
ignoring general atmosphere and art style, both are big movements but hold very different emotions ^_^ sharp and angry and desperate vs gay and carefree
the use of perspective further helps the emotions within poses, lower views make a character more intimidating, etc etc you get it for sure.
if you want to go hard on perspective, colors/lighting, and composition i highly recommend taking a film class or course or watching a video idk or something related to media-making.. drawing and film are very similar especially in regards to things like storyboarding.. the rule of thirds and camera angles that depict feeling are soo helpful to have in the back of your mind shoutout my one film and media class from 7th grade
