pheeph

So have you watched UQ Holder!

Happy late Birthday^^

Happy belated birthday!🎂

You are awesome.

Critique time! Hooray!

I see that you've been using a 3D pose app to help with your poses, and I have to say; I can tell it's helping a lot! Your foreshortening and poses in general have improved a lot. Your Fear and Anger tasks are especially good in this regard. However, I would caution against leaning on it too much because it can easily become a crutch. Posing apps are just for that, posing; and they tend to not convey motion very well and can leave your art looking stiff when traced exactly. They also usually don't have a wide variety of body types.

Your art is clearly very anime/manga inspired. Proportionally your characters lean a bit more into "chibi" territory, and I don't know how much of it is intentional. I really do like your style, and I'm not sure how far you actually want to lean in that direction.

A lot of your characters end up having very "childlike" proportions, and this is in part do to how big you draw your heads vs the rest of their body+ how small you draw your hands. This works better in some pieces, but not all. Again, I'm obviously not you so I don't know how much of it is intentional for your artstyle.

But I do feel that the hands you draw end up very small. A good rule that I've found is an open hand (including the stretched fingers) should be able to cover the entire surface of the face (eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows- not the entire forehead). This can be tricky in an artstyle that has such large eyes, but keeping this general rule in mind I think will help.

I also think you need to work on realistic anatomy. I have heard this echoed throughout my life, and I'm sure you've heard it as well but:

It is easier to make stylized art when you have a good grasp on realistic anatomy and art. That way, you understand the basic structure and can actively pick and choose which parts to exaggerate. This will also help improve posing and motion because you know better how the body moves.

This is a very helpful site! AdorkaStock | Stock Photo References for Artists, By Artists there's a mode on there where you can practice different poses, it'll give you a random stock image from their catalogue for you to try drawing. It's really fun! Really useful, and it has helped me a lot with my anatomy. Their models have a wide variety in body types, so it can also help with drawing different body types.

The most important feature of a character, especially in this kind of art style is the eyes. I can tell you are making an effort to fight the ever-present and looming threat of "anime same face" in your eye shape variety. However, it can only go so far. Your characters always seem to be perpetually wide-eyed, and when you aren't consciously making the eyebrows do a specific thing; the eyebrows are sitting in a very comfortable default position. Eyebrows irl are surprisingly mobile and can move an alarming distance on the face. In a cartoony artstyle; even more so! Even subtle expressions, eyebrows and muscles around the eyes move a little bit.

I want to give you an assignment! I want you to try drawing a variety of expressions, with the eyes squinting in various ways. Not squinting with the eyelids, but with the face itself. When we smile (genuinely) our cheeks move up and it makes the bottom of our eyes turn upwards. When we scowl, our entire brow moves down and changes the shape of our eyes in the top. I don't like to toot my own horn, but I love to draw expressions and it's one of my strong points. If you want tips/examples I can definitely try to help you with it because it's difficult for me to fully describe through text.

Working on expressions can also in turn help with facial anatomy and make your faces look less flat.

Sorry for the long one! Hope this helps, and I've loved seeing you improve! I haven't been in the last few rounds but I have been lurking around and I can tell you are getting better (and fast)! Keep up the good work and keep practicing!