Nothin' special...

[cdra1617]

Just a quick sketch I did last night. Done on Paint because my Corel wouldn't run >.> But I used a tablet anyway.

Oh, and I know the hands are bad >.>

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/2534/lihnsketchsy8.png

Just one of my random characters, Lihn. =D C+C please.

 

[aragornbird]

*yawn*

I really am quite tired of looking at anime anthros, but I’ll give it a shot anyways.
The hands are flawed, but not as flawed as the wings. If everything with bat wings had such huge thick bones in their wings, then nobody would be able to get off the ground. Really, in order to create a believable illusion of flight, bones in the wings need to be especially thin and lightweight.
Her bones are as wide as her hands! Definitely a no-no.
That particular posture makes her look flat, like she's been cut out of a thin sheet of paper and is folding backwards. Yes, it's just a rough sketch, but it is definitely possible to make sketches look three-dimensional, even without shading. Straighten her body. Tilting your spine backwards like that is very uncomfortable. Make the area around her stomach slightly wider. An anorexic appearance is not a sign of beauty.

I hope your Corel gets fixed soon so that you have a proper program to draw with.

 

[Rätsel Feinschmecker]

Hmhm... I like her head design. Pity that your Corel couldn't run that time. It'd look much better with smoother lines.

Her mouth is too close to her nose. The mouth should be placed halfway between the nose and chin.

The shoulders and neck are too small. Further defining the collar bone and making her shoulders wider should fix the former; for the latter, just make the neck wider. The lines defining the neck muscles should curve inward.

Her torso's too long--from the neck to the waist is usually about two to three heads long, depending on the height of who you're drawing. She also looks 'flat'; she has very little depth to her (i.e. she doesn't look like she has a rib cage). Adding folds to her clothes would help, and just generally fleshing out her body. Her torso is also too thin, as if she could just snap in half if she bent over.

Her arms are alright... Just need a little more definition. The arm is thinnest at the wrist. Also, you know how on your wrist there's that little bump on the side? That's going to help separate the rest of the arm from the hand. The thumbs on her hands are on the wrong side, unless that's part of her design.

This is just a personal thing, but I find her design to be too plain. Unique marks, clothing and/or details would help separate your original character from everyone else's.

 

[cdra1617]

Thank you both for the tips! ^^ I will keep those in mind.

I did a different pose in Corel, with color and your advice on arms and things. It came out better ^^ But still, I <3 C&C.

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/1720/lihnjpegiq3.jpg

It's a tad cramped, and the hands still aren't prefect. But meh.

Oh, and a bonus: Laxurla the lioness Nobody. *Kingdom Hearts reference* Another anthro OC, whoop dee fricken dee.

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8297/laxurlastreetjpegql4.jpg

Hands are worse, especially the left, but the arms are better, I think. X_x

Same pose out of sheer lazyness. x.x

 

[aragornbird]

Well, the anatomy is slightly better, but not by much. The wing bones are still to thick and the stomach is still to skinny. It doesn’t seem like you changed those parts. Also…when a person is standing still, they don’t dangle their hands in front of their bodies like that. They either have their arms next to their side, or they have them in some other position. Think about what you do when you stand still in a content posture. Do you cross your arms or place your hands on your hips. Think about that and use it to apply more naturalistic postures to your characters.

 

[Rätsel Feinschmecker]

It looks a bit better with color, but you still need to work on your anatomy. Again, both look flat and lack depth. Their arms should be thinned down. As for their hands, have you tried using your own hands or pictures of other hands as references? Examine your hand, and practice drawing it. Contract and relax your fingers and observe how they work. That goes with every part of the body, too. Knowing how your bones and muscles work and act will help your proportions and poses.

Again, the lines defining the neck muscles should curve in, like a U.

On the first picture, there should be a hair outline in front of the base of the ear. They're not fused with her hair now, are they?

For the outline, I suggest switching to a smaller brush and putting the pen pressure on. Even if you don't have a steady hand, you can zoom in and create a fluid line from a few repeated strokes. Right now your lines are very choppy.

As for coloring, switch to a bigger brush and leave no white space. It's not like you're coloring with crayon or colored pencil when it comes to CGing. I'm assuming Corel also has access to the layers feature, so don't be afraid to go outside the lines. You can erase the excess later.

Your shading lacks depth, which also makes it hard to discern the clothing folds. Just shading with one color darker than the base color will still make it look flat. I would choose at least three different 'shading' colors; two much darker than the base color and a contrast color. A contrast color is usually shading with the color opposite of the base color on the color wheel, like a dark purple or blue. Alternatively, you can use colors that harmonize with the base color well, such as using brown along with dark red and green.

A highlight color will usually be a very bright contrast color or a bright color reflected from the background or an object near a surface. Never use white to highlight or black to shade unless the picture calls for it (be it monochrome, a nighttime or dark background, etc.). Using those two colors to highlight and shade will make your picture look flat and lifeless.

Again, make use of layers. They're very handy, and if you make a mistake you won't have to delete the entire colored section, just a part of it.

 

[Ophie]

Of course, that advice with layers goes right out the window if the artwork is hand-drawn. (I actually still don't have much of a clue of what a layer is; any digital artwork I've done was with MS Paint.)

 

[Rätsel Feinschmecker]

Layers are like transparent sheets of plastic stacked on top of each other. What you do on one sheet won't affect the one on top or beneath it. For example, you could do a sketch on one layer, and do the lineart on a layer on top of it. If you delete the layer the sketch is on, the lineart is still preserved.

Layers aren't wholly necessary--you can do everything on just one--but they're handy tools, especially concerning some neat effects and certain objects (such as translucent clothing over skin), or if you want to experiment with something without messing up the original picture. Plus it's easier to correct mistakes if you mess up.

For traditional media, the only digital alteration I would make to it is the contrast... Though usually I just let it be.

 

[Umi Mizuno]

It's more Oekaki then anything on your first sketch. Some reason I prefer it more than the ones you colored. The fingers are too long, the coloring is in different directions, some parts of their body are out of proportion, things like that you could improve on.

 

[Ophie]

Thanks for the explanation of a layer. I guess the counterpart in MS Paint would be saving your piece, then opening up a second one and start working on the second one. (There are really three things I didn't use MS Paint for: shrinking an image down, making gradients, and changing the file format.)

Also, laziness results in similar poses? I'd think that laziness would result in just a plain old regular standing pose, with arms hanging down, a frontal view, and completely neutral expression. Laxurla was just a modification of the one above, wasn't it? (I'm not trying to badmouth those pieces. You demonstrate a large amount of potential if you put yourself to drawing. Just draw and draw on anything you can and never stop. That's my way of getting better.)