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Underground > Creation >

Jenny help and advice

at the scarwash

01:29 / 26.04.03

I was wondering if maybe some of you more experienced art types could help me. I'm working on a Shifter story, and I'm surprising myself with the effectiveness of some of my pencil roughs. I am, however, having a bit of difficulty with consistency. Any advice with coming up with a character design and sticking to it would help. Do most of you use models? Photo references? I realize that a book of anatomy for artists is something I could use, as well as something to help with drapery. But right now I'd just settle with a way to keep her goddamned face from changing every time I draw it.

01:51 / 26.04.03

The trick is to draw your characters as if they were real people—to draw them as if you know how they're supposed to look, as if you're not making them up from whole cloth.

It may not help you to get it right, but it might help you to not get it wrong, know what I mean? Like if you're meant to be drawing, say, David Bowie, you can look at the picture and say, "That doesn't look like David Bowie—the chin's too big, for a start."

The art of drawing is the art of seeing. If you have a clear mental image of Jenny before you start drawing, then you can tell how far your drawing deviates from that image. Otherwise, you're lost with no reference point.

So form a strong mental picture of jenny: base her on a real person, or use one of the stories that's already been completed. Look at Nelson's drawing of her, for instance: notice her round face—how the head is nearly a perfect circle. Notice the wide mouth, the lips full but pale, the slight dimple as she smiles. Notice the squat, snubby nose, the eyes with their epicanthic fold, the pencil eyebrows.

Take it and break it down into shapes and ratios. Find the proportions, and you find the essence of a face. Eyes about halfway up head, rather small and wide-set, short nose, the corners of the mouth lining up the centers of the eyes. Simple shapes, lines and proportions.

Take a sketchbook page and draw Jenny's face ten, twelve times. Then draw it ten times more, trying each time to use fewer lines. Find the essence, the face distilled to its simplest elements. Once you've got that, you can elaborate on it almost infinitely: but the essence has to be there first.

05:47 / 26.04.03

Failing that build a rudimentary model (out of plasticine or whatever you can lay your hands on) this will help with positioning+proportions and just in general help character consistency from scene to scene. Hope that helps.

Nelson Evergreen

08:21 / 26.04.03

Technicalities aside, remember that many artists take time to 'settle' into how a character looks, and this doesn't have to be confined to pre-production. My own Jenny's face has shifted this way and that over the course of her eighteen pages in public, but I think I've got her (and Lex, and Bradley) nailed now. Clea's still proving to be tricky...

I use photo refs occasionally, mainly as source material for clothes, hairstyles, buildings, whatever, but don't draw directly from them. I'll make some sketches to get the basics ingrained in my head, and then work from there; always give your own visual idiosyncracies plenty of room to strut their stuff.

03:14 / 27.04.03

Not much to add with all the other great advice given here. This is really very important, though.

Find the proportions, and you find the essence of a face.

The ability to draw the same thing many times with consistancy is in the proportions. Sight measurement is in taking a space you've already defined and basing the rest of your proportions from that measurement. Typically, I'll draw the shape of the head, find the halfway point down and across and draw crosshairs. Face measurement is usually five eyes across, with one eye width on either side and one between the eyes. Everything on the body can be measured once you figure out the size of just one thing, be it the eyes, noses, ears, etc. I size the body in heads. Obviously, top of head to chin = one head. Chin to nipples = one head, etc. Mileage varies with different characters, but try to design your character so that this is made simple for you. For instance, you can make someone with a huge head, and make him three heads tall with the second head down being his waistline. If someone has wide set eyes, they can have a gap of two eyes instead of one. So long as you keep that consistancy.

If this is really giving you trouble, you may want to draw a model sheet of some sort, the kind that they use in animation. A model sheet is usually a line-up of the character in five different positions. Front, 3/4 Front, Profile, 3/4 Back and Back, giving a view of the character from all sides.

This is a good site for artists' reference, including full nude turnarounds, close-ups of hands and feet, and sample model sheets. I know lots more sites with model sheets if you wanted to see more. Abd check out the online awesome, free, out-of-print Loomis books. I printed them all out and put them in a binder. They're wonderful.

If you're really interested in drawing, you may want to check for life drawing classes in your area. Sometimes there are good ones for cheap. I suspect I will be taking life drawing classes for the rest of my life.

Would anyone be interested if we started an artist's tips thread? I know I'd love to hear hints from the people on Barbelith. Been thinking of starting one for awhile.

10:41 / 27.04.03

I would Moriarty. That's a really good idea, and the Loomis book's link is fabulous, thanks.

Jack's entirely right, you have to know who you are drawing. Of course if you created the original character it's probably a lot easier, but the tip of drawing Jenny's face over and over is a good one. Also, I find sometimes it also helps to draw the character several times through different degrees of a 360 degree rotation, so you get to know what they look like from all sides.

10:58 / 27.04.03

What size of paper are you guys using to draw the final pages on?

18:03 / 27.04.03

Consistancy is one of the most annoying things about drawing comics I find - the number of times I've thought "hey, that's an OK panel .. except he looks completely different from in the last one! Shit, where's the rubber.."

The solutions suggested are all waayy too technical for my style - the only thing I've been known to do occasionally is draw simplistic portraits of character's faces from the front and side (I believe you professionals call that "profile" and something else..) and go over them with a really thick pen, then use them for a kind of modified tracing, to make sure you get things the right shape, but change them enough so it doesn't look like you're using the same drawing again and again..

18:21 / 27.04.03

See, I'm coming from an animation standpoint where if you don't get it dead-on 99.9% of the time, you've fucked up. And believe me, I don't even come close to 99.9%. There's a good chance I've failed my program because of that.

The "profile" and "front" thing is what I was talking about for model sheets, and something olulabelle also mentioned. Like Nelson said, after a while you'll get the hang of it and it will become second nature to draw the character. It doesn't hurt to go back and see where you came from or look at your revision of the character to make sure you aren't straying too far within a story.

I'm assuming that anyone reading this thread wants to know how to draw better, which is pretty tough going. That doesn't mean that anyone contributing to the Jenny thing should have that kind of dedication. It's supposed to be fun and open to anyone, even if they "can't draw". So, anyone reading this that is feeling a little intimidated by the discussion, don't worry about it. Just draw a good, fun comic and relax. But if you feel lke pushing yourself, go for it.

at the scarwash

00:22 / 28.04.03

Thanks for the help, everyone. I second the idea (or thrid it by now) about an artists' tips thread.

06:26 / 08.06.03

I realise this is an older thread, came upon it via the jenny everywhere site. But as good & useful as these suggestions are, I have a solution that I feel can’t be beat and that every one should at least try.

I’ve become an avid fan of sculpting in part due to this issue. I started using non-firing (dries hard till you soak it in water) clays to model my characters; I find it much more durable than plasticine and more interesting than photo ref.

From there it becomes easy to make character sheets if you so wish, no mater the angle. Or even just keep the heads on hand while you draw, I do this and I find the work gets a much more vital, living breathing drawn from life feel, even if they are not strictly realistic faces.

This example is the main character from a GN I’m currently drawing.

I’ve since painted him white to make the forms stand out better.
Personally, having tried just about everything, I would put this ahead of all solutions.

The results, basically still life drawings, are so much better than those I have gotten from pose sheets or photos. Every lighting problem, angle and feature can be resolved simply by picking up the head and drawing it.

Also facial expressions can be figured out fairly easily, especially if you take some time to study the structure of human facial muscles and how they form expressions, and then build your models up with those structures in mind. It just becomes a problem of extrapolation then.

Resources like those linked above by moriarty are very helpful at the modeling stage. Starting out with some photos & sketches first to develop the face in your mind is advisable before tackling the clay.

06:32 / 08.06.03

Not to fail to mention, playing with the clay is a lot of fun. As suggested above, defiantly keep it all fun. If you don’t like how it’s turning out just remember to keep the clay soft buy wrapping it in a wet rag and then an air tight plastic bag. You can come back to it and rework it over an over till you get what you want from it. The sculpting, if you keep a positive attitude about it, is almost more fun than the drawing to come!

And once you are done you really will know this face as well if not better than your own.

04:59 / 19.07.03

(I'm posting this here and not on the IMP thread cause it's a more art specific question.) Is anyone here really good at layouts and wouldn't mind looking over an 8 page Jenny script of mine and adding detailed layout instructions? My artist is at a loss as to what to do with my script. At the very least, it'll by a quick and interesting read.

Thanks.