tutorial hunting

[Skylark King]

Okay so here's the scoop.

I really want to get this story I've been working on in comic form and up on the web. The problem, however, is that I have a complete and total lack of anything resembling artistic skills. So what I need is either an artist to join me in making my vision complete or I need to aquire some artistic skills.

It was reccomended to me to aquire the skills myself. While I would love to do this, as I said, I am nothing near an artist. I have seen many tutorials on here which assume I can draw things as simple as circles and squares. This is something of an assumption, to be sure. What I need is a tutorial specifically designed for someone with absolutely no skills whatsoever.

Any help at all would be appreciated

[ZOMBIE USER 19235]

Come on, I bet you can at least draw a circle. ;P

if not, PRACTICE DRAWING A CIRCLE!!!! lol

if so, you're already on your way!

well it depends on what style you are looking to draw in. if you are looking to draw anime/manga, i know a few good sites, but otherwise when it comes to other styles of drawing, im well, clueless -_-

if you want to draw anime/manga, i recommend two very popular sites (to me at least)

People

http://www.bakaneko.com- VERY USEFUL and starts from scratch. teaches you the basics of drawing anime, it helped me a BUNCH when i first started out. my drawing skills improved 100% after that!

http://www.howtodrawmanga.com - simple, but has some pretty useful tutorials. you can also buy books from there also if you want to learn more.

backgrounds - i dont know any good background tutorials, i usually just copy off of photographs and other references. sorry ;P

hmm, what else.

Too keep one thing in mind, over the years, my drawing skills improved greatly. when i look back on my old sketches, they looked horrific, i have to say that i have improved, even though there is even more room for me to improve.

so practice practice practice and you will see yourself improving day by day!!! I guarentee (sp? haha) it ^_^

the best thing i recommend you do is find a style you really like, experiment A LOT until you are comfortable with one, and then go for it!

I wish you the best of luck! Hope this helped!

- manda[/url]

[BOMC]

if you're interested in drawing manga style:
http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/index.htm
http://omu.kuiki.net/
http://susanooh.anime.net/Art/Class/index.html

or just drawing in general:
http://www.huntfor.com/design/tutorials ... tm#allages

i'd also try about.com

[Skylark King]

Thanks guys, these really help quite a bit. I spent maybe two hours last night trying to get this down, and I can see that this is something that I could do with a LOT of practice.

I think I'll hold off on my big project while I hone my skills and work on something more basic to help me hone my skills.

[Faub]

Do you have any scans of your artwork that we could look at?
Also, what style are you trying to achieve?

You're just starting out so I would suggest getting used to the pencil before you jump into drawing a comic. (Of course, Scott Adams started drawing Dilbert without ever having drawn before and he's wildly popular. http://www.dilbert.com/) Your style and ability will change and improve over time. Count on that. Don't be afraid of bad art. It just means you have something to build from.

Take the time to learn perspective drawing. I have not found a good online tutorial for this. Instead, go to a book store or the library. There will be several books available. This will give you a basic idea of spacial relationships and will really help you when you start drawing your comic. Draw from life whenever possible. Draw people. Draw places. Draw objects. Don't take the book's word for it. Find out why perspective works.

Figure Drawing: Download the pdf file from here. This is an excellent source of information about drawing people.
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7639

There are a LOT of tutorials here. Many are probably more advanced than what you are looking for but you still might get some ideas from them.
http://www.huntfor.com/design/tutorials/drawing.htm

The cartooning link in the above page is broken but it was moved to:
http://www.sara-jordan.com/activities-cartooning.shtml

[Skylark King]

Well the project of my initial inspiration is Midori of the West A samurai-epic set in the American West. The idea was originally inspired a number of years ago after watching Yojimbo and Fist Full of Dollars back to back. Since the genre of samurai epic and western were so similar as to inspire cross-genre remakes why not displace a samurai in the american west? (we'll film it all in Italy, it'll be great). I have a LONG LONG LONG way to go before I can get into anything involving regular action.

I have decided that I do want to do my own artwork, the completed project will be significantly more rewarding that way. But, in order to do that I need to GREATLY improve my style. The best way to improve anything is to just do it.

So I set out to learn the fine art of art, and found a pretty decent tutorial that showed me how to do a basic front view head shot. After some work I found that *gasp* I could draw. Right now, that involves headshots, which led me to inspiration #2! How can you do a webcomic that can start with just simply some talking heads without getting sued by David Byrne? Well, the Daily Show happened to be on and the term talking heads did originate as a desription for news anchors. I could get away drawing talking heads doing spoof news commentary while learning everything else. Eventually Breaking News as it would be called, could expand to have full body shots for on-the-street-interviews and even complex 'video footage' of news events, when my skill and style get to that point.

My scanner is currently en-route from my brother's place in Kent, Ohio. Once it arrives at my ever-waiting doorstep I'll scan my early sketching attempts for all to heckle... I mean constructively critisize.[/i]