oBe goes Haywire

[Hellen]

First of all, congartulations, oBe! I can imagine the amout of work you've done to complete this.
And I'm still deciding if I liked it or not... Telling a story using pictures always seemed like a miracle to me. I envy artists who can DRAW a story, frame by frame. And you did a great job here!
On the other hand, artistic side is not very impressive or expressive. Perhaps you intentionally want to get away from the standard comicbook inking, but your "messy" style isn't working well, imo. The eye of the veiwer must immidiatly catch key characters and objects that are espesially bright and detailed, while here almost everything is blended together.
Another expressive tool is angles. I don't know why, but they don't catch my eye either. Angles are always hard to draw, but here they're just... not very interesting.
And finally, poses and face expressions. You've intentionally limited yourself to characters who have no "faces" and therefore can't express emotions. That's okay. Anatomy and poses are not the best I've seen, but also alright. oBe-ish anatomy...
All in all, that's not that bad for the first attempt, but you still have lots of stuff to work on. Come on, you're a pro artist!
Oh, and no hard feelings! Honestly, you've been always inspiring me with your art. Therefore mMore oBe art is requiered!

[oBe]

Update!

Because I suppose it is somewhat relevant now.

First:

See the animated trailer here:


Then, if that doesn't make you cringe yet, you can read the actual issues here:

http://issuu.com/Haywire/docs/haywire_1 ... ipBtn=true

http://issuu.com/Haywire/docs/haywire_2 ... ipBtn=true

http://issuu.com/Haywire/docs/haywire_3 ... ipBtn=true

http://issuu.com/Haywire/docs/haywire_4 ... ipBtn=true

http://issuu.com/haywire/docs/haywire_5 ... ipBtn=true

I tend to tell people to start from the back, being the bottom link, because the first book is horrible, and the fifth is commonly referred as "substantianly less crappy", so who knows. It has become relevant, because there's a storyline with a gunslinger and zombies now.

I have a feeling none of the embedcode things will work, and I seem to remember there being no edit function anymore. So yeah, moderators, this is on you =P

So please enjoy the read, or look at the drawings, or tell me to piss of and to never bother you again.

[oBe]

Either time has fixed the youtubeembedcodething, or I have a moderator to thank. Either way, cool beans.

Oh, I suppose that I should add that the music in the trailer is by Dimebog, and the voices are Daedalus. So it's like, a posty production.

[Shadowman]

"Holy crap that was Dad voicing that."

[Hellen]

It's nice to see that you finally updated. It's also good that at least certain things got more or less sorted out story-wise. I almost forgot who that Cooper was, lol. Now you have to explain the flying whale phenomenon and we're good to move further. I can only guess how you're gonna deal with all these new characters and their storylines. I expect a shocking twist at the end.
I also see that you have switched entirely to digital painting. I don't know for how long you we've been using it, but I'd like to see your brushes set correctly, otherwise I don't know what could be the reason for your painting style to be such a mess. Perhaps you should rely more on actual hand-painting rather than on effects. Anatomy is still not your strongest part either. Use some refernces, for God's sake. It helps a lot. It's also never a shame to get back to tutorials and books. Remember how they always tell to start with a stickfigure skeleton? I have a feeling that you miss that stage and that's why your bodies look so distroted.

[NAto]

I thought that voice sounded familiar

The shot in space hooked me...

[Daedalus]

Those damn rolling eyes. So ambiguous.

[oBe]

Daedalus was very compliant with the voice acting. Couldn't have been easy either, as I made him redo it twelve times with colourful feedback such as "more epic", "too generic", "not generic enough" and "this needs to sound like an entirely different person". Yet he remained calm and came through with everything I asked. Naturally, I immediately offered him a longterm contract.

Hellen, you are always such a flatterer. Please, don't hold back! If you have more arguments to tell me it's garbage, do share! I'd love to see this thread flesh out.

It's true, I don't use a lot of references, because when you have a story to tell, you often need a very specific pose, and a specific angle, and I'd spend too long searching for the correct reference. I think there's more to learn in trying to fix something by yourself than tracing a picture and following a tutorial. The end result might not be perfect, but my goal is to get better through experiment, not copy a picture and a style. You are free to have an entirely different philosophy though. But I am curious, what is "the correct brush set up"?

[NAto]

Well I think it's fantastic

[Hellen]

*Sigh* I knew I should have added more smileys. I just thought that a bit of critisism would be more welcomed than "OMG!" and "This is so awesome!" sort of feedback.
Don't get me wrong, I really like your comic and I always enjoy reading it. It's just that after all these years you could have improved artistically, but you still have the same problems as you've had before. That is espesially strange to me considering you are a professionally-trained artist.
Believe me or not, but tracing pictures turned out particularly effective to me. And you shouldn't nessisarily search for the exact same pose you want in your picture. A simple anatomy chart would be enough for you to notice that arms are not attached like this to the torso and that torso itself doesn't look like this at all. Of course, you are free to have an entirely different philosophy.
By brush settings I mean that I for example have only a couple of brushes that I set for myself and that I use for painting. I'm the most comfortable with them. I was thinking maybe you don't know how to properly set your brushes.

[oBe]

Well Hellen, my college years have been over longer than they lasted, so the time I spend drawing has decimated. Perhaps that's why I don't progress.

Nate: thank you!

More fun Daedalusvoicerecordingtrivia: he had to stop recording every time a car passed.

[NAto]

More fun Daedalusvoicerecordingtrivia: he had to stop recording every time a car passed.

With that mic if you tune it right you could probably pick up sounds from other dimensions, nevermind a car driving past.

[oBe]

It's not entirely impossible there are some muffled out innocent screams buried within the static somewhere.

I'm still sort of dazzled Tchernobogs realm has internet.

[NAto]

It's not entirely impossible there are some muffled out innocent screams buried within the static somewhere.

I'm still sort of dazzled Tchernobogs realm has internet.

They probably have some kind of 4TB Tesla-ADSL