Just a rambling question

Earlier today I posted Victoria's Secret Elf Model!! and ShinkuDragon had commented on it here.

I kind of wanted to take the time to reflect on what Shinku brought up about the long legs! I hope you don't take this the wrong way (and that I'm overly sensitive and defending my work!).

This might all be worded really weird, but it got me thinking...

At what point does a person judge if an artist's work is -offkey-(can't find a better word D? It might be just me but I thought the proportion was fine, and stylistically the right choice to do so.

Maybe what i'm trying to say is, when is it that I am at the point of "knowing the rules" to then "break them"? or that other people will acknowledge I'm at the point?

Was it Shinku's preference that made him feel different able the proportions? I just thought this would be a great opportunity to ask people of SP. I'd love to see what others think about the stylistic choice I made to make her proportions the way I did. Do you like it? Do you think it's amateurish? Is it fine to you?

..or maybe I'm just over-thinking this? LOL

Once again sorry for the rambling nature of this quasi-question!

Responded to your post over there but I think this is fine, you both have good reasons and I added my own too. As for knowing the rules and breaking them...I can't say much about that since I'm no artist though I'll say you're getting there, just keep in mind that the artists who truly break the rules start off by grounding themselves in solid theory first so they know how to twist something and yet the audience sees it as being 'right'.

i'm quite bothered that you...

...write my name with 2 u's! FFFFF- f5

let me do something on paint and i'll show you what i mean about the legs btw

Proportions that are off or are bad in general are easily pointed out in art that uses forms that are seen are a regular basis (ie humans).

For the legs, I didnt notice anything wrong until it was pointed out, but even then, I was able to find a justification in my own mind for the longer legs (lower viewing angle, hence a thinner shoulder width towards the top, along with the longer legs). Because your piece did not have a background, there is no reference for the perspective that we are viewing it from, and will normally default to either the face, or about the top third or so of the image, and usually put the horizon line (in our minds) at just above the middle of the figure.

Artist question, artist section. I shall move it thar.

@miek:

ok, here's the three screens:

 Spoiler

the green line goes from the bottom to the neck, on the next one the blue line goes from the point i consider the "joint" between body and leg, to the tip of the feet

 Spoiler

comparing those in the next picture: (in order: picture body, your body, picture leg, your leg)

 Spoiler

your legs are longer, while the body is smaller, this is pretty much how i saw it, both together gave me the impression of very long legs compared to the body.

edit: derped the tag, sigh

hmm what I kind of was wondering was when you said

... i feel the legs are waay too long

Would you have preferred it if it was much more shorter? (the legs)

hmm what I kind of was wondering was when you said



Would you have preferred it if it was much more shorter? (the legs)

i can't really give specifics, it's just that as you and sapta said, you kept the overall length the same while taking away from the body and keeping the head regular sized, so yea, i feel that you'd have to cut the legs a bit, or give the body a bit more length downwards.

do note i can't draw humans for crap though, this is just my impression

i can't really give specifics, it's just that as you and sapta said, you kept the overall length the same while taking away from the body and keeping the head regular sized, so yea, i feel that you'd have to cut the legs a bit, or give the body a bit more length downwards.

do note i can't draw humans for crap though, this is just my impression

Thanks so much for the replies Shinku! I really appreciate it and sorry about the double u's before haha.

I guess I kind of figured out that people just simply prefer or have a different understanding of what looks right to them. Like when I look at this official art for Chun-Li in MvC3
,
I instinctively assume it looks great, especially because it's been professionally done (but really to some I guess her legs look way too tall, to the point of obscurity even though it is just a cartoon, which I assume you do?)

Actually, both your picture and this one have roughly the same proportions. It's just that it's easier to see it in yours because your model isn't covered, I had to re-do my measurements to see if Chun-Li was off too.

[MENTION=6822]Miek[/MENTION]; well, she's not called thunderthighs for nothing, and yes, i also do feel her legs are too large for her body, buuuut it's her main form of attacking, have you seen the feet of the characters in street fighter games? they're massive.

Cartoons are different, and I guess if you're used to looking at cartoon women who are "more attractive" than any actual woman can achieve (longer legs, bigger boobs, huge eyes, etc), then that looks good to you.
Plus cartoonists compete with each other, so if once having legs half again the length of the body was "beautiful", now they have to have legs twice the length of the body (like the above).

Human women, though, have legs that are only a little bit longer than the rest of their bodies:



Also

Notice the length of the arms compared to the legs. Your figure's arms are half the length of her legs.


I'm not saying you should draw a fantasy figure with a normal human's proportions, but you should try not to exceed a human supermodel's proportions.
That's my taste, though, and I may well be a raving feminist more concerned with women's self-image when they compare themselves to "idealized" drawings, than with young men's enjoyment of said drawings.

It's your style. I love the way you draw legs, it makes me so damn jealous.

That's the important thing to note when judging an artwork, consider the artist's style to see if certain elements are "off-key" or not. That's why critique is "harsher" on people that you don't really know or haven't sampled enough work. But, after seeing a good amount of the person's artwork, you kind of define a range for proportions in that person's style.

In that drawing, the legs look fine to me. The proportions are in the range I'd expect from you and, therefore, there's nothing off-key from my point of view.

If you're working on a character that already exists, such as Chun-Li, you know that they might have some exaggerated features that's part of the character. Chun-Li has her legs, Chris Redfield has those biceps, Jessie (Pokemon) has her super long hair, etc.

I mean, look at this drawing I made a long time ago of Chun-Li. I don't recall anyone complaining her legs being too long/big, because their one of her traits.
[imgspoiler]http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x190/loose24/chunli.png[/imgspoiler]

Each person has their own set of rules, they can bend to a certain degree, if they break inconsistency might happen, they can always be rewritten.

Each person has their own set of rules, they can bend to a certain degree, if they break, inconsistency might happen, they can always be rewritten.

You poet, you

Well, I always tend to think of exalting certain parts by using a certain size on a drawing. Your style tends to value the legs (and those are pretty damn awesome if you ask me) by making them much longer than usual, so the first thing you tend to stare (or at least in my case) are the legs; it makes me think of Sailor Moon, that has this same proportion style.

 Spoiler

The image above is a pretty nice example; these legs are long and "off the correct proportion", but there's a reason for it (that doesn't need to be that complicated or justified, it's simply a form of expressing your style), there are many cases like that: the beautiful and colorful bright eyes from some drawings, they change the proportion and colors for it to stand out from the rest of the background; big heads (like Maple ones) are another nice example of having more interest to a part and less to another one, like you can see with these gigantic heads and such tiny bodies; there are many other examples of how proportions can be distorted without changing the quality of a piece, as long as you don't mess around without even thinking about some "base sizes".

Honestly, I'd care about proportions just in case of a realistic drawing, a portrait, that needs to follow a set of rules and look exactly like what you normally see on a "normal" human being; but when it comes to any other kind of drawing, it doesn't really matter. As I've said, you can change the proportions as much as you want, just because you want an element to stand out; in these cases, proportion doesn't really matter nor there's any rule about the canon sizes of absolutely anything.

Hell, not even my own body has these proportions, why would I care about it on a free styled drawing? :o