Non-Compete - Work in Progress (Patreon)

So when I've been doing these caps, I've been using more reference materials. It's a good practice. You want to be connected to real poses and real clothing styles, even if the art style is pretty cartoony. 

My first draft was soo bad, and I've had this come up a few times when I use a reference to directly. Real people do not directly translate to stylized art. There are a lot of things that look correct on a human andin a photo, but do not work in a drawing. 

One of the big things that I end up being reminded of is that propotionally, my characters have larger heads and shorter limbs. In general they tend to be a little thicker than real people. Anytime I use reference too tightly I have to go back in and scale up the size of the head. It just looks wrong when I don't. 

Also, I'll see a lot of artists talk about this is changing up the arms. I did have a more photo accurate arm position (I kept changing it to try to make it work better). But in the art is makes it look like a blob or broken. The wave of a line her arm makes is not something that our mind processes in a drawing. So you have to move and readjust it in a way that give a better flow and context. 

Similarly for clothing. That vest falls so specifically that it looks wrong while mimicing it directly, but the idea of it can still be communicated with some alterations. 

Using reference is not a bad thing. All artists should use reference at some part of the process for grounding. Being too faithful to a reference is a dangerous pitfall. It can take a lot to figure out where the line is. 

Just some real world examples of artists that use reference, but have very different results are Terry Dodson and Greg Land. Worth looking them up.