No, I haven’t been neglecting my drawing—I’ve just been neglecting this site.

As readers know, I bitch a lot about my crappy linework so I decided it was time to do something about it. Thus I captured a few screens from Marvel Super Heroes and made a poor attempt to render Juggernaut in one of his victory poses.

And the lesson for the day is distorted anatomy can really screw you up if you’re not used to drawing it. Juggernaut’s proportions are obviously exagerated, and in the context of a world where the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak can turn Cain Marko into a walking talking tank ... it’s not realistic, but it makes sense.

So, yeah, I made Juggernaut look like a MegaMan villain (Unstoppable-Man?) He looks like a miniature, and I’m not not sure exactly why. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say A. the lack of any kind of reference in the same frame, B. I goofed up his proportions, and ... I get the feeling there’s another factor I’m overlooking.

Next up, another screen capture—Kitana’s versus screen pose from Ultimate MK3. I had just finished the ‘5 A.M. Eyes’ render for my eye study series and was exhausted (had been awake for 24 hours), so I pulled out something to draw. I’d done Juggernaut a few days before with little success and really didn’t see this going anywhere but the trash bin. But, what the hell, I was bored.

It developed a lot better than I expected. Her gloved hands gave me problems, although part of that came from my lack of enthusiasm. I didn’t make corrections and tweaks like I should have. Want another indicator? Check out the blatantly unfinished fan! I rendered it as far as I had to and not a hair further. “Yeah, I’ll let it fade off into incomplete construction lines ... that’ll make it look kinda artsy!” Ha! What can I say? I didn’t get any sleep that night.

Anyway, Kitana I knew I would shade from the get go. While I do want to work on line-only drawings, I don’t want to just abandon other styles of renders entirely. My plan is to work on line-quality from sources that are already line-only (or line-heavy) drawings before I try applying it to more realistic (read: lineless) sources.

Both images were initially sketched out with an F pencil. With Juggernaut, I darkened the lines with softer lead (probably a 3B). I think I darkened the blacks in Kitana’s outfit & hair with the 3B too, but I’m not positive. I do know that, even if I did switch to a softer lead, most of what you see is the F in action

Lastly, once upon a time I bought a cheap drawing pad and got what I paid for ... a PoS. Very very thin paper, a binding agent that long ago stopped binding the pages together. I only had a few pages left, and I was eager to kill them.

Three Years Later: Fighting Game Characters (Kitana), Take Two