Fanart: The Effluent Engine, Homestuck, Namie Amuro

[alias_sqbr]

I'm fairly happy with all of these.


The Effluent Engine


Namie Amuro

So I have apprently become one of those people who watches jpop videos because of the pretty singer (though her music is pretty good too). She just has this presence. See for example Make it happen, Wonder Woman and and Fast Car (the music for all of these is poppy Japanese R&B. The first and last clips are women in dancing in corsets and short dresses (Fast Car also has men in suits) while Wonder Women is three female singers in regular clothes in a parking lot at night walking around)


Homestuck: Teal Deer

Comments

[lea_hazel]

That teal dear made my day.

[alias_sqbr]

Awesome :D

[sanguinity]

Jessaline and Eugenie! Eeeee!

[sqbr]

I wanted to draw them the moment I finished the story but it took a while for my muse to come up with anything specific. That story hit so many of my buttons :D

[ex_pippin880]

You should do Homestuck My Little Ponies. :3

[sqbr]

I have had vague thoughts of doing a Rose-as-Twilight-Sparkle pic. Did you see the Aradia Pony?

awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

I don't even know if I should say this but it seems to me you lost some of Namie Amuro's Japaneseness (comparing to the photo). On the one hand, I don't want to encourage over-exaggerated caricatures of Asian features, on the other hand, Japanese eyes do have a different shape to European eyes, and I'm guessing you have more experience drawing the latter?

Re: awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

Oh, I spotted one specific thing looking again: the white/pale line up the nose goes up further in your picture than the photo, so in your picture her nose has a much more European bridge between the eyes.

Re: awkward whitey

[sqbr]

No, you're absolutely right. And you should have seen the first draft! I decided it wasn't so terrible I shouldn't post it, but I definitely need to work on drawing epicanthal folds.

Re: awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

It's a lovely picture (I feel awkward because am I qualified to criticise?) but's not the same person I see in the photo, if you know what I mean?

Re: awkward whitey

[sqbr]

I think anyone is qualified to criticise in the sense of "this is what didn't work for me", it's good to get a variety of opinions. And I am alas at the point with digital painting where I can get a likeness, or I can make it pretty, but not do both at the same time :/

I decided to do another picture, tracing this time to get the lines right and she STILL looks really different!

Re: awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

I do think she looks more Japanese in this one. And I suspect it's a matter of practice and I know that you can do that, you've proven it already.

Re: awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

I've noticed a difference in detail between this picture and photo (this is as much me testing my own observation skills and trying to understand how Japanese and European eyes look different). On (facing us) her left eye, you've got a shadow under the brow that goes most of the way across, but on the photo, it's only the inner half? third? near the nose, after that there's a lighter triangular area (a slight bulge) widest at the eyebrow, and then a shadow just above the outer corner of her eye. If you look at the profile line above her other eye, you can also see the bulge - her eyebrow is almost further in, rather than at the most prominent point.

I went and looked at some photos of other people, and now I'm not sure if that's actually a Japanese thing, or just a difference between the photo and your picture.

Re: awkward whitey

[sqbr]

Whoa, good point.

Yeah, I have SERIOUS ISSUES with the lighting around eyes, my pictures of white people look off as well. But I think Japanese people's eyes are more prone to that bulging in the middle thing.

TIME FOR MORE PRACTICE.

Re: awkward whitey

[aquaeri]

Eye shapes are really, really complicated the more I look at them. And I think, because we're visual and social (as humans) we notice any problems there more than just about anywhere else. I can remember playing a bit with illustrator where you can import a photo and it tries to convert to lines, and whenever there was a face it was always crap - not because it was doing anything different, but because we have such high standards for faces and eyes in particular.

Re: awkward whitey

[sqbr]

Yes, that's why there is some skill in tracing and having the picture come out looking like an actual human being :)

[aquaeri]

Oh, and now having watched the videos, you're completely right Namie Amuro has presence. There's some attitude behind those eyes. I did a bit of reading about her on wikipedia, and I'm not surprised. She's over 30! She was a pop idol in her teens, survived that, had a child and marriage (since divorced), survived that, and seems to be making a reasonable comeback now, one of the few Japanese women to have had hits in her teens, 20s, and 30s.

Thank you for introducing her to me!

[sqbr]

Yes, I looked her up on Wikipedia myself after a video of hers popped up on my tumblr dash, she's awesome.