Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sticking to what I'm bad at




Over the last 7 or 8 weeks I've had an unusually large number of people tell me how much I suck at characters and how much better my background work is. Most of these people suggested that I work on my characters less and focus on my backgrounds more. This advice was both logical and well intentioned. I mean if I'm going to send portfolios out to companies in the hopes of getting hired, then I better send them some beautiful depictions of the things that I'm best at right? So I decided to go ahead and do the exact opposite. While I DO see the logic in strengthening my oh so "well-developed background muscles", I would be doing my happiness a disservice by neglecting to strengthen my ability to design characters. I prefer to tackle my weaknesses and bring them as close as possible to my existing strengths before going back to the things I'm better at. Over the last month and a half or so, I've been consistently sketching characters in my sketchbook and hitting up the life drawing sessions as much as possible in hopes of strengthening my weaknesses, which I think is my responsiblity as an artist. Above are the fruits of my labors. While I'm not even CLOSE to the level I would like to be at in terms of arting awesome characters, I think I've made some significant improvements.




4 comments:

Unknown said...

I've always liked your characters. Don't worry, i don't think anyone's going to hire me either.

Daniel Araya said...

WTF??!!?

Dude, your name is the same as mine, Daniel Araya, we are both 23 and devoted to arts; the only difference is that you are black while I'm white, and I live in Costa Rica, and that you are a much better artist than me.

BTW I found your blog while looking at comicartcommissions.com, I had to see the work of the dude who's named the same as me.

FDW said...

New blog, scrapped the old one have that. Also, I drew scott.

Danny Araya said...

wow, that's a hell of a coincidence..