Part of the old series of comics that were uploaded all at once on a cold October morning with just about two hours left before work, so i didn’t have time to write individual posts about all of them.

Start from a centre point, but don’t adhere to it.

Marking a little dot at the top of the scalp usually gives me a good focal point to start the flow of the hair from. No matter how far the hair flows or if it changes direction mid way or even if the person’s laying on the ground and the hair is splattered everywhere, the dot will keep everything flowing natural.

Because it’s just a single point though, don’t adhere to it. It’s not like all your hair sprouts from just one point on your head. It doesn’t have to be right in the centre either. A little off to either side is usually fine.

You can also work from a centre line, essentially a parting. As long as it’s allowed to grow far enough, anyone’s hair can be set into either a centre or side parting which directs the floe of the hair. The would essentially be an improved version of the centre point, but some manga styles (especially spiky) won’t like it at all.

Remember that your hair is on your head.

Gee whizz that sure sounds obvious, but the problem occurs from half head syndrome (it may have a fancier name than that, but even Van Gogh screwed up with it from time to time (or purposely used it, i don’t know)). To test whether you may potentially be affected by this, answer the following question without using your hands: Where are your ears positioned on your skull? If you find yourself wanting to answer ‘ somewhere at the back’ or anything besides ‘precisely halfway on the diameter between my face and the back of my skull’ and you may find yourself a victim of drawing only half a head.

Your hair has a roughly spherical and quite bumpy dome to work around. Make sure it doesn’t drop off any steep cliffs at the back there (which is what half-head syndrome essentially is. It’s where people drawing a profile shot as if their skull slopes down immediately after the ears), whether they’re bigger or smaller than the intended head should be.

Also, on a similar note: draw the head first! I’m guilty of not doing this. My brain seems to think the head doesn’t need to be there on the paper first, and that this floating wig can just keep things going until somebody gets in under there. The problem with getting the head under there is that the hair was supposed to have fallen on it. Hair that has fallen onto nothing may continue to do so even after a skull has been shoved under it, hanging as unnaturally as a floating wig.

Stroke down, then stroke down again.

This is definitely a personal preference but it gets goods results more times than my other methods. For each stroke of hair i draw, starting from the top (or at least using the centre point as a rough guide) and stroking down, i always prefer to start another stroke going down to meet the first stroke’s tip. This is opposed to stroking down from the top and then, from the tip, stroking upwards to come back to the centre area.

The reason for this is that an upward stroke threatens to break the natural flow of the hair by accidentally coming in at the wrong angle (and away from the centre area). While hair can curl and spike away from the centre point, it is still best to start from where the hair grows naturally and lead it to its destination, rather than start from the end and try to describe how you got there (i hope that metaphor makes sense. Basically: No return trips).

Each stroke is a multi-stroke.

Even if the hair you’re drawing is but one stand sticking out from the side for the express point of quirkiness, it pays to go over your hair strokes at least more than once. This adds weight to them, which will further add to the style and, probably more importantly, will negate any crappy looking lines when it comes to scanning.This is especially true of inking hair and lineart in general, where your scanner can have a horrible tendency of picking up where your inks have been absorbed into the paper at a near microscopic level (usually above 300dpi). This can easily turn what was once a great pencil sketch into a shaky mess that look like it shouldn’t be shaky at all…and yet is.

Hair styles are rarely symmetrical.

Though the majority of your body is symmetrical, your hair’s flow will never want to follow this rule. Characters with symmetrical hairstyles are usually serious types (with exceptions like Bobobo). Drawing a symmetrical hairstyle is fine, but the standard style of hair usually shows little differences here and there and it’s also better t have variety than cope out and just mirror the side you’ve already done.

Hope that helps. Leave a comment if it did. If it didn’t, also leave a comment, but please don’t be too mean about it. A little mean is okay.

But i’m stuck at work right now and can’t get to the backup.

Everything will be restored momentarily………… by which i mean a good seven hours.

It occurs to me i am actually intoroducing character art here before i’ve even gotten as far as introducing the character, and i can’t actually remember if that guy does that or not, so it isn’t to psuedo-elistist attempt to do a parody of him. It’s just that i suck.

The urge to make a game has been overwhelming lately. Granted i have none of the required skillrequired (bar dreams!) but i shouldn’t let the little things get in the way. Letting little things get in the wayare for secretiaries and people who view loading the dish washing as some kind of real time tetris game in a never ending race to make space appear before the time runs out and Emmerdale starts (hi mom!).

But the urge is there. I can’t imagine it would be too hard, nor can i imagine it would suck. Granted i also believe a worldwide communications network should take around six minutes to plan, create and implement, but i wouldn’t be called a manager if i weren’t exactly who i wasn’t now (bleh?).

The only real question i have is, what pigeon hole to put my game into, then modify ever so slightly so as to cause people to argue what type it is.

Boy i am back late from my trip to someplace possibly down the shops but i’m not sure and i really am exhaling loudly to cool my brain temperature. Were i not a complete and total wuss, i would have been very manly and drew a comic whilst flexing my muscles , lifting weights and growing beards, but as i am not i will have to be angsty and claim allegiance to procastination. Therefore, i must let down you, the fans, the reasons i do this, the non-existent entities who invade my fibulars and not have a comic today. I know that’s one whole page of high-intensity, deep commentary failure to make a witty metaphor of a webcomic that you guys have to miss out on, but i’m afraid we’ll just have to bear it all together, like unwllting slaves at yaoi orgycon ’07.

Instead, please accept this random scribble of character art.

I was never taught how to draw, beyond once having a pencil clasped in my hand by the school yard bully and forced to etch carbonated lead all over the forehead of a girl I kinda liked but then never saw again afterwards, so it’s hard for me to determine what things get taught in an art class beyond the fundamentals and basics of anatomy, perspective and silly faces in the margins. I can imagine the teacher would work to prevent a lot of bad habits being created right from the get go. But I’d also like to imagine that the following errors were not made by me and me alone in the entire universe and that there are at least ten thousand other poor saps out there who frustrated themselves endlessly over why their pictures no looked pretty- and then those ten thousand people visited my humble workHate and got the monetization flowing in by absorbing the wisdom I threw at them.

So here are six mistakes you may or may not whether you are or are not an artist be making or unmaking. I would like to think that the majority of you would choose to deny making said mistakes and then claim they were sorta obvious afterwards and yet somehow still come out of this article having learned something.

1. Your tools are not at fault.

One question that used to burn me up when I was young (read: three years ago) was just how did the professionals do stuff like this.

One of the many pieces of fine art from Omar Dogan.

In my head the years of diligent practice and building up of artistic techniques was not an acceptable answer for why these insufferable fools could ever consider themselves of a higher standard than myself. Anyone who said it was all down to practice was clearly a lying liar. No. It was clear to me that the reason why they were heads above me was because they held magic pencils that drew perfect lines, carried magic paper, able to fall in love with any piece of carbon that attached itself to the fibers and rearrange as necessary into a panacea of perfectly artistmanship. Even the rulers would secretly attach themselves to the mind of the artist and then just draw the whole picture itself while no one was looking.

But no. While it is true that good working, fully functioning tools will make your artwork appear high quality, this is not a valid excuse for a lacking of knowledge into the areas you need to be knowledgeable in (anatomy, perspectives, landscape, tonal values, basic observational skills) and will not excuse why your hand and eyes cannot guide the pencil in the way you want.

Good artists (those below great and excellent artists) can usually make a cheap, crummy pencil work for them without too much trouble. This isn’t to say you can kidnap said artists and force them to draw a bust of Homer with a blunt pencil and a torn up piece of scrunched up notepaper. The tools at least need to be in working order; properly sharpened, bristles on a brush smooth, paper not on fire. Getting the right tools out of that particular range also helps. Rubbers for example, are for rubbing out incorrect notes made in lectures you fall asleep in. If you’re a sketcher you should be using a putty eraser. It removes everything cleanly (unless you’ve pressed down too hard), leaves no bits and is moldable.

I so wish i got told about these centuries ago. I’m sre they existed back then as well.

But for practice and your first few years of getting into the drawing scene, even the tools bought at the stationary for kids back at school session should be more than enough. That pack of ten HB pencils bought for a dollar fifty may break a lead every time you try to sharpen them, but if you can’t draw a coherent looking Naruto with one of these, you ain’t going to be able to draw one with that fifty dollar retracting, super mechanical, self sustaining, carbon pencil either.

2. People are in Perspective too.

This is one of those things that killed me when it came to manga. Those big shots of people charging at the enemy, their fist bigger than their whole body, the rushed feelings as they seemed to travel out of the picture, the feeling in my loins staring at those firm chests…*ahem* but I didn’t get what was going on with how they got that picture with no clear evidence of Satan working soul magic.

Oh I knew about Mr. foreshortening back then, the tricky little bastard, always hamming my efforts, but this seems to be beyond that, another step to anatomy that I couldn’t quite mock up in my head. If I copied/traced these pictures I got it, but making my own proved impossible.

Until the one day I clicked. People are in perspective too, even over the top dramatic, dynamic perspective that the like the heart stopping scenes you’d see in shounen manga.

It’s the type of thing that makes clear obvious sense in every shape of the word. People aren’t special. They’ll still objects in the drawing world and though they may be the centre of attention they are not exempt from the basics of drawing realistic models.

The problem here lies in two areas; the separation of perspective and anatomy lessons, and the ‘draw what is cool factor’ that most beginners are going for. Perspective mainly deals with blocks and shapes, cylinders and pyramids. Anatomy deals with complex detail of muscle groups and bone structure. Because it went into humans deeper than the other topic, anatomy kinda takes humans away from perspective.

Not an entirely accurate box, but the point should be clear. Mr. Fortuna here is akin to a building drawn at a bird’s eye view 3 point perspective. Try not to get fooled by speedlines when researching these.

Which is a shame because, while they don’t necessarily need to follow it (at least not in cartoons and the like) humans in perspective just end up looking so much better. It kills off that ‘pasted into the background’ look that so many pictures drawn by amateur artists have, which brings us to the draw what is cool factor.

Those getting into drawing their own cute little pictures have it easier than professional artists in one way, that they know exactly what they want to draw and they only think hey have to draw that. They wanna draw their favourite character from their favourite comic book series, they go right ahead and do that. It’s only when they finish they might go about drawing the background surrounding the character and sure, they might use perspective. But it’s already too late. There’s no way that character is in perspective now. They best you can hope for is some kind of standing in the foreground look or an abstract piece.

And this can all be fixed by the simple measure of blocking out your pictures beforehand, making sure perspective lines go where they need to. You can draw your characters in a moment.

The great thing about learning this little notion as well is, once you’ve done so and got the knack of it, that pesky little demon of Foreshortening will just disappear into the ether. The perspective lines will guide your newly created bodies and let you know where that hand needs to be and just how big it is. You shouldn’t have to be frustrated about it ever again (after practice anyway).

3. The thumb is opposable

Ask an artist what the hardest thing to draw is, and he’ll get cocky and say ‘the other eye’. While that is a point for later consideration one of the other harder things to sketch is the hand. This is because it has five little hangers on who are complete bastards for getting just right. The hand can be so hard to draw that most people usually end up skipping things on it just to prevent wasting their own time (even though they’re artists). They’ll draw blobs or scooper hands, they’ll keep the fist permanently clenched. They’ll even cut off the pinky,

And what’s the main cause of trouble for all our hand wankers? It’s the thumb. Why? Because of how many bones it has. And that number is three.

I could get into an argument about phalanges and carpals now, but I’ve already done that in a previous entry. Basically I’m including the bone shown below.

Whether or not you count this bone as part of the thumb or hand what remains true is that it moves a lot better than those four other metacarpals trapped inside your palm and if you don’t take it into consideration when drawing your hand your hand is going to look a little off.

Again we have potential bad teachers to blame for little when it comes to drawing a barebones structure and just choosing to make the palm a little wider instead of giving this its own little block. Doing so opens up a world of flexibility that gave us the seven millennia of civilization that we’re inevitably going to lose on a nuclear poker game one day.

4. You can draw from your elbow.

Some kind of pencil mounted elbow would be cool (I also imagine some kind of firing mechanism as well) designed to confuse teachers as they die impaled on carbon, but this be not what I mean.

The point here is simples. Try and draw a straight line without a ruler. If it ends up looking like this:

It may look reasonably straight, but it’s starting to curve at the ends. It’s also only about eight centimeters long. Even without a ruler you can draw lines longer than this a lot better.

Then you be making that classic mistake of resuming that your wrist bends at some kind of arc that is also a perfect straight line.

Let me make one thing clear. Your wrist cannot twist in a perfect straight line.

‘Oh, of course, that’s obvious. I bet you’re going to tell me now that if I draw a line while keeping my wrist still and using my elbow to move the paper I’ll get a much better result?’ Well, you rat scapillio- y-yeah. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

The elbow may twist as well, but you’ll get longer, straighter lines with it than with just your wrist. This also knocks some sense into you over body control when drawing. Helps out quite nicely.

5. No two objects line up perfectly … outside of 2 point perspective

Ignoring the eyes drawn in the Sunday funnies for a moment, trying to draw objects symmetrically while also more realistic than the Sunday funnies can leaves things looking wonky. This comes straight back to that ‘the other eye’ comment I made earlier. Know now that even the artists who get paid for drawing superheroes have these issues and its technical, medical term is called ‘Assuming there is a horizon coming out of the man’s nipples-istus’.

Let me try to draw well enough to explain.

This is wrong:

This is right:

It is only slight here, but at other angles when one eye is definitely higher than the other, it’s important to fully understand the important of perspective.

All your body parts follow the curves of your body. These then follow the rules of anatomy that make up your body who shortly follow the rules of perspective on your body. As a result you can expect to get away with drawing your eyes exact the same on the same level and have it not look a little wonky.

This goes one step further with the golden rule of composition, which is simply: No two intervals are the same. The eyeballs and nipples may be identical to their partner, but the objects around them aren’t, the distance between them and your viewing space are different and therefore the tonal values between them are also going to be different. On top of that nothing in nature is usually perfectly in line with any other part of nature and even man made structures must again follow the rules of perspective. The key lesson here, don’t think you can get away with drawing fences like this (outside of simple cartoons).

Each plank is different, even when measured to be the same as its counterparts. The woodlines will be different. Flaws will be here, there and over there. The weather would have warped the planks. All sorts of reasons exist for physical differences in objects that should be the same and you should be drawing them.

So do so.

And to end it all…

6. It takes time to draw something.

Things like this don’t help but with the fast flow of the internet today there are artists out there (and I am constantly one of them) that seem to believe they are underperforming if they haven’t drawn a thousand pictures in the space of a week. While I’m sure a few hundred quick sketches in a week is entirely possible for the retardingly determined this should not be the point. Quantity does not equal quality, and as clichés go that’s a good one to remember.

Another good one to remember is that guy on deviant art who’s depictions of Sakura-chan accidentally displaying her pantsu did not create all those sick works in the space of an hour. Hell, each picture alone probably took longer than that.

This little problem that amateur artists fall into I believe can be the result of three things, a) seeing deviant art accounts with the aforementioned thousand pictures b) comic books that show some guy drawing twenty plus fully drawn, wonderfully coloured pictures of testosterone harden ladies in the space of a month and c) rap music.

What people can forget is that just because one person could do a full comic by themselves (and many do) people with these art accounts created their massive collections over many years, that professional comics are usually handed by a team of at least three artists (penciller, inker and colourist) for every page and that rap music will always be terrible and makes your brain into mush.

And this isn’t even taking my original point into account about the whole speed thing. A single page can take hours to compose and complete. I’ve seen artists revealing that to just ink one page of their latest strip can take up to five hours easy. This is where the dedication lies. The willingness to go to all that effort for a page that is probably going to be blurred past by half a dozen readers is what makes a true artist cry.

So don’t think that you’re doing something wrong if after a mere thirty minutes you’ve only got a basic blocking draft of where all your characters are going to stand and perhaps what the background looks like. Great art takes time and your work will be reflected in the end.

Of course you could always cheat and just turn the lights on and off.

True art takes seconds, according to the judges of the 2001 Tate Gallery Awards ceremony. Well done Martin Creed.

Further reading:

On Opposable thumbs

Drawing Dynamic Hands (Burne Hogarth )

On Human Perspective

Dynamic Figure Drawing: A New Approach to Drawing the Moving Figure in Deep Space and Foreshortening (Burne Hogarth )

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When i was a data processor, i had a friend, also a data processor.

We were unique in that we were the only ones who seemed to hate our job.

Quickly she left and i stubbornly stayed until the day i was kicked out as fast as they could possibly manage.

I remember not her name nor her face, only that she did not know the concept the Big Brother reality tv show was based off.

She is the inspiration for the entire of workHate.

And it is impossible for me to meet her again.

Luckily, I have had seven years of Samurai Deeper Kyo to keep me warm and so now I will talk about it at the endless void.

Samurai Deeper Kyo seems to suffer in a similar way to my poor self. There’s a complete ignorance in the manga world to its existence. Bring it up on forums, and all you’ll get is how a few people watched a few episodes of the anime and then proceeded to stop watching anymore episodes, because it took all that was good with the series and replaced it with space demons because no one likes see Kyo rip another thousand people apart, the only possible reason for doing so is that killing people is scary (which was confusing in itself. This is Japan. The only thing they really censor is the penis).

I’m assuming fans do exist of the work, both here in the UK and that country east of the land of the rising sun, because it somehow got translated all the way up to volume 38 and I just finished reading it last night as a result. It had a brilliant ending, if a little compact but with a wonderful feeling of finality that you’re not allowed to get with a lot of other manga who haven’t entirely decided what they’re doing with themselves until about volume ten and even then they sort of tell it wrong. It is one of those manga where it earns your right to read all the way to the end and not screw over all your attempts to be satisfied by the end.

And the odd issue, it’s essentially above the level of things like Naruto and Bleach bu at least some kind of exponential factor of two. I don’t make that statement easily. I’m not a hater of either of the above (the Bleach manga ticks me off, but that’s because of decompressed storytelling that tries to capture every millisecond of a three second incident). I love them, but I still reckon that Samurai Deeper Kyo did a lot better for itself, manga-wise.

The reason Kyo does a better job lies right in the sudden twist right back in volume three, where it dramatically chose to break away from the format that Naruto followed, the moment that it decided to stop being about a typical Japanese student with a perverted nature and ‘lots and lots’ of potential hidden behind clumsiness (especially around the tsundere) all topped off with hidden pasts and demon badasses locked within him that scare his friends whenever it get released and has the Big Badass actually pop out, slaughter people and take over the whole show. Such was the power of Kyo.

After the first few volumes of Kyo you wouldn’t be punished severely for mistakenly the whole thing as some sort of harem manga. We were only on three girls, two perverts and four ‘maybe he’ not such a dork after all’ moments by the point Kyo takes over, but that’s usually true to form in the sorts of things. But no, you get badass fight after badass fight all carving a path through history, as well as getting to see the importance of your own life regardless of whatever anyone else thinks and the need to blow through all lies glows stronger with every issue.

Kyo as a character is a very carefully crafted puzzle. Within him is a shyness you never see admitted, a timidity of situations that are only best brought up with the use of an ellipse, with the fully grown manboy sometimes not speaking for several volumes in a row. Kyo is a man raised with no need to speak (due to living with someone who’s essentially a psychic) and an urge to ‘be the strongest’, a goal inspired by no one but himself. No one ever tells Kyo to be the best throughout the entire series. It’s something he decides for himself and never tells anyone except his fallen opponents. It’s the moral of the story and what makes Kyo Kyo.

What makes the series besides Kyo is, of course, the hundreds of characters and the fight scenes. Kamiyo creates such wonderful characters and gives them the time they deserve. Others do this a lot nowadays no problem, from Naruto to Lost but these characters hold special places in my heart for their interactions. Everyone gets along with everyone, even when they absolutely hate each other. All characters chatter away meaninglessly to each other, taking the most serious moments of the whole series and turning them into whacky comedy that you find yourself waiting for at the end of every fight, watching as the most powerful attacks get turned into giant pillows all because one maniacal serial killer is kind of miffed at the other.

This is something that other series with hundreds of characters can lack. For all the captains of Bleach there are some that just don’t talk to each other, not out of some ancient grudge, but because there’s no time for it, or the writer didn’t have a chance to establish a relationship, even with allies that are dynamically at odds with one another (Tousen’s justice verses Kurotsuchi’s sadistic experiments, you would have thought they would have come to blows by now). Some characters are created just for the need to be created (that 1^st Lieutenant will do something one day I’m sure, but until then, let’s just watch his moustache). With Kyo every character is created for a reason. If they get a name, you can be damn sure you’ve got a background story and some proper relationships showing up.

All the characters are fun and worth the wait. It does come as a bit of an issue, since it usually leaves the manga quite happily showing another ten or so shadow people, giving them an ominous title and then leaving us waiting four more volumes before any of them appear before adding three more questions per character as to what mystery they’ve got wrapped around them. Still, all questions get answered in the end. Only one (literally, only one) gets missed out, and then we got an entire bonus aftermath after the epilogue manga to explain that one away (HI-DE-TA-DA).

Some characters do fall into cliché, especially the bishounen types like Yukimura, Shinrei and Sasuke. Be they serious or playboy, they still fall into a stereotype and never really get back out. They’re still great characters and hilarious/awesome all the way through, so it’s not much to worry about.

Then you have the characters that stand out all by themselves. Bontenmaru is the definitive big guy who stands at the back of everyone and just laps up all the praise with his highly egotistical yet surprisingly compassionate side. Benitora combined the Osaka Yankee with fists full of comedy with all the determination of a badass normal with no special powers and yet such a promising secret history that in itself turns into an ongoing joke. Then there’s Akari, who is probably the most flattering example of a pre-op transsexual I’ve ever seen in anything Japanese, be it hentai or non-hentai.

And Hotaru. Wonderful Hotaru. That guy who got mauled to death in the anime so very bad when some higher-up said ‘hey, that’s bastardize his character and let a big time voice actor jerk himself off every time that cool bishie should be on screen.  The Shikamaru of the series (in terms of unique character and certainly not strategic genius), I could have chosen to write the entire damn article about him  but other than listing him as the Osaka of the series I feel he’s far above a one sentence character description. All I can say is don’t be surprised if volume sixteen becomes your favourite for a long time to come.

One on one duels make up the most of Samurai Deeper Kyo. It’s just such a matter of skill on the author’s part that these fights actually stay good. For a series that doesn’t rely on the Beach/Naruto formula of ‘Attacks that just so happens to be perfectly designed to allow the character to win in that exact particular situation that perfectly counters the opponent’s other bizarrely unique skill’, fights of pure sword fighting with the occasional hadouken remain entertaining and full of variety

If you haven’t got into Samurai Deeper Kyo yet I would highly scream in your ear about it for two hours until you finally shouted ‘fine, I’ll buy your silly sword fighty book’. It falls into one of those categories where you can have a ‘worth it’ slapped in there and not feel cheated after reading the whole thing. You can live happily in the knowledge that it has all come out, getting the whole lot is actually kind of cheap. You’ll get a good year’s worth of reading out of the entire series (I got seven years on slow release and I was still gasping for the next volume) and be satisfied with the great fights and worthy ending.

And the first few volumes are currently super cheap (less than a pound) on Amazon. click on the links below:

Part of a series of reviews based on manga that i have read most/all of. For others, check out the archives!

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]]> http://workhate.co.uk/?feed=rss2&p=924 0 http://workhate.co.uk/?p=924 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WorkhateInc/~3/yO81CJBNtDU/ http://workhate.co.uk/?p=910#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:11:15 +0000 Shariku http://workhate.co.uk/?p=910 As part of the ‘It’s fun to traumatise your friends, family and work associates’ series of articles, I present to you the Proposition for Pretend to be a Body Snatcher day.

This year, October 23^rd is Pretend to be a Body Snatcher day, because after being on this planet for so long one realises you can just randomly announce days for global worldwide events to occur and there’s a chance that someone will be just crazy enough to do it and post a video up on Youtube with the police dragging them away afterwards.

The rules are simple, the prizes intangible and the consequences potentially disastrous for both others and yourself.

Rules:

1)      Pretend to be a body snatcher. That is, a third party who has hijacked the body that you frequently inhabit for its own purposes, be they nefarious, academic or stupid.

2)      Do not tell anybody that this has happened to you. Remember, the organic humans surrounding you must not know what you have done. To reveal your secret is to break cover, and breaking cover will displease your alien masters, sentient AI overloads/ other pod people.

3)      Be really bad at maintaining rule number two yet at no time admit your grievances.

4)      Record for funnies.

For inspiration, below are concepts stolen from movies and other such media junk that otherwise fuel our pathetic human lives that involve the Body Snatcher people. Choose one as a template if you so desire:

Pod person

Fresh from the farm that your template was taken to last night as he/she slept, the pod person spends his days being the exact same person he was the night before.

A Pod Person is perfectly normal, alarmingly so. Any suspicious activity is easily laughed off as simply a bad habit or foolish slip of the tongue. Should anyone actually accuse you of anything, they are the one who is crazy and attempts should be made to alienate them from the group to divert suspicion away from yourself. Invite people into cupboards while insisting there is nothing to worry about.

Parasite

“You’ve seen what we are. We use your dead as vessels.”

Those guys from Dark City

Just because you’re dead now doesn’t mean you were when you woke up to find that strange, larvae creature requesting a hug from your face last night. And just because you’re still dead doesn’t mean you’re not now a shambling monstrosity still trying to shove food into your host’s mouth at the breakfast table.

Intelligent Alien stuck on a planet of stupids

This human is perfect. In a high enough position of authority to pull influence amongst the humans, yet socially distant from those around him. Once we have his body, we’ll have his access codes, his files, his… awkward on again off again relationship with fellow lecturer Doctor Wong.

Try not to be too infuriated at how primitive these carbon based beings are. Also, don’t chuckle when they use keyboards to type words.

Robot

“No minds, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No souls, replaced by tech.”

Dr. Mordin Solus, on the Collectors, Mass Effect 2

Your robot may have its template’s human facial characteristics and body proportions. It may have the same voice and mannerisms. It may even have your social habits and the exact same level of useless Code Geass trviaia that you do, but does it have your human heart? And if he does, where has it kept it?

Faker (or blue He-Man as everyone knows him) was apparently a robot. No, i didn’t care about that either.

Highly incompetent alien

“I am Government Man, come from the government. The government has sent me. Ohohoho. He is not an alien lifeform. He is an experimental government aircraft!”

Gir, on the alien Zim, Invader Zim

So you’re looking to invade the earth, and you’re using this fleshbag to do it with . You’re not so sure how you’re invading the earth, and you’ve been unable to contact your superiors for further orders, which is a little strange what with your universal communications network, but you’re sure this is because they have complete faith in your ability to wipe these puny er… earth things off the face of… this this planet they’re on.

Soon all shall bow before you, as charred corpses of Doom!

Just borrowing the body

Can be played as a battle of wills. There’s someone in you that shouldn’t be,. Perhaps someone you know, or someone that came out of that bottle you broke at the antique shop. But whoever they are, they’re not getting your body without a fight! Prepare to fight with your left hand  in the queue for the bus. Struggle relentlessly over which option to pick at the vending machine. Lose the battle for dominance at the altar, just before saying ‘I do”.

The brainwashed

“What are you talking about? I’ve always been a supporter of communism. Why, any other thoughts are just pure treason. All hail Emperor Zhang!”

A satirical thought experiment if nothing else. You’re the same as you always were, with only one discerning difference, usually one that defined your entire political/philosophical/creative lifestyle. It may have occurred yesterday after you left halfway during the film to go to the toilet but never came back. Can be played further as an almost mindless zombie, but that falls more into parasite territory.

NPC

“Welcome to Corneria.”

Best played with many body snatchers against one person, who is unaware that he’s the protagonist of his own video game. Repeat statements endlessly. Assign sub quests to those in passing. Reward people with magical blades of magic for finally reaching you.

Recruited government spy

For once, there are no aliens, no pod people, no robots in disguise, but just the other day men appeared in suits and glasses and maybe a car and told you that Amanda Stretton from accounting may not be who she said she is. It’s nothing to be alarmed about I’m sure, but they did ask you just to keep an eye on her for them, see if she does anything suspicious or knows anything about a series of disappearances that have occurred once every three years. Watch her carefully. VERY carefully. Maybe get a bit closer, but try not to freak out when she asks you what you think you’re doing.

Government spy recruiter

“Could I speak to you for a few moments regarding Amanda Stretton?”

Best done to a stranger you’re able to pull up next to whilst they walk to work at an office. Convince them to step into the car. For extra effect, choose a college that works with one of your friends and doesn’t know them. Your friend should comment casually to the stranger during the day how Amanda has been acting a little weird lately.

Secret Insane Asylum Planet

There was a war somewhere.  He didn’t know where.  Not a place you could necessarily get to by travelling anywhere from here, late Twentieth Century London, Earth, but somewhere, sometime.  It was the ultimate war, the final confrontation between Good and Evil, and he had played a major part in the war.  But something had gone wrong, he had been betrayed, lost a battle with the forces of chaos and been ejected from the real battleground to languish here, in this cesspit they called ‘life’.

Inside Grout’s mind. Walking on Glass.

You’ve been trapped on a planet you don’t recognise. You don’t know how you got here, but you appear to be living as one of the many bipedal life forms on this planet. Worse still, you’ve been living here for as long as you can remember. Your former life is a shadow. Freedom from this nightmare doesn’t seem possible. You realised the truth long ago, but everyone is either in on the punishment and monitoring you, or just thinks you’re crazy. Today’s the day though, you’ll show them.

You’ll show them all.

Trapped in a coma

You need to wake up! Please… just wake up.

(Not exactly a body snatcher one, but great for a mindfuck nonetheless)

Actions taken by body snatchers:

Of course just pretending in your mind is no different from all those other fantasies you participate in throughout the day in order to prevent yourself from coming into work tomorrow with a hundred foot long subway sandwiches which you are so totally gonna eat and a shotgun. So below is a list of Inspirational Ideas. Ideas, random musings and even scripts that you can use in your efforts to freak out everyone that has ever trusted you.

Attempts to absorb other humans into the collective:

You: Hello sir. What a fine day it is for a beverage.

Innocent: Uh… uh yes. I guess it is.

You: I will go have one now, and provide nourishment to myself through absorbing its nutrients.

Innocent: Okay… Did you get those reports I as-

You: Would you like I, Alistair, to obtain you a beverage of nutrients as well?

Innocent: Oh. Go on then. I’ll have a coffee. Black. Two sugars.

(immediately pull out can from your pocket and pass it over)

You: Here you go. One Peps-Coffee.

Innocent: Oh um… thanks. I’m not really a fan of Pepsi. You can have it.

You: But you must have it! Drink it. Drink it now.

Innocent: No, really I’m fi-

You: YOU MUST DRINK IT. It is the taste of a new generation!

Innocent: I really think I should get going.

You: You are full of anxieties and carbon. Do not worry. I assure you, as a fellow human of the British race, once you have drank this Pepsi of the coffee variety, you will have nothing to worry about Ever Again.

Unnecessary celebration of mundane acts

Success. The anti-virus scan on my computer is now complete. Our earthian top of the range security systems have thwarted all viruses. The human race is safe… (stare ominously at Mildred at the desk across from you) FOR NOW!

Insert name here conversations

Not just pronouncing a person’s name with extra emphasis, but the continually failing attempt at having a first time conversation with a person you’ve ‘known for years’.

Innocent: Hi Bill. How’s it going?

You: You are John… Hello John…

Innocent: …Hi.

You: You are sympathetic, John. And are willing to listen to your co-workers plights.

Innocent: Uh… thanks.

You: It was not a compliment, John.

Suspiciously specific denials

Innocent: Uh… Jack? Are you feeling all right?

You: Uh… Of course, Samantha. This body of mine is fine and without any intrusions to its epidermal membrane. Whatever cognitive functions could have been skipped to make you consider such a  [BSHELL FAILURE] subroutine?

Actions based on poor prior observation of human activities or errors in programming/ Inconsistent behavior/ Physical incompatibility with the human host

Normally, on the earth planet, making yourself a cup of coffee means you are meant to drink it afterwards.

When going to the lavatory, it is usually assumed by fellow humanoids that there is a reason for going in there other than to stand stock still in front of the entrance for five minutes.

Also, unexpected outcrops in the wall may prove an obstacle to human interfaces with poor path detection software.

‘Accidental slips’ of the vocal output device

“Silence pitiful human!”

“Okay class that was great. You’ve all done well today. All hail ProZorg! May his reign of travesty be everlasting and courteous! Read chapters six and seven for next week.”

“Foolish mortal! You think you can just ask a great RahZagolon how you can…Oh wait, you said Quiche. Ha sorry. I thought you asked where the Kweshek are, which is the vital weak point for a completely fictional alien race, which I am most certainly not a part of. Yes it is aisle five, right at the far back. Let me show the way…”

Suspicious conversations with yourself

“Yes. The mute is set on my skin suit, Septora. Do you honestly believe that by hanging around mammals for this long, I have become as stupid as them?”

Failing to contact the higher ups:

(to the sky) “Right. That’s it. I give up. You win. You hear me. You win! You were right. This planet isn’t worth saving. Every human here is miserable and pathetic and without hope. Just like you said. Go ahead and destroy it. See if I care.” (start waiting patiently)

Tasty on your home planet

Usually discovered by accident during meals. The body snatcher will delicately taste a food item and chew cautiously for a few moments before being overcome by gluttony and forcing as much of the common food item as possible down their gullet in front of a bemused crowd. Examples include tomato ketchup, mashed potato and the gravy dish. For extra effect, request the specific food item from other people’s plate (and only that one food item).

That’s it. Post your efforts on the forum. (click for link) You gain extra points if you are left unsure of your true nature at the end of the day.

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]]> http://workhate.co.uk/?feed=rss2&p=910 2 http://workhate.co.uk/?p=910 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WorkhateInc/~3/ZMvEqXg6LGk/ http://workhate.co.uk/?p=902#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:39:54 +0000 Shariku http://workhate.co.uk/?p=902 The urge to skip teaching a tutorial on how to draw feet can only come after not being exposed to terrible representations of the foot for so long. It’s an important area to cover, but it’s not one I will be covering anytime in the near future up to perhaps next week when I find out I have no real method for drawing clothes and need to stall on that too.

So now we move onto heads.

I already know this is going to be a fun tutorial, but not fun in the traditional sense of the word, or fun in the other sense of the word that is strange. No, I mean fun as in there are so many gawddang areas of the head in which to cover that all of them are each worthy of their own bloody tutorial and attempting to cover them in a two thousand word document in as futile as trying to come up with a good comparison metaphor when you’re busy trying to catalogue all the possible topics you want to talk about.

When talking about constructing heads, the following topic areas have to be considered:

Structure of the skull.

Positioning of facial features

The eyes

The nose

The mouth

The ears

HAIR!!!

Emotions

And this isn’t including the myriad of differences that comes between realistic faces, superhero faces, cartoon faces and shitty fucking manga faces, areas which the original intentions of this series of documents intended to achieve and was successfully able to blank over for all those parts where essentially everything is structurally the same. Oh no, not for the face. Simplicity is god in the creation of a cartoon face. Scott McCloud got famous for informing the comic book world (and only the comic book world) that faces are more relatable to the gazer the simpler they are (which I figure explains 100% of the whole hentai situation the internet has going on out there).

Luckily this is where I get to cheat, because with simplicity comes a billion different ways to draw things. And with a billion different ways to draw things I can come up with the excuse that a lot of it is all ultimately style and the best thing you can go do now is start experimenting on how you want your eyes to look (copying is also an option for learning)

So for now, let’s focus on those first two steps mentioned above. Regardless of the type of face you’re making the structure mostly stays the same. Deviations can exist in the rules (and most certainly do for newspaper strip characters and anyone whose nose is drawn as a semi circle) but for the realistic/superhero and to some extent manga characters all follow the same basic process.

Skull structure

So here’s a skull:

Regardless of what eventually goes on in the insult to calcium everywhere, you are going to need to make sure the basic structure is in place before you start surrounding it with skin and afros. So let’s get a method setup for you.

Now most people who can’t just immediately draw at a super professional level often start with this:

It’s a good start and allows you to get the parts that include the dome of the skull and not miss out on the chin, but personally I prefer to go with this:

This gives you one extra advantage. It’s immediately 3D. It can also be adapted to any position the head faces at any angle at any direction, something the 2d cross lacks, especially when going portrait.

This also avoids the half head rule, something you’ll go to instinctively fuck up at every opportunity you get. If you don’t get what I mean just looking at the picture go draw a cartoon picture of a head facing sideways portrait right now. I’ll wait.

Are you done? Where are the ears? If there’s at the back of the head you’ve failed basic anatomy. Despite popular belief on how the homunculus in your body wishes to believe the body worked your ears are  precisely ninety degrees away from your nose based for the centre of your skull. This can be hard to confirm as  looking at your own head in the mirror requires looking at the mirror head on and seeing your ears sticking out, but it’s true and shut up with any further arguments on the point.

We’ll get onto other tips and tricks of the facial positioning later, but this is the important one to start with. That top circle we’ve drawn is the circumference of the big dome that makes up the top of your head. From your eyes to your ears to that little nook at the back of your head, everything from upwards is the dome. Just note that in reality this isn’t an exact circle. In fact there are no circles on your head whatsoever. Everything is some kind of oval. We just use circles to makes thing quicker. Remember, it’s only a template.

From here we move to the jaw. This entire section starts out from the ear hole, slants down a little and then slants further away to meet up on both sides in what makes the chin. The jaw area is what you want to manipulate when over exaggerating heads without making things look ‘wrong’.

The only other major structure area to mention before we move onto facial features is the nose. Though a facial feature in itself it’s usually seen as one of the less important ones compared to eyes, mouth and (in manga) hair). The nose’s construction starts on that top  circle again and starts as an indentation  that rises up a little to meet the forehead and down a lot to make the nose.

Facial positioning:

The following is included in list form as, let’s face it, following these paragraphs is difficult when all you’re really here for is to scan through in the hopes of finding out some quick advice as to how it works. So here are the rules of the face when trying to make sure everything lines up. All these rules unless stated otherwise assume your face is relaxed and looking straight ahead (as your you were looking at yourself eye to eye in a mirror)

As you should know, the face is perfectly symmetrical with the exception of the brain’s penal gland. The only break on this rule is superficial features (as in the hair and any scars) and the muscles which control eyebrows, cheeks and the mouth.

As stated previously the ear hole is positioned at the halfway point of your head when viewed from portrait form. There’s a whole half a chunk of brain back there that’ll look weird if you don’t draw it out.

Based on the two circles template above, the ear is the length of this space and is roughly the same height as the middle part of your face, namely from the tops of your eyebrows to the bottom of your nose.

The length of the nose itself is just a tiny bit smaller than the length of the ear, though if you include the indentation at the top of the nose that leads up to the forehead, they’re exactly the same size.

The tragus of the ear (which is that bit that can be used to cover up the ear hole) is in perfect line with the top of the zygomatic bone (the edge of the bone you can feel when you rest your finger just under your eye).

Your eyes, like your ears, are in the centre of your head, not near the top.

The complete width of your eye socket (including eye, other lines and the bags you’ll have tomorrow morning) is the same length as your eyebrow when relaxed.

When the face is relaxed, the pupils of your eyes line up perfectly with the tips of your mouth.

The top tips of your mouth formed by the philtrum (those railroad tracks that run between your nose and mouth) are directly beneath the centre of the nostril.

The bottom triangle that makes up the pyramid of your nose is tilted, meaning you can see your nostrils head on.

Feature construction (for cartoons)

A popular way of creating faces lies on the more cartooney side of things in feature construction. As you can see in the examples below, many of the features of cartoons don’t follow any of the rules set above. Eyes are higher than they should be. Noses are the wrong shape. Quite frankly I dare say it is an embarrassment to the natural way of face making and as a British gentleman I do dare announce that such works be to an end immediately.

But until that happens let’s go over it.

The trick of feature construction is simply that it doesn’t rely primarily on the shape of the head first before putting in the features. It’s the other way round. As in the picture of Homer Simpson below, you’ll see that the eyes comes first, followed by the nose, mouth and ear. The head surrounding them almost comes as an afterthought, to the point where it’s obvious who it is even missing his characteristic bald head.

The is very effective for the world of cartoons, and can easily travel to the world of manga (manga usually operates successfully on both borders) for the simple fact that the world they’re being drawn in is simple and feature specific. We’re drawn to features and even the simplest difference between styles can easily be recognised.

Learning to feature draw is simple. You just practice it based on what you want. Most characters follow the Homer Simpson pattern above of starting from the middle and working your way out and almost always starts by drawing the distinctive eyes of your character first. This actually allows you to keep a better centre of proportion in terms of where the head goes in relation to the face since everything is built up upon the previous feature.

As long as you follow this very successful basic formula, creating a new cartoon character is easy and usually a lot of fun, which I guess is what drawing is supposed to be about.

So now we have your heads complete. Well almost, I’ve missed out another big section here. Two in fact. The first is eyes which it may dawn on you you are using at this very moment. The other is hair. Both will be discussed on other links.

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