Why does my art suck?

[Deleted member 1952336]

I'm really struggling to make quality art for my game. I've been doing art drills and studies for about four hours a day for the past year, and I've gotten better but I'm missing something.

Could any one tell me which of my preview images look the worst?

Here's my game Thread

I'm going for a style that's similar to:
This Game (Rick and Morty a way back home)

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This Game (Milf Toon Drama)
SPOILER: This Gif
But most of all

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Did I make a mistake going with perfect vectors? I thought these were all perfect vectors when I first looked at them. But now, the more I study them, I'm thinking they are hand drawn lines with varying thicknesses. Especially that gif, which I assume is the highest quality of all of them.

Here's a quick character I drew today without overlaying perfect vector lines:

Spoiler: Here

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Spoiler: And for Comparison here's an Unfinished animation I've been working on for the past few days (with perfect vector lines)

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I could probably clean up that first character, a little more. Maybe I'm just not that good yet. But maybe vector art kills a lot of the life in a drawing?

My reasons for perfect vector art were to make the drawings easier to adjust, cleaner looking, and to produce cleaner animations. But maybe I made them sterile and lower quality?


Do these games (below) have better art than mine, or are they successful because of the quantity of content)? Maybe I should stop redoing the first part of my game and focus on quantity?
Rick and Morty a way back home
Superhuman


Please. Any advice?

 

[F1_V10]

Are you kidding me ? It doesn't suck if you ask me. Not an artist, but amateur DAZ3d enthusiast here.
I haven't played as of yet, waiting for more updates so more content in a single playthrough. I think you need to give the game some time to get traction. Don't count the chicks before the hatch mate!
Goodluck and godspeed dev.

 

[Deleted member 5410619]

Do these games (below) have better art than mine, or are they successful because of the quantity of content)? Maybe I should stop redoing the first part of my game and focus on quantity?

The art is fine.
From what i can tell:
The two you are compeeting with have more interesting tag's then you.
You have to keep in mind that you are:
1: Compeeting with thousents of different porn games.
And your does not stand out.
Just looking at it makes me go:
Right an other teen titans parody.
Next.
2: Doesnt have any interesting tag's or preview picture's.
People like different things.
I for example like conquest and domination.
Reading your discription i get no context of the kind of story it is.
Just vague robin is facing himself(So a clone probley) and no worry it is a relaxing game you can not fail(ah so it isnt a game but an other visual novels.)
3: It is new.
Games grow by word of mouth.
If people like it they will tell other people about it.
As news spread people will want to check it out for themselves.
It is how minecraft grew so big.
People wanted to know what it was about.

If you want to grow your game you need to ask yourself:
What am i offering that is different then the billions of other games on f95zone.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Keep drawing, getting better is not something that happens in a day.
Also perhaps you haven't found your style yet, try drawing in a bunch of different styles, discover what you like most.

 

[michaelcappi]

Seems fine to me.

 

[Omniprophet23]

I'm really struggling to make quality art for my game. I've been doing art drills and studies for about four hours a day for the past year, and I've gotten better but I'm missing something.

Could any one tell me which of my preview images look the worst?

Here's my game Thread

I'm going for a style that's similar to:
This Game (Rick and Morty a way back home)

You must be registered to see the links

This Game (Milf Toon Drama)
SPOILER: This Gif
But most of all

You must be registered to see the links

Did I make a mistake going with perfect vectors? I thought these were all perfect vectors when I first looked at them. But now, the more I study them, I'm thinking they are hand drawn lines with varying thicknesses. Especially that gif, which I assume is the highest quality of all of them.

Here's a quick character I drew today without overlaying perfect vector lines:

Spoiler: Here

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Spoiler: And for Comparison here's an Unfinished animation I've been working on for the past few days (with perfect vector lines)

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I could probably clean up that first character, a little more. Maybe I'm just not that good yet. But maybe vector art kills a lot of the life in a drawing?

My reasons for perfect vector art were to make the drawings easier to adjust, cleaner looking, and to produce cleaner animations. But maybe I made them sterile and lower quality?


Do these games (below) have better art than mine, or are they successful because of the quantity of content)? Maybe I should stop redoing the first part of my game and focus on quantity?
Rick and Morty a way back home
Superhuman


Please. Any advice?

Youve got really cool stuff to show for yourself. I like you go fór creative angles. What I think you want achieve Is get expressions to your characters, kinda like in anime. For that you should Focus on eye shaping, mouth movement And get some familiarity with body language psychology. You see, art is.not learned, it's felt And that's what you lack I think. I noticed that your characters look more or lesa same And So they convey feeling, like nothing Is happening or progressing Get in it emotionally. Other than that I Will totally enjoy your art looking forward to it

 

[woody554]

comparing to the games you are aiming for I don't see a huge level difference.

the main thing is probably the slight lack of consistency, which comes with getting better/getting more mileage. the thing to understand about professional 'bad drawers' like the rick & morty art is that the artists are probably VERY good but just choose to use a naivistic style. the difference being that their 'poor' lines are 'poor' in an extremely accurate way, which gives the art a feel of professionalism.

but what concrete steps can you take to make your art better?

-line quality. longer, sweeping lines. don't noodle around with short lines, they make everything look messy and dirty. like try to draw the upper arm or even whole arm with one fast sweeping line. if and when it goes wrong, ctrl+z and sweep it again until you hit it just right. look up videos about line quality.

-your construction is pretty symmetrical so points for actually doing it. but there's something wrong with the torsos, they're not hitting the right shapes. maybe try copying much better manga art for a while, you know the ones with amazing curvy asses, puffy camel toes and other juicy shapes. their level might be way above you, but treat it as body shape practice. try to get the feel for what makes them curves so sexy, then come BACK to the more naivistic shapes you seem to want.

or just work on actual realistic character drawing. for general practice. that's where all the good comic artists get their base too, then simplify to a cartoonish style of their choosing. you're trying to jump over that crucial part which is creating some problems.

but I think in general you've done a good job in a year. you clearly have a style you want, you just can't quite hold it steady because of lack of miieage. most people are ALL over the place for years if not forever. at least you have a clear direction.

that said, try to not fool yourself by "this is not badly drawn, this is just my style" when things look off. it might be one of the most common ways people lock themselves mentally into avoiding getting better. for the next 10 years the reason is always gonna be you, not your style.

but I think you have a good start there. just keep drawing a lot, try to always be more exact and clear with your lines. drawing well is muscle memory, practice, not talent.

-oh, I just remembered a great excercise to become more consistent: draw the same exact thing every day for a year or two. no joke. doesn't matter what it is. just keep doing it and you'll see a significant improvement over time. it can be a crocodile or whatever, then just keep repeating it every single day no matter where you are. become the 'crocodile guy', make it your thing. embrace the obsession.

this is the video I saw about drawing the same exact thing.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[AmazonessKing]

Hope I don't sound rude, but I think you went for more than you can chew with Teen Titans. Things like Rick and Morty, and even my own Steven Universe game are relatively easy to imitate because the style is very simple, at least compared to other things like, well, teen titans. Not like it's the epitome of animation, but the character design is very well done, and judging by some of the stuff I saw, yeah, you are not really cutting it.

Then there's the fact that it isn't enough to just imitate, you can also make it your own. These shows aren't exactly designed with lewds in mind, so you have to fill the gaps, and that does require extra work. I think the best example is Four Elements Trainer. Not 1:1 in many instances, but very good-looking in most of them to warrant a like.

Also, animations tend to magnify these problems.

I'd say your options are to make your own style and slowly approach the show's style, or stick to stills in the meantime.

All that being said, I don't think your art is bad. It's just that you are not in a place to imitate teen titans like Mity, Incognitymous or Zone would do. You are better suited for another kind of show until you refine your craft enough to go for something more elaborate. But that's just my opinion.

To be more specific, you are completely failing at rendering. IE, you are using only flat colors, for the most part, you are missing shading, a lot, and other details like lighting, shine, skin tone, etc. I can give you an example with my game:

Fully rendered scene:

Spoiler

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Vs flat colors:

Spoiler

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I can get away with it because the flat colors do resemble the source material far more than the full renders, even though I think the full renders look amazing. So just really study the source material, and sometimes, maybe you won't be able to fully imitate it. But, I can give you a comparison of your game, vs Mity's four elements trainer, and their respective source material, so you can see the big difference.

 

[nishikocat]

From one artist to another: you’re doing well, and you will keep improving with time.

Regarding the vectors, I’d stop stop using them and instead handdraw all your lines. It’s much faster, and it will give your drawings more life, as you can vary the line weight much easier.

Drawing clean lines is just a matter of practice. Use a brush that’s specifically for inking. And in programs like Photoshop and ClipStudioPaint you can adjust the jittering to make it easier.
Good luck and most of all, keep drawing!

 

[Eagle1900]

In my opinion the images are not to be thrown away. I think that since it's still a fairly new project, you have to give it time to get known to the public. the art isn't even the worst I've seen around, try to build a compelling story that can give strength to the whole project. I would put the possibility of making the wrong choice and consequently having different scenes, if you say it won't be difficult to play, I translate it into a boring game. otherwise, give the game time to mature, remember always aim for the max, but don't expect to reach it any time soon... personally when I start a game I see if it's been there for a long time, and that helps with many reviews and many "errors" that may have been there at the beginning and that have been resolved with reporting over time. never give up and keep working hard, you will see that the results will come if you put passion into it.