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Transformers-Mosaic — Triumph
Published: 2010-10-11 07:47:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 6266; Favourites: 81; Downloads: 68
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Description
Written and co-lettered by;S.-H. "Creature SH" Hueske - [link]
Art, colors and lettering by;
Brandie "Ouchimoo" Hanson - [link]
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Comments: 87
So deliciously creepy. OM NOM NOM.
Although I really did love the GIVE ME YOUR FACE line in the movie. Oh, OP.
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I really like the Transformer designs but the human faces...
... I can see a bit of struggle there. I mean I can tell who they are. Just the proportions are a tad off.
The color really pops, really liking that.
A few foreshortening errors.
Nice twist in the story.
Good job.
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It's the inking. This was an experiment sort of merging comic book style (which I'm still learning) with my usual method (see coloring haha) It didn't help that I tried inking in Photoshop. It went horrid. Hated it so much,then wanted to paint their faces but then it would have looked out of place, then I would have done everything else . . I actually started that but it was taking forever ..so yeah sort of went F#(% and said good enough ><
All in all, I am more satisfied with it now than I was back then, I guess because I can write it off as a learning experience -__-;
so, I'll work on improving my foreshortening.
Thanks for the crit
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Seeing as you seem happy to absorb a bit of useful info...
Regarding inking in the computer - I can recommend the Manga Studio software for that. It makes digital inking a much less painful affair.
You can get a cheaper 'debut' edition of the main program, which is very reasonably priced. It's a good spend for the inking and toning options it offers. Takes a while to get used to, but definitely worth experimenting with.
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Since your the third person to recommend it, I may have to check it out.
Thanks
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No worries - it's definitely worth a look.
I need to spend more time playing with it, really. The screentones are my thing. ^_^
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I believe...
[Scoots over to inspect box for 'debut' edition']
It'll work with either. Good, eh?
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You are very welcome... I can give you more if you want but it's purely up to you.
I keep thinking about the middle panels the most... something really going right with those ones. Because when I think of your mosaic those are the three panels that I picture in my head instantly. So you are definitely on the right path with those.
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Sure go ahead, that would be super.
One of the things I like the most about this piece is the most middle panel with the spark being ripped out, the second, third and fifth panel point to it. Story wise that's where the big turning point is so I thought I pulled that off well. Also I can't tell with the mosaic's thumbnail size, but if you zoom out far enough the moon just looks like a moon with a couple yellow blotches. The only face you could see was the 'man on the moon'. That was purely accidental but awesome.
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Okay I'll just give you pretty much everything I can think of. And hopefully you'll glean what you can out of it and go from there.
Draw faces... lots of them. Even more, if you can take a figure drawing class and draw, draw, draw... it will make your skills that much sharper. Become a sponge and learn everything you can. If you consider the fact that most comic art out there is human figure based, it's really wise to learn to draw the human figure really really well. I mean if you are really interested in going comic book pro, you gotta be able to draw practically anything so you can fit anywhere and do any job. Jack of all Trades type of thing! It'll take some time but it is definitely worth it!
Taking a drawing class will also put you in touch with anatomy resources as well. In fact, if you get an art teacher who is less fine artist and more illustrator/designer that would be one step further. A fine artist is going to push you to "feel" and "interpret" the human figure and not be "technically accurate." An Illustrator/designer, at least the ones I learned from, really understand and get why you need to have a solid grasp on the structure and less interpretation. (So hard to learn that from a fine art teacher and not a designer, grrr... believe me I've had both.) And you want the best possible guide. It's your education and you are paying for it, but it's also your future career you gotta consider too. Nothing against any of the fine artists out there... you just gotta get the right training from the right sources for the right job.
That's at least a place to start... the next step would be to light your own still life drawing sessions and just observe everything around you. Metal things, glass things, drapery, how a shirt fits on one body type as opposed to another, how the cloth drapes... If I can look through some of my art books I've got I'll see if I can direct you to some of the instructional stuff I've got on drapery... Observe how light hits all of these things too. It will just improve your observational skills and your working knowledge of how those things are. In turn it will have a positive effect on your art.
Now... after all that... The first panel with Prime standing, he's all blacked out. The arms and the legs don't feel proportionally balanced. One arm looks to short, the legs one is really thick and the other too thin. It's not bad... it just tells me that it's not easy to draw a robot that you can't pose yourself. But with the increase of your technical skill you'll find this less and less of a problem and you'll catch yourself.
Everything on this mosaic is really blendy. All the colors look airbrushed and pretty, some places make sense but others don't at all. It just says to me... look this is really pretty art and I'm not really looking at reference material. Like panel one... the sun in the distance makes perfect sense... the cliff walls in front of it not so much. There are very little variations to the edges of most of all of the images. It's not bad... I'm not saying shame on you for doing it and you should quit now. I'm saying that you will look that much more interesting in your art if it is less consistently blendy like that. Because the panels are so small and there is so much you have to convey in the single panels, you'll have to decide where you want the detail to be and when you are going to burn the detail out. That comes with time, practice, and observing others who do it really really well.
Panel two with the human faces... you've got to consider your light source. This panel would really be that much stronger if there was less ambient lighting and more of a directional light. It will help the structure of the faces, the fabric, and the gun barrel. Also, I'd lose the moon... it looks too big and it is too perfectly spherical. It sticks out like a sore thumb because of that. It's not bad... it's just obvious to me that you didn't draw the circle you used a circle tool to make it perfectly round where everything else was drawn.
Consistency is my next tip... you are great with you light sources in some of the panels and in others, it doesn't look like you thought about it. But at the same time where the blending occurs is a good example of when NOT to be so consistent. You have to have a mix of both. Another thing is the detail, you are either super detailed in some spots and really not in others, it's either one or the other, no middle ground. You need to establish that middle ground because the stark contrast between lots of detail and less detail isn't pulling the eyes the way it could say if you had a middle ground. Then the blendy areas will really shine and the detailed areas will move the eye. Again, I can't tell you what you should do more or less of to find that right balance, it comes with time, experience, and observing those who do it really well... and then practice. Practice, practice, practice... It's the words of sages!
The three middle panels are good. I really like them. The planes over egypt... The sky being blendy good, the detail on the planes are great. The contrast between the two planes, excellent. The one with all the detail... lighting source! EXCELLENT! The pyramids below... sand and smoke too blendy. And I almost want to see a horizon line... don't ask me why? Maybe to break up the blending?
Prime killing Fallen... nice. This is a good use of variety in the lines, in the tone, in the variation of line, lighting. The only thing I'd improve is the background... again blendy. The next panel over has texture to it... and I like that. I wonder why you didn't use it on both panels? And then just be careful that you don't make the backgrounds more colorful and interesting then where you want your audience to be looking because the texture background... the pink is sort of drawing my eye away from Prime and he's looking really cool. I'd push the color down... grey it out more and then lighten Prime a tad at least in his face? Light source possibly?
But the colored background in the previous panel worked for me because the contrast between the background and Prime's shadowed body... PLUS blue and orange are complimentary colors and balanced out nicely.
In fact the panel with the 4 bots... it seems more like a collage but the same lighting applies because the contrast can really draw the eye of your audience. And it seems to me that you are trying to draw the eyes of the audience to each of the bots. But because the only thing you are using is color to draw the eye, my attention is really fighting between Prime, BB, and Arcee... Ironhide gets lost in the background. Although I really like the detail on him. It's not until I really look at the piece a few times that I'm really wowed by it. Again the detail is great but when you understand why it's great and how you can use it, you'll energize your work to the next level. And I really think that you potentially could go far.
The really exciting thing about this panel is that it looks like you had reference for it. Ironhide's gun is AWESOME!! Bumblebee's not to bad either... only I think the direction seems just a tad off for some reason, can't put my finger on it? But Arcee's gun... is not working for me, it looks 2D and flat. And the biggest thing that flattens it... the detail on the side. It's not turning away enough. The line on top is perfectly straight? The perspective is off on it. Which is really weird because it feels like in some parts it is doing exactly what it needs to do to show the angle right, but then other parts of it aren't... like the perspective is conflicted? That one is a really hard call. *scratches head*
Last two panels... the perspective is off in the Prime shot on the moon. The shadow and the gun angle don't seem to match up very well? It's weird... Prime has chicken legs. lol! And the edge of the moon, WAY too blendy. Look at some reference material with that. The edge will be crisp. Just like the horizon line in the first panel. The moons light against the black will make it crisp. And stars... not a ton mind... just enough to see the brightest ones or hint that they are there.
Last panel... I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at... Fake Prime is looking into something right? The circle is too perfect, you used a circle tool where everything else is drawn. The light source is really good. I know where it is coming from and as you get further away from the light source things darken... EXCELLENT! But it is again really blendy in the background.
Anyhow... that's a review right there. lol! I'm not making any cheap shots about you personally or saying that you in any way are a bad artist... cause you are not. So I hope I haven't hurt your feelings in any way. I see a few things going on here that make me excited for you as a new up and coming artist. Just keep going and draw draw draw... observe things... This piece is really intense... the colors, the contrast... as you practice and do more consider pulling that back and using the parts you want people to really see be the intense parts and the parts you want people to see less of more middle ground. Layers in a sense.
Hope this has helped. My intention was to be helpful. I just wanted to give you some good feedback. Keep doing art, keep drawing, keep doing Mosaics.
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Ah no, didn't hurt my feelings at all. Got over that when I was 16 haha. Grr, except for that one incidence where this hack was like "WELL I"M SURE YOUR OLD ENOUGH TO TAKE CRIT SO: Insult, insult, insult, insult, insult. Not a single hint of real criticism anywhere." and I'm just like WOW! I was so tempted to return parry with the same sort of response but I decided to walk away. Although, I still wish I hadn't D<. Yeah backgrounds and perspectives are things I still need a lot of work on. Mostly because I haven't done them much. *sigh, those faces looked perfectly fine in sketch mode. ... UGg Pencil vs ink /= ! Still working out the kinks between those two mediums. I do take fault in the ambiance wash of light. My reference did have a strong light source but i was trying to give the 'hopeful' scene less dramatic shading but as you noticed, it flopped ><. So the biggest things I'm getting is. Work on perspective- check. Stop making everything so blendy and color dependent - >< TRYING!! and don't resort to Photoshop tools when I'm not happy with something being perfect. . . -_-; -check Although i do have circle templates now so whoot!
No, for real, thanks for the crits, they are key for improvement.
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oh yeah, when you start adding color... whole new ball game. Color is so easily influenced by EVERYTHING. You don't only get the tone of the pigment, you get the temperature too. (And light bounces all over the place.) And for color, I'd recommend taking still life or face portraiture oil painting class. But only when you are really ready because it's like learning to walk all over again and if you are having perspective things to pound on... portraiture painting will kick you in the teeth. Build from skill to skill. Man, took me 6 years of college to do all the stuff I learned... and then on top of that once you leave college... life has lessons to teach you too.
As for the face reference having strong light source... and you were trying to draw it with an ambient light source... even for seasoned artists it's still hard to do. My suggestion with that is to use more than one reference. If you were trying to make the faces look like Sam, Epps, etc. have your reference for those people and characters and then have lighting reference for similar faces but the lighting you are shooting for. It's more work but you can get a bit of an idea what it will look like to have an ambient lit cheek and nose and then you can try to resolve between the two what the character looks like. And then color... that is another tricky one too... because so much depends on what you are going for as well. The best advice is to have a group of people as your... "I'm doing this, is it pulling off right?" group. A peer/critique group... hey writers do it... why not artists too?
And just because it's ambient doesn't mean that you won't have general shadows on the faces... you can still have lighting and push it way back and burn it out to the simple shapes to help define the faces. You'll still have highlights. Again just observe... watch faces... drawing them forces you to really study them which is why I highly recommend it because it can be tedious work to sit and stare at a face for hours at a time. =>
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wow... maybe I did say alot...
SURPRISE!
And you too can prevent forest fires...
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Heh, sounds good to me. Though I'd favor Nemesis Prime... well, RiD Scourge, but now I am just getting silly.
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Isn't this like.. the sixth Mosaic with the 'Autobot leader really being someone evil' motif behind it? Been there, done that.. and a bit tired of the 'artificial badass' theme anyway.
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I'll concede on your point of it not being the most original twist, but "artificial badass"? What does that even mean?
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It means that you make a character a 'bad ass' without earning it. From a writer's point of view, it becomes "He's a badass 'cause I said so", not because the character has earned it through the story.
For this mosaic, we have a Decepticon who has murdered Prime and become all sorts of awesome by posessing his body, without a shred of crap-all to back that up in the fiction. It's a cheap way to translate a poor interpretation of Prime from the movies into 'look at the REAL badassness of Straxus!'
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I don't agree with you about that lack of backup. Straxus has been a, as you put it, badass since Marvel UK. This Mosaic is just using his established personality in a different continuity. (Note how everything implied here is quite in line with his usual practices)
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MWAHAHAHA! So devious.
Good to see your Mosaic finally got posted, Ouchie!
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Interesting. Though I'm not sure why people don't understand why Optimus was more intense in Revenge. You need to think about it. Optimus has been fighting the Decepticons for so long. Now he's helped drag this war to Earth, a planet not ready or prepared for it with beings that are so fragile compared to Cybertronians. He needs to stop it, no matter the cost. That's why he's become so brutal towards his enemies now. I find it funny when the first movie came out, there were some people complaining that Optimus was to weak in the final battle. Now he's too aggressive. Can't please everybody.
Oh well. Fantastic art on this one! Kudos to Brandie Hanson! And like I said, interesting take on his lack of mercy on his foes!
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me agrees too.
He's a military leader, after all...
We are just too much accustomed to the 'everybody's dad' -take of the G1 cartoon. Robojesus-syndrome, lol!
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I don't think people are so much bothered by his brutal behavior, they're more disturbed by his seeming remorselessness when he fights, hurling insults and saying things like "Give me your face." That's not only out of character, it's creepy.
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Creepy for you maybe. I don't feel hampered down or obligated by previous characterizations of Prime or anyone else in fiction. Storytelling has an infinite scope and there's plenty of room for different takes on characters or introductions of new ones. If you look at Optimus (Or Convoy if you will) in various other depictions, he's been a lighthearted character as well as a hardened war vetern. Take Batman for example. You could talk for hours about the different versions of him and you can't really say "This is exactly how he should be!" That's just your opinion and nine times out of ten you'll find a few people dissagreeing with you. I'm not saying you're wrong for finding him creepy. I'm saying I saw something different in him at that moment. He was betrayed by his fellow prime, "killed" by his "brother" was about to lose the people he swore to protect to this sun destroying machine, so I can't blame him for being cranky and talking $%!#!
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I'm just saying, "Give me your face" sounds less "hero" and more "sociopathic serial killer."
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See now it never bothered me that he said that. If you think about it... the Fallen killed the other 12 for heaven's sake all for power! If Optimus was the last surviving relative of the dynasty of Primes, that was family he never knew because of the Fallen's treachery. Whole generations left in the dark and they never had the matrix on top of that...
The day of judgment was at hand for the Fallen. I took the "Give me your face" as being the equivalent of don't be the coward and run, you look me in the face when I give you this here smack down. But that's really wordy... lol!
=>
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Hmm, that's one way of looking at it. I just think it could have been worded less... psychotically.
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Very true...
Not saying that the line wasn't edgy cause it so was. I mean this is Michael Bay we are talking about here. Just put something in at the spur of the moment that is badass and cool... AH "Give me your face!" Yeah, that'll work...
Dude just didn't get it about the character. And he has a very immature sense of humor... But yeah, with the list of infractions a mile long there are so many things to pick at. lol!
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And I'm saying given the circumstances, he was really pissed. Optimus is not just a hero. He's a soldier fighting a war that he wants to be over with. To each his own.
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Aww thanks 
And I completely understand and for the most part agree with you. It's just with the way Bay writes up his movies. I would have loved to see more emotional turmoil going on in Optimus's head as he'd be pushing himself to be more brutal. But ya know. . outside of him and the twins I think the max any other robot got to say for lines was . .erm . .2 sentences. . Ugg.
But when I read Hueske's script I just thought it was too funny not to do. 
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Bay doesn't write his movies for one(Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman). Make no mistake, even though his presence is felt everywhere a big movie like that has everyone's opinions/thoughts thrown in. I used to work in a little independent film company and getting anyone to agree on a whole project is murder. That said, in Revenge you can see that he has compassion for humans but a total hatred for the cons. You could definitely see that the writers either a. wanted to write their Optimus Prime or b. only paid attention to his character traits towards humans. I'm more inclined to think that most writers want to deviate from retreading old material so maybe an edgy approach was what they wanted. Or maybe Bay was playing with the toys and was crying out "And then Optimus rips off the bad guys face! 'rrrrriiiiipppp!!!!! crash!!!!! Kaaaabbblllllaaammmm!!! Bay'splosions!!!!!!" Hehe!
I think the idea in the mosaic is great! It's a fun theory and it gets to tie in a character not seen in the Bayverse! And the art's fantastic! 
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"...Bay was playing with the toys and was crying out "And then Optimus rips off the bad guys face! 'rrrrriiiiipppp!!!!! crash!!!!! Kaaaabbblllllaaammmm!!!"
it seems to have been happened, exactly.
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BAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYSSSSSSSPPPPPPLLLLLOOOOOSSSSSSSSIIIIIOOOOOOONNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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KAAAAAWWWWWOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHH!
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for those who are unfortunate enough not to be US-dwellers: [link]
thanks!!
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Blah yeah didn't mean to say Bay - write. The writers are equally guilty. Okay Definitely more so . ugg, Just overly ticked at Bay atm. Let's see how the third movie pans out. BAYSPLOSIONSSSSSSSS
I can't lie though, I do love the Transformer designs from the movies If ya couldn't tell. ><
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Judging from all the things we've been hearing and the title, I have a feeling it's going to be even more of a cluster$@#$ than the last one truth be told. But there's a sick part of me that relishe that idea.
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-_- I stopped paying attention after I saw that Wheeljack looks like Einstein. . .awahaa? Not sure how much I'll like the Transformer designs after that ><
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Aw, I can't wait for Einsteinbot! I hope he has a thick german accent and a conversation with Dr. Scapel! That would be awesome on a disasterous level!
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I agree with this completely!
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