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okay...sooooooooooo random character #1!!!

Nicole Willow Woods ((I love coming up with names heart ))

so how did I do?

I love critisism, so go at it.
I especially need help with the shading.



thanks to all

You did alright. The face is cute, (I totally imagine she'd be tsundere. lol) and I don't have any issues with the design as far as content goes. Her human arm however, is uneven in length, and your coloring could be improved by some quick tips.

If you're using Photoshop or something similar and you want to blend colors to shade, set your opacity between 25 and 30 with the paint brush, and make a number of strokes until you have the desired darker color. As you make successive strokes, you'll see the colors start lighter and gradually get darker as they overlap. By holding "Alt" you can bring up the dropper tool and select one of the lighter shades, and then blend that together with the darker one. Do it every couple of strokes and you can get a gradient effect like this That's your basic technique for shading using opacity in photoshop and similar programs. BUT You should probably not use this technique for your robot arm. Highlights and shading on metal are different and more intense than on other materials. Try googling some metal objects to get an idea of how the reflection works, and then try to apply that to how you're coloring that arm.

Aside from that, I'll just say you should push your values more. There are a bunch of crazy things to learn about coloring, which Lenorekitty brought up (such as reflective light, and using contrasting colors) but focus on technique for now, because once you have that down it will be easier to apply the more abstract concepts.

P.S. If you'd rather go for a cell shading style like that seen in most anime, try not to use zig-zags like the ones going across her chest unless that's part of the clothing. You're better off making it more of a sharp geometric shape, than an irregular one. And also, if you have a tablet and PS, I can show you how to set your brush to automatically adjust opacity to shade like I explained. The method I wrote earlier was more of a mouse-style.

Hope that helped some. ^_^ I do like the character.

Wait. You're not even in Highschool yet?

I'm impressed. o_O

Some general tips for using your tablet:

Draw sketchy until you have your desired shape, then zoom in between 300, and 500% to "ink" your sketch on a new layer. (when i do this, I use the "image>adjustments>color balance" setting to make my original sketch red or blue) At such a high zoom, you won't get wiggly lines. ^_^ The trick is just realizing that you'll never draw quite as smoothly free-handing things at a normal size. It also helps to occasionally rotate the canvas, especially if you're the kind of person who draws by rotating the paper ;p If you're having a Really hard time drawing a line, it also sometimes helps to map it out using the pen tool, that way you can just draw over the path and keep the authenticity of your drawing while also having the aid of something akin to a ruler.

http://augustc4.deviantart.com/art/Spicy-Curry-Brush-Tutorial-24105181 This is the tutorial I used to get the brush that has opacity settings, but it's good for more than that too. You likely have a similar brush as a preset towards the bottom of your brush pop-up, but it's better to understand how to adjust the settings, so that you can make custom brushes that you actually like.

And that's that for now. If there's anything else I maybe missed, just tell me and I'll try to help you out. ^_^

Your art is really cute, I like the name. blaugh

Umm, the only thing that is a bit off to me is her right arm. The bottom portion is larger than the top portion, which seems unnatural. This wouldn't happen unless the bottom portion was closer in view, but it's not shown, so I don't know.

You're really talented, good work!!
I love the name and the character, keep it up!