Might be a bit late, but did the a piece for the #aaredraw challenge. Redrew and redesigned an old drawing of a Froslass gijinka from 2019.
Here's the redraw:
Here's the original:
Critique:
In my old version, the lines of the drawing were very rough and not very smooth. The rough lines, coupled with the hard black outline makes it a bit hard on the eyes. In addition, there is no shading and the hair has no virtually no texture, consisting of mainly a flat white color with only a black outline and a few strands of blue. The Froslass' eyes also look like plain pupils with purple sclera when in fact it is supposed to be the color underneath its outerhead/skull, so there should be depth to it to show that but because there are no shadows, it just looks flat. The poses of both the Froslass' and the girl are also plain and stiff and both are just looking forward. The hard lines and the lack of line variation add to the stiffness. The layout/spacing of the drawing is also kind of awkward because it's so long vertically but not very wide horizontally, making it feel like there's a lot of empty space. There's not a lot of detail in the characters, possibly partially because of the position of the characters and fitting them vertically and so both are zoomed out.
Redraw analysis:
For the redraw, one of the biggest improvements is the amount of detail added to the drawing. I added shadows to make the drawing more interesting and to add depth. This made the Froslass more accurate to the original pokemon design (while the eyes could use more improvement, the diamond shape's indent looks significantly better and shows an example of light and shadow adding depth). I also chose to go with a different style, opting for a combination of lines and watercolor/painting-like style. The painting style made the drawing look softer, which I feel works very well with the colors chosen. I improved a lot on the hair. Going into the redraw, I wanted to emphasize the hair of the character so I worked on adding detail to it, adding texture with the individual strands of hair and making the hair tangle with itself and overlap over other strands instead of just a blob/single shape like the original. The hair definitely looks more like hair and the fluidity of the strokes helps make it look soft and much less stiff than the original. I also tried to vary the lines in the drawing to help make it more interesting, with some variation in thickness. The shading of the dress also looks more realistic because of the use of multiple image references for the ruffles for the shadows and light. I also changed the positioning of the characters so that they are positioned next to each other so it feels more natural to look at the image layout-wise and I was able to do a more zoomed in shot of both characters. The interaction between the characters also feels less stiff -- for the Froslass the is no longer just floating with stiff arms outstretched, but the bend of the arm and hair interaction make it feel like a more natural pose. The interaction of the Froslass combing through hair of the humanized design helps to emphasize the hair that I wanted.
There are a few places that I would like to improve upon or modify if I had more time, but I think overall, I'm very satisfied with the redraw. I'm especially proud of the hair and my attempt at the shading. I might go back later and fix it up more.
Here are some progress/proof shots. Originally I had two different attempts at the redraw and kind of took the best of each and mashed them together.
Original idea for re-draw. I ditched the position and did a redraw of this attempt but kept the hair position and the Froslass.
Second redraw attempt: I settled for the pose of the human with this. I really liked the piercing gaze of this version.
Mashup of the two drawings for the draft:
Lineart sketch while wip, the colors were for me to tell what was on what layer:
Random in progress shot:
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