[ART] Askren's artstuffs. Now with more fiber!

[Askren]

The only one on this page that really works for me is the chaplain

 

In the original phone pic you show it looks a little strange; the purity seals sit awkwardly and there's very little to see otherwise, but the most recent rendering you posted looks great, my only suggestion would be to make the crozius seem thicker - at the moment the wings look beefy but the body of the eagle looks 2D.

 

The Marneus Calgar one, such as the picture communicates, is a great cartoon depiction, but then I find there's only so much you can get from a cartoon drawing without several frames, dialogue or some form of narrative. The stylistic choices you've made, which work for the chaplain, seem to compromise the spirit of the subject in this case, as with the first picture you show. The proportions seem strange and disjointed

 

In the first picture, look at the size of his forearms compared to the width of his bolter. The size of the chainsword compared to the fore-shoulder pad. If you follow the line up from his groin armour, his stomach armour seems too far set-back, but follow the line of his abdomen up and his chest armour seems too far set back. Overall you get the impression that he is wider around his middle than his chest. And his head really is too small. Given that the human head roughly fits into the torso 4 times, even with all the steroids, surgery and physical demands the astartes body is put through, as large as he gets this ratio is not going to change a huge amount. The head will grow proportionate to the rest of the body. Not much, but enough.

 

I don't want to get fluffy and uber-technical, especially as these are cartoon depictions, but I feel that overall - this applies to the first pic more than of Calgar - it doesn't feel like a space marine. It looks like it could just as feasibly be 3 children standing on each other's shoulders operating a robot suit.

 

But nor do I want to get too critical :) with the first pic, I think if you enlarged the head a little, narrowed the waist and lowered it a fraction, and fixed the bolter, it'd look awesome :tu: The calgar pic just needs a couple of details emphasising - put a bit more weight into the lines of his fore-powerfist and the leather-braided tabard to bring them forward and add a bit of depth, and fix his right shoudler pad (is that the corner of a banner? If so the shoulder pad could do with widening) - and he could look just as awesome :)

 

 

Thanks for the criticism, I like reading how people see things critically, rather than just the usual "Omg itz good lol". As for style choices, like I said, I'm a cartoonist by trade, and proportions are too much fun for me. In my webcomic, I love to play with huge guns operated by tiny people (think Guardsmen slinging Astartes Plasma Cannons), and rifles with barrels that need more than one bipod. When I start drawing Marines, a part of me always says, 'Well, if the helmet is proportional to the armor, then the head has to be smaller to fit inside. But when ever I see a drawing of a Marine, the head is always scaled with the armor, which would mean the helmet would be grossly large. I mean, even on the minis, which I know aren't 100% to scale, the guy would have to be a twig to fit into that armor. That, or it's paper thin. But when I think of 'power armor', the kind described as being so thick it needs a system of servos and hydraulic cables to support it and make it move with the person inside, not only does my mind say "Damn, this armor has to be pretty damned thick, it would be huge.".

 

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's nothing I don't like about the drawings. In fact, I've been staring at them for so long in my sketchbook, that the glaring and obvious errors and generally crappy parts are invisible to me, because I'm used to them by now. But being able to get my work on a screen in front of me not only lets people like you point out things that need changing, but it lets me see it in a whole new light, so I can see everything I don't like about it.

 

But basically, when it comes to massively disproportioned heads/shoulders/armor/bodies, I usually intended them. Everything else is probably just a mistake. :P

[Commissar Molotov]

I love Chaplains, and I'm really impressed by the last picture. The crazy proportions take some getting used to, but you've got a great eye for intricate gothic detail that really works with 40k characters.

[madscuzzy]

The chaplain by far seems like the best piece, but other than the smoke pipes, I believe the leg... the right one, the one closer to us, is angled wrongly. It's facing away from us and for that to do that requires the leg to be broken at the thigh. Just something I noticed: while you do have a great eye for detail, the basic overall form seems unfinished. Drawing through the body parts with the proper cylindrical shapes might help make the piece more solid and in proportioned to each other. Even though parts are exaggerated, proportion and form is still necessarily. Your work shows great promise and then falls short on this point.

 

For example, our left, the shoulderpad should have more of the back showing behind the head. If you follow the line on the bottom front and draw it through to the back, the 2 edges should line up. At current it doesn't. The eagle wings on the crozius don't match up, and at this angle, there isn't enough forced perspective to make one wing that much smaller. And somehow I don't think the leg can angle up that much from this angle at this point, without having some twist in the body.

 

Still the work is good...:o Keep it up! Would love to see more.