Some advice for beginners

**Jaguar Wong** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 2:21am

Originally Posted by NSLightsOut

Your steps are a product of inexperience. The snapshot approach is mental, not a technical approach. It helps your application, granted. But you aren't going to suddenly nail a reverse flying triangle by adopting the snapshot approach with six months of training under your belt.

The 'thinking ahead' approach, IMO, is just a logical progression of the snapshot method, albeit with a greater knowledge and ability to apply technique.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. My instructor tells me the same thing. I don't "plan" enough, I just go for stuff without thinking things through. But that IS what inexperienced players do. We roll too tense, we hold on longer than we should, missing an opportunity to transition, we give up actual positions to go for submissions. I don't have the mindset for it yet. I think it's a combination of mental and muscle memory, but again, I can't say for sure until it I can "feel" it.

Also, I wouldn't even know where to start a reverse triangle. ;)

**Jaguar Wong** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 2:34am

And now for some more derailing...

I'm also sick of the bad anime-influenced art that's cropping up all over the art forums. We started calling it Americanime (sometimes American'time). If it's got an obvious 80's - early 90's anime/manga style I generally don't look past the first image (if I'm looking through someone's gallery). There's a lot of great digital artists out there, and they all seem to have different software preferences, but I see a lot of work done in Photoshop, Painter, or both.

I don't know if you found this forum yet, but I love lurking through the EatPoo.com forums. They're like the Bullshido of digital (and traditional) arts. I post there occasionally, but man the talent there is just amazing. Anime crap gets laughed off the board all the time. Sometimes awful artists are banned and told not to return until they improve. Harsh, but funny to see when you're not in the mood to see another DragonBallZ inspired character.

As for my digital skills, I can't really say I'm up to snuff, since I'm only really doing digital "sketching", but this was done in Painter (the lite version that came with my Wacom) when I first bought my tablet.

As you can see it's nowhere near as tight and well rendered as the second image you posted (which has a great Burne Hogarth "Dynamic Anatomy" feel to it). It's a speedpainting (I try for under an hour, but others don't even get past 20 minutes and put out much better stuff), but it's a good way to spend some time just feeling the strokes.

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 10:51am

I found eatpoo just this week and was really happy I did. The criticism can be harsh, but I have yet to see it be wrong and they have an amazing talent pool. I've been digging through hundreds of threads and have been blown away by the quality of the pieces and the accuracy of the critiques. It'd rather at least have them as a positive collective role model and work towards a worthwhile goal than just adding starbursts to scrawled vampire-chans and posting them on DeviantArt to garner a bunch of "wow ur amazg".

What kind of artistic training do you have?

**Jaguar Wong** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 2:56pm

Originally Posted by Aesopian

I found eatpoo just this week and was really happy I did. The criticism can be harsh, but I have yet to see it be wrong and they have an amazing talent pool. I've been digging through hundreds of threads and have been blown away by the quality of the pieces and the accuracy of the critiques. It'd rather at least have them as a positive collective role model and work towards a worthwhile goal than just adding starbursts to scrawled vampire-chans and posting them on DeviantArt to garner a bunch of "wow ur amazg".

What kind of artistic training do you have?

I've been in EatPoo for a couple of years now, but the new talent just keeps coming in. They're really the reason I started picking up digital painting (just like Bullshido was one of the reasons I finally started BJJ). I used to post stuff on DeviantArt, but stopped when there was ZERO contructive criticism. The guys at EatPoo don't beat around the bush. Just like posting video of some sparring here, you're going to get a couple of nice comments and a lot of helpful comments.

I have the training that everyone here should learn from and not follow. I was self taught. I would definitely take some figure drawing and life drawing classes and workshops. I have basically the same art education as the average college gradutate that isn't majoring in fine arts. Except with some more focus on computer graphics. That was my fallback career if the whole comic artist hero/legend didn't work out. Funny that the computer graphics stuff is paying far more than I would have ever made in comics (unless for some strange reason I got real popular).

The best thing to do is to use classes and workshops to really solidify your foundation. Anything more than that usually requires really specialized and expensive classes (or entire art programs, like the Kubert School for comic artists). You can do a lot to develop your own style once you have the foundation set.

Funny how developing art/drawing skills is much like martial arts skill development. The more you put in, the faster you'll improve, but if you're foundation is weak, you'll have to backtrack and fix certain aspects if your skillset.

**fanatical** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 2:59pm

Aesopian. If you DO get the Alias Sketchbook, please write a review on if it really DOES feel good to draw on. Most drawing boards just feel unnatural and fucked up imho.

**supercrap** · Posted On: 2/10/2006 11:18pm

Holy crap!

Eat poo is amazing!

(Add that to my list of things I never thought I'd say...)

What are you guys usernames? ****, so much talent onthat place...

**J-Lau** · Posted On: 2/13/2006 6:23am

Originally Posted by Aesopian

What you lack in size or strength you'll have to make up for with efficiency of movement and technical skill.

I like my version better (I forget who I stole it from): "What I lack in size and strength, I make up for with a lack of sympathy"

**Blitzkrieg** · Posted On: 2/13/2006 1:09pm

You're one of the only people I've seen who doesnt have some gay **** eater grin and goofy pose for when he won a belt. Cudos for lookin bad ass all the way through