How Do You Stay Consistent With Your Art?

[Remilia]

Seriously, how do you do it? I've been trying to make reference guides for my character, but they never look the same. I'm a traditional artist btw.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Seriously, how do you do it? I've been trying to make reference guides for my character, but they never look the same. I'm a traditional artist btw.

That's a problem most artists have, from what I've seen.

The only thing I can say is practice- Practice until you're good enough to keep a consistent style. Otherwise, there's not much I can say. Reference sheets can only go so far.

 

[Bugaboo]

Fairly recently I had to make a model sheet of a character I made for my job so the character could be made into a figure (the figure was left on the cutting room floor after 3-D guy got kicked off the project for being slow as fuck)
This was difficult becase I had never tried to draw a character consistantly from different angles. Eventually I had to make like, grids showing how big each part of it was and break the character down into shapes. I can probably show the model sheets since nothing became of them but I'll just sketch basic shapes over the character's body so you can see what I did.

 

[Zim]

Yeah it really comes down to practice. I draw mostly superheros and aliens as a hobby. You just have to draw them a lot and eventually it's automatic. Reference sheets are good for new characters but the biggest problem (at least for me) is getting faces to look the same. For this I just take a little more time at first to make sure the distance between facial features is the same.

 

[nyess]

Practice drawing your character at different angles, seeing how shapes of the body and features would look like. Character sheets are good for this. Also, if you plan on finding a consistent style, my advice is look for artists whose style you like, learn how they draw and draw things in their way, sort of.

Eventually you'll learn some tricks on drawing from another's style that will help you to create your own in the future. And plus, it's always a good idea to know other artists, because someday you could meet them, and aside from making new friends there are those that could want to do work with you.

 

[Bugaboo]

Here's the modelsheet I did

Spoiler: Giant Image

When you're drawing the next pose you take the shapes and super impose them on the previous pose to make sure it's consistent

 

[chimpburgers]

Seriously, how do you do it? I've been trying to make reference guides for my character, but they never look the same. I'm a traditional artist btw.

Learning how to draw your characters from different perspectives really helps and letting your style develop naturally overtime as you get better at drawing. It's easier to figure out how they're gonna look from this pose or that pose.

 

[Reddit Avenger]

I usually just save every picture of a particular character I've made and have them open on another screen and try my best. Of course I usually just change character designs mid-way through anyways because I'm a perfectionist who hates everything.

 

[Molasses Assassin]

It helps to start off with a sketch made out of basic shapes, you can build your drawings up from there adding more detail after you've drawn the foundation.

For a reference sheet, you can draw straight lines across the paper, starting with one for the top of the head and one for the bottom of the feet. You can add more of these lines to divide the proportions of the character, that way you can draw the character rotating side by side while keeping the proportions consistent.

Spoiler: Examples I didn't draw

 

[random_pickle]

I like to compare the size of body parts to other parts of the body. For example, for one of my characters I know that his upper arm ends at the bottom of the ribcage, his legs are twice as long as the torso, the shoulders should be 1.5 heads apart, etc. The only problem is when perspective is taken into account, then it gets a bit tricky.