Posts by Minos

  • Minos' digital sketchbook


    Those look awesome indeed, thanks man!


    A few weeks ago I had the realization of what was holding me back artistically is exactly the lack of drawing. When I started doing digital concepts a few years ago, I hadn't drawn in quite a long time and being able to make 2d concepts really fascinated me. I was able to work my around my lack of fundamentals by using cheap tricks and cool ideas. Instead of just drawing, I spent the past years training my eyes and watching a lot of art theory videos and tutorials. My idea was, because I was acquiring all that knowledge I would eventually become a better artist.


    But the truth is, a good artist needs to be good at both the practical/theoretical aspect (perspective, shading, values etc) and the creative one.


    Anyway, to make a long story short I began drawing again about 2 weeks ago, almost everyday, and I can already see a huge improvement. Each page on my sketchbook is about 10% better than the previous one and that has been a huge motivation to keep studying and getting better. I've also been doing a lot of quick thumbnail paintings during lunch breaks to practice value, composition, coloring etc... (that's how I started this painting, but inbetween this one and the last one I probably did about 12 quick thumbnails)


    Thanks to everyone who has helped with crits and links, keep em coming because they are highly appreciated and helpful

  • Minos' digital sketchbook

    Yeah that's true, perspective is fucking hard to get perfect


    I've been drawing a lot recently and that's been helping me immensely. I notice that everytime I commit a "terrible" mistake I learn from that and make new mistakes instead. If I could change one thing, I wouldn't have cropped the top building soon, and the top and right buildings don't look like they are in the same height due to some crazy optic illusion (which I only noticed when I was almost done with the piece).


    hanks for the crits guys, they are super valuable, keep em coming!

  • What have you watched recently?

    Transcendence - Very forgettable movie, the premise was pretty nice but you can tell the people who made the movie had only a very superficial understanding of how things work. In the end it's a very dumbed down movie, maybe people who never read any scifi stories might find it interesting (which I doubt since the pacing is very slow and the characters shallow and uninteresting). I was never a Johnny Derp fan but this movie only shows how he usually doesn't give a crap when acting. I dunno, maybe he's just a bad actor.


    Don't get me wrong, this is not a horrible movie but in a few weeks nobody will remember it ever existed.


    4/10


    House of Cards 2 - Just as great as the first season, great stuff!


    9/10

  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

    Quote from Skjalg

    Yeah but the nature of card games is that the meta changes and cards become bad or good all depending on the months flavor


    So... is that a bad thing? That's the reason people still play Magic to this day, there's always something new to look forward to and old strategies become obsolete at some point. Imagine if you bought a Magic "license" 10 years ago, would you still expect to get cards for free after all these years just so everyone has the same conditions? How would the company make money in between and keep the dev team going?


    I think that's a bit of that old argument about Formula 1 vs Indyracing. Formula 1 is a very a dynamic sport and the winning teams are always changing, because each team has to research and improve their own cars with their own funds. Indy racing on the other hand is completely stagnated at this point, every team uses teh same chassis and engines from like 20 years ago. Sure the pilots have more equal conditions but at the expense of stagnation.


    The same could probably happen to Hearthstone in the long run had it been a "full price" game with paid expansions or whatever. The free to play model fits this kind of game perfectly and will help its longevity, and let's be honest, the way F2P was implemented in Hearthstone is very fair, it's in no way a pay to win game.

  • CGHub is dead. Long live CGHubs!

    I hope this serves as an opportunity for people to return to Deviant-art. It's still the best art platform around imo, or at least the most useful if you want to grow as an artist.


    The problem with CGHub and the main reason why I never got into it, is that it was filled with high profile artists rubbing on everyone's faces how "good" they were, that was the whole point of the site. Most of the popular stuff was very samey: sci-fi helmets, zbrush orcs, district 9-like machinery, photo bashed environments etc... Since CGHub was a place purely for showing off, most of the artists there only posted their very best and most recent work. This in turn sent a distorted message for aspiring artists and artists looking to grow (such as myself). Since you couldn't see their progress it was hard to learn anything from them.


    DA on the other hand is a very open community where posting crappy shit is encouraged. People there are generally very nice and supportive. I love it when I find awesome artists I had never heard about, take a look at their galleriers and see all their old crappy shit from 6+ years ago. Seeing people's progress is very inspiring to me, much more than just looking at "great art". And as a plus, writing tutorials and sharing knowledge/techniques is very encouraged in DA and most of the high profile guys there do that too.


    The problem with DA is the stigma of it being a place for bronies, animenerdshit etc... That in part is true, but if you look hard enough you can find some awesome communities there with useful art resources and people trying different things

  • Are there any good mobile games?

    Best source to find hidden gems


    http://toucharcade.com/


    Just expect the best IOS games to be half as good as an average DS game gameplay wise and you will be able to enjoy them.


    As for games, Puzzle & Dragons is pretty cool, it mixes puzzles and... pokemon. I hate how you can only play a few times a day though so I never invested any energy on it. And there's also a Sim City 3k port that is actually pretty descent

  • Tip of the Day

    Quote from blackdog

    Not a tip but it might be interesting and there are no other container-topics that I see.

    Sketchbook Pro 2015 has some very cool cool features, check the video from Scott Robertson, celebrity concept artist.

    I really dig the first feat he illustrates: the cursor snaps to the perspective to easily draw grids!

    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
    ~

    Don't want to sound nitpicky, but just want to point out that ALT-click between layers in PS doesn't create a link, but uses the underlying layer as a mask


    No way! That looks awesome, I have to try it!

  • What have you read lately?


    OMG so glad to know I'm not the only one who took months to finish that book. I remember when I read it (I was probably 15 or something) I had to restart it 2 or 3 times because it was so hard to follow.


    Anyway, great story and characters. Still waiting for the movie

  • Aww yisss. My mapcore shit came.


    American Apparel should be good for slim types, their tees are usually high quality and fit my skinny body pretty nicely


    I'm glad I still haven't ordered mine then, I just can't wear wide tees because I look ridiculous in them. Same with the Blizzard ones, they are either extremely tight (S) or wide enough to make me look like a wannabe thug (M)

  • What are you playing now?

    Aren't most Square-Enix JRPGs like that though?


    Most of them are super awesome and great overall, but there's always some massively stupid design/story choice along the way that can potentially ruin the whole experience if you don't swallow your gamer pride and keep going.