what

Mackeral fell in love. Also, nice doodle.

criticize it brutally, artdudes
i want to improve my doodleskill

In my personal opinion, I think that if a dragon did exist, it'd probably be quite bulky with strong, fairly prominent joints.

But maybe I'm biased because I utterly adore the design of the Sabre Dragon from DraCo, which has some pretty big shoulders and large muscles in general :p



Alright then...she seems to be rather...blank. Like someone who just had a lobotomy and hasn't started drooling on themselves just yet. It might just be the lack of a nose (not a problem considering there isn't one on the base image) making it hard to determine which way she is looking and the general emotions of her face, but, I don't know, it feels like we're drifting into uncanny valley there. I think adding sclera (the white part) to the eyes would make it easier to determine the way she's looking and in turn help with the overall feel of her face.

Other than that, 10/10

the face was intentionally blank and undetailed, since i got the inspiration from one of my friends doing the same thing with a character of his where he did the same. i thought it fit better
i tried doing more detailed eyes but failed at it, and when it came to the suit, i just got lazy. i might eventually go back and actually give her shoes and a hood, and make she suit look nicer in general

Well, i think our ideas of dragons differ somewhat, then. :v
To be fair though, when i say "cat", i think more like leopard or lion, not house cat. With that said, my reasoning behind usually depicting them with a more slender build is that i believe they should LOOK like they're able to take flight, not just using magic (or a jetpack) as an excuse. While the sabre dragon is indeed a nice and very formidable design, it feels to me a bit like smacking canary wings on an elephant; it doesn't seem like it'd be able to generate enough lift to carry that huge frame with those wings, although i'd hate to be chased by it on the ground.

Also, birds. They're really not very voluminous below the feathers (the ones that ARE voluminous tend to be flightless), and their bones are quite porous in order to get them light enough for flight. Sabre dragon up there seems like it's a two-digit ton beast with quite thick and solid bones to withstand the forces generated by those muscles, which isn't very conductive to flight beyond being able to flap the wings really hard.

Although in your defense, the anatomy in my doodle IS pretty terrible. :v

@Miggles: Is it possible to see the base that you used? I'd like to see exactly which parts of it you made before getting all critical n ♥♥♥♥ yo.

edit: meanwhile here's a lizard



HAVE YOU ANY IDEA OF HOW TEDIOUS IT IS TO DRAW THAT MANY SCALES

:o

I'm sorry if I offended you by accident, Shook. Anyhow, I do agree with you that sustained flight would either require a metric shedton of strength to just brute force flight and not have to worry about endurance (aka, the common depiction of dragons as flying tanks) or hollow bones and small musculature, which seems more common when dealing with wyverns. They're commonly depicted as being more slender and smaller, more avian like rather than more reptilian like dragons.

Now, I'm going to get a little tinfoily here :p But this is my personal interpretation of how most of these big bastards would actually travel.

I don't think the Sabre Dragon, or dragons in general, are evolved for sustained flight. Consider the amount of armor they have on their chests and necks, (example here.) something that would not actually be all that useful if you were going to fly in and set fire to something like say, a bull or other large animal. Sure, it'd be useful against ground fire from civilization, but the common depictions of dragons typically have them making their lairs far from people...and high up in the mountains. Now, consider the physical strength of the fore arms and the size of the thighs in the hind legs. (Example again.) The overall size of the hind legs in comparison to the front ones - which look more claw like, more hand like, than the rear legs - and the general position of the tail and hip makes me believe that whenever dragons were first imagined, they were thought to walk on all fours like most large hunters, then switch to an upright position and stand there for a lengthy amount of time. Take a look at the tiny little claw behind the rear legs of the Sabre Dragon, it'd definitely come in handy for standing by acting quite like a heel I'd imagine.

Now, here comes the biggest part - calorie intake. I know, I know, trying to determine calorie intake for a fictional creature is completely insane, but it's safe to assume that a large, muscly beast will require a lot of food a day to survive and require a frap ton of energy to use the wings the way we'd expect, but that's why I think that if dragons really did exist, they would be an ambush predator.

Think about it : Large wings allowing good gliding characteristics but bad for sustained flight making it easy to cover large amounts of ground quickly in the mountains; where the dragon's strong limbs allow it to climb through the rocky conditions quickly and return to high ground. Armour is heaviest on the front of the chest, neck and head, so we know it's more used to being on the offense than the defense, attacking a target head on. So, it'd jump down from the mountains, glide towards prey (probably a large group of animals like highland cattle, something suited for that environment.) and attack on foot - strong hind and forward limbs would likely allow it to run around on foot quite quickly and attacking from an ambush would certainly allow it to close the distance very quickly, while also giving it an elevated position from which to survey the landscape and find the large amounts of food necessary to survive, as well as letting it migrate quickly by gliding from one mountain to the next. This is where the legs come in handy, since vaulting from the top of the mountain after a sprint would give it a ton of momentum.

Anyway, we're on the ground. Some of the moo-moos decide to charge towards the dragon while others (calves, for example) flee - which is facing them, hence the forward armor. Swipe of the claws, chomp of the large jaw and if we're going into fantasy territory, flames everywhere and job done, lots of dead cows for the omnoming.

But what do I know? They're a fictional beast most often portrayed in a different light than what their physiology would suggest, though I do write dragons like that in my story. The main one swoops towards targets from high positions then fights in melee more like a glider carrying a tank (think some of those paratrooper tanks from WW2) than a jet fighter or helicopter. It's mostly a matter of personal taste, I suppose.

Oh, and I'm back to working on my starships! I'll show you guys when I've done more progress but I'm properly working on my sci-fi RtD again, so you're probably going to see a few deck plans from me in here. And a few polandballs. And flags. And who knows what else.

-Caek, resident dragonologist :p

EDIT : Fixed a hyperlink I forgot a = on.

holy ♥♥♥♥

Not at all! I generally don't get offended by accident, and will be painfully direct if that is the case, so don't worry.

more dragonrambling down here


@Miggles: Right then! I'm just going to be really honest here, since that's what you're asking for: There's not much to criticize, since most of it stems from the base (which is why i personally don't like using bases, but each to his own). But, there's still more than nothing, so here goes:

- Ear should probably be a bit pointier, as per the reference.

- Hair style is more or less a duplicate, but you've done nicely nontheless. I'd suggest making it fall more straight down (not completely straight, since it's obviously wavy) in this neutral pose, though.

- The shirt/suit/rainjacketthing should probably curve a bit over her shoulders, instead of being straight lines. Likewise for the "button line" going down between her legs; most people aren't flat down there. Quick doodle to show you what i mean, since i'm probably terrible at wording it right. Red lines show the no-no's, black lines are how i'd personally do it (although as it is with art, there is more than one way to do things). Maximum overcleavage omitted because so did you. :v
Also, if it's a sufficiently tight suit, you could probably get away with curving the collar the other way, at least slightly. I think. You'll have to forgive me for speculating, i am not well versed in drawing cleavage.

- Smile is simply made, but works nicely for the style.

- Perhaps consider making her hands green and giving her sleeves like the reference? Unless it's a full-body suit, of course.

my friend helped me a bit and i ended up with this
he put on the blush and i kept it
he also made this by himself, which is more accurate to the actual game
though shes missing leggings

Funny enough Migs, you've actually inspired me to try and take a crack at this myself. I'm drawing a princess.

This is harder than it looks, but fun

Okay! Doneish

I tried to create my favorite princess from the Dragon Commander game: Lohannah. This was my main base image, but I used a few screenshots of the game, etc. I spent around one and a half to two hours on it in total, and boy do they show!

Behold, Princess Lohannah of the Elves in all her majestic glory!



mysides.avi.

Anyway, I started with the hair and just went from there, with that horrific-thing-that-shall-haunt-my-nightmares being the mouth.

I, uh, abandoned work on the face after that. I probably should've just put a frigging question mark there, yikes. But the rest came out great for someone who hasn't done any art other than spriting since...forever. The wooden belt must've taken nearly half an hour on its own.

if you want more natural looking lines, use a spline curve tool
and, if you want it to fit the style more, use thicker outlines
single-pixel lines look bad on a larger base like this, details should be at least 2 or 3 pixels
you could use those 3 things especially on the straps of her dress, the lines connecting either side, the purple dots, and the mouth

the hair color in the front is a little too bright compared to the others, and the bun on top should sit more to the right, as well

Blurb