I don't draw frequently, but am sometimes inspired by the oddest things. I suppose I dedicate this sketch in tribute to yet another game that has become lost to me. The Floran are a neat race. Odd, exotic. Terraria is just a little too bland for me nowadays. Thanks, Chucklefish. (in case you're wondering, a spear and dagger was one of my more common uses for the L/R main slots on the classic Starbound hotbar... nevermind the species-specific craftable weapons that I am hearing got axed as well)
holy moley! Your grasp on anatomy is fantastic! Do you post your art online anywhere else? I'd love to take a gander <:
I do have some art online, but honestly most of it is quite unlike this. I only draw rarely, as I mentioned, and mostly for something to be quite this level of quality it needs to be inspired. I'm not exactly what you'd call a professional artist. And with the exception of the one in the OP, none of my sketches really have anything to do with Starbound.
Man, I love the feel of these sketches, there are just some things digital can't imitate, like the very tactile look of graphite on paper. Nevermind the skill behind it! Top notch, man!
... Funny you should mention that. These are digital. A little program called MyPaint. Awesome for these things.
Yeah, it really is. The primary culprit in these pictures is the deevad/4H pencil brush, from the built-in Set #2 in MyPaint. I have not yet, across any and all other digital art programs, found a pencil brush that even approaches the level of natural that that brush has. I do draw in actual pencil, or rather did. Hardly have a reason to, nowadays. The digital medium is much more forgiving.
Yeah, I know that feeling. I do commission work pretty regularly but no one wants traditional mediums, man. All digital. I used to be all about that watercolor life, but I've barely got time to anymore. Oh and india ink. goooosh yes. But this is... super intricate. I'm so awful at mech.
It's really more that I mainly work in just pencils, and MyPaint gives me the best digital pencil there is, plus an infinite canvas, layers and an eraser that doesn't mar the paper (but very little in terms of digital manipulation, which I consider an awesome trait). I just don't need to use physical mediums anymore. And yeah, I tend to be good at intricate mechs. I just have an unfortunate tendency to be awful at finishing them. Especially when color is involved.
I've been using a program called Krita recently for my paintings because of that mimicry of traditional mediums. Painting is like, my favorite thing to do, so short of having Photoshop which is just... full of unnecessary crap I don't really care to use, it's hard to find programs that really give you that this-could-be-actual-paint eyefeel. This is freakin' fantastic though. I think it's just the plight of the artist to be bad at following through on personal projects. xD
Krita is also a program I use, for following up on sketches made in MyPaint. It's awesome because the primary file format used by MyPaint, ORA (OpenRaster), is also one of the ones that Krita uses, and is one of the few programs that use it well (GIMP also kinda uses it, but it's worse than Photoshop in the interface department). I found a good set of sketching brushes for it: http://meemodraws.deviantart.com/art/Krita-Brush-Pack-311306611 Now that I tried to look for it, apparently Deevad released the MyPaint-like pencil brushes for Krita too: http://deevad.deviantart.com/art/Krita-brushes-pack-version-6-527545639 I still recommend MyPaint for how nice the interface is, for sketching specifically, and I still don't know how the Deevad brushes work in Krita. But try these out too.
Since I only have the one Floran so far, I think I'm going to up-detail it. Apparel will come later. I've developed an interesting theory regarding the Florans' human-female-like "features", and a different example of the same principle you can see on the shoulders. Basically, on a Floran's chest - there's nothing special there. What appears to be a set of 'melons in the leaves', so to speak, is actually more like... cabbage, I suppose. Just layers and layers of Floran decorative leaves, growing over time and accumulating in particular areas, a sign of age and status more than anything. In a way, resembling a rattlesnake's rattle, remnants of old shed skin. The reasons why a "female" of the species keeps their what is basically a tight lump of "chest hair" trimmed to that shape, is primarily social, especially since their integration into the human and human-like civilizations. That's what I like to think, anyway.
When I look at the player model, I see a large leaf covering something that looks like breasts. I'm sorry but I can't think that it could be anything else. Also nice art.
well, there's no real reason for Florans to have breasts - humans are the only animals out of every species on Earth to develop them, making it unlikely that an identical feature would pop up halfway across the galaxy, and it wouldn't make any anatomical sense. humans have mammary glands because they're mammals, and mammals were named that specifically because the mammary glands exist nowhere else in nature.
Hey I'm not the one who made the player model. When I see it, that's what it looks like. None of the races should have Mammary glands, but you know what's seen cannot be unseen. Also there is more to the player model than the Mammary glands, anyways.
