[Sketch] Kingdom Hearts II - Surge (Axel/Roxas, PG13), Second Draft

[justira]

So I went into a bit of an art slump after trying so hard to post more art more often with less shame. Complete opposite of the intended effect. Man. FAIL.

But! I finally picked up again this week, and produced a new draft of the last doodle I posted here.

Fandoms/Characters/Pairings: Kingdom Hearts II: Axel/Roxas
Rating: PG13! Axel's more than a little naked, but Roxas has him covered ;)
Crit/Feedback: YES PLEASE. This second draft is actually the result of some fantastic crit I received from lassarina last time: major hat tip, Rina! My goal for this draft was to make the entire picture more dynamic and intense, since the last one was kinda static. The next step will be to flesh out the background (which I omitted this time, but it's visible in the old version), clean up the weapons, and go ahead and do the final ink, so if you have any suggestions now would be a REALLY GOOD TIME >.>




So, a few major changes this time! Last time lassarina pointed out to me that the hand was a little distracting. I WANTED the hand to be a major element in the drawing, since my I R ARTEEST Grand Idea for the picture involves a lot of body language communicating the general idea that these two don't really quite trust each other... do they? But she was right, the hand was getting in the way!

Boring technical notes: most of the lines are a lot cleaner this time, since it's the next draft, but they're still pretty messy and the line widths aren't quite what I'l be aiming for in the final inking; more like a caricature of the intended weights. I pretty much redrew the whole thing, using the previous iteration as a base to work off of. I reworked the proportions and anatomy a good bit -- most noticeably I lengthened Roxas's left arm and both arms that go up to the keyblade. I also fleshed out Axel's calves a bit and retouched Roxa's left foot. I think their torsos may be a touch long but... but I like them this way >.> I made Roxas's head smaller, too -- it was way too big last time, mostly thanks to the ridiculous hair. Now I THINK it's more or less the right size but I get the nagging feeling it's now too small for KH-canon proportions D= D= D=

(PS I totally actually MADE AN EFFORT on Roxas's hair (as opposed to Axel's >.>) this time and I think it might have paid off! Note to self: NEVER DRAW ROXAS AGAIN.)

The major aim here was to tweak the body language and up the intensity, though. I really focused on the hands, shoulders, and Roxas's face for this. I'm actually SUPER PROUD of Roxas's face -- I think I really did intensify the expression a good bit, and he also looks a little more angry, which is a direction I like. I'm EVEN MORE PROUD of the super duper trick I used to do that: 90% of the change in Roxas's expressiveness comes from adding that little line to the right of his nose: it's a crease that appears when someone's nostrils flare or they curl their lips (or mash their lips against something pretty hard, ahem), and I think it really had a huge effect.

I also rearranged all the arms and shoulders, going for a little more tension and dynamism. Basically ALL the shoulders are in really awkward positions, so pretty hard to draw, but I tried, and I think I did better this time. Oh, and I realigned Axel's foreshortened arm to line up better with the compositional diagonals I have running through the picture.

The two huge changes are Axel's hand and Roxas's coat, though. I tried to change the hand's pose so that it flowed more smoothly from the rest of the arm, i.e. was not bent at the wrist. I had it bent at the wrist last time because his hand was supposed to be caught between motions: when you suddenly stop or pull back in the middle of reaching for something, your wrist bends. I really wanted the gesture here: I needed body language saying that Axel's reaching for his weapon was ambiguous.

However, that really wasn't working with the flow of the rest of the picture! So this time I tried to find a hand pose that was ambiguous but in the middle of an action rather than between actions. I think I improved the hand anatomy/rendering a good bit, but I'm not so sure whether I made the gesture better or worse. Here, I think the hand can be read as either just barely touching/finishing reaching for the chakram or just letting go of it. I'm pretty happy with either reading, but I would prefer the letting-go one, so if anyone has suggestions for how to nudge it in that direction please let me know!

And! I COMPLETELY changed the way Roxas's coat falls. In the previous draft the hang of the coat said that Roxas had already, uh... settled in Axel's lap. This was a little wonky -- Axel was obviously still mid-surprise, or just getting over it; it didn't make sense for Roxas to look so settled already. Plus it made the picture look more static overall. Not good.

This time I tried to make the coat say that Roxas JUST got there and BARGED in on Axel and kind of FLEW at him a little and all kinds of CAPSCLOK VERBS like that. I still need to tweak it a bit, like for example on Roxas's right hand the sleeve should be wooshing to the right a little. I'm a little worried about how the zipper mechanics look: I did look up where Roxas keeps his coat zipped up to, actually drew that point in my sketches and worked out how the thereafter unzipped coat tails fall. But I'm not sure it comes across as very natural without the understructure showing D=

Anyway, so. Yeah. I'm still staring at Roxas's ass entirely too much and am worried that it somehow received a downgrade since the last draft. Damn.

I'm also probably pretty retarded for putting this much thought into a picture of fictional boys kissing. But, uh. Oh well >.>



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