Creative Corner

@findingpears - A month, already? Time flies, doesn't it.

This certainly looks nicer than what I remember from a month ago~ As far as the setting out of it goes, I think it's very straightforward and should be just fine for a shop front. I like the arrangement of the dragon and gijinka in the info post, that's pretty tasteful. (Admittedly, it does make me want the small icon-esque art that you don't have any commission tier for, but I feel like I may have brought up that point last time round, so.)

So yes, overall I'd say it's very much okay! The pricing is on the low side, but it's understandable considering you're a very new shop. The gijinkas for me are of a similar coverage and style to your dragons, but a bit more simplified (they don't have any wild patterns/genes), so I'd suggest doing the dragon prices minus 50g and just see what happens there.

As far as little changes go - I would suggest 'returning customers' be used instead of 'recurring customers'. Diseases recur, big ugly numbers recur, customers return. I'm also finding the text under info to be a bit on the small side, even at my usual 110% zoom on the site (I'm on desktop).

Yeah though, 'grats on having your shop (almost) all set up! It does look very functional.

@Spooner Hey! <3<3<3 I finally set up an art shop, and I hope I took your advice to heart. Could I ask you to take a peek and give me your thoughts? I really, really appreciated your advice before!

Thank you so much for your response! I've changed the font size (you were so right) and the dreaded 'recurring' word haha

I probably will get around to opening half-body/ sig / icon options somewhere down the line, but have been finding headshots the most manageable with uni and stuff. Hopefully I have some more time soon ;v;

And thank you so much again, I really appreciate having a second pair of eyes!!

@cartographic Hi again~ Cool that you're back! Hopefully I won't end up repeating myself from before too much, haha... [quote=Assorted Remarks] - I think overall, the thread formatting is very neat, and the thread's quite short and easy to get through. Part of that is because you've only got the three options now, but like you said, you cut the traditional art and the dragons. I'm not really part of that whole school of thought that says that more options is better, so I'm cool with three options. - At the moment, you can't click on the images to make them bigger, nor can you right-click on them to make them bigger in a new tab. - Right now, the prices are fair for the art! - At the moment, I'm not confident your art is going to stand out enough against the competition here on FR. You may need to work on your goods more before you start seeing sales - I may be wrong, of course, but just don't lose heart if you don't see anything right away. - As far as art critique goes, your competition is now human/humanoid artists. When we look at what stands out in that category, and what sells, there's certain styles, line weight stuff, even means of colouring and shading that are very popular. - So, if you want to sell your art, you may find you need to study one of the popular styles. I'm not saying copy, I'm saying study what's popular, and then work it in. - Different people study in different ways, but how I usually study styles is by getting hold of a piece of concept art and pulling it apart to see what I like about it. You can find pieces that [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/f8/ba/70f8ba7d139008fb747d5f88b116dd6f.jpg]show character expressions[/url] or [url=https://imgur.com/YorgwqD]break down body parts[/url], or you can get painted scenes. - I'll talk about the last one, just because it's the most relevant for you if you want to do art that has fullbodies and scenery going forwards. Here's some concept art from Up: [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/407183926277308419/828526114623848530/Pixar-Concept-Art-Up-Plane-Sequence.png[/img] - Stylistically, there's lots of distinct stuff here. I like how the artist has used harsh light and lots of murky colours to create the impression of light filling a dark house. In particular, making the sky such a bright blue causes it to really stand out against the inner walls. I also like how the artist has used coloured lines here, rather than black - it makes the walls and objects appear more natural, and also aids with the murky effect inside the house. - Regarding the light - look at the curtains and how colour has been used to indicate where the light is filtering through them! Also look at how colour - not lines - is used to show the wrinkles. I feel it's very clever stuff. - Even though Carl has a very obvious style to him (big head, short arms, lots of very simple shapes, etc), the other objects in the scene are all very realistically proportioned - look at the dresser and compare its size to the stairs, or the books on it, for instance. The colours are all quite flat and simplified, but the sizing is quite realistic. For me, this creates an almost dollshouse like impression, and helps me to quickly realise where the scene is set. - When you look at the thirds in this image, there's quite a lot going on. Carl's head is right in the second horizontal third, but vertically, he's more in the third on the left - this is likely to help emphasis the whole tilted effect. Two of the planes and the zepplin are all sitting in the third directly above Carl's head, which implies some sort of interaction or drama. - The dresser and the stairs create something like a dark border around the image, adding more depth and making the bright areas of the art seem even brighter. Look at how the dresser covers much of the top right corner, and the stairs take up much of the bottom left. - Lastly, the composition. What I like the most about this image is actually the tilted axis of the house, even though Carl is standing upright. It creates a really interesting angle between him and the floor, and it makes for a bit of drama. Angles aren't something I use much in my works - maybe I should try doing something similar in the future. - So, hopefully you can see from this that any picture you like can be teased apart to give you ideas for your own work! I'm not saying copy, but just have a look at some art you really love and see what exactly you love about it, and try to figure out why they made those choices. :0[/quote]

@findingpears - Not a problem! Best of luck to you with it - I've run fullbody art shops while doing uni myself, and Would Not Recommend, 0/10. Just stick to whatever you feel you can manage~

@cgeez - As usual, yer art is so pretty! I like that I got to see more of it today.

I'd say you definitely took what I said onboard, because I do like your shop now - it's quite clean and concise. My only thought would be regarding that Pricing image. I've seen people do things like that before, and I'm just... not a fan? (I mean - there's lines and numbers all over your nice art! It doesn't look as pretty with lines and numbers all over it, haha.)

My suggestion regarding that would be to have the fullbody, split into the coloured and uncoloured ones as you showed, and also do this for a halfbody and a headshot (prices go under each image). You absolutely have the forum space to have three main/full-sized example images in addition to your smaller gallery, so I'd just say go for that.

Only other thing I'd say besides that is that if you've drawn a FR gijinka somewhere in there, it might be an idea to show one of the dragons, so people are encouraged to get thinking about their own dragons. But now I say it, I feel like I said that last time round, so ehhhh.

Good luck with your shop~ And make sure you bump it to open it up properly and get it on the front of the forum page!

@Adrenaline - No worries at all. I think most of my post was just 'keep it up', to be honest with ya (besides that very mysterious table of contents post thing), but yeah!! Keep it up~

Thank you so much! I used to do photography, so your talking about thirds actually makes lots of sense to me – I'll definitely try to keep that in mind.^^

As for picture sizes, what size would you recommend in the thread? I didn't want to make everything too big, but I get that my examples are all pretty small right now (which is, fortunately, an easy fix since the originals are all at the original size). Right now, the width is at 300px; would you recommend as large as the thread allows? Slightly smaller?

As for options, I thought about adding in halfbodies, but I don't really have any examples right now, so I'll save that until I draw some more.

Also, you mentioned styles – do you mean semi-realistic vs realistic vs inked, or something else?

@Spooner - Dmed you back!
I put the foggy banner behind the sales text cause without it I thought the text blended too much in with the drawing and it looked confusing to me. I might leave it as is until I can draw a better one at some point. But the rest of the text stuff I can fix up. I had just figured out how to use text graphics and effects when making them and it shows lol.

Thank you once again for the advice. I'll go rearrange some more stuff.

@Spooner

Hi there!
I'm not planning to open an art shop (I might never, honestly) but I was wondering if it would be okay for me to pm you for some art advice? I'm not really comfortable with posting my art in public so it would be easier for me to do it privately ;w;
Thank you in advance!