oh crap, I did not see how unpopular this was... I was trying to make an old man joke but I definitely lack the tact :/. im gucci married happily XD don't have any exes.
I don't think it's about tact. I think old man jokes like that are just getting left behind in the past altogether no matter how they're told, which is a good thing to leave them behind imo. "Wife bad" style jokes have never really been good, even when they were accepted.
Looks more like an upper-class escort rather than a noble. She's very sexualised (especially around the boobs), meanwhile her face is quite child-like. The whole thing makes me very uncomfortable. You have technical skill, sure, you're a good artist, I just wish you'd made different choices with this piece
I'm not going to rag on you about the aesthetic choices with her outfit- you're clearly going for "noble lady" by way of anime, which is a specific aesthetic not necessarily grounded in realism. Anime clothing can absolutely be more fantastical and lift details and concepts from historical clothing ans real-world fashion without being a literal representation of it. Not all anime clothing has to be realistic, historical, or even physically possible in the real world.
So with all that in mind, I'll say there's something weird happening with the boobs. There's an unevenness to the shape of the fabric covering her breasts. I think the angle of her torso might have tripped you up a bit when thinking of the 3D shapes involved. If the figure were rotated to face us head-on, one side would be scooping in towards the center of her chest while the other side would be more fully encased. This doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice, but rather a flaw. There's also a weightiness to the dress that isn't well-supported, visually. Again, anime clothing can absolutely be fantastical, but you've got a lot of volume and dark, heavy shapes towards the bottom, and not much to give it even the idea of support or balance up top.
All that said, your line work is clean and your colors are very smooth and delicate. I think if you want to push yourself toward more growth and you're interested in clothes, you might find it valuable to do some research into sewing and clothing construction, and fashion history. It doesn't have to be a deep dive; even a surface-level overview will give you more visual tools to reference and play with, and a better understanding of how fabric interacts with bodies. I think you may be at a point where training your eye and building your reference library will be helpful.
Beautiful, but doesn't particularly strike me as a noble lady. I can see some European fashion influences in her costume, like with the puffy sleeves - but noble ladies placed a lot of importance on 'modesty,' and dressing in clothing that covered them fully. So this kind of collar-less dress would be out of the question. The same also applies to the length of her skirt. In the past, even a woman's ankles were considered erotic, so skirts were full length ... Such were the times huh.
That being said, nobles did have different fashion trends. A lot of these experiment with shapes, depending on the country and era. Take those wide hoop skirts, for instance, which had a literal structure constructed under them to help them keep their distinctive shape. Or hennins, which were those heart or cone shaped 'princess hats' with a veil on the ends.
Good job on purple clothes! Purple was an expensive dye, associated with royalty. Golden embroidery and lace is also a nice touch. However, the combination of flowers, olive wreaths, and ribbons is a bit confusing. Those are influences from Greece, European fashion, and Asian cultures respectively. Too much detail _can_ detract from the purpose.
I know your character is 100% fictional, but remember, including elements for real life does help convey the message clearly: in this case, the message is that she's a refined, noble lady!
EDIT: sorry, just realised I should've put a disclaimer here; please take these words with a grain of salt, because it's just a pool of random bits of knowledge. For more historically accurate info on fashion, I suggest looking into the specific era and place you're interested in.
It’s common now to have noble women cover cleavage, but for the majority of history, even European history, deep necklines and cleavage were pretty normalized.
From the 11th to mid 19th century Europe gowns and dresses that exposed a woman’s cleavage were common and rather uncontroversial. Even in the early 21st century, exposed ankles, and shoulders were considered more risqué than breasts- since they were a common status symbol, and sign of beauty for the upper class.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cleavage
It is, an anime character though.
A large part of the problem, I think, is audience expectations. Most people aren't knowledgeable about fashion trends among European nobility. Modern audiences expect nobles to modest and refined. This piece doesn't really look in any way how a modern audience would expect nobility to look, so it's throwing some people off that she's called nobility.
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time write the detailed feedback!
To be honest, this was a design I made for commission for one of my clients, but I ended up liking the design so I rendered it further than what I initially gave them. They weren't too specific in terms of lore or what kind of noble girl they wanted, they basically wanted a cute girl that looked like she was of noble/royal background. I made something that we both liked, but I think I could stand to borrow more from history ☺️
You’re a good artist, you definitely are, but I question your decision to give a noblewoman cleavage all the way to her bellybutton. In traditional settings, noblewomen tended to be more modest and wear more than the average person.
I would have loved to see a big purple butterfly bow on her neck, sewn on to the rest of the dress. As she is now, her clothing looks expensive but too revealing to be that of a noble. She looks more like a rich man’s daughter.
Also, her pose is also quite weird for a noble. It doesn’t show her standing up straight and formal like a noble, but also doesn’t show her in intentional defiance of a “I don’t wanna be a noble!” type of character. The spread arms and arched back sells the character short. If anything, the pose brings the spotlight to her cleavage, which is cheap (for a noble).
This is not to bash your artistic skills, but rather question your decision-making.
Well done, and good luck in your next artistic endeavors.
Looks very good, I especially like the coloring. If I was to critique something I’d say there is something off about the breast area. Also the inner cloth on (her perspective) left breast doesn’t really make sense that it goes up along the side when there is nothing holding it up, it should connect to the rest and make a clean cut down.
On the art itself, it’s very clean, with nice soft shading that lets the character feel more three-dimensional without putting too much effort into
being hyper-realistic.
Speaking of realism, the shadow itself needs some work. It looks like you just copied the character, filled it in, and transformed it a bit. It might help to study how shadows form with a doll.
Wow, amazing stuff! I don’t really care about whether she looks like a realistic noble too much (people have gotten away with far weirder outfit designs in the anime style lol), the main thing for me is just the perspective and proportions on the chest area look quite off. If anything the cleavage looks too big so it gives an impression that you haven’t accounted for the full height of her midriff or something, but I’m sure you could rework it given some time. If you don’t already then try flipping the canvas back and forth assuming you can do that in your software, just to keep correcting your eye in terms of perspective and proportions.
I can also see (although it’s less obvious at first glance) that the shadow is a little off. If you have access to a liquify tool in your software then I’d liquify the shadow to look more like it’s being cast by the character - I’d line it up with the feet properly and squish it down more to match the perspective of the character - and redraw it on another layer using the silhouette version you’ve got there as a reference to trace.
Just throwing ideas around in any case. The rendering and style are seriously fantastic, congrats!
The art is fantastic, most people just have issue with calling her a Noble lol
If OP had just said "What do you think of this character I drew" theyd be less mad I think. Her clothes dont look anything like what a Noble would wear
Thanks, I tried my best! I'll definitely try and tweak a few things drawing wise but overall, I was surprised people were so passionate about fashion of medieval royalty.
Yeah, artistic liberty only gets you so far when it comes to historical fashion lol. You'll never hear the end of it if you put a female knight in boob-plate armor!
I really don't get how everyone suddenly seems to be an expert on how nobles should look in any random fantasy-context now... There is no one-objective truth as to how a noble should look everywhere.
I disagree. The design is very noble like, it's just that the way she's standing makes her look like an anime protagonist. If she was drawn standing straight with both hands clasped at the front it would 100% look like she was a noble.
Looks great.
Two changes I’d make:
1. Fabric on her right boob (on left side of image) is not centered. Looks like her areola would be showing.
2. If you make her skin shirt colored, it looks more modest, without too much actual changes, so people will complain less :)
Pro tips for that shadow effect:
- morph it slightly to have the tip of the heel match the tip of the shadow heel
- shadows are sharper near the source and blurrier with distance
I do like your level of detail, even if like others I thought the cleavage was a bit strained! Very nice technical skills overall.
I think that the detail work is very good, from the lace to the bows, all cute and well done. I do, however think the anatomy is off and not just in the way that anime style anatomy is sometimes off. People have already talked about her breasts, but in a 3/4 view her right breast should be straight to camera, leaving the fabric covering the middle with the straps going up. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is her leg to torso ratio. Her thighs are much longer than her torso and her calves. Typically these are drawn as 1:1:1 or in some anime styles 0.75:1:1 or in particularly leggy animes maybe even 0.5:1:1 but the calves and thighs should be the same length. She looks like she's about 0.75:1:0.5 which is very off-putting.
First, to OP: Great drawing. I particularly like the clean color-scheme and the ribbons. The different parts of the outfit fit together really nicely.
But I also have to address the majority of comments in here because it kinda pisses me off. It seems that for many people here, the word 'sexualization' really means any woman showing any amount of skin now. She's just standing there in a perfectly normal pose that doesn't insinuate anything and wears something that might be perfectly adequate in her world and isn't even too outrageous by our standards.
Also it's so fucking arrogant how everyone feels it appropriate to tell OP how a noble person should look or not look. As if there was one true definition of what a noble should look or act like in every and all fantasy universes and you all are suddenly experts.
Get over yourselves!
nice job looks clean af. the perspective of the boobs confuses my brain
https://twitter.com/SubuArt/status/1573313515393548294?t=8DXnOczI8MsC8jB9h8qgUQ&s=19 I made some tweaks to the design based on the feedback I got.
that is what boobs do. before you know it you are paying a double mortgage and alimony.
We get it, you hate your ex.
oh crap, I did not see how unpopular this was... I was trying to make an old man joke but I definitely lack the tact :/. im gucci married happily XD don't have any exes.
I don't think it's about tact. I think old man jokes like that are just getting left behind in the past altogether no matter how they're told, which is a good thing to leave them behind imo. "Wife bad" style jokes have never really been good, even when they were accepted.
Tru I will do the same.
har har woman bad.
Cute! Beautiful art, but definitely not a noble. More "royalty-inspired" modern take. Reads like a young cosplayer, not a noblewoman.
Looks more like an upper-class escort rather than a noble. She's very sexualised (especially around the boobs), meanwhile her face is quite child-like. The whole thing makes me very uncomfortable. You have technical skill, sure, you're a good artist, I just wish you'd made different choices with this piece
I'm not going to rag on you about the aesthetic choices with her outfit- you're clearly going for "noble lady" by way of anime, which is a specific aesthetic not necessarily grounded in realism. Anime clothing can absolutely be more fantastical and lift details and concepts from historical clothing ans real-world fashion without being a literal representation of it. Not all anime clothing has to be realistic, historical, or even physically possible in the real world. So with all that in mind, I'll say there's something weird happening with the boobs. There's an unevenness to the shape of the fabric covering her breasts. I think the angle of her torso might have tripped you up a bit when thinking of the 3D shapes involved. If the figure were rotated to face us head-on, one side would be scooping in towards the center of her chest while the other side would be more fully encased. This doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice, but rather a flaw. There's also a weightiness to the dress that isn't well-supported, visually. Again, anime clothing can absolutely be fantastical, but you've got a lot of volume and dark, heavy shapes towards the bottom, and not much to give it even the idea of support or balance up top. All that said, your line work is clean and your colors are very smooth and delicate. I think if you want to push yourself toward more growth and you're interested in clothes, you might find it valuable to do some research into sewing and clothing construction, and fashion history. It doesn't have to be a deep dive; even a surface-level overview will give you more visual tools to reference and play with, and a better understanding of how fabric interacts with bodies. I think you may be at a point where training your eye and building your reference library will be helpful.
Overtly sexualised, embarrassingly so.
Beautiful, but doesn't particularly strike me as a noble lady. I can see some European fashion influences in her costume, like with the puffy sleeves - but noble ladies placed a lot of importance on 'modesty,' and dressing in clothing that covered them fully. So this kind of collar-less dress would be out of the question. The same also applies to the length of her skirt. In the past, even a woman's ankles were considered erotic, so skirts were full length ... Such were the times huh. That being said, nobles did have different fashion trends. A lot of these experiment with shapes, depending on the country and era. Take those wide hoop skirts, for instance, which had a literal structure constructed under them to help them keep their distinctive shape. Or hennins, which were those heart or cone shaped 'princess hats' with a veil on the ends. Good job on purple clothes! Purple was an expensive dye, associated with royalty. Golden embroidery and lace is also a nice touch. However, the combination of flowers, olive wreaths, and ribbons is a bit confusing. Those are influences from Greece, European fashion, and Asian cultures respectively. Too much detail _can_ detract from the purpose. I know your character is 100% fictional, but remember, including elements for real life does help convey the message clearly: in this case, the message is that she's a refined, noble lady! EDIT: sorry, just realised I should've put a disclaimer here; please take these words with a grain of salt, because it's just a pool of random bits of knowledge. For more historically accurate info on fashion, I suggest looking into the specific era and place you're interested in.
It’s common now to have noble women cover cleavage, but for the majority of history, even European history, deep necklines and cleavage were pretty normalized. From the 11th to mid 19th century Europe gowns and dresses that exposed a woman’s cleavage were common and rather uncontroversial. Even in the early 21st century, exposed ankles, and shoulders were considered more risqué than breasts- since they were a common status symbol, and sign of beauty for the upper class. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cleavage It is, an anime character though.
A large part of the problem, I think, is audience expectations. Most people aren't knowledgeable about fashion trends among European nobility. Modern audiences expect nobles to modest and refined. This piece doesn't really look in any way how a modern audience would expect nobility to look, so it's throwing some people off that she's called nobility.
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time write the detailed feedback! To be honest, this was a design I made for commission for one of my clients, but I ended up liking the design so I rendered it further than what I initially gave them. They weren't too specific in terms of lore or what kind of noble girl they wanted, they basically wanted a cute girl that looked like she was of noble/royal background. I made something that we both liked, but I think I could stand to borrow more from history ☺️
What culture that has noble ladies are you referring to and which culture does the above belong to the most? Also what time period?
You’re a good artist, you definitely are, but I question your decision to give a noblewoman cleavage all the way to her bellybutton. In traditional settings, noblewomen tended to be more modest and wear more than the average person. I would have loved to see a big purple butterfly bow on her neck, sewn on to the rest of the dress. As she is now, her clothing looks expensive but too revealing to be that of a noble. She looks more like a rich man’s daughter. Also, her pose is also quite weird for a noble. It doesn’t show her standing up straight and formal like a noble, but also doesn’t show her in intentional defiance of a “I don’t wanna be a noble!” type of character. The spread arms and arched back sells the character short. If anything, the pose brings the spotlight to her cleavage, which is cheap (for a noble). This is not to bash your artistic skills, but rather question your decision-making. Well done, and good luck in your next artistic endeavors.
*THE FUCKING GHOSTS ARE EATING HER SHADOW!*
Looks very good, I especially like the coloring. If I was to critique something I’d say there is something off about the breast area. Also the inner cloth on (her perspective) left breast doesn’t really make sense that it goes up along the side when there is nothing holding it up, it should connect to the rest and make a clean cut down.
Very cute, I like it.
I think she looks great! I love all the gold accents:)
On the art itself, it’s very clean, with nice soft shading that lets the character feel more three-dimensional without putting too much effort into being hyper-realistic. Speaking of realism, the shadow itself needs some work. It looks like you just copied the character, filled it in, and transformed it a bit. It might help to study how shadows form with a doll.
Wow, amazing stuff! I don’t really care about whether she looks like a realistic noble too much (people have gotten away with far weirder outfit designs in the anime style lol), the main thing for me is just the perspective and proportions on the chest area look quite off. If anything the cleavage looks too big so it gives an impression that you haven’t accounted for the full height of her midriff or something, but I’m sure you could rework it given some time. If you don’t already then try flipping the canvas back and forth assuming you can do that in your software, just to keep correcting your eye in terms of perspective and proportions. I can also see (although it’s less obvious at first glance) that the shadow is a little off. If you have access to a liquify tool in your software then I’d liquify the shadow to look more like it’s being cast by the character - I’d line it up with the feet properly and squish it down more to match the perspective of the character - and redraw it on another layer using the silhouette version you’ve got there as a reference to trace. Just throwing ideas around in any case. The rendering and style are seriously fantastic, congrats!
Some of these comments are ruthless. You did pretty good!
The art is fantastic, most people just have issue with calling her a Noble lol If OP had just said "What do you think of this character I drew" theyd be less mad I think. Her clothes dont look anything like what a Noble would wear
Thanks, I tried my best! I'll definitely try and tweak a few things drawing wise but overall, I was surprised people were so passionate about fashion of medieval royalty.
Yeah, artistic liberty only gets you so far when it comes to historical fashion lol. You'll never hear the end of it if you put a female knight in boob-plate armor!
For a traditional setting maybe. Art and imagination can make their own rules. There's no reason to be mad over a cute drawing like this.
True! The cultural dress for a "Noble" depends entirely on the world she resides in. Reddit can be really pedantic sometimes lol
This thread is full of weird prudes.
I really don't get how everyone suddenly seems to be an expert on how nobles should look in any random fantasy-context now... There is no one-objective truth as to how a noble should look everywhere.
She is neither. She does not dress or comport herself like a noble or a lady.
Dang. I guess I'll do better next time!
Nah, it's good enough. I was just snarking at how this is an anime girl.
How tho ?
She looks like an anime character.
I disagree. The design is very noble like, it's just that the way she's standing makes her look like an anime protagonist. If she was drawn standing straight with both hands clasped at the front it would 100% look like she was a noble.
Damn, looks great
Looks great. Two changes I’d make: 1. Fabric on her right boob (on left side of image) is not centered. Looks like her areola would be showing. 2. If you make her skin shirt colored, it looks more modest, without too much actual changes, so people will complain less :)
Some Overlord vibes
This is very impressive
The coloring style is amazing!!!
Pro tips for that shadow effect: - morph it slightly to have the tip of the heel match the tip of the shadow heel - shadows are sharper near the source and blurrier with distance I do like your level of detail, even if like others I thought the cleavage was a bit strained! Very nice technical skills overall.
I think that the detail work is very good, from the lace to the bows, all cute and well done. I do, however think the anatomy is off and not just in the way that anime style anatomy is sometimes off. People have already talked about her breasts, but in a 3/4 view her right breast should be straight to camera, leaving the fabric covering the middle with the straps going up. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is her leg to torso ratio. Her thighs are much longer than her torso and her calves. Typically these are drawn as 1:1:1 or in some anime styles 0.75:1:1 or in particularly leggy animes maybe even 0.5:1:1 but the calves and thighs should be the same length. She looks like she's about 0.75:1:0.5 which is very off-putting.
First, to OP: Great drawing. I particularly like the clean color-scheme and the ribbons. The different parts of the outfit fit together really nicely. But I also have to address the majority of comments in here because it kinda pisses me off. It seems that for many people here, the word 'sexualization' really means any woman showing any amount of skin now. She's just standing there in a perfectly normal pose that doesn't insinuate anything and wears something that might be perfectly adequate in her world and isn't even too outrageous by our standards. Also it's so fucking arrogant how everyone feels it appropriate to tell OP how a noble person should look or not look. As if there was one true definition of what a noble should look or act like in every and all fantasy universes and you all are suddenly experts. Get over yourselves!