Can't Draw must find help!

[DarkClaw]

I have always enjoyed looking at other people's drawings that they make for their characters and have long wanted to do the same but alas I am how you say...artistaclly challenged. I have great ideas and can see what I want to draw but well I just cant get it right and my stick figures scare my children so I have to put the pencil down. I want to know if there are some easy to use programs that can in a sense help me bring my characters to life? I am putting out an S.O.S to any and all in the Fantasy Realm that have an incrediable talent help me find a way to ease my pain.:help:

[Fenixcrest]

I reccomend learning to use vectors. Properly implimented, if you have an eye for art, you can create some pretty nice stuff using vector art even if you have no hand for art. Vectors are found in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator(especially Illustrator), Macromedia Flash, and Gnu GIMP, among other softwares.

[Curufea]

Poser is good, if expensive.

Or you could try one of those identikit programs - like heromaker (sp?) that puts predrawn bits together.

[Kabluey]

Poser is good, if expensive.

DAZ Studio is a free alternative to Poser, and the interface may actually be easier for a newcomer. You can find it at http://www.daz3d.com. This site also has a lot of tutorials that are good, and some free content that you can download. And if you look around the web, you can find some other free content as well - as well as a lot for sale, of course.

There's a bit of a learning curve to Poser and DAZ Studio over something like HeroMaker, but the results can be much better. I've been using DAZ Studio and Poser for my upcoming Star Hero campaign, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Just as an example, here's a picture of one of the alien races I'm using in the campaign.

http://www.tesseract.org/harry/stuff/StarHero/nadris.jpg

There's a lot of fantasy-oriented content out there as well, including standard character types (e.g., elves, dwarves, orcs), armor, weapons, etc.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[DarkClaw]

Thanks for the help and the ideas I'll give them a try. if you come up with any others please let me know.:thumbup:

[prestidigitator]

There are also some very good figure drawing tutorials out there on the Web if you look a bit. Seriously it takes little, "talent," to become a good artist if you have motivation enough. Learning the right techniques and doing a lot of practice can make a decent artist out of anyone.

[tkdguy]

I don't know if you like manga-style drawings, but this can give you some tips, including Photoshop effects:

http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/