Some thoughts on detail

One of the most common problems I see with American fan art or art of any sort for that matter is that there is too much attention paid to detail (or effects) and not enough to the base concept. I've seen countless comics, both amateur and professional, that have guns detailed down the last screw and lots of impressive coloring work but the characters are malformed and they are in poses that are ridiculous. Space suits (no hands, no feet) with highly realistic reflections and the background is on a completely different perspective plane. Normal sized superheroes that, seen in 3D space, are actually 20 feet taller than the buildings they are by (Or Klingon battle cruisers that have incredible detail put into the warp nacelles that are aimed 30 degrees to the left of where the bridge thingee is). This is the equivalent of putting a beautifully patterned bikini on a Morlock (TIME MACHINE), standing it on a garbage covered beach and thinking that the image is good because the detail is pretty.

Lines

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. —Joseph Conrad

Manga, comics and animation are all based on the lines. Bad lines will mean a bad image.
The best advice I can give to artists working with pens is: get rid of the technical pens! There is no variation in any of the lines (the whole point of using a tech pen) and this kills the dynamic feeling that should be there. They also make shaky, wiggly lines in the hands of an amateur. (Look at the image we're using here!)
Animation and manga lines have kyoujaku: thick/thinness or what western animators call line quality. The most common line styles, most easily identifiable from their endings (or where they join other lines), we use are these:

	The three on the left are lines commonly used in characters. The others are used for machines and props.
	This is an example of varying line widths. I've thickened the lines in spots where things overlap or attach so that they stand apart better. The slight variance gives everything more volume and it doesn't look like it's all on the same plane. This is just a sketch and my lines are still pretty shaky but the basic idea is there.

If you're working on a computer, spend the money and buy a tablet. That it makes painting easier than a mouse is a secondary concern. The most important thing is that you can use the pressure sensitivity as you would use varying pressure on a pencil or brush. Use those differences!
One of the most common signs of an amateur artist is sketchy or "hairy" lines. It makes the outline harder to make out and ruins the clean look of the image. Try to work with longer and fewer lines.
Every single line on a finished image should have meaning. A sketch is a different matter and as long as the artist knows what he wants to do and the sketch can help him accomplish that pretty much anything is OK. This sort of sketch should be kept private though.
Correctly applied, cross-hatching can be a very nice effect. Here we have a very poor example. The artist here would have been better off buying some screen tone or just leaving the image the way it was. These lines will probably not appear or will look like dirty spots on a reduced size photocopy.
There are many great examples of cross-hatching and other line work out there. (One of my absolute favorites is the work Berni Wrightson did for the illustrated FRANKENSTEIN book. Check out the ones he did for CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF too.)
Likewise, the artist should not try to color in large areas with pencil or to put some pencil down and smear it with a finger or smudge stick. That's OK for pastels but looks terrible and doesn't reproduce well with graphite pencil.

Problems

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. —Oscar Wilde

Common problems with fan art are heads, eyes and hands. In the image here we can see that the characters' heads are somehow strangely shaped but that can be said about many anime characters. The artist must always keep in mind the basic construction elements of the characters. In this case the artist does not have a clear idea of what the actual shape of the characters' heads are under all that hair.

Here is Patty's head as an example. You can see that her eyes are not lined up correctly for the curve and angle of her face. The blue line approximates her actual head shape.

A character should always be conceived of from the most inner, basic elements outward. Think of what the skeleton looks like then what the unclothed body looks like (Kya!). Think of what the clothes are made of and how the different layers cover each other. Think about the texture of each item—the smooth or rough leather, the weave of the cloth, the silky hair, the gooey, slimy tentacles, the cold metal or whatever else you may have. When you can feel each object as you are drawing it then you will make a much better image.
As mentioned before, eyes are always a problem. Anime characters often have large expressive eyes and it is easy to make large, obvious mistakes. When drawing eyes, the artist should think of what the eyeballs looks like inside the head and where they are looking. The positions of both upper and lower eyelids are very important as they can communicate the character's emotion.
The artist here has not considered what the eyeballs look like and did not think about drawing the rim of the eye on the original sketch so the eyes are out of place.

	This is Rabby's original face structure. Not only are the features out of line but the eyes are misshapen and aimed wrong. Adding in the red borders of the eyeball/eyelids really makes a difference!
	This the the corrected face structure, You can see that the facial features are all oriented the same way.
	This is a detailed version of Rabby's corrected eye.

I like to put a heavy line around the colored part of the eye to make it stand out even more and make the eyes more visible. Here, I'm working with characters that were designed by someone else and I want to keep as much as possible to their design but I can still vary the line weight in spots to get a better effect.
It has been said that the single greatest indicator of emotion is the eyebrow and this may be true of anime characters. A slight change in angle can mean the difference between total acceptance and caution or hesitation.

Rabby's hand is pretty deformed here, almost simian. Here is what her hand should look like. The red line indicates her actual finger shape under her gloves.

There is no magic way to draw perfect hands and hands are about as complex as the human body gets. There are lots of good pose books that have images of hands and the artist can also take a Polaroid or a digital snapshot of his or her hand in the right pose. It may take a long time to draw the hands but that effort is not wasted – the human hand is extremely expressive and drawing it poorly or not spending enough time on it expresses the artist's lack of concentration and quality. The same can be said about feet. I see a lot of fan art with characters that have no hands or feet.