A question for vore artists

[AkaiFenneku]

I gotta be frank, this thread might come across as venting to some, but I actually am in need of somebody who can relate to my current dilemma.

Do any of you ever feel as if the vore you draw is the ugliest thing ever? Not in terms of style, actually; rather how awkward it looks anatomically. This is specially directed towards same-size vore artists who find themselves in the task of drawing huge sized bellies. I am aware that vore in itself is an impossible fetish, and so real life logic shouldn't be applied to the way the guts expand and all. Thing is, I've seen artists nailing huge bellies just fine, but in my case, I don't know why, the bellies always look awkward and strange. It's become frustrating to the point where just thinking of drawing vore myself feels like a chore that's never going to come out right. It's one of the reasons I've not been uploading content to my gallery as of late (along with being busy with real life issues and all). Unsurprisingly, I find size difference vore way less challenging to draw and I've found myself sketching it more often, but I don't want to ditch same-size vore forever. Another thing I find frustrating is that while huge bellies look ok on my animals, they never look ok on my humans. Despite the fact that I love both animal and human preds, I want things to be balanced, so I don't want to ditch drawing human preds forever either.

I know the solution might be 'try to imitate the artists you see draw it perfectly', 'polish your anatomy', etc. It's just kind of frustrating to have so many sketches done that never look right no matter how many references you use... Does anyone else feel like this? If so, how do you try to tackle those problems you face?

[merlovinit]

I took a look at your gallery and am not sure what you mean. Maybe you are being too hard on yourself?

Anatomical skill is really what it comes down to in the end. Mine isn't very good and it's frustrating sometimes being unable to execute an idea. However it doesn't really get much better unless you spend time doing studies.

Edit: one thing that I also do when working digitally is to rework parts of sketches over and over until they look right. Something is off? Duplicate layer, erase, and try again. You can do a lot to salvage something by just spending a lot of time fixing things until you're happy with it.

[Ghrelin]

I would guess most artists feel this way at least every now and then, about one thing or another. I know I do. It can be hard to get things to look how you want them to, especially when there's no real life equivalent for reference. Just takes practice, studying images that look "right" to you, and thinking about how the different parts should interact. I find mapping out a sketchy "internal view" on another layer helps a lot with positioning. And if you don't think your practice is helping, look back at your oldest work. You're probably improving more than you realize, even if progress is slow.

[Phorcyz19]

We're always our own worst critics. You'll always see the flaws in your art, even if theyre things others won't notice.

[MaxTwenty]

Anatomy is important. Specifically, practicing and drawing to learn how bones/muscle/fat/skin/etc fit together and interact as well as where things should be. But same size vore results in impossible belly sizes and shapes, so the trick is really to get composition and angles right to make it look believable. This is kind of a contradiction - if you fall into the trap of using angles to hide parts you can't draw well/configurations that couldn't work in real life, the temptation is there to lock into those few angles and improve even slower. Work at being able to draw any body, any pose, any angle, any interaction, and pepper in experiments with vore and bellies along the way.

Basically this is going to take a lot of time. Working to improve your knowledge and making more connections between what you have already, not to mention practicing technique and execution, is a lot less gratifying than drawing porn (or anything that falls into presentable product), but it pays off over time. And if drawing porn isn't gratifying for you right now anyway, nothing to lose by shifting focus to that for a while.

[Mawsome]

Honestly this might be the detail that I struggle with most overall. Trying to get all the sizing, positioning and general proximity of different elements correct in a scene drives me mad sometimes. I always strive to make things look "believable", where realistic anatomical proportions are taken into account with a certain degree of artistic liberty. And sometimes, despite all my efforts, things still don't look "right" to me.


I think Phorcyz19 said it best: "We're always our own worst critics." I know I am.

[Khalcifieron]

Honestly, my best way to fix sketches and the like is to just give it a day. Do absolutely nothing involving the image and come back, then sketch the same thing all over again. Some days I come back and realize, hey, this wasn't so bad after all, and other days I realize whats wrong, or that something just doesn't work. I work digitally, so I can flip images easily, but I also know that there are photo apps that you can use to flip images, or even just looking at it in the mirror. Another thing for awkward anatomy is trying to make the pose yourself. I realize that doing the pose won't always work, as you don't have a belly to balance you, but that's kind of where imagination comes in Another thing for bellies, is imagining what the prey is doing in there, if they are curled up, or trying to move. This might not be the kind of answer you are looking for, but with vore, especially same size, you really have to operate on feel, rather than reality, so it's also very important to work on fixing things, rather than just scrapping them altogether, you just have to work with it a bit until you know WHY it isn't working.

[AlluringPredation]

MaxTwenty is pretty spot on. Improving your artistry will help, giving you the ability to break as few rules as as possible. Monsterpeeps and minor size difference will help. Cownugget probably does it best imo, and is one of the few good examples you can learn from. But you're still going to break anatomy same size, it's inevitable.

You could go the route of sketching from cartoon examples, entirely break the molds you have inside your head, limiting your creative ability. Get yourself used to the outrageous, so you can scale it back and find a decent halfway point.

[tummytrouble]

i have the same issue sometimes! the way i make it look more appealing is i actually sketch the prey out so the belly doesnt look so random and awkward. just drawing the belly by itself can be the issue, but everyone is different!

[Throku]

I'm a writer foremost, but that's doesn't mean I don't over-analyze things, rather the opposite. And as for unappealing it's the same for writing, there you have to imagine and describe it in detail, which is no less off-putting at times. Which is why I fancy hammerspace/cartoon physics often enough and/or quick enough digestion that the bulging belly phase is just that, a quickly passing phase.

However, I think merlovinit, is right, you're bulges are good, you're clearly thinking of what you're doing before you do it.

The main problem I see artists have with bulges is fitting them in. And I think the reason you have a much easier time with animal preds than human, is partly that everyone is an order of magnitude more familiar with the human form than any animal one, so if anything is off it's much easier to notice and even if we can't tell what it is, we're likely to instinctively know something is off.

The other thing is that humans have slender bodies with long limbs and most animals are the other way around, long sausage bodies with short limbs so on most animals there are plenty of room for a bulge, something that's not the case for humans.

And MaxTwenty, is no doubt right that one needs to tackle every pose and angle to get good, but like tummytrouble's avatar, some are easier to pull off. If you button those pants up, you're running into trouble, then you get the weird sagging gut in order to fit the bulge and so on.

[Tassie]

I can't draw, so I only write, sorry.

I can imagine things, but when I try to make them happen on paper, it never works, so I can only talk about the way I imagine things, sorry.

[Doughnutz2000]

I constantly notice things that bug me about my art. Even the highest skilled artists have this problem. We just critique our work too much. Not to mention when you've put like 10 hours into a piece of vore, it's gonna look weird or worse because you've already been starting at it so much. That's what I find anyway.

[AkaiFenneku]

I'd like to reply to everyone here on this thingy I'm writing-
I've read all the responses to this thread and I'm very happy to know I'm not the only one going through this. I mean... it sucks that we all find it difficult to draw vore and make it look good at the same time (or writing it, in the case of writers'), but it also means we're not alone with this issue. I am aware that being an artist inherently includes having low self esteem and not being confident on what we do from time to time, and the tips people have written here are very helpful. I think one of the reasons I (and a lot of other artists) struggle to draw vore is because we give up really easily, and I know it's a silly observation that anyone could think of, but it's something that we often don't tell ourselves enough as obvious as it is. I really should just sit down and go back to drawing, cause dropping it altogether isn't going to make me improve.
Thanks a lot for your input, everybody ^^ When I made this thread I was looking for people that could relate to the issue I had cause my circle of friends who are into vore is near inexistent, and the few people who are into it either don't draw or don't understand my struggles, so this gave me a good insight and comforted me a lot.

Note: Throku is right though, since we're already familiarized with our bodies we find more anatomical mistakes on human art than on animal art. You put into words what I found very hard to describe-

[MementoMori]

Personally I used to feel like that about drawing same-size vore too, and that was the main reason I was reluctant to draw it for a while when I first joined!
For me my main problem was I didn't want to draw characters with a stretched out jaw mid-swallow. I still wouldn't want to draw too-distorted of a face even now! What I do to get around that is I draw them having swallowed down to a slimmer section of the body (hips, legs, etc).

For tummies, it took me a while to get over the same thing you're talking about as well. I think it's just a feeling honestly, not really because you're doing anything wrong! In fact I think you draw cute bellies in my opinion!

The only piece of advice I could offer is, trying to pinpoint your own particular tastes in big bellies can help. Everybody has different tastes with them, maybe you just need to find yours and emulate that, and that can help you be happier with them! Remember, same-size in and of itself is a suspension of belief, so there's absolutely no right or wrong answers here. It's all up to your personal tastes. So for example, how big/exaggerated do you like bellies to be? Do you like them to be under-exaggerated and as small as it could be for the prey's size, like a pregnant belly would be IRL? Or, do you prefer the pred to have a very large belly after eating just one person? Just up to you! Do you like the belly to be very squishy and soft, with a lot of variance in its possible shape, or a bit more hard and thus very round? Do you like when the prey struggles inside the belly, and if so, do you prefer this to be expressed by vague blobby shapes, or full-blown hand/face imprints to be shown? Etc. etc.! Hope that helps and good luck! X3