I miss Jason Manley and conceptart.org . This reminds me of him. He would have done a better job at making his light speech into a long speech about why, for each illustration, there is a passion for composition. I feel no doubt that this man's career, that is 1 year younger than conceptart.org, benefited from conceptart.org immensely, and that what is being shown in these tutorials is often an unfortunate replacement for the art direction that existed there. Of course there are many exceptions to that on here. But there doesn't really seem to be a community here. Ive tried to participate a few times and it seems extremely quiet here. However the anatomy on here on proko is second to none. With this piece I only have one problem which is that the choice of the area where he is turned into stone doesn't contrast well with the background to read well. The color dynamic should be different there, but maybe that is something that is typical of the style of Magic the gathering as needing an overly tan background.

how come the digital illustration and advanced techniques course says it has 0 lessons but is $109

We've got some news regarding the digital painting course. First off, the not-so-great part - Jon Neimeister won't be able to wrap up the remaining lessons of the course. We know many of you have enjoyed his insights and teaching style, and it's a bummer not to have him finish up the course. However, life throws curveballs, and we're committed to delivering the quality education you signed up for. The good news - we've put together a team of digital painting instructors to take over and finish this course. We selected artists that specialize in each remaining topic. It will move much faster since multiple artists will be working on videos at the same time. Producing this course is at the top of our priorities right now. Stay tuned for more updates about Jon's replacements, and as always, we're here if you have any questions or need a hand with anything.We appreciate your patience and understanding, Stan and the Proko Team

I hope we are going to get updates soon. Is Jon alright ?

Hi Dorian! This course looks super interesting. I would love to attend it but need a little guidance from you. I am a beginner/intermediate, I am very interested in shading, that's the part of drawing the draws me the most. I have never done any course on Proko. Do you think I need to do Figure Drawing Fundamentals first, before getting onto your course? Or can I jump onto this straight away? Will it be to hard for me? I am a digital illustrator so don't draw much with pen and paper. www.brunamartini.com for an idea of my level. Thanks for your help!

To set the tone directly: this post is gonna be a negative critique of this course. I don't want to slander it or anything, as the content does have value and I like it. But I think it hardly matches what is being promised, which got me a bit disappointed. Anyway, Let me explain. The course includes an ebook and a bunch of videos. The videos are real-time demos of 4 different artists using Reilly rhythms to get some pieces done. And apart from Brian Knox - who takes the time to explain how he prepares his pencils, how to draw clean lines, perspective and such, before going into the usage of the Reilly method to construct the figure - they're not really teaching you how to do the same. You'd think each specific rhythm would be explained, from how they relate to the actual anatomy down to how they look like in many different poses, but nah. Doesn't happen. After Brian's done showing the big idea for the torso, no one does the same for the arms/legs, or break down things any further. It just becomes... commented demos, really, with Jeff Watts even stating that he doesn't expect us to really follow what he's doing because it's extremely advanced, or Ben Young not even using the Reilly rhythms at all to focus on tonal rendering instead. As for the ebook, it does contains different diagrams for the Reilly rhythms, which makes for 3 pages. And the rest is made of commented pictures of the drawings that we're already seeing in the videos. In the end, it's almost entirely up to us to figure out how these rhythms really work. I understand that students should learn some things by themselves, but a course should break some things down to make it easy for them. If it's just merely about giving clues, it breaks the whole purpose of a course: teaching. Again, don't get me wrong. I don't want to roast this completely, nor to offend anyone! These are genuinely great demos, and the ebook is good material to work from. I'm really happy to have them. But frankly, after coming from Stan's awesome courses (which include real lessons with explanations, exercises, critiques, etc.) this can only come as a disappointment. And for all I know, maybe the team behind this is made of extremely good instructors. But in that case, I suspect that the good stuff is kept away in the main Watts atelier program, making this just a pricey teaser... Anyway, feel free to express any counter-opinion. I'm open for discussion, and would actually be really happy if someone were to change my mind about this. ^^ I'm also curious to see if anyone else shares my point of view.