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#but NOW with this style the comics in... i can use flat textures like this as a part of the style and it works!! and its easy for me to do!!
drenched-in-sunlight · 7 months
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hello hi!!! grfhvhghr i am in love with your artwork so much you cant believe-- i wanna ask if you have any tips on how you lineart and colourpick?? no pressure to answer tho, have a great day/night!! again, love your art <33
hi!! thank you for your kind words!! since i got asked about these a lot, im answering this for all the other ask asking about lineart and colour tips too! You can see some previous post here.
also i could only give out tips that work for my drawing style - which is heavy lineart / colours pop up the line (believe it or not it's American comic book style. ppl cant understand why my art doesnt really look like usual anime/ Asian webtoon style, even though it is still clearly anime / Asian webtoon style, but when i told them it's because im drawing these by studying American comics, no one believes it either lmao.
i do study but i do my own things too, so most of my art inspo is really unexpected to ppl, but they r really where i learn things from, cuz i dont even go to art school TT_TT).
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Changing the brush size will help you achieve thick/thin lines better without having to put pressure on your wrists. Keep your hold relaxed and let bigger brush size give you the thick strokes.
I like messy sketch, to me the sketch is just an outline shape to fill details in when i do the line, it also gives more freedom to wriggle as i draw! cuz i dont really plan out everything from the start, just wing it as i go, so a lot of my work is actually very spontaneous.
that leads to this point: when you do the lineart you should start deciding which colour style you want from it to adjust the details amount. the ink shadow blocks in my art aren't there randomly, i adjust them to best complement the shape language and colours.
for piece where i want the line/shadow to...idk hit (?), the colours are almost flat with textured brush adding depth to them, so the inking is the shading, thus there are more details in the lineart / ink blocks.
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for the video above and piece like this where i want the colours to be clear and pop out, the use of ink blocks are minimized and i do the shading during colouring process. but! the ink blocks can still make some places pop very nicely! just use in moderation!
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when doing the base it's good to keep the colour on the left side of the colour wheel (low saturation), but as you do shading and lighting, try to spread out evenly so it won't look washed out.
toggle around with hue and saturation slider as you go! the key is always adjusting! you're making hundreds of decisions at once, being conscious of your choice in why a line or a colour should be in a certain way will help improve your process a lot! (i think you can tell which art i turned off my brain and just draw for stress relief ........ which is also a valid way to draw and sometimes the result might surprise you! but for more serious stuffs i try to be aware of most of the move i make. it's problem solving, yeah?)
i find that one way to keep your art from appearing too...yellow in the end (which is sth that haunted my ass for a long while) is always aim for cold tone, so if you accidentally make it warm either way in the end it won't be too warm (and yellow :cry:)
well that's all the stuffs i can think on top of my head. sorry i can't give more advice on colour picking cuz it's sth i don't really know how to give advice on???? i think my colours now are still pretty lame haha........ if there are still any questions i'd gladly answer within my ability, though im very slow to answer ask ( i do read and be happy at all of them tho!)
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budderdomo · 2 months
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My Paint Tool Sai Brushes/Painting Process Tutorial!
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Explanations and Examples down below
Disclaimer: long post
Hello! I wanted to first thank everyone for liking/reblogging my most recent art piece (the Darkiplier one) It has become my first post with over 1000 notes which is just insane for me. I just wanted to do something to thank you guys for that.
Anyway, this post will be divided like this, so scroll to the title if you want specific things
Introduction
Brush textures/shapes for download
Overall process -> Terms and Definitions
How I use each brush (+ examples) -> Sketch -> Lineart (only do this sometimes) -> Rendering -> Textures + Post Processing
Conclusion
Introduction
This post is mainly for me in the future to look back on how my painting process was. My process changes ALL the time, sometimes I use lineart, sometimes I paint, sometimes I don't use textures, sometimes I have 100 layers, sometimes I have 1. It just changes depending on the piece. There is no "correct" way to do art. Do what you want!
Second of all, I feel I should point out you don't need fancy brushes or many brushes to make good art. I painted this piece with 1 brush.
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That's right, 1 brush (it was the P A I N T brush shown in main). I didn't have a sketch, I didn't have any lines, I started with big shapes and went from there.
Third of all, I use Paint Tool SAI (the first one). So this will be specific to that program. I'm sorry, it's just what I know how to use.
Brush Textures/Shapes
You may see in my brushes that there are textures/shapes that don't come with the standard SAI program. I tried to find the links for you to download them yourself.
Arrow: https://www.deviantart.com/digikat04/art/Custom-SAI-Brush-I-265506547
All texture brushes: https://painttoolsaibrushes.splstc.com/painttool-sai-textures/
For some reason I can't find where I got marble pt. 2 or chalk so here's the png files. (You can convert them to .bmp files) (Hopefully that works!)
Chalk : Marble pt. 2
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Overall Process
Before I go over my process I'm going to define some terms I'll be using and what I mean by them:
Flats - base colors
Rendering - Includes shading, lighting, small details, and texturing to define a form
Blending - mixing two separate colors together
Reduction - Once you've made a line/shape, reduction is the act of erasing part of it -> At the bottom of my brushes (in the images up above) you can see a checkered box which makes your brush transparent. I use the erasing brush to Reduce the red circle.
Persistence - How well the brush can create a new shape/color on top of pre-existing colors (If the brush blends a lot on top of other colors it has low persistence)
"Hard" vs "Soft" brushes - How well defined an edge is on a brush
Stabilizer - Turns trembly lines into smooth lines
So, I draw a different way each time. My canvas size is normally between 2500 pixels and 4000. I usually do around 3000 though. In general for my paintings I usually do
A sketch
Flats
Hue Shifts
Lighting/Shadows
Brighter Light/Deeper Shadows (Highlights/Ambient Occlusion)
Smaller Details
Texturing
Post Processing
For my bigger compositions, I make thumbnails. And for my "comic book" style I use lineart and layer modes (like multiply, luminosity)
How I Use Each Brush (+ Examples!)
Sketch
I have 2 sketch brushes. "pencil" and "sketch" For most of my life I have been using the default pencil brush on size 1. But recently I have been using this softer "sketch" brush on size ~20 or so. Either way works, but I find that the "pencil" brush is easier for linework and the "sketch" brush is easier to blend into paintings
"Pencil" : "Sketch" examples
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Lineart (opt.)
Nowadays I don't use lineart that often, but if I do it's with my "Softlines" brush. It's great for both very thick and very thin lines. I lower the opacity of my sketch and put lineart on a new layer on top of it
"Softlines" brush examples
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Flats
With lineart I seperate each new color with a new layer. For painting I'm now using one color as an underpainting color and working on top of that layer. So I render one thing at a time while working on the same layer.
I lower the opacity of the sketch and create a new layer under my sketch. I use my "pencil" brush to lay out the underpainting color and "blur" for hue shifts. And then I reduce it to the silhouette using my "sketch" brush (This gives a softer outline)
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Rendering
This would take way too long to explain every step of how I do it. So I'll explain how I use my brushes in this step.
"Arrow!!!" - I use this brush for laying out intial shapes, big areas of color, shading, lighting. The arrow shape has a point on the end that's really great for triangular shapes. It's not very good at small details because of the texture applied to it.
"Sketch" - I use this brush during the rendering as well. It's great for small details that you want a softer look of. It has a high persistence so it's great for working on the same layer.
"P A I N T" - This is a brush that's good at very many things. It has higher blending than "sketch" or "Arrow!!!" and it's shape is square. Great for blending, general painting, small details, reduction, etc.
"blur" - great for gradients or to smooth something out a lot
"Gaussian" - is a gaussian blur. Great for making things out of focus or fuzzy
"square TEX" - texture brush that has high persistence with some blending
"metal TEX" - texture brush with high blending and a spread shape.
"speckle TEX" - texture brush for kind of a sparkly look. High persistence
"water TEX" - texture brush that works kind of like a glaze. You can use for flair/fun
example
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Post-Processing
Typically I use more filters for this. Paint Tool Sai has sliders to change hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, luminosity, and color deepen. So I tend to mess with those. I also add effects like chromatic aberration
The tutorial I follow for chromatic aberration in Paint Tool Sai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thmaephD9Ec&t=169s
I also add particles like dust and other objects.
Finally I use my Gaussian blur to make things out of focus/motion blur
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Conclusion
I hope this helps! I feel like I'm at a point in my art journey where I'm good enough to give advice. So hopefully this helps someone out there with their art journey! Obviously I have a long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of where I've come. I remember watching speedpaints and tutorials trying to become better at art. So I kind of want to add to that cycle for artists. :D Have a great day!
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eliyips · 4 months
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Can i ask how u do lineart so well,, it looks so smooth,,
I've always been very big on keeping my lineart clean and smooth! :) I'm very inspired by comic and graphic novel illustration, so naturally, I try to take notes from that sort of aesthetic in a lot of my art.
The short answer is that I just have a lot of practice, and am very picky about how my lineart looks. So, I'll often spend a long time making sure it looks just how I'd like it, before moving on, even if the lines aren't necessarily going to be the focus of the final drawing.
The longer answer kinda depends on what lineart you're asking about! The style of my lineart tends to change to fit whatever mood I'm going for, so I have a lot of different line styles with varying levels of smooth-ness.
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On the super-smooth end of the spectrum, we have these bubbly, cartoony lines! These are a pain to draw, to be honest. But they really contribute to giving that cute look :) For these, I used the Clip Studio Paint G-Pen, with some minor adjustments to the settings, mainly so that there's not too much line width variation. The uniform, thick lines are important for this look! :) Drawing in this style really just a lot of trial and error. Usually when doing lineart, I'll erase away at lines to get them to the right thickness, or even just clean up a sketch and call that lineart, rather than doing lines on a new layer. But, that's a lot harder to do when the line thickness has to stay consistent. So, I end up just drawing the same line 7 times over, un-doing my work and re-doing it until i'm satisfied. Again, it's a pain! I used to draw like this a lot more frequently, but I stopped because I found that other approaches are often a lot more satisfying and rewarding. This is still great, for that cutesy look, though.
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Next, we have what I would affectionately call my ref sheet lines. As much as it's probably a bad idea, I have a habit of just kinda skipping the lining stage of art. I'll just take my sketch, and tidy it up until it's clean enough. But for a drawing where there's only going to be flat colors, that sort of roughness can look sloppy, In my opinion. So, particularly when doing ref sheets, or other art which I don't intend to render, I will actually go through the effort of fully sketching out my idea and lining on a separate layer. The result is a lot cleaner and more deliberate, and looks a lot nicer when colored! Especially if I take the time to color the lineart :) I also really like doing small details with thin lines, particularly body/facial hair, elastic cuffs on clothing, and the seams of clothes, too. I like drawing those little details a lot, and I think they shine the most in my cleaner line style :D
For this, and for most of my lineart, I use these brushes which you can find on the Clip Studio Asset Store:
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I'll bounce back and fourth between these, and Kozmo's Scratchy Scribbler brush, which you can find on Ko-fi!
Additionally, I have a modified G-Pen with a pencil texture that I think I made myself? I don't remember making it, but I also don't know where it came from! So i guess I did, lol.
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A little more messy than my ref-sheet lines, we have the line style which you probably see most often on my page. As mentioned before, I usually kinda skip the sketch step for these? I don't encourage that, it's a bad habit of mine. But I make it work! I feel like the best way to explain my process with this is to just offer you a timelapse of my lineart process:
I just kinda... go. and it works out! most of the time. lots of cleanup and tweaking, and as you can see with Bdubs and Etho here, sometimes I do actually just. do a sketch and then line over it. So maybe I have no idea what my own process even is, LOL.
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Now, to completely abandon your original question here's how i don't do smooth lineart! :D In this style, for the most part, I ignore the cleanliness of my lines, only really erasing with the lasso fill tool, when lines get too cluttered to actually read. Usually I'll only go for this when I'm already planning on painting over the lines. Because sometimes an idea doesn't need or want clean lines, and sometimes I just want to paint some values or slap some colors together and call it a day. Love my clean lines, but scratchy, messy lines are fun too! :)
Not sure if any of this really explained how i do smooth lineart, but I sure did talk about lineart for a while. I hope you could find something interesting or insightful in here! :) thanks for the ask, and I hope you have a great day <3
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kustas · 1 year
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I like monstress on a very basic level of enjoyment cuz it is very blasé specially considering Marjorie Liu works on marvel specially her time on daken dark Wolverine and black widow so I might ask what do you dislike about the art?? Just wanting to get a more in detail of the art on general not the character stuff
a few things haha
complex to the point of buisiness for no good reason: there's just so many details that serve no point. readability is important in comics, you need to prioritize what you want to show. also, it's hard to get good composition with that level of shit going on in your panel
lackluster technically. stuff like lighting and anatomy are sketchy. i talked about volumes before, that too. the lineart is messy too, with a lack of control that doesn't feel deliberate with stuff left unconnected or lines that wobble around, it looks like a penultimate pass to finished lines not final lineart
digital slop yaaay why paint when you can throw a gazillion layers of color and blending modes with an airbrush on photoshop this was no one can see your lines or your flats but it's not actually painted
can i please get a character who does not look like a model. can i get wrinkles stubble some sag perhaps
im going to be real now that you pointed out she works for Marvel it all makes sense bc most of this is prevalent in superhero US comics and I hate the art in them. i like simple stylized things and i like my worlds and characters that inhabit them to look boring. busiest comic artists I enjoy are probably Sfar, Segrelles and Toppi and their work is both technically impressive and boasting strong sense of style
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sfar is the busiest here with little space to breathe but only uses flats, and while his lines and volumes are lose so is everything so it looks stylish - its both uniform and deliberate. segrelles has eye searingly corny realistic oil paints but his composition and anatomy are so polished each panel is a standalone painting. toppi has a lot of texture but equally as much if not more empty black/white flats and could sneeze on a pen and somehow convey a 3/4 and a half face in perfect counter shading with that lvl of draftsmanship
but i can bitch about the technical stuff, a lot if not most of what I don't like about it is sheer personal preferences. feels bad to run my mouth on this when I myself am a mediocre comic artist :/ she can probably draw better than I do
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alkcomics · 3 years
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Here’s some process inks for a new Limiter drawing.
Expand below for images and blabbing about the steps so far.
I usually delete sketch layers as I go, but I wanted to keep a record of each step in my current process. Looking back through older art for F-ST pitch materials made me realize how much my digital illustration style has evolved since then.
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1. Thumbnail - I’ll do bunches of these until I can nail down the concept. Done small (but at the correct dimensions) so I can move quick and focus on composition shapes.
2. Roughs - Refined sketches for the lines, blacks, and colors. Basically a proof of concept. Also the stage where I’ll pull in references. I shot photos of my hands for this. The idea is to get all the hard problem solving out of the way as early as possible in the process so when I’m inking the lineart I can just flow. Every problem gets harder to fix the more refined the artwork gets. My sketch here was pretty clean, but that’s not always the case.
More of my illustrations get abandoned at this phase than any other, because my vision for lighting/environment exceeds my actual coloring abilities right now. Might not always be the case so I wanted to mention it. I have so many roughs for Limiter illustrations I hope I’ll be able to finish someday. I’ve shared these before, but here’s a snapshot of the view of unfinished illustrations I’m met with when I open my Limiter folder:
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3. Lineart - I up the dpi of the canvas, merge all my sketch layers together, and ink lines on top of them. This doesn’t have much shading in the colors, so only inked over the black and white sketches, but that depends on the demands of the piece.
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4. Filling blacks - Just paint-bucketing in all the blacks. Here I’m using a lighter color to see the outlines and make sure I’m getting everything, since there are a lot of abstract areas. Usually I do this directly on my lineart. I had some ambition to do some color effects in the black areas for this piece, so I set my lineart to a Reference Layer (in Clip Studio) and filled them separately.
5. Final blacks - Matched the color to the lineart. Didn’t do much editing here, but this is another ‘proof of concept’ stage where I’ll often go back and tweak things that aren’t working in the composition.
6. Flats - Laying in the flat colors. Because of some color effects I’ll be doing on top, I have one layer for the figures and one for the background. For more simple illustrations I’ll just flat on one layer. My coloring style is simple and generally flat, so layers don’t do much other than increase my file size.
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And that brings us to here! Sometimes I ink my sparkle effects in the lineart (like with my traditional comic work), sometimes I lay them on top (seemed easier for this piece). I converted the whole thing to black and white to try and problem solve why the sparkles weren’t doing it for me. Sometimes just focusing on values can really help -- both because it focuses only on the effect the elements have on the overall composition and because it feels less intimidating to make a change without having to tweak all the colors.
Seeing it like this made me realize it was the textured, radial lines that are throwing me. I want the light to be emanating out from Mars’ head, not coming in at the edges like that.
Time to go back and finish this! Thanks for reading.
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lil-tachyon · 3 years
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Your art has such a moebius like quality that i always struggle to replicate. Do you have any tips you could share?
Hey thanks for the question! I’m a complete amateur and Moebius is, in my estimation, one of the most skilled visual artists of the last century so please take everything I have to say with a grain of salt while I answer your question. This all comes from my own experience and I am still learning. 
First of all my main piece of advice for anybody drawing anything: if you want to get good, assume that you know nothing, start from the beginning, practice fundamentals, and draw every day, even if it’s just for like 15 minutes. No amount of art advice is worth anything if you don’t draw.
Now to address your question about how to replicate a ‘Moebius-like Quality,’ I would say what you need to do is study him very carefully.
When I first started drawing seriously and getting super into Moebius and all that I made the mistake of thinking “Okay, this is just simple lines and bright, mostly flat colors underneath. Not too hard to replicate.” Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Moebius’ art has this thing about it where it can often appear really simple but you try to recreate it and you find yourself hitting a wall. Let’s look at an example:
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This looks like what I said, right? Clean lines, striking color palette. But there’s more to that. First of all, the fact that the gigantic flat black shape at the bottom of the piece conveys simultaneously the impression of the girl on the left leaning against the chest of the central figure and the boy on right fading into the back of composition while not containing any detail itself should clue you in to how much of a master good o’l Gir is and how much thought and knowledge had to go into designing this piece. There’s more.
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If we zoom in on the head we can learn a bit. This is the focal point of the piece and, as such, this is where all the detail is. Where lines are used sparingly throughout the rest of the comp, here they provide an abundance of detail for the central figure’s elaborate headdress with contour lines defining the shape of the yellow crest and other lines throughout intimating textile patterns. The colors are striking but they’re not just random bright colors.
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There’s the light blue of the background, a smattering of desaturated purple/red colors in the headdress, and the yellow of the crest. Let’s look at a color wheel:
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You should notice that yellow is on the opposite side of the wheel from the entire blue-purple section. Yellow contrasts with blues and purples. Thus, just that tiny bit of yellow is enough to make it totally pop out from the rest of the more desaturated blues and purples in the piece. So, not just some random bright colors, but some carefully thought out areas of low and high color contrast.
Let’s look at another example:
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A small piece but so effective. Notice how in the top, the horizontal lines begin super tightly packed and spread to create a gradient from pack to white. Notice how the line weight increases between the shadowed and light sides of the mushroom cloud to brilliantly indicate a core shadow. Notice how the horse and rider are mostly just black shapes- but they’re composed in such a way that your mind knows exactly what they represent. Notice how the hatching that creates the ground texture also points towards the cowboy’s head as a focal point.
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Another one:
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Look at the linework on this. The way he varies the lineweights to indicate changes in value. The way each line describes the form of the figure and his clothes. How the lines create texture. No line here was put down by chance- each one has a purpose and Moebius knew the purpose of every mark he put on a paper.
So, I guess part one of my answer is you gotta really put the work into being a good artist and use Moebius as your guide. Get good with pens, be able to vary your lineweights, be confident with all different kinds of hatching styles, etc. Read up on color theory and see how Giraud applied it. Every new thing you learn, take that knowledge and use it to study your favorite artists and see how they applied it. That’s how you learn.
There’s a little more though and this applies to the content of Moebius’ art.
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Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the Moebius’ concept art for the unmade 1970’s Dune movie with a screenshot from the new Dune movie. What makes them different? As bizarre as the Moebius design is, it feels a hundred times more real to me than the armor pictured on the right. There’s a specificity to it. Where the Moebius design feels like the result of generations of tradition and culture resulting in an outfit as elaborate, unconventional, and distinctive as that of an Ottoman Janissary, a Landsknecht, or a Samurai, the image on the right looks like a generic assemblage of armor plates with no history behind them. 
As fantastic as Moebius’ work is, it definitely has a basis in the real world. I mean, he spent years illustrating a gritty, down-to-earth cowboy comic. All his designs feel distinct and specific and I would venture to say that a lot of that comes from taking an interest in real world cultures and traditions. 
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I think this is true of all real good science fiction and fantasy artists. They know how to take something from the real world and twist it to their own ends. 
I hope this answers your question and helps you find joy in creating art. That’s what it’s all about.
For more reading, here’s a William Stout article on the subject: https://www.williamstout.com/news/journal/?p=3806
As a postscript, I’ll include some other artists that I think anyone who is a fan of Moebius should check out.
Sergio Toppi:
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Katsuya Terada:
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Katsuhiro Otomo:
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Mark Schultz:
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iheartvelma · 3 years
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When comic coloring goes bad
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OK, I know this is a niche topic, but as the world has become aware of the damage that bad art restoration can do (hello, Monkey Jesus), there’s a similar problem in comic books. 
Traditional coloring had to be carefully planned. Were you working with the limitations of CMYK inks, slipshod print registration, cheap paper that would soak up and spread inks, and smaller comic book pages? 
If so, that meant your colors had to withstand a harsher process, be simpler and often flatter, letting the pencillers’ shading marks handle contouring, and the width of their lines to determine distance and depth (generally: thicker and darker = closer; thinner and fainter = further away).
Heavy Metal magazine posted a very interesting article on this topic, asking “Should old comics be recolored, ever?”  
The image above is from Moebius’ great work, The Incal. The left is an original panel; on the right is a recolored modern panel (in a different translation, hence the dissimilar lettering style which is likely a modern computer font vs hand-lettered original) 
The recolor shows what modern computer coloring is great at, which is gradients.
The pants on the falling man are no longer flat purple, they have 3D contouring of lighter grey areas. The background buildings, instead of being flat-ish shapes partially shaded with cyan washes, now have computer-generated gradients and fills for every facet and shape. 
Is it more “realistic?” Maybe, but now the intent is completely lost. In the visual vocabulary of the original, your eye focused on the central falling man, and the gradation from cyan at top to a faded white near the “bottom” of the canyon of buildings makes the distance seem horrifically huge. In the recolor, the visual primacy of the man is lost among the other shapes, and weirdly, it doesn’t look like he’s falling as far. 
Part of the art of comics is that it’s about omission, silence, focus. Like cinema, what you choose to focus on makes the point. If instead of a shot that uses a telephoto with high depth of field to pull a character into the foreground (say, to emphasize how alone they feel), the director just shot them from across the street with an iPhone, and did nothing to make them stand out from other pedestrians, traffic, buildings, etc, the point of the shot would be lost. 
What bugs me most about modern coloring / contouring is that it’s really easy to overdo it. One of my critiques of Garth Ennis’ The Boys is that the coloring completely obscures Darick Robertson’s pencils. 
Look at the difference between this line art, which is Robertson on his own:
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and this colored cover which is more typical of the interior artwork:
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Everyone is weirdly shiny and plastic. Rather than add realistic depth, it’s actually made them look squishy, flat and distorted. 
It’s like instead of skin, they have makeup samples or Calamine Lotion. 
There are so many little bits of visual detail going on, not to mention all the fold lines in their Mandatory Leather Jackets, it’s hard to know where to look. 
Rather than play up the comic-book-ness of things by going for flat or more subtle gradients - or using classic techniques like touches of zip-a-tone dot shading - they gooped this layer of airbrushing on airbrushing all over it. 
One of the arguments they make, particularly for reprints of older works, is that ‘the garish CMYK coloring of the past looks extra garish on high quality paper’ which may be true, but it also means you’re removing the comic-book-ness of it. 
I think this is sort of why the Zack Snyder version of Superman doesn’t really resonate. The colours are darkened, the textures amped up, the amount of visual detail on the screen boggles the imagination. Superman is brooding and Troubled. 
The 1978 Superman and its sequel do a lot more with a lot less. Yeah, the costume is simple and four-color bright. The only thing that troubles Superman is not the weight of the world, but how to balance his love for individual people with his duty to protect everyone - the problems of a big blue Boy Scout. It works better - it communicates clearly and quickly. Superman stands out among the grey and steel of Metropolis, against his black-clad Kryptonian foes, against the brilliant crystal of his arctic Fortress of Solitude. 
Christopher Reeve leans into the 4th wall just enough for us to know he gets it, but also layers some complex emotions on top of what could have been a stilted and cheesy role - he sells us on the idea that there’s a man under the big red S. The bright costume gets us to let our guard down; then he takes that opportunity to surprise us with nuance. 
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ot3 · 4 years
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My approach to flat colors + limited palette drawings
This is a follow up to this post  i made about how i go about figuring out a color palette for my limited palette drawings. an anon asked me about my actual technique of finishing them so this is gonna be an explanation of how I work in a limited palette with flat colors. I ended up with these thumbnails for a sketch last time so we’re gonna work from here and I’m gonna sort of walk through how i got to the finished version
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first things first: every part of this process is just developed as a result of me messing around. take my advice with a grain of salt and if you think you know a way to do something better/that makes you more comfortable. go with that over what I say.
I’m honestly a little surprised when people express confusion about how i draw like this because it��s SUPER simple - literally all you’re doing is just stacking solid color blocks of shape. its very imprecise despite how sharp everything ends up looking. 
First things first is that you want to decide how you will be handling your edges throughout the duration. Do you want your shapes to be ultra-sharp and precise, or do you want a little bit of a wobblier, grainier edge? Both can look good but it’s VERY much a matter of situational basis. i’ve been favoring looser and grainier shapes so that’s how i’m going to be working on this. 
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on the left here, you can see the shapes made with precise rectangular selections and an untextured pen, on the right, freehand drawn shapes and a grittier pen. There’s something immediately pretty different feeling about them. So play around with that first - its not something that’s fun to change halfway through! But lets step back a minute. It helps to work large to small. The two biggest shapes here are these orange chunks and everything gets stacked on top of them so i’m gonna do that first. 
Now, a key feature of what i do: clipping masks. almost all digital art programs have them. What a clipping mask does is it constrains the pixels of a layer to the transparency of the layer below it. Here I have the light orange layer, and then on top of it the buildings and billboard are clipped to the orange. Most of you probably already know this and I’m overexplaining a bit, but there was a time when i didnt know how clipping layers worked and someone had to explain it to me.
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now you’ll notice the shapes of the buildings are rough, and sloppy. here’s the fun part: since this is all about stacking shapes, only your exterior edges matter. this all gets filled in. be as sloppy as you want when you’re making your shapes. in fact, the outside edges get trimmed out a bunch to when i do this - i go in and erase them clean. Don’t be too finnicky about drawing perfect and precise! its a waste of time. As long as the silhouette is what you want, the interior can be a nightmare.
Working this way, it’s important to keep your layers stacked in a way you can make sense of. Right now there are four layers here: the background dark orange, the two main orange rectangle shapes, and then the buildings on one layer and a billboard on the other. I rack up a LOT of layers doing this and it makes it annoying in some aspects, but being able to freely recolor any one chunk without losing my detail is a key aspect of this.
So, I block those out
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Next, I do the same for the smaller chunks that are still main shapes. There are once again, a lot of layers here. The top layer is the hair - you can see the head showing through it. The head and arm underneath the hair, same layer. Then the cup. Then the light green pieces of paper. Then the dark green ones.
The cup is technically farther forward than the head and arm so you would think it’d go on top, but the point isnt to recreate the foreground and background hierarchy with layers so much as it is to group things in a way i can work with. The cup goes underneath so it can be grouped with all the other objects on the table. 
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now, i just go and fill in all the shapes. i forgot to do the blinds but i get them later. you might notice a lot of these shapes are pretty rough, which was harder to notice before they were filled in. Now that I can see better, I go in with an eraser and clean up the edges until they’re the shape I want 
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sometimes erasing leaves little bits of ‘noise’ around objects like on this napkin here. i like to keep a little bit of this noise for texture, but if you dont like it make sure to get rid of it! if you’re working very crisp this will stand out a LOT
Next up is to add some detail onto the objects
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I flipped the canvas here because the head shape was wrong - the ears were uneven and i wanted to fix it. I want to go about adding detail onto the billboard and buildings. i do all detail with clipping masks - but the objects are clipped to another layer and so nothing can be clipped to them. instead, i unclip them and just erase by selection for the same effect
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all of the text on the papers is clipped to the papers below it. the buttons are clipped to the phone. the yellow photos and card are actually another independent layer on top, in case i want to recolor them separately. im indecisive and end up recoloring things a lot. For the most part these objects are starting to become recognizable as more than just shapes
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i go in an add the details on the background and character now. theres some more stuff on the table. the lines of the face and ears are on one layer, and the flats of the eyes below that. Here’s what each group of layers is, and what they look like on their own
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The background/bottom chunk. Just the table, window, and shirt.
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The middle bit. All the stuff on the table and the blinds.
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Finally, the top, which is just his head and arm. 
now this stage is the bare bones of the drawing. you can more or less tell everything that’s happening. it reads. but its very much lacking in something - it doesnt have a ton of depth or interest. and adding that additional detailing, the dept and interest, is where stuff starts getting REALLY tricky and subjective. 
im gonna take you to a much simpler scenario to show the sort of options i go through at this stage
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ahh its our dear friend, sphere casting shadow. this is, more or less, the kind of image we have. you can tell whats happening but it’s lackluster. there are TONSSS of ways frm here that you can go add interior detail to a shape once it has been established. here are some quick and SUPER rough examples
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from top left to bottom right: flat cel shading, softer airbrushed/gradient shading, halftone, and a textured brush. Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. They can also be combined.
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for example, here’s the solid cel shading being used to contain a gradient/airbrushed detail. This image - probably the single oldest piece of my art i still willingly show people - is entirely colored with gradients being contained in cel-shaded chunks. It has a sort of soft, luminous quality but without losing its crispness.
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here’s a super quick bust with some variations of stuff going on. obviously this is no masterpiece but you see how different types of detailing can interact with each other and be used to distinguish materials too. 
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With the mob psycho comic I did, the detailing that wasnt line was done using a variety of halftones of different shapes layered on top of each other
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by contrast parts of my ace attorney comic use a textured brush and have a sort of blended, papery feel
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any of them can work for pretty much anything as long as you are using it with intent. practice around. mix styles of finishing together. find a comfort zone. the more you do it the more intuitive it becomes and at the heart of it this process is a very intuitive way of drawing because of how far removed it is from realism.
Now here is the trick - light and shadow.
Everything up to this point has been very flat and adding detail helps but there’s only so much that can accomplish. To get HEAVY light and shadow you need to think about things differently. I think if there’s any part of this process that’s complicated, its this one. 
To truly get the most out of your palette, you need to pick chunks of an image to be in higher/lower light and then either ‘step up’ or ‘step down’ the colors in that chunk. here’s what I mean.
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Here’s our ball with a beam of light on it. Everything Within the beam of light is one step in our limited palette lighter than anything outside of it. Here’s how I go about doing this: the shape of the beam of light is below everything else. Then, once I have the shape blocked out, i select it. With that selection in place, i go to EVERY SINGLE LAYER that’s effected, lock the opacity, and recolor that chunk. So what’s going on here is that there is only one more layer - the beam of light, below everything but the background, and the rest of this effect is just caused by every layer above it now being two-toned following the exact same silhouette. THIS is why it’s so important to keep your layers separate - if the shadow and highlight had been painted onto the base directly, i would not be able to do this without significant effort. 
This works with all of the finishing techniques I talked about above
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A combination of cel shading and half toning, all stepped up to give the appearance of heavier light on one area.This is also how I go about rendering transparency in this style. All of my layers are fully opaque and I allow the colors to do the work of conveying transparent material
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Here’s our ball with the patterned/textured brush  shading, being viewed partially through a window
it’s obviously not a very representational way of working, but as long as your audience UNDERSTANDS what you’re trying to convey, then you’re executing it successfully.
So with that, now we’re gonna go and finish this drawing.
For this one, I decide a big central shadow is necessary. In the original thumbnail, he was backlit, which I still plan on doing, and that wouldn’t make sense without casting a shadow.
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I’ve had to change the colors of some objects entirely in order to get this to work right. This is what I mean when I call this an intuitive process - some stuff felt weird, so I changed it. This also involves a bit of problem solving. The newspaper is now unable to be separated from his hand. Sometimes changing the color of an object makes that object look better, but ruins its relationship with the objects around it. It’s up to you to learn how to adjust and finagle things until you get it where you want.The paper he has and the napkin underneath it also all blend together now.
The next few parts of this process are REALLY just trial and error, where I toss a bunch of spaghetti at it until it works. It’s hard to decide what to screenshot, because I don’t know what will or will not be part of the finished drawing. To that end, you can watch the recording of this drawing here. This video isn’t edited at all so it contains a couple of minutes of really shitty sketching, and then all of the color thumbnailing work i did in the last post. Actually getting started on these final colors begins around the two minute mark. It is also sideways, I am sorry I don’t know why. 
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Now, here you can see where I’ve more or less worked things out. His hand’s not on the cup anymore because my friend pointed out it didnt have an arm attached to it. I added some halftoning to make a gradiating effect in the sky and on the table to give the impression of a sunrise. His eyes are different but as of posting this, I don’t like them and am probably about to go back and change them again. The Cup now has a shadow and some rim lighting. His hand is in shadow. The stain on the napkin is big enough to define the edge of the paper on top of it.
Little things like that. 
The more you draw like this the more the way you need to think about your space becomes natural. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best of luck!
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mysuperlaserpiss · 4 years
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What program + brushes do you use?
I use MediBang Paint Pro. It's free and I like how simple it is.
These are all my go-to brushes
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I can't stand using just one brush for sketching. Charcoal has a cleaner look, but I tend to use it to refine the final color pieces than actually sketching with it.
Sumi allows me to draw more fast and stylized, idk I feel like I can be loose with my doodles with this brush. I also use Sumi to color flats into the comics, or any illustration for that matter. I've been switching between both Sumi and School Pen to the flat color lately.
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Next is the inking. Honestly, I love to ink with lots of different brushes! School Pen and Pencil are my personal faves because I can get soft-looking line or really thick and bold lines.
I also like to sketch with them too...
Now, my coloring varies a lot. I can have a "painterly" style or flat colors with a few gradients and highlights.
As I mentioned before, Sumi and/or School Pen are used for flats, after the flats are done, I go in and use two brushes for shading/painting.
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Oil Paint gives texture and helps you paint out your soild shapes. It lets you get all of your solid colors on there as well. You can blend it a little bit but you have to switch between two colors to get them to blend.
Oil Pastel is great for blending! However, keep in mind your brush size, because the bigger you make the brush can make the area your painting appear fuzzy, especially when you're trying to make a surface look smooth!
I know this isn't a brush, but the gradient tool is super rad and could really make a flat sketch pop!
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And make a separate layer for highlights!
Remember, y'all are not chained to one way to draw, ink, and color! Experiment with different brushes and techniques!
Quick Side note, this did not take me 27 layers to do, I have other doodles on the same canvas. This only took five layers.
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pantmonger · 4 years
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As many are practicing a craft in this time of social isolation, So I thought I would touch on a basic that a lot of new artists don't do. Working in Passes, a short tutorial. Most beginners tend to try to draw a picture one fully detailed bit at a time, but much like failing to block an image out gives rise to creeping proportion errors, so does that approach give color and detail errors. Instead finish the image to a consistent level in passes. Pass 01 In this example I started with an initial pass utilising reference for the pose, I blocked out the basic structure. You want to make sure you know where everything is going to go before you get really commuted to the image. Pass 02 In this pass I dress the pose, blocking out it's costume and rough details. You can include revision or changes as you go, but get it all to this level, then decide if it is conveying the idea you want it to. If not go back and change it. Pass 03 Detail time. I tend to think of this pass as being the final ‘pencils’ if the image. These pencils can be the basis for the inks if you are making comic, or provide the structure and become invisible by the end of a more painterly piece. Pass 04: If you are working a more comic style image there will be an inking step before this. In my pipeline its now time for blocking out the flat colours. Make the colours garish when you first place the, to stop similar colours blending into each other. Then, give them the real colours you want. Note: This garish first is only appropriate if you are working colours in layers, otherwise just use the final colours right off the bat. Some artist prefer to keep it all free wheeling at this stage, they are better then I :) Pass 05 This is a step you can skip depending what finished look you are after. For example simple colours and cell shade will not have 'textures' Here I have added some noise, rust, textures etc to the flats. Pass 06 The quick global lighting pass. Not concerned with the nitty gritty, nor ambient light yet. Just blocking out rough areas of shadow and highlight. This is so when I zoom in and work the image later, I don't have to worry about breaking the lighting. Pass 07From here on in I tend to zoom in and work the details of the image. But its still a good idea to keep all areas worked to the same level and work in passes especially if the image involves a background. As that backgrounds lighting will effect the characters etc. But for this little one, I'm calling it done.If you like my work, please consider taking a look at my Fantasy RPG products. Physical/PDFs on DrivethruRPG:  Digital on Roll20:
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scrawler-jay · 3 years
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of mice and artblock
So, midterms happened and I abandoned this blog for a while. But now I’m back, and I come bearing mice.
*
I’ve been really struggling with finding subjects I like to draw. I’m happy to work on skeleton studies until Judgment Day to better understand anatomy, but I know I need to balance “homework” art with “for fun” art, or else risk losing motivation for learning to draw -- and I’m so used to writing fiction at this point that no subject really appeals to me artistically unless it’s got 5,000+ words of story attached (or at least some narrative/character ideas, yanno -- something for my brain to pick at). The obvious solution is to draw concept art and characters from my written stories, but I feel really intimidated by that because I’m such a beginner artist that nothing I create now will do justice to the vision I have in my head.
I need art OCs and concepts – things that I will only draw art of, and have never written a story about. Stuff that doesn’t have to match a previously established, written story, and that I can change as I learn more and my skills improve.
I ended up drawing a bunch of mice.
This was initially just a whim. Human anatomy requires a lot of skill to pull off, especially faces and hands, but mice felt more beginner-friendly to me. Admittedly, I was going for a more cartoony style as opposed to photorealism, so if you’re looking at this from a realism perspective then these are pretty poor mice. However, I don’t feel ashamed of them, which I am taking as a good sign.
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I kept drawing one mouse over and over. I ended up calling him Leo just because it was funny – “leo” refers to lions, but here Leo is just a little mouse. But of course, giving him a name (and a gender, incidentally) is the start of a story. Via a flight of fancy, I got it into my head that I wanted to do a painting of Leo trying to catch a big snowflake. I made some thumbnails of what I wanted the scene to look like, and then cut out a roughly 7 inch x 7 inch piece of watercolor paper from a big sheet that I had under my bed, sketched the scene in pencil, and then finished with watercolor pencils (and a white gel pen for the snowflakes). The process probably took 2.5 to 3 hours.
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So, now the lore is that Leo is a mouse living in a little house in an old tree at the edge of the woods, and he wears a red scarf. I did not like this painting. It seemed over-saturated and the colors didn’t quite work the way I wanted them to. I ended up watching a tutorial on color theory, and decided to redo the painting using my newfound knowledge of color schemes. I used this color palette tool to get an idea of what kinds of colors would look good together, and settled on a complementary scheme with bluish green and brownish red.
And then, everything went wrong.
I tried to redo the painting, still working traditionally. I rushed the sketch because I was so eager to get right into working with color. This time, to avoid over-saturation, I used watercolors out of a pan rather than in pencil form. Mixing the colors in the lid of the pan took a really long time because I was so picky about shades, and because I continued rushing I didn’t allow the layers enough time to dry. Leo’s scarf (now green instead of red) bled into his russet fur, and the mailbox was the wrong shape, and I tried to erase a pencil line and created a dark blotch over an area that was supposed to be white with snow – and then I gave up.
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I had downloaded Krita, a piece of digital drawing/painting software, a while ago, but hadn’t had any success using it because my desk isn’t big enough to accommodate both a laptop and my small tablet. Using my lap to hold the tablet was an exercise in frustration, and I knew so little about how digital art works that I just felt really overwhelmed and lost whenever I opened the program.
However, Krita (like most digital art software) has an undo button that I find very alluring, so I decided to try it again, now on a shiny new desk from Ikea that is actually big enough to support tablet and laptop together. I think just the space on the desk really made all the difference, but also I was determined to get this artwork of a mouse to a place where I felt satisfied with it.
I spent a solid 5 hours working on what ended up being a very simple colored drawing of a mouse catching a snowflake outside his little house. I barely blended anything at all, and there’s no light source that required me to shade anything – it’s just flat color. However, I really like these colors, and I think I did well (for an absolute beginner). I want to go back and add textures/shading to give an impression of depth, but I'm not sure how.
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Leo – like all of my figures – feels really stiff, so I also want to work on gestures/studies of mice doing things. And, thanks to the popularity of mice as lab animals and pets, there are way more reference photos of mice than I expected! Most refs depict the house mouse, Mus musculus, but I did find the work of a wildlife photographer named Dean Mason who spent 15 years photographing harvest mice (micromys minutus).
Unfortunately, all of the prior artwork in this post I had drawn almost purely from imagination, and I think it shows. I studied two mice from photos in pencil, then erased the lines until they were barely visible and tried to do the fur texture in ink (with a dip pen, so there is some unevenness when the pen was extra inky).
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Left is my first attempt doing the fur texture. I was more cautious with layering pen strokes, so you can see the lines of strokes fairly evenly. Right is my 2nd attempt, where I was bolder with the pen. I like these mice more than the one I created in the digital painting; these ones (especially the right) feel more Beatrix Potter-ish, which is a vibe I like.
Do I want to go back and fix the anatomy in my digital art of Leo? Yes. I also want to take another stab at doing this piece traditionally, but this time, I'd go monochrome and try to do everything in brown. However, part of me is exhausted from drawing ten million snowflakes and does not want to relive that experience with a gel pen -- I've already done it once with a tablet pen, and that was enough.
I have a hazy, far-off goal of creating a comic of Leo having adventures with another mousy friend, but that’s so far in the future that it’s not worth spending time considering right now. In the nearer future, however, Leo’s friend might become a reality – I know he’s an albino mouse (name TBD) who either escaped from a drug-testing facility (I loved The Secret of NIMH movie as a kid) or else is a pet who was dumped into the wild by a human owner who no longer wanted him. Leo is outgoing and adventurous, and this friend is shy and cautious.
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octopusunoreverse · 3 years
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Little white lies
Little white lies is a magazine created with the sole aim of capturing and reviewing movies through out the year normally printing 4 times a year quarterly, though the magazine has become more well known for its independent ethos and iconic, striking illustrative covers created by a new artists each time, deadicating its front section to upcoming theatrical release.
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Sin City Issue 2 - Jul/Aug 2005   this one was one of the first early covers that stood out to me, reminiscent of early grunge comic styles used for the gritty Noir/Action graphic novels, fitting for the fact that the movie itself is based of the Sin city comics, the difference for this is that the artist for this cover has taken the features form the actor to then blend it with the style used for comics; heavy sett shadows sonf light shown but blacking out the ares where the shadows are completely in black and leaving the background showing through to show where the light hits, but they still show a lot of texture in the face by using what I can assume is almost like a dry brush texture, roughing up the face  implanting the idea that this character is ether rough character or dangerous, the artist also hints at the story itself with smaller type and illustration shown in the form of tattoos hidden under the layers of grime and of what I would assume are plasters, I do like the white negative look off it.
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Marie Antoinette Issue 8 - Oct/Nov 2006  I personally like this one because the vibrant colours, hinting most likely to her more risky and existing life before she became romantic heroine that we know now in history, though its nice to at least learn more about the various females throughout history as there stores are normally erased or twisted, so for a historical drama I believe it works well, the one single figure of Marie Antoinette by herself standing out against the flat black background, making the character of Antoinette the main visual point of the illustration, because she is, looking at the portrait itself, id assume they took a image of the actor in their costume and thresholded it and then they most likely multiplied the layer so that they could then drawn underneath, similar to the techniques in the pen tool workshop.
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Control Issue 13 - Sep/Oct 2007  the cover for this one I like the monochrome colours and black used, it gives this feeling of hollow pared along side the mood the thresholded image of the actor, I particularly enjoy the typography the font strong and bold in its shapes has these spirals exploding, visually interpreting it as them loosing control which I thinks works very well for a  sci-fi mystery thriller film, so meany lose ends left unsolved. the colour palette as I said before is monochrome which I think is a interesting handle on a typical cover the highlighting the character with lighter colours showing the characters important and stands out against the simple darker colour background and text.
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Let the Right One In Issue 22 - Mar/Apr 2009 This Swedish romantic horror film reinvented vampier in the love film, because lets be honest most vampire movie suck, the artist took one of the iconic scenes from the movie and beautify painted it with water colours and pencil/graphite, the iconic light eyes of the character shine through as the, watercolour blood drips down her face ones again reminiscent to the movie itself, I like the use of the hair being used to silhouette  the face, the position/placement of the face itself it feels like its looking directly into your soul almost.
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An Education Issue 25 - Sep/Oct 2009 I think this is a brilliant depiction of a coming of age movie, straight away introducing you to the main character, the bright pink hue, brilliantly used to show off the innocences of the character themselves, and that is pushed by the limited about of skin showing. the illustration itself seems to of been done with gouache paints considering the smoothness of the colours working together on the page, the hair, nose and eyes are my favourite, especially with the eyes and nose they have so much detail, you can see the youth in the eyes and the realistic look of them works so well and I love how the artist has used just shadow and light to detail the nose, and I like the hair personally because of the way they got light to reflect onto it as well as how it looks so soft and neat it looked.
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Where the Wild Things Are Issue 26 - Nov/Dec 2009 I wanted to personally wanted to look at this issue was because it relates to the movie/book that I am looking at now, I think this is a brilliant concept for the movie I personally love the childish simple drawing, reminding me of childish drawings, and I like the idea of the ‘wild things’ climbing from in Max’s mouth, I think this is brilliant due to the fact that Max has problems of acting out in such a wild way. it also relates to the original poster for the movie ‘there is one in all of us’, I like the use of the colours are quite depressing in itself, but in the realistic view of the movie where in the ‘real’ world the character maxi is struggling with the divorce of his family.
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Attack the BlockIssue 34 - Mar/Apr 2011 This one stood out to me both because of the colour pallet and the style of the outline. The outline themselves reminds me primarily of the linocuts, I think it shows the mystery and the lack of empathy for there assailants and how the gang themselves blend together when the character is all one colour. I personally loved the background/the sky it has beautiful speckles of stars and meteorite shower. I don’t particularly understand the Artists use of smoke, id have to assume that it has a impact or relevance to the story itself but it beautify shapes that fit with the Lino style.
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Call me by your name  - issue 71- Sep/Oct 2017 I particularly like this illustration for this coming-of-age romantic drama film, though I personally don’t like cinematic worlds use of age gaps between their gay romantic relationships. but this particularly artistic interpretation, the oil pastils drawing dose defiantly scream coming of age movie and it also dose make me think of the link that combines with the main character being half Italian, the background flows but also seems to be pulled away from the page, maybe because of the fact that there is less gaps in the foreground, I also like there use of lighting its done well to be presented coming from the right side of the page. But the type that they used to show the title docent fit for the rest of the image, naturally I believe that the artists probably wanted to remove from the original type from the movie poster.
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The miseducation of Cameron post Issue 76 - Aug/Sep/Oct 2018 I believe that this depiction of their movie, the colour used for the face is a direct reference to the film poster the yellows, green  and pinks. the background gives away so much for the movie and the elements and its relationships with the story of being sent to a conversion camp, and the coping methods that one turns to. The expression on there face is a well done illustration of Chloë Grace Moretz, I honestly recognised her straight away without knowing that it was her in the movie; back to the expression itself shows so much betray, sadness and heartbreak all in one, its an expression that is shown through out the film a common apparition.
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isle of dogs - Issue 74 - Mar/Apr 2018  I personally loved this movie, the entire stile used in the cover in the magazine is in the same style used throughout the movie itself, the movie used these 2D elements through out the stop animation. the posters show off so meany aspects of the movie the setting of the movie ‘the isle of dogs’ the science group trying to find a cure for the ‘dog flu’ it hints to the open scenes that were done in the original Japanese style. This is a common aspect in this imagery it has little elements of the story dotted around this.
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vvsnotes · 3 years
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Reflective Post. Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Yesterday, I re-watched Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse for the second time. And I thought, there isn't possibly a better way for me to begin my reflective posts but with the Spider-Man. 
That movie is very important to me on so many levels. All the way through aesthetics, story, execution, animation, ideas, colour palette, characters design, to sound design and innovative approach. And well, it's not Disney, nor Pixar (which by the way, is also Disney). To see an animated movie so well made, independent from the biggest animation corporation, is amazing. It brings some fresh air into that monopolized industry. Don't get me wrong, I adore Disney, however, when you realize almost everything is owned by it, it kind of makes you feel uneven. 
Back to Spider-Verse. First of all, the aesthetic. The producers made the whole animation using an unusual approach, which consists of mixing 3D and 2D, to achieve the comic look. They also stylized the characters and applied textures and lines which made the image flatter. It a very nice change, since animation these days tends to go towards 'the more realistic the better'. Spider-Man Verse completely flipped this and showed everyone how animation can be done in a fun way. 
From my perspective, I love 2.5D animations. I don't like it when it's too flat, or too 3D. I like to experiment with style and techniques. I like to mix my illustrations with 3D features, to give it that unique style, so when Spider-Man Verse came out I couldn't contain my happiness. For example, remaking absolutely genius movies like the Lion King and turning it into live-action, really doesn't sit well with me. The original Lion King holds so much authenticity. The live-action just strips it out of it. It's almost boring. Everyone has a camera in their pockets, we see realistic effects in movies all the time. I don't understand why anyone in the industry would think that making it look realistic is good. 
The animation is probably the only medium that actually allows the creators to completely change the world and do anything to it. You don't need to justify anything in animation, because everyone knows it's not real. The whole point of animation is to not imitate real things because it allows interpreting everything in a different way. The Spider-Verse does just that. It's a movie where the creators completely unleashed their creativity and imagination. It's a movie that I wouldn't watch frame by frame because every second is as an illustration. Not even mentioning the hand-animated sequences, the stop frames with paintings. It's packed with effects and it makes it amazing because every time you watch it you can find something new. The attention to detail is incredible. 
I honestly could write and talk about Spider-Verse for ages. One thing that I'm very happy about is that I am not the only one talking. I'm so delighted that it got the recognition it deserved. It proved that animation can be watched by everyone, not just kids. It showed the whole spectrum of possibilities animation holds, and well, it's one of my biggest inspirations as of now. 
References: 
  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. (2018). Sony Pictures Releasing.
Wimshurst, H. (2018). The Genius Animation Behind Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse | Analysis. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21oG99eF3A [Accessed 21 Nov. 2020]
Wired (2019). How Animators Created the Spider-Verse | WIRED. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wUKu_V2Lk.
Abad-Santos, A. (2019). Lion King 2019 vs. the original: what’s better and worse about the remake. [online] Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2019/7/17/20694836/lion-king-2019-versus-1994-original-review-comparison.
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First of all I think the line art is absolutely beautiful and that’s definitely one of the best things about this art style but that definitely takes ages to do. And I think the time spent on the art style is later made up by making the colouring and shading quite fast and simple as the colours are usually just few swatches without much complexity, and then cell shading is used which is definitely way easier that full rendering and better aesthetically for the comic format.
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Now Map added a blue overlay on the full piece (colour and linear) to set the overall tone and hue of the panel / drawing. The blue shadows will stick out a bit less if the entire drawing has a blue hue rather than plain, flat colours.
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See I feel this is quite original thing to do. A lot of people stack lights on top of the shadows or like Maf take away the shadows creating light areas but this is usually done using certain brushes meanwhile Maf simply highlights them with the lasso tool and deletes the shadow layer they put on the piece earlier. I’m pretty sure I never seen anyone do it this way before but this looks really quick to do especially that especially that your strokes have to be quite fast to make sure the lines you make with the lasso aren't shaky, so I’m assuming this saves a lot of time too.
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I actually also do that in my drawings where I slightly outline the shadows. There’s no real reason why I do it like the tutorial says its a stylistic preference but I just really like how it looks when I do it, makes the drawings look more stylised.
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This might be very useful to make the lineart where the light is coming from look lighter and brighter to add to the effect of the light make it even more visible.
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Adding the extra warm colour really puts the character into their setting. The yellow airbrushed overlay is really simple to add but does so much for the illustration overall, it makes the light source feel real like its actually there and is a really simple way to connect the setting and the character together.
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I also add little highlights like this to hair and skin especially in my own drawings. It adds a lot of texture to the piece makes the hair look shiny and stand out and for clothes it can imitate different materials. For example leather picks up a lot of light so adding a lot of highlights would be good to show it’s texture and it goes for basically any material or surface, so adding highlights is definitely a must.
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Grouping all the layers in a drawing will definitely be useful when you’re working on multiple panels at once because after a bit of time it must get quite confusing to do.
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askhamotzi · 5 years
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Hi Sammy! Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm trying to work on my first digital comic and I was wondering if you have any tips to share? Your work is so beautiful and the composition is amazing and so inspiring! I usually work in CSP when I draw, and I've done some paper drafts, I'm just starting the digital process now :) thank you so much! And I hope that mine will come out to be even remotely as incredible as yours!
hi there, omg thank you so much!!
for me, the process i’ve usually been doing for digital comics goes like this:
1. planning/research - this can go on throughout the entire process of making the comic, but it’s a good idea to get a big chunk of it done before you start so you have ideas and know what you’re doing! grab ref photos if you need, look stuff up on the internet, do whatever
2. write script and create characters (usually i write scripts in microsoft word, but for “dream” i worked off of an account i wrote up on the notes app of my phone after i woke up from the dream, and improvised the script page by page) - i frequently make up characters before i even have a story, but if i do have a story in mind i tend to do the characters at the same time as the script
3. sketch comic, insert placeholder text - i do all of my comics in FireAlpaca! i use the box/shape tool to lay out where i think i want panels to go and what size they should be. i usually work at the same size i would be printing at, but you could work bigger! i usually combine the sketch stage with the thumbnail stage because it’s easier for me to layout panels on the actual page so i can see how they fit instead of tiny thumbnails. here i sketch out placement of objects and poses, and make sure perspective makes some kind of sense, and any other important things i don’t want to forget in the lining stage (or coloring, like lines where i want certain shading to go). i also include placeholder text that may or may not be final, but i highly recommend laying out words as early as possible bc they can take up a lot of space you need to account for 
4.  draw comic - i go right into ink/lines! i don’t do a pencil stage (the pencil stage is the same as my sketch stage). to start i always draw the panels by hand (i don’t use a tool because i like an organic line, but to make sure they’re somewhat straight i use the boxes from before as a guide). i also do the word balloons by hand, and then i do figures/backgrounds. sometimes i leave out details that i will include in the coloring stage, like certain textures (texture of trees or grass, for example)
5. color - i start with flat color and then shade! usually i hand pick the colors i want to shade with instead of using a multiply layer or something like that, but for really complicated things i do tend to use different kinds of special layers. 
6. (this is throughout the process) but sometimes i will take the FireAlpaca file and put it into photoshop to use their guide tools to adjust things, or use a textured brush for something, or to insert text. for “dream” i went back and forth regularly with FireAlpaca and photoshop 
TIPS
- for composition, i like to consider mood and keeping the eye interested. lately, i don’t tend to break the mold of the grid without a reason (this is just me, you can do whatever you want!! tons of people don’t adhere to the grid and do other really cool stuff. i’m still learning!). the reason for breaking it could really be that i just need more room for words or to show something and i’ll extend the panel into the margins or bleed area. or maybe the shape of a panel needs to be changed bc it’s a dream or a flashback, or maybe you need to go into the bleed area bc something dramatic is happening! you can also mess with the colors of your panels, and the colors of the margin space. consider too, if you like the look of the page overall as an individual piece! 
- if you plan on printing your comics, make sure you print out your sketched pages/layouts at actual size so you can make sure the panel sizes and font sizes are legible when a person is going to read it! this can take a lot of attempts, but once you find what you like hopefully you won’t have to do it a million times again
- for longer comics, i recommend creating a palette of colors that include all the ones you use most frequently so you don’t have to constantly eyedrop them from other pages
- don’t get too hung up on any 1 panel, remember that the average person spends something like 6 seconds (probably less) looking at one panel before moving on 
- i work at a very high dpi, like 400, which has always been fine (so far), i always recommend working higher bc i think it’s safer, even tho it does make bigger files
- remember to save your work, and save it in MULTIPLE places!! back it up!
- this is just a taste thing but i love comics with custom type/handwritten type styles! you could try out doing a handwritten font or something! i used Calligraphr for mine, and i’ll prob use it again to make more
- i think it’s important to try and best recreate how your audience will experience reading your comic! since it’s impossible as the author/artist to see your own work for the first time as a finished piece, make sure that before you call it done, you give it a couple days without looking at it, and then come back to read it with fresh eyes. see if you think you’re getting the effect you want and if you like the flow! sometimes this can be hard to see/feel though, so you’ll have to just trust your gut sometimes haha!
that’s all i can think of for now but you can always ask me if you have more specific questions!! good luck with your comics!!
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haeroniel-doliet · 2 years
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Turns out its a helluva mess when i start messing beyond flat colors!! Might be a sign to not do so much again (but yet .. practice to get to where im one day happy??)
Like ive done as much as i know how to do at this point in time to the portraits (still gratuitously bloody shame on me :') ) oh except for a background bc WHAT does one DO for a character shoulders up portrait background??? Settled for now on a gradient old school photo style lmao
I like the fix it one as is, a lot (but also i liked the lineart for the portraits better i think) and idk, imngonna try give it a light bit of shadows and lights, maybe step away from a lot of blending bc i think i think thats where i went wrong on the other one
Like, they look fine, but they also look. Meh. Like ive used too much blur tool (i havent, i tried using kritas wet brush thing and it looks....ok close up but the effect is no good when zoomed out like posting size APPARENTLY) and its all noncommittally washy.
(cont'd over thinking)
Am i gonna 'render' them a third time??? Do i have the mental strength?? Bc i think maybe trying for something not so, "realistic" could do me better, like a little more cell shady. But also i dont?? I dont know how to cell shade? I dont watch anime or cartoons v much and my style isnt that cartoony or clean lined?
Maybe on the fix it i can try a more....... Conservative and less blended shade/highlights? (And if i like it/learn smth new go back and re re do the portraits same style) I also just. Idk. How does one make it not look so. Flat and meh?? Im doing basic color stuff ok i think, ive got a bit of texture but its still? Eh???
Honestly i could just post them and move on but i dunno, i have the energy to problem solve a lil bit so why not?? (Not tonight. Im gonna sleep on this all)
Why post shit im not 100% proud of? (Ngl kinda been in the mood to take down that first sketch of the fix it bc it looks nowhere near as good as what i fixed it up to but ....... Ah fuck it i was happy w it when i did it so eh)
Why why why oh why is art so hard?????????
I wanna try and become one of those cool artists who post multiple fun things yknow, like u get inspired and can draw it beginning to post in one evening! Im probably way over thinking and pushing myself to some standard of unrealistic perfection i have for myself...
(also i like thumbnail doodled out like, all these things i wanna draw for a really nice fic i read and even after editing some i have like 8 bits i wanna draw?? 4 as like a mini comic bc i havent done one since i was a child and i think itd be kinda rad if i learned to draw short comics for fic scenes i like??? But yeah basically in one inktober post there would only be 5 ideas (a lil more complicated on average i do give for granted but like. Those took me WEEKS) but yeah i just. I wanna draw them. Even if itll probably take me for fuckin ever... (And i didnt even finish off the last two inktober batches, oh. And i have a uni thesis to do ew) .... I wanna push myself to draw faster (less iterations to get it right) and so i can have rly solid and good and quickly done drawings to then color in as i learn to for future?)
Ugh man. You know what i need to do/shouldve been doing before i jumped into coloring original stuff?? I shouldve done colored studies. Like ive been drawing scenes both from reference and original on the inktobers and i think thats why my drawing/character stuff has gotten decent. I really should just whip out like prettily colored movie screencaps and work on painting studies of them. That would really fix up why i cant figure out lights and shadows and blending in coloring! No horrid tutorials just figuring out how can i make it work for me
And you know? You know what it is okay to have pieces that are from before i figured it out right? Im gonna try a slightly different thing for the fix its (if i hate it, theyre good as flat colors too) and yes they dont have a background either please love of god someone tell me how to add random backgrounds bc im not in the mood of scene building further but they float in off white space atm.
If i learn smth ground breaking and can QUICKLY do a bette rendition of the portraits, sure the perfectionist wins. But maybe just maybe. It would be fine to post them as they are. Yea, they look roughly as lifeless as my first big painting/that dinluke poster redraw. And maybe thats okay. Because hi if i do dedicate to doing like a good few color focused studies of star wars scenes as a treat i can come back stronger and have a better piece???? Its about growth babes. YEA
Alright i said to myself thats it in gonna go sleep on it and continue tomorro but. I thought id slip in here a secret surprise for anyone unfortunate enough to have clicked read more... And i got a little whiplash opening the picture bc it looks. SO WRONG but the more you look at it its like ... Fine. Ok judge for urself and tell me pls, first and second attempts at 'rendering' the portraits (the darker bground was the first attempt just going by gut, the lighter one after trying to watch like 1 tutorial and using more brushes and just generally trying rly hard!!)
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yes ive clearly fixed issues in the sketch differently in both so they... look... like different expressions?? idk man idk idk idk see now this small they look differently off!! god the curse of the zoom in and out and perception.
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