meruz

[meruz]

hey new york city im at anyc all four days with @crowlets this weekend pull up. artist alley P20!

[meruz]

bro I followed you instantly bc of those severance stickers but then I see you make SAMBUCKY ART???? yeah ok yeah ok im in

oh thank god someone out there is into both. i got u 👍

[meruz]

Hi sorry if this is an odd question but i was wondering how u feel about ur art being printed for personal use? like eg to paste in a journal spread? if you’re not comfortable that’s totally fine ofc!

yeah thats fine just dont sell, distribute, or mass produce it in any way please. thanks for asking!!!

[meruz]

hiiiiii do you have those amazing severance stickers available anywhere for sale??

thank you thank you thank you

yeah.....not right now but.........one day.......i promise......

[meruz]

Hi!! However many years ago you did a painting(?) of a hardware store in the boston(?) area and i literally can’t find it now, but i really treasured it as someone that wanders a lot of craft and hardware and hobby shops accompanying friends who do miniatures and model kits. do you still have that piece publicly available anywhere? it’s one of my favorites of yours

yep its right here! this is one i actually referenced from my own phone pics haha. i also love a hardware store

i actually have a relevant process post for that drawing here also

[meruz]

@andy-dew

Sure!! I think its pretty straightforward though. basically. for anything like this where I'm literally just drawing a real life location its just a matter of collecting a bunch of images. here's my pureref board:

the og U street location for Ben's Chili Bowl is actually closed for renovation/repair rn and idk. theres another location open across the street but I didn't take enough pics the last time i was there. so i opted for google maps images of the old location.

its actually super easy to get like a billion angles of well trafficked spots. especially places of business. like in the interest of being easy to google and scope out a lot of businesses even have 360 degree camera shots online just tab over to "vibe" or "street view" on any business's google pg and u can find stuff uploaded by the business owner, stuff uploaded by customers, dozens of photos of peoples food the menus etc. this + google streetview ive used to gather ref for random residential streets in florida, in southern california, music stores in tokyo, comic stores in massachusetts, stadiums and froyo shops and train stations in ny etc etc

it feels like not a lot of people do this because when they draw a location they don't always have a specific place in mind. i think its more common for people to seek a general vibe/idea so theyll google image search "comic book shop" or search on pinterest and draw the first couple things that come up which can sometimes feel generalized or over-referenced. but i think if you think about the context and general area first (I'm often thinking about what city I'm in for an illus) and then look for images for specific businesses, specific buildings, specific streets you can then hodgepodge together the ones youve collected to make something that feels really observed and true to life. my other fun reference hack is if im looking for references of an interior space like someones house or apartment ill look through rental listings in a particular city. or airbnbs. if i want something upscale i'll use smth like zillow and if i want something a little more lived-in i lll crawl around on craigslist. once you draw enough things you get p good at looking for things to draw i guess. sometimes i think my favorite part of drawing is research.

aw thank u so much!!!! i think one of my favorite things about bgs/environments is how you can use them for like..inferred storytelling. i mean some of it can be on the nose too haha but i love to look at little background details and think abt what it means for the characters and the time, place, state theyre in etc.

anyways sorry im kind of using these asks to post process lol sketches below!

i was really inspired by this fanart on twitter where theyre eating and sam has buckys suit jacket in what seems to be like a halfhearted gesture to keep low profile in his cap costume?? lol. ITS CUTE it feels like u get a real sense of their daily lives. anyways i wanted to do that but with a more specific dc spot because i love dc.

tbh my inital idea was to scan my own bens chili bowl reciept and make something like..mixed media. but i immediately lost my receipt so i sketched out this instead.

id say the finished piece took abt 5 hours of actual pen to tablet work from sketch to final. intermittently spread over 2 days. but tbh i kind of rushed it bc i had previously spent like 6 hours on the other drawing which was like. the same shit but from a different angle skfnksnfkf

[meruz]

im at otakon artist alley with @crowlets this weekend! table f207

edit: it says 7-9 but otakon is aug8-10 im just stupid

[meruz]

hello!! how would you feel if someone wrote fics inspired by ur art?? (specifically the sambucky stuff 🙏)

(ofc all credit will be given!!)

I WOULD BE ELATED The only thing i ask is that you link me to it...because i would love to read!!

this is my general rule for all derivative fanwork u can use my art in an edit or fanmix or for fic just 1) credit/link to me 2) please show me i want to see so bad

[meruz]

aw thank u so much!!!! i think one of my favorite things about bgs/environments is how you can use them for like..inferred storytelling. i mean some of it can be on the nose too haha but i love to look at little background details and think abt what it means for the characters and the time, place, state theyre in etc.

anyways sorry im kind of using these asks to post process lol sketches below!

i was really inspired by this fanart on twitter where theyre eating and sam has buckys suit jacket in what seems to be like a halfhearted gesture to keep low profile in his cap costume?? lol. ITS CUTE it feels like u get a real sense of their daily lives. anyways i wanted to do that but with a more specific dc spot because i love dc.

tbh my inital idea was to scan my own bens chili bowl reciept and make something like..mixed media. but i immediately lost my receipt so i sketched out this instead.

id say the finished piece took abt 5 hours of actual pen to tablet work from sketch to final. intermittently spread over 2 days. but tbh i kind of rushed it bc i had previously spent like 6 hours on the other drawing which was like. the same shit but from a different angle skfnksnfkf

[meruz]

sevvy sticker sheet im hopin to have for...idk lbx probably. + drawing i had lying around from the s2 finale

[meruz]

hi meruz! i'm an animation student rn, and bg art is one of my interests. like many people do, i practice perspective drawing using the many perspective tools/rulers art programs offer. though, afaik, photoshop doesn't have such features, and that is the industry standard. i feel as if i have enough knowledge to be able to plot out perspective manually/by hand, though my main concern is whether i would be able to do so at a reasonable speed and/or to the same quality as i could with a ruler. is this a detriment, should i be focusing on getting more confident with making my own grids & drawing freehand specifically for the purposes of hireability (ofc, i understand this is obviously a net good for general improvement haha)? i guess i just fear showing up one day to a job with an obvious skill gap, and art school is not always the best in preparing students for these things! ty, love your work :)

this is a REALLY good question omg. certainly something i didnt know much about when i started working. ill say this: in a professional setting, method doesnt really matter. what matters is speed and accuracy. if its overwhelmingly faster and more accurate for you to sketch with perspective rulers from another program and port it over to photoshop for the final then no reasonable person would stop you from doing that. plenty of industry artists sketch on an ipad or in procreate/CSP and then tidy everything up for production in PS. I even know few bg artists who are really fast with 3d modelling who will often throw down a quick and dirty 3d model as a drawing aid. (whether or not you can get IT to download programs other than photoshop on a work computer is a different matter entirely)

HOWEVER your instincts are right in the fact that there is a time-saving and editability advantage to keeping your workflow solely within photoshop. But I don't think you're gonna need to grind that hard to be ~hireable~ bc there actually ARE ways to make it easy.. or well...easier in photoshop! I'll list out a couple under the cut

1) perspective tools v2 plug-in

the first project I ever worked on used this one a lot. And I feel like its easy to pick up even when you don't have a good grasp on perspective (like me when I first started haha ha) - basically you can use the line tool I think? and press a button or something.. ok it's been a long time since I've used this plug-in BUT what. I know is that it will auto-create vector perspective grids for you if you give it like a line or two to jump off of. you can also really easily customize the density of the grid, colors, etc. it's super useful! costs a little bit of money but tools like this are worth every penny imo.

2) polygon tool vanishing points

so you'll know if you study perspective that its all vanishing points. for 1pt perspective you need one(1) vanishing point, for 2pt perspective you need two(2) vanishing points etc etc. you can create a vector vanishing point pretty easily in photoshop with the polygon star tool. theres a million different tutorials out there for it but here's one of them

really it takes maybe 3 clicks max? this guy makes his VPs on a horizon line he set with guides but truly once you have one you can just move it around to wherever. heres me making a vanishing point and then moving it to right spot in my composition.

and once youve made these shapes once you can repurpose them pretty easily. heres me duplicating, resizing and moving that VP to another spot for a second and third vanishing point (ok the drawing is not exactly on the grid but also. technically its 4-5pt and even more technically...i freehanded most of it when i drew it so it's not gonna line up perfectly with any grid LOL)

in my experience a lot of animation productions nowadays actually include these type of grids in their bg templates just as like a convenience quality of life type thing. one vp close to the center and a 2nd vp far off down the horizon line will probably cover 90% of shots on most projects. something like this:

ultimately it takes a lil more fiddling with transform tools than i like personally but some people dont mind that. i think the main limitation with this method is that photoshop polygons can only have 100 sides max? but. i mean. obv you can duplicate it and rotate it to get more lines. and you can change all sorts of properties, color thickness etc just like you can with perspective tools v2.

3) guides + line tool

OKAY those were the easy nice to use perspective methods now we're getting to the janky ones I use.

I picked up this method after taking Angela Sung's BG class and I find it really useful once you have a solid understanding of perspective and you want a grid that feels really custom. Basically I'll set the horizon line using the guide tool. and cross it with another guide to locate my vanishing point. then with view>snap to>guides checked, I'll make a bunch of vector lines the line tool branching from my vp

and then of course rinse and repeat for the other vps... I think the obvious weakness for this method is that if your vps are really far off the canvas or if you have a lot of them the multiple line layers can get hectic really fast. also it requires a certain instinct for where your perspective is which can be hard to nail at first. for instance this composition is 4pt but it's also a bit of a dutch angle so to lay out the 4 vps my guides look like this LOL

I often put the lines from each VP into their own group folder and then merge em and crop em whenever I feel like i dont need to fiddle anymore. ANWYAYS despite this chaos i think my favorite thing about this method is that you're manually drawing in the lines so they can be really sparse where you dont need that much guidance and really dense wherever you DO need it. I think also setting the grids up in this way gives me a better understanding of the prespective of the piece as a whole. um but thats just me. also i find in general setting up perspective like this to be a very relaxing process even when its sometimes difficult to explain.

OK LAST METHOD

4) just fuckin...use a ruler

this is my ruler. its clear, its like 15cm. they make a lot of rly nice stationary type rulers like this nowadays that dont scratch the tablet surface or anythig. i think specifically if youre really used to setting up perspective on paper like..why fix what aint broken LOL. i use this all the time not just for a quick grid but also for straight lines in general because sometimes photoshop shift click just doesnt nail the line quality i want and its honestly faster than hitting a bunch of shortcut keys. u can also use string perspective grid method on a tablet...idk maybe its obvious but sometimes people forget that these traditional methods are possible and just as valid in the digital space!! its all drawing

OK THATS ALL IVE GOT I HOPE THAT HELPS and i hope this makes sense bc i typed it all out on my phone. peace n love

[meruz]

your art has inspired me to make a sambucky edit lol

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6fwggUm/

HOLY SHIT THANK U...FOR MAKING THIS..AND ALSO FOR SENDING THIS TO ME i love party4u this is lovely im reposting to my 3 tiktok followers

[meruz]

i rly liked that dc landmark bens chili bowl featured briefly in thunderbolts as some shit bucky spills on his shirt LOL.

edit: liked it so much i drew it twice. top img will hopefully be a print ill be selling at otakon this weekend!!

[meruz]

Preview of @meruz's piece "Bloody Mary" for the yuri anthology, Glimm*r Vol. 2! There are just 9 DAYS LEFT to support Glimm*r vol. 2 for even yuri content. Find the Kickstarter link here!

[meruz]

Can you please draw sam and bucky on the boat or in louisiana? I luv ur perspective work

thank u!! sorry this isnt very perspectival. i did a more perspectivey sketch in the back and then gave up bc i couldnt find solid ref...they like almost never show a real establishing shot on that boat its all mid shots and closeups.

[meruz]

I like your rasey art a lot uhm. Yeah that’s all stay awesome

aw thank u!! i rly liked drawing rasey. raph is frequently my fave and also i just like the concept of two guys bonding over being rowdy as fuck lol. but i got a little shy abt posting tmnt stuff its... actually a really broad fandom! it was hard to predict how people would react to anything. also theres just so many different tmnt continuities and characterizations it never felt like i was truly invested in one and instead i was just writing fanfic in my head which is awesome but not rly my preferred way to engage i guess. felt weird. anyways. since u were nice enough to send an ask heres some goodies:

relevant pages from my 2023 sketchbook

idk if you can tell from these but I was constantly going back and forth abt their height and age difference LOL. nothing crazy but mutant mayhem raph Does seem p tall compared to his brothers, maybe also to other teens! but its cute when theyre small too and i think its fun when caseys as an older burnout type or super senior

also heres a playlist i made back when. its mostly 100gecs LOL

[meruz]

+bonus drawing for this situation