#But also because I often draw different projects and panels in the same file under a different layer so I’d have way more if I counted em

[raionmimi]

this isn't about Fate but in general. How do you do it. How to you deal with being one of the main content creators for an under appreciated character. You have to make all the content for them. Like how!!!! Is it intimidating? Or freeing cuz there isn't a big fan lore you need to deal with??? I just need to know cuz in arknights ( the fandom i am vibing in mostly rn ) i am supposed to be the biggest fan of Cutter and i have to make fan content for them and just..how

The long answer: I guess I was able to do it becuase I never really saw it as a daunting task to fulfill, I just drew stuff because I happened to like those characters. I have 650+ art files of one character alone (Medb), which is very generous becuase I'm not including a ton of stuff. Never actually noticed that I had done that much while I was working on them at the time tho lmao, so I’m actually surprised to know how much I have done

The main reason that I have personally been able to thrive is becuase I never rly dealt with any outside pressure from entitled fans, fandom elitists, or fervent haters, so I was always able to focus entirely on what I want on my own time.

Imo, the number one thing that kills an artists' vibes would be other people. The more people in your general vicinity, the more chances there are of rubbing elbows with the bad apples of any fandom. I added a list of pros and cons of being a content creator of an under appreciated character under the cut, but they're all pretty much in regards to not having to deal with people

My advice is to just find your groove and ride it out to wherever it leads you. Whether you choose to keep making content for the character or not, just do it because YOU want to make that choice. Don't do it becuase you feel like you HAVE to, otherwise, you'll burn yourself out over it

The short answer: My city now

Cons:

End up seeing nearly all the art/fics

Depending on the character, easier to find character hate unintentionally

Have to make my own content

The few people that do like the same character as me might not interpret them the same way (but I can easily coexist or ignore them in the same vein since there's such a small number of this happening)

Pros:

No pressure to create on a timely schedule becuase not many people are waiting around for posts about the characters in question, so I can take my time and pick and choose when I wanna use my energy towards making stuff

Can make as much canon character analysis but also self-indulgent material as I want, and not really have to deal with weirdos arguing with me because their headcanon is different

Similarly, I don't have to meet any real expectations as an artist/person that much

I make my content with my audience of me in mind, so I don't have any pressure to keep up with trends if I don't feel like it

People tell me I helped them get an appreciation for unpopular character, which is a great honor

Smaller amount of followers, so I'm not scrutinized under the public eye where people either put me on a pedestal, only to chew me out if I make content they don't like, or the opposite where they just shit on everything I make

Seeing content of the character I like is even more like a treat becuase "!!!! I didn't have to draw/write this one!!!!"

Even if I switch interests, it doesn't really matter becuase they weren't a highly in demand character to begin with

Regularly able to experiment with whatever I want and deciding what I think is best for me as an artist

[kintatsujo]

any advise for someone putting together a webcomic?

Oh boy oh boy anon I don’t happy flap often but you better believe I have advice XD

For people new here: I’ve been doing my main webcomic, The Law of Purple, since 2004, also was doing a different webcomic, Alien Revenant, for several years before having to hiatus indefinitely, have done a number of fancomics, including one that ran weekly for a number of years, and I’m in the midst of rebooting another original called Eclipse Knight.  That’s why I’m someone you might consider asking about doing webcomics.  That and I take an actual philosophy to this stuff.

Onward to my Advice, born of blood and toil!!

Make a palette and stick to it

This does keep the art of your comic looking consistent but the REAL reason is because you’re not going to be spending a bunch of time deciding on colors because bam, I have ten specific colors for different shades of wood and I’m gonna pick from those.  Note how I phrased that!  I’m not telling you to make a 500 page comic using Gameboy Classic colors or something-- I’m telling you to make a palette based on the colors you’re going to want for your project.  I personally tend to prefer to work from “master” palettes where ALL the colors are coming from but you can also make pools of palettes so that, for example, individual characters have their own personal colors.

Also: Don’t bother with too many different shades of red.  A lot of people can’t see the difference between more than a handful, so why make more work for yourself?

The more backups the better

I know that probably sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many webcomics go on hiatus because of things like “I lost half my files.”  Alien Revenant’s rocky years started because it uses conlang heavily and my glossaries weren’t as up to date on all my backups when a certain pen drive got borked.  Even after that you’d think I’d have learned my lesson and I STILL ended up having to recover some colors from LOP’s master palette that I’d added between computers when our one desktop crashed.

Don’t feel guilty for using shortcuts that work for you, and use whatever kind of references you need

I’ve made perspective references by setting up toys and a bunch of rulers and furniture and taking pictures with my phone.  I’ve made perspective references using computer programs.  I own a model Harley motorcycle because it’s the one I wanted Blue to ride.  Use free floorplan programs.  Use the Sims.  I have straight up traced pictures of buildings I’d drawn in the past and in the LOP page I’m working on there’s about fourteen characters that are just the same guy copy pasted over and over.  (They’re going to be obscured by effects so why kill myself over it?)  I’ve also copy-pasted the lineart for backgrounds from one panel to the next when I wanted the same angle, and sometimes I just copy paste the sketch layer when a character’s going to be mostly in the same pose and adjust from there.  

(Copy-paste isn’t a sin and if you’re clever it’s barely even noticeable.)

Also a full-turnaround sheet for every character is HELPFUL but like, don’t actually feel like you HAVE to do it, either, especially if you realize it’s actually stalling you out.  Reference sheets are usually most important for things like somebody having complicated tattoos, or the furniture and architecture of the main character’s house, or uniforms, things like that.

Set aside Specific Comic Work Time if possible

I’m currently doing better at keeping up with my own schedule entirely because there’s time each week that I have nothing to do but work on my comic, which is Sunday mornings while I’m sitting in my office waiting for people to go away so I can wipe down the light switches and lock the doors.  When I was at my most productive as a webcomicker, I had a full set of college courses crammed into two or three days and nothing else to do once my homework was done but sit around the school lounge areas and draw.

Time yourself doing pages and try to base your schedule on that

Even if you start off with a decent buffer, no schedule buffer lasts forever.

Don’t pick a coloring style that takes you more than four hours per page

oh my god, no amount of painterly coolness or smooth airbrushing is worth that.  I should know because I did an airbrushing style for a chapter of LOP when I first started coloring on the computer and chapters of LOP are generally between 100 and 200 pages long, and I wanted to fuck off and live in the woods or something by the time I was done.  

Not even because of how much time it took-- Once I was good at it, it looked beautiful, but airbrushing the same two dudes having a Serious Conversation for fifteen pages makes you contemplate killing them both off randomly by the end and one of them was the main character.  On that note--

Style testing will save you a lot of time and tears

There’s a number of ways to style test; do a bunch of memes with your characters, do a short five page thing, just do a series of standalone pieces.  It’ll give you a much better idea of what will work for you and what won’t.

That said if you wanted to do a different art style for every page of your comic because that’s what scratches your id, go right ahead and do it because doing webcomics should be fun if you ask me.

Pick a legible font

I had a rant about this not too very long ago.  Go to Blambot and get yourself some legible fonts.  I’m dyslexic.

Try out batching your pages

When I talk about “batching” LoP pages, I mean that I sketched four or five of them, then I went through and inked all of those, then I went through and colored all of them.  This isn’t necessarily something that works for everyone but when I have consistent Work On Comics time and a buffer it’s something that usually works pretty well for me.  

Don’t pick a website for hosting that you think is ugly

Because the website your comic is on will inform a lot of your experience.  I’m currently on ComicFury and I’m very happy there, and he’s got a set of templates you can choose from and modify the colors of.  Also personally I don’t actually trust Tapastic as a hosting site, not to go into detail but someone I read had some very bad experiences with them basically trying to legalese the rights to her webcomic out from under her.  I can direct to a post of the Twitter thread if anyone wants it but you can also find it by searching “Tapastic” on my blog.

And finally, if you stop having fun it’s time for a break.

One of the things about doing consistent webcomic schedules is they don’t always allow for that “breathing in” part of the creative cycle.  It’s okay to do things like taking a break for a month to just... binge watch three different anime or something.  I thoroughly encourage a schedule that lets you enjoy other media while you’re actively working (sometimes literally; I sometimes listen to podcasts when I color) but sometimes you just straight up need a Real Vacation from your webcomic.  Definitely consider taking at least two weeks off between discrete chapters if that’s something your comic has.  Some artists do filler, some invite in guest artists, but it’s fine to just say “see you in October.”  

Good luck, Anon, and let me know when I can read it!

[semi-sketchy]

This is for both of you! I am SO NEW to digital artwork and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m using FireAlpca and I was wondering if you could give me some tips and how to make my art better! Thank yo7~

Forgive me for taking so long to get to this, just asks like this take a lot of time to put answers together for.

Seeing as you’re using FireAlpaca, this’ll be somewhat easier. So, I’m going to assume you’ve got a drawing tablet and have it set up in a way you like. If you’re using a mouse, then godspeed.

I also went into a lot more than I thought I would with many pictures, so I’m going to put this below a read more.

First, let’s go over a few basics.

Canvas size. I’ve seen it and done it myself, so let me tell you, you want a large canvas. That’s the resolution I use, I like to have something that’s 16:9, but the aspect ratio is up to you. Extra large canvases can also cause FireAlpaca to lag, so keep that in mind before you do a 10,000x10,000 canvas. Find something that’s at least over 1,500x1,000 that your computer can handle. It’s a lot easier to shrink something down than to blow it up and you can always crop out extra space at the end. If you noticed you drew the sketch small, I recommend blowing it up some before lining so you have more room for details and so if you upgrade your monitor in the next few years, your old artwork won’t look pixelated.

Correction/stabilization. You’ve probably heard many people talk about this already and are using it, so I’ll keep it brief. It uses some digital tech to make your pen movements seem more fluid and flow better. Find the number that feels right to you and adjust it as need be. As you can see I keep mine pretty high, so here’s a quick example of the same drawing with different stabilization settings.

…I somehow got progressively worse each time. Well, the important thing is you can see the smoothness of the lines and how they flow better, so that’s what matters. Now onto the next topic.

The brush tab. FireAlpaca is widely used and that means it has a huge community that makes custom brushes. Some people find this confusing, so I’ll try my best to walk you through installing custom brushes.

First, you want the actual brush. I recommend looking through DragonLoreStudios’ brush packs as most of the ones I use are from them. Some cost points, but there are a few free packs. (Pack 6 has a water texture which I freaking love.) You’ll need to keep those files, so I recommend making a folder on your computer where you keep all the custom brush textures.

It’ll be in a zipped folder, so you’ll need to extract it. Just right click and select “extract all” to a folder that is NOT the zipped folder (done this a few times). Now the hard part.

Click that icon, “Add Brush (Bitmap)” and select the image from your computer.

It’ll pull this up. This is the tricky part. Some brushes come with what the presets should be to make it look like it does in the preview, however not all do. You can do some tweaking if you change your mind about something or it didn’t work like you wanted it to by double-clicking on the brush in the brush tab. However, since this one is from DragonLoreStudios, there’s a preset panel I can match this to.

And that’s the end result. They update that panel once in awhile and it is time consuming to put in a bunch of brushes, but they carry over from version to version, so no need to worry about losing your custom brushes when you update.

Lastly, if you’re like me and want to organize your brushes, I introduce to you folders. I had some people ask me about this on my last stream, so it’s as simple as layers and folders. Just click the folder icon, name it, drag ‘n’ drop. Nice and easy way to keep your brushes organized.

So far, haven’t said a whole lot you didn’t know, huh? Alright, let me get into some stuff that I jumped for joy when I found out.

FireAlpaca doesn’t have a multi-select….or does it?

Yup! I didn’t find this out for a long time. If you hold shift with the wand, you can select as many areas as you want. It seems like a silly thing to get excited over and you may have already known about it, but I figured I’d point it out since my friends and I took forever to learn about it.

The blur sucks. We all know. No matter what computer you have, when you turn it up over 120 it gets so laggy you can’t hardly use it. But, those big canvases, you can’t use a dinky little 100 size blur on it. Welcome to filters.

I’ll admit, I don’t quite know what everything on that list does. HOWEVER, I do know what gaussian blur does and with the select tool, it’s amazing.

Let’s say you drew this awesome background, but you want those dots blurred however you don’t wanna sit here for 10 minutes with the manual blur tool.

It’s amazing, really. Only want one side blurred? Just use the select tool and blur that side. I wish I knew about this a year ago whenever my airbrush shading wasn’t smooth enough.

Now, the hue is also something that has saved my shading life more than once. It works just like you’d expect. Don’t like that background color? Think it needs more pop?

Simple. The other two options that I know on the filter tab are also great! Sand and cloud. Depending on how big your canvas is, it might take the computer a second to put it out, but it’s a texture that’s randomized every time you do it and here’s what they look like with black and white.

Not very interesting, huh? Well, put a color below them and turn that layer to overlay…

Wow! It adds some texture! I personally like to turn those down to about 15% opacity so it doesn’t overpower the image, but it’s nice for adding texture to your plain, otherwise straightforward, backgrounds.

So, time we take that knowledge and move to the miracle that is clipping.

Clipping is your go-to tool for shading and colored lines. I can’t believe how often I have to tell my friends “no, don’t grab the paint bucket use clipping” because clipping looks better. Always. Alright, for an example I’m gonna grab a newer piece that I already finished since I still have the project file.

Notice the clipping? I actually used more, but had to merge some layers because a clipping layer can’t clip onto another clipping layer. I’m gonna go backwards a little here and show you how helpful clipping can be.

This is without clipping. Not very nice looking, is it? I shaded with black as a base color, the lineart sticks out like a sore thumb and it lost its soft look. I actually use black a lot to shade, but only as a base color (unless I’m shading a really deep color, then black is basically my only option). After I got all the shading, I made a new layer and turned on clipping.

Now with this layer, I’m free to put color into the shading. If I did this with say a paint bucket, I would end up with spots that didn’t quite reach because of the antialising or it would expand if I turned on that on and I’d have to go over it again to clean it up. With clipping, I get clean lines and am free to change the color with ease.

The ears are a gradient, which means it’s time for some clipping ex machina mixed with the hue tab.

I made a copy of the top half of the color layer that covers the part I’m shading.

Now we got it pasted in with clipping on the ears. It matches up perfectly, of course, but there’s no shading. Time for the hue tab!

Look at that. Was able to keep the shading even with the gradient while adding a bit of hue shift to the purplish side. THAT is the power of clipping. Of course, use clipping for the lineart mixed with a bit of airbrush for the ear gradient (since the color layer ain’t on the lineart, have to color that by hand) and remembering to darken the lineart around the shaded areas, and we get this.

Sounds complicated, but it’s really simple and the result doesn’t look half bad. I’ve used clipping + hue on so many drawings and it’s saved my life.

Now, another little nifty trick is that white boarder. You don’t have to trace all the way around your piece, that would take forever. Let’s go back to our little grumpy Tara piece.

I added some color to help the boarder stick out. Now, first we wanna make a layer above the background layers, just below the color layer, and turn off the background.

Should be looking like this.

Next, we’re gonna use the wand to select outside and under the select tab, click “inverse”.

Now, it’s time to expand! It’s the button right under inverse, you can see it in the last image. How big or small you want it all depends on you and the canvas size, so play around until you’re happy with it. For this example, I’m using 7 because this is a pretty tiny canvas.

Next, we want the fill tool. Honestly this thing is so much more useful than people give it credit for.

Get the whole area and boom! That’s it. Deselect, turn your background back on and take a look!

Beautiful. The reason you don’t want to use the paint bucket is it wouldn’t get every spot. If you drew a tuft of fur or a little corner, it wouldn’t reach. This way makes it so every inch is covered. However, with fur and all, there’s a bit of a draw back and something you’ll have to fix manually.

Look how it squared those spots out, yikes. You’ll have to take your pen and round them as I did in that earlier piece with Miles.

I think this’ll be the last thing I cover and I myself am not very good at this, but I want to show you comics in FireAlpaca.

Step one: do NOT USE THE SNAP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE. THERE’S A BETTER WAY.

For real though, don’t do that. Make a new canvas (I wouldn’t use the comic tab, I just find it screws with all the knowledge I have and all it does is make a new canvas anyways).

Great. Next step.

We’re going to go to the layer tab and click “add panel material”.

That’ll bring this little box up. Whatever you pick is up to you and remember the undo button does exist, so choose whatever you want and click “OK”.

We got it started! That’s the easiest part done. It’ll automatically set you to the “panel divide” tool so you can get working. Drag that tool across and it’ll cut lines and if you hold shift, you can do diagonal lines.

Here’s a quick example. If you adjust the kerning and leading, you know, this stuff:

You can change how close it’ll cut the panels.

However, for some odd reason, you can’t do completely diagonal. Like if you take a square and cut from one corner to the other, it won’t work. I don’t know why, maybe they’ll change it in an update, but that’s how it is right now.It also takes a little getting used to, so mess around with it.

The great thing about doing this instead of using the snap (besides it looking better) is nothing will go above it. Even if it’s the bottom layer, you can’t go over it or erase it. However, sometimes you want a little panel overlay and this doesn’t give you many options, does it? Maybe you’d like to transform it, but you can’t because it’s a comic layer. You wanna convert it.

Under the layer tab, just click “rasterize material” and it’ll turn it into a normal layer you can use your select tool and transform stuff on. Now if only they had a way to create text boxes my life would be complete…

Oh, one last thing I wanna mention: ALWAYS save your project file. When you finish a piece, don’t just save it as a PNG and be done, save it as a MDP (FireAlpaca file) too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve drawn something, uploaded it then realized I forgot one minor detail I wanna fix. Without the project file that contains all my layers, I’d be so screwed. Just keep the file around for maybe a week or two, at least until you know you won’t go back and edit it any time soon. Also be careful you don’t save a file as a PNG to show it to a friend, make progress, then just aimlessly click “save” because it’ll be in the format you last saved it as. I’ve had a friend do that several times and it’s terrible when that happens.

Okay this went from some help to a sales pitch. Still, when I found out about this stuff I thought it was a godsend. I might’ve just rambled on about stuff you already knew about, but I tried to cover some more obscure things you won’t find in basic YouTube tutorials. Anyways, hope this was of use to you!

-Sassy

[ellie5012fd-blog]

Interview- Head of design for Liberty Fabrics- inspiration- people and places

Emma Mawston, head of design for Liberty Art Fabrics, is not surprisingly passionate about prints and the Liberty heritage. She is also a long-time supporter of Texprint and regularly gives time to participate in the Texprint interview panels that take place each June. As a creative company focused on design excellence Liberty understands just how important it is to look to their future heritage and drive innovation by supporting the next generation of young designers; Liberty Art Fabrics sponsors the Texprint Pattern Award. -Emma, how long have you worked at Liberty Art Fabrics and what were you doing before? I have worked at Liberty for nearly twenty-one years – in fact the same amount of time as Alexandra Shulman has been editor at Vogue! While at college I had a great work placement with Nina Campbell, I then won an RSA Bursary which led to a placement with Cavendish Textiles – both invaluable experiences. On graduating I went freelance, exhibiting at numerous exhibitions, working freelance in-house at Nigel French (design consultancy), and designing for a variety of markets under my own name. When I applied for the Liberty role, I found out that they had asked my to interview because they liked my handwriting on the letter accompanying my CV! -Tell us about the team at Liberty Art Fabrics? The designers at Liberty Art Fabrics are Sheona, Sally, Polly, Robin, Keighley, Laura-Maria and Carrie. At any one time the team are working across three areas - fashion, furnishing and lifestyle art fabrics - on different briefs, and often for different seasons. We often go on drawing research trips, have drawing days and spend time hand drawing and painting original artwork. Also in the team are Rupal who works on special projects, and Lauren who backs us all up on everything plus creates the presentation Powerpoints, keeps the fent book*, and makes sure all design and colour files are organised at the end of every season. Holly is our studio co-ordinator who keeps things running smoothly! -What is the process that takes a design idea into production and retail? At the moment we are about to start creating sketches for spring/summer 2015. I love coming up with the design briefs, it’s one of the most inspirational aspects of my job. One of my favourite tasks is to thoroughly research an idea and come up with something original each season. Liberty Art Fabrics is a design-led company, which we pride ourselves on. While we listen to feedback from customers, agents and our sales team our design briefs are created two to three years before a collection is launched at retail so it is really important that the collections are design-led and retain the heritage and originality which makes our prints so successful. Each season the studio creates around 43 designs in 8 colourways. We then present our work at a number of selection meetings, working very closely with Kirstie (Kirstie Carey MD of Liberty Design) who reviews the new ideas. We whittle these down to 40 designs, all of which will be printed onto Liberty’s iconic Tana Lawn. We also create capsule collections on a number of different base fabrics using the designs most relevant to each base. While we aim to think as creatively as possible at this stage, there may also be other considerations – it is important that our collections are successful worldwide, so we occasionally work on special projects that cater for specific design and colour requests. We also work on childrenswear design and colour. -Tell us about your recent travels for inspiration and research? While researching spring/summer 2013 we went to Tresco (Scilly Isles) – in fact nearly all the best sellers in this collection were inspired by that trip - we also went to Vienna for design research, to the Chelsea Flower Show and on the trail of Guerrilla Gardeners in London! More recently we’ve been to Glasgow and The Isle of Bute, both wonderful. However my favourite research trip was to Iceland for autumn/winter 2013, a truly inspirational place that will stay with me forever. Do you ever refer back to the Liberty archives? Yes, the Liberty Archive is amazing. It is hidden away in a warehouse in Bermondsey - a treasure trove of archived Liberty prints and sketches. Every design, from tana lawn to silk satin, is documented with as much information as possible and stored safely in a digital database. But most exciting of course are the collections themselves - oversized books bursting to the brim with swatches, piles of neatly labeled boxes and paintings as bright as the day they were painted. -What are your favourite inspirations right now? Gosh, almost everything inspires me, but mainly it is my daughters Mauve and Rose Xanthe who make me laugh so much and look at the world from such a variety of different and wonderful perspectives.