#I found the comic tool in my drawing program

[its-ezraaa]

Swords And Serpents Part 1

Another AU no one asked for where our Kings Row boys are a bunch of nerds who play Dungeons and Dragons. (Of course Seiji is the perfectionist control freak DM.)

[norameld]

Vacation Pit Stop At The Celadon Department Store Art & Story by: Nora Meld (me!) Full Size Image Here!

| Next This was inspired by @yamujiburo 's wonderful series of comics that can be found here. The outfits are from the mom fashion post.

I'm not usually someone who draws in an anime style, but I wanted to stay as faithful to the source material as I could so I was using reference from the comic series constantly. My actual style is far closer to the art on the bootleg button lol.

This took me like 18 hours total. If you're going to do a massive perspective image in your first panel, I highly recommend finding one of those programs that helps with it because doing it manually was hell and took most of the time I spent on this as a whole. I do think this turned out fantastic though and I got to learn a lot about the tools in clip studio paint.

Also, Kiana I demand more chubby Jessie! As a chubby girl myself, I love it more than anything.

(also shoutout to wolfeyvgc, who has the original world champ difference)

[celestialalpacaron]

Ayo, someone by the name of Curly-B-Blog is redlining art of yours from 2020 (while pretending that it's actually Sai Scribble's work), and kind of being a dick about it. just thought you should know.

You know, originally I was just gonna brush it off, but then I went back to look at my old SU art from 2020 and did so much self reflection from then till now.

I think this was around the time I was just learning how to do perspective and tried to use the perspective tool on Procreate for the first time? :0 and I remember telling Sai “Sai I have this STUPID idea, I CANT believe it this stupid joke it’s so DUMBBBB, it’s living rent free in my BRAIN I SWEAR THIS IS GONNA BE SO STUPID DCIUWHEFIUWHIRFUIW4F” and being super excited to show her the finished product. People still think Sai created the Cursed Skin Gloves comic and I think it’s hilarious wjhwnuhwijwuiw

The comic was received very well and it made LOTS of people laugh and I’m still proud of this comic to this very day! :D and tbh if it wasn’t for my obsession for Sai’s Switcheroo AU I never would have found my passion in comic work! (love you you stinky hoe @saiscribbles 🩷)

HOWEVER…. I definitely still had lots to learn! I wasn’t very good at perspective at the time I’ll admit, but I was definitely having lots of fun learning :3

And throughout the past 4 years, ALOT has happened.

I graduated from college with TWO fancy pieces of expensive papers in Visual Development in Animation and Illustration learning from Will Kim and Jeff Soto, and as a I was working with the funny voice man Cougar MacDowall as a comic/story artist and reached in total around 7 million views for my fan series FNAF Security Malware Breached (it was even #21 on the trending list around the time of my birthday 🩷 what a lovely gift), had an insane opportunity to work with Mike Geno and with the voice cast from The Amazing Digital Circus for a fan song as a background and character asset artist, Vivienne Medrano liking and sharing my silly Overlord Husk AU comics, currently on my route to getting my certificate from Aaron Blaise’s Character design program and graduating from Marc Brunet Art School, and now I am completing my first year as professional colorist and art assistant for my storyboard and comic mentor Michelle Lam, aka Mewtripled! (Also I’ll be heading out to Lightbox Expo 2024 on October 26 with Michelle and the team so if y’all ever wanna meetup hahahajaj wink wink wink wink wink)

So you can say I learned ALOT and I enjoyed every minute of what I do :D I try to be humble about my accomplishments because blah blah being humble good yes yes but this time I wanna be selfish and say HELL YEAH I DID ALL THIS!!! AND IM SO EXTREMELY PROUD OF MYSELF FIUGEIURGERGGRS

Now here’s my most recent comic page that I posted like 2 days ago without the text.

That’s pretty freakin wild to me, I can’t believe I used to draw Steven Universe art like that back in 2020 LOL LIKE GUYS I DREW THIS!! WITH!!! MY HANDS!!! IS THAT NOT INSANE!!!???

Anyways moral of the story:

Learn from everyone and everything! Yes, even then mean ones too! If you can learn to work with anyone, I promise you’ll get to where you want to be faster. People can be a little mean on the internet, but that shouldn’t stop you from being where you want to be in the future. I’m so EXTREMELY grateful for all the opportunities and to all the kind professionals who were willing to give me a chance. Seriously, I’m so graciously thankful for everything, and I hope everyone here will support me and my silly little comics I will do now and in the future!

And one more thing:

Don’t be a jerk. Be to be nice to everyone :D nothing good comes out when you’re bad to everyone.

[icolo]

hi everyone!! my wrist is too sore to draw today, so instead i thought i'd share some of my favorite csp assets + how i like to use them! i also linked some procreate brushes at the end of the post!!

lineart brushes:

SU-Cream Pencil: i swear by this brush and i use it very often!! if you lower the pen density and use a gradient map over it when coloring your drawing, it has a nice effect. that's what i did in this drawing here! i also use this brush like i would draw on paper, so as a sketching tool. recently i've been enjoying blending it for shading. the pics below are drawn on one layer; left is more manga style while the one on the right is from a WIP of my singer sargent study, so it can be used for more realistic styles pretty well!

Found Pencil: another pencil brush that feels really nice to use, created by @/pigpenandpaper.

PS style brushes: a recreation of photoshop's (i believe) default brush. very versatile and also blends well!

analog wind variant pen: a nice pen that i like to use for lineart that is intended to have a bit of a sketch look.

zakutoro real g-pen: i used it for the lineart of this piece. although, it was drawn before i started using 600dpi in my works, so the lower resolution might make it look a bit unclear.

sets of rough pens: great for manga lineart with a rougher vibe; some of them have varying line weight.

coloring brushes:

zaku brushes: very nice and painterly mixing! i definitely recommend it for those who like to leave their colors a bit unblended.

softie marker: as the name implies, it's very soft! i like to use it for blush in chibi illustrations.

analog watercolor brushes: realistic-looking watercolor brushes. i recommend using it with csp's default paper textures, or those i linked below!

993 coloring pen: it's very soft and watery, though it can be made more solid by adjusting the paint density. i actually think it works very nicely for lineart too.

rock dog pen: another soft marker brush i like, that i once again also use for lineart and doodles.

thick coating brush set: recommended for paintings that show brush strokes.

cartoon cloud: don't let the name narrow your vision!! this has to be one of the BEST brushes for painting in my opinion, and of course it's great for clouds and explosions but so so much more!! and it's FREE try it try it!!

decoration/miscellaneous brushes:

neon pen

paper textures

symmetry move brush

close and fill without gaps

rope brush

sphere fisheye guide

flash balloon

speech bubble set: a lifesaving collection for comic artists!! dimensions and line weight can be adjusted by using the operation tool.

gradient map to use in color mode at 15% and another gradient map to use at 20%: the percentage refers to the opacity of the gradient map layer, but they are just the creator's recommendation and i tend to actually increase it. to use gradient map efficiently, i recommend putting all your colors (and lineart if you want) in a folder. then, right-click the folder, select "new correction layer" and then "gradient map". this allows you to modify the gradient map without worrying about affecting the original colors in case you decide not to use it in the end. to import a gradient map from your downloaded csp assets, click the wrench icon next to the name of the gradient set that's currently in use, then select "add gradient set".

you'll also notice that the creator recommends to use their gradients in "color mode". of course, this is also only a recommendation and i suggest trying as many layer modes as you like! to change a layer's mode, simply highlight the layer and click on "normal" (the default mode) and csp will display the available modes.

fruit ninja gradient map: fun to use if you want really drastic/vibrant colors! the names of the gradients are cute too, as you can see in the above screenshot!

BONUS: jeremy fenske's free photoshop brush pack: these aren't csp brushes per se, but they can be imported into the program! excellent for environments, i recommend watching fenske's video on how he uses the brushes to get a clearer picture since there are so many in this pack!!

BONUS 2: my good friend clem has a few brush packs for procreate that are ideal for painting,decorating drawings, and y2k-inspired illustrations, i definitely recommending checking out her shop!

in conclusion i hope this post can be helpful to you!! i tried to explain how to use the brushes as best as i could, but feel free to let me know if anything is unclear!! i hope you will enjoy using them! :D

[totaltrauma]

Hi! My name is Wyatt Sheppard, and I'm the writer & illustrator of Total Trauma Comic. (However, I do get lots of help with backgrounds and other assets from my wonderful fiance, @apple-scrumper!)

I'm a part of a system. I'm exceptionally close with my fellow alter Judith (Jude), who I often refer to as my sister. We sometimes work together on projects, like SHINE which we have collaborated on, and a novel we're currently writing together.

I am 27, and I use neopronouns (pri/prin/prinself — pronounced pree/prihn/prihnself). They/them pronouns are also okay to use. I went to college for Creative Writing, and while I love making comics, my real dream is to write novels.

I have currently finished Total Trauma Volume 1, and am working on Volume 2. I have also finished "Heather, Rewritten," a prequel novella. I am currently working on SHINE alongside Jude, as well as WTF4 (World Tour Final Four), another prequel novella. I also completed the Total Trauma Tarot Deck, which can be bought here. A couple of years ago, I made a comic called Triplings, a diary webcomic about me and my siblings.

I've been making content in the Total Drama fandom since I was 17, and I was just a baby alter. As a baby alter, I was desperate for some sense of identity, and I found that in the fictionkin community. (If you don't know what fictionkin is, do me a favor and don't look it up.) All that is to say, I latched on hard to Heather from T/otal D/rama. I started writing about her, and wrote "Heather's Lament," a lengthy fanfic that would (many years) later be polished into "Heather Rewritten." I started to come up with my own personal "canon" for the series, and I spent 5 years bursting at the seams with information about it, until finally, one fateful day I decided to start a comic.

I had actually kind of grown away from T/otal D/rama at that point in my life. I had latched onto a new obsession to spend all of my time thinking and writing about. But I got this idea in my head that I wanted to make comics. I was watching an artist, Jacob Andrews, draw a comic on youtube, and I thought to myself "Man, I would love to make comics." Then I realized that nothing was stopping me.

T/otal D/rama is what I knew how to draw, so, T/otal D/rama it was. (Well, technically what I do is edit the pages together... More about that below.) I blew the dust off my old established "canon," and made the first page. I had had the story of Volume 1, especially the plot surrounding Duncan, living in my head for the past 5 years. It was a lot of fun to revisit that story, and to rediscover my love for this franchise.

I use a program called Paint.NET — I do not recommend it. You could easily do the same thing I do in photoshop, procreate, or whatever you might have access too. Paint.NET is simply free and familiar to me.

I go about making the art for Total Trauma by first editing together screenshots from the show, then tracing over it. Example given below.

It's super easy to do using nothing but the line tool. The only real trick to it is learning how and where to vary your lineweight.

[wander-wren]

so anyway

obviously some people are using programs that are not chatgpt, or might be referencing the ai but not actually using it to write, but let’s say for a moment that there are about 500 ai-generated fics on the archive. which i think is a lowball, but we’ll see.

my official stance is that if you’re using ai to help you write due to a disability, different native language(s), or what have you, that’s fine. it is a tool. i have also seen artists use ai to generate backgrounds or buildings and draw a comic around that—that sort of thing is neat! as long as you’re building on what the ai gives you and making it your own, cool.

what i take offense to is things like this:

(the final two are from the same fic. i took out identifying info bc i don’t actually want to attack anyone here, just explain my side.)

so the main theme i keep seeing is people complaining about the ai-written fanfiction….that THEY are choosing to upload! you don’t like that it’s inaccurate or poorly written or too short, but you aren’t going to put in any effort to fix it? at all?

i understand wanting to experiment. i understand that writing your own stories is hard and can be daunting at first. but it feels gross, frankly, to fling works that took you very little effort, that you know are subpar, at an audience. you don’t think there’s enough content for your ship/fandom? WHY would you try to feed your fellow fans with something you think is bad?

it’s content for content’s sake and i do not like it.

the way this works is, if you want more content, you make it yourself. even if you’re not a good writer, even if you don’t have the best english or whatever language you’re writing in. how, pray tell, are you supposed to improve if you don’t do that?

who is this content even helping? i sorted the fics by hits to get a sense of popularity; the fic with the most hits that is completely ai-written (not using it as a tool) has 2816 hits. about half of the fics have less than 200 hits. there are real writers who might have similar stats, due to writing unpopular ships/fandoms/tropes (some of my fics do!) but across the board it’s clear ai fic isn’t drawing a lot of interest.

sorry i found this while looking at hit counts and i just. you’re not going to subtly demand content from your fellow fans in the SAME breath as admitting you are also not a content farm, but it’s fine, we’ll just have ai do it??

no. no. fandom is not about content. fandom is about community. and if you’re using ai to post fics without editing or sometimes even reading them, that tells me you’re much more interested in the former. putting aside the ethical dubiousness, putting aside the debates about “real art,” you have no courtesy.

and chatgpt can’t write.

[genericpuff]

Architecture anon here: I totally agree and know all about the use of 3D models in Webtoons, my point was that I found it concerning to figure out what easy tools are in SketchUp that LO used to use to great effect with the backgrounds but Rachel doesn't use anymore because she is just that checked out of the comic, even when it's just a click of a button on her end. I'm not saying she should hand-draw everything, I fully support her using as many 3D models and tools as she needs to make the process easier for her, I just wanted to point out that she isn't using the tools at her disposal correctly even when she used to use them to a better effect and would only take a second to do in the program. Sorry if it came out the wrong way!

Oh no you're good haha I get what you're saying now! And yeah I totally agree, even when she's using 3D models she's taking the path of so little resistance that it's reducing the quality of her work and that's not something that should be happening to a webtoon that regularly brags about the amount of awards it's won. And that's when she's using the 3D models, when she isn't she's just drawing boring dark blue backgrounds, no matter where the characters are. It's tragic.

[comicaurora]

Hello, I'm trying to make a comic myself and I've heard some advice that creators should make their own fonts and draw their own text bubbles instead of using premade one.

I was wondering if you made your own bubbles and font or if you found a nice one on a website.

Have a nice day/night!

I made my own font using this website! It's very intuitive and I've actually used it to make multiple fonts, including the Dragon/Primordial typeface and both Ancient and regular runes.

As for speech bubbles, Clip Studio Paint has a tool suite for drawing them, and I've never felt the need to get more complicated than that. Depending on what program you're using and what visual style you use you might prefer to hand-draw the bubbles instead.

[xenonmoon]

Have you thought about trying to draw different versions of his costumes from the comics? Or maybe an evolution of all his different costumes?

Took me a while, but it turned out to be a great idea! Drawing the same subject over and over with different tools helped a lot getting a bit more familiar with the new program. I've ended up doing one sketch / drawing for each costume moonie uses in the comics I've read so far, starting with: 1. Werewolf By Night

(original: Don and Howie Perlin)

The debut costume! While I liked the slim cape tied at the wrists, the collar always felt a bit off ad silly to me. Loved the silver knuckles and braces inspired by cestus gladiators though!

Fun fact: it was apparently meant to have red eyes at first, as we see in the cover of Werewolf By Night #32. I remember him popping out with red eyes 2-3 more times even in later comics, one for sure #24 from the Moench run

2. Moon Knight (Volume 1)

(original: Bill Sienkiewicz)

When Sienkiewicz joined the team it was requested (I think the editor? I've read it a long time ago) a small design change on the cape, making it more like Your Average Superhero Cape(tm). Doug Moench didn't quite dig the idea at first since he found the previous design more unique for the character, but he ended up liking a lot how Bill made it flow in his panels.

(original: Bo Hampton)

After Bill Sienkiewicz left the series there were a number of different artists taking up his pencil, but two in particular (Keith Pollard and Bo Hampton) unexplainably made him forget what the "under" in "underwear" really meant. Loved how no one quite understood if the suit was of a heavily shaded white or a glossy black, so sometimes it's black with lots of reflections and sometimes it was plain white, lol

3. Fist of Khonshu

(original: Mark Beacham & Geof Isherwood)

I refused to draw this costume in its entirety and just went for a rendition of my favourite panel lmao

Like really, who thought that golden braces / ankles and wrestler-style belt were a good idea. And the ankh instead of the moon in his chest? Ah well. Didn't last long anyway.

4. West Coast Avengers

(original: Al Milgrom & Joe Sinnott)

Basically the same as Fist of Khonshu's but THE MOON IS BACK

There is a big gap from here on since I've only just started Marc Spector: Moon Knight and know little to nothing about what's between here and the 2014 run

5. Moon Knight (2014) - Mr Knight & Moon Knight

(original: Declan Shalvey)

This is actually the first comic I've read. I believe this was the first or one of the first appearances of the Mr. Knight costume? A way to keep helping around (esp. with the police) without Moon Knight's reputation getting in the way. I've forgot a lot about the overall plot, perhaps for the best - I'll read it again eventually, this time knowing what happened before!

(original: Declan Shalvey & Jordie Bellaire)

I absolutely LOVE this version of the MK costume. It's simple and effective, more than just a skintight suit but less than a full armor so to make it believably flexible to wear, at least to some extent. The black-and-white contrast makes it less flat and easily recognisable. I'm glad it was carried over to later runs, along with the "classic" one.

6. Moon Knight (2016)

(original: Greg Smallwood)

I'm a sucker for Smallwood's art. I can't help it. I'm almost glad Marc spends a lot of time without any mask in this run, his faces and expressions are just *chef kiss*

(original: Greg Smallwood)

Did one even for the improvised costume in the asylum, since the other MK suit that appears in this run is identical to the classic one (if I remember well?)

7. Moon Knight (2021) - Mr Knight & Moon Knight

(original: Alessandro Cappuccio)

I've read the first 3 issues of this run and peeked into some of the later ones for now - I'm not a big fan of how he draws Marc/Steven/Jake's face but the apart from that the art in this run is bloody gorgeous.

(original: Alessandro Cappuccio)

Ok this took me a bit more than the others. #2 gotta be one of my favourite issues so far.

I saw Moon Knight's costume doesn't change much from the earlier runs and Mr Knight's basically identical, it seems they've reached a bit of consistency lately? I'm still missing some of the runs

Anyway, thank you sm for the ask! I had fun drawing these! Some of these deserve their own post, I'll probably do that later.

[morlock-holmes]

So I've had a lot of too passionate discussion about "AI art" (A term I am deeply unfond of) but they've lately clarified something for me, which is that I am now thinking that certain distinct things have been conflated in the popular discussion.

Incidentally, for the following discussion I'm only talking about image generation; while text generation apparently uses similar programing approaches, I feel like for end users the use case for generated text is very different from the use case for generated images.

So what I have realized lately, is that there are (at least) two ways to make revenue from AI art, and that these two different revenue streams have different implications for copyright law and data use in general.

I've been playing around a lot with Stable Diffusion, a group of open source image generation tools, because, what, I'm going to use a closed-source system like some kind of simp? No thank you.

Honestly, I still have a really poor understanding of how Stable-Diffusion models actually work; everything I've read has been either so technical that I come away with no information, or so dumbed down that I come away with no information. I'm working on it.

But on a basic caveman level, if you want to use Stable-Diffusion, you download a specific checkpoint model which is a big (A few gigs) file full of god knows what. You then download a GUI, you type a text prompt into the GUI as an input, your computer's GPU performs a whole bunch of calculations based on the prompt, and after a minute or so spits out one or more image files.

So, now that Grog explain magic box to you, it should be clear that there are actually two ways to generate revenue from this:

I can sell the individual image outputs, or;

I can sell the model file and access to hardware which does the calculations.

So, a company like Midjourney does the latter; they aren't selling individual pictures to scifi publishers to use as book covers, they are selling access to a proprietary model and the hardware to run it.

This means that copyright concerns are kind of different depending on which of those approaches you are talking about.

I think @squareallworthy was the first person I saw advance a certain argument for AI models as being copyright infringing.

People say that the model isn't the actual image, that it's just data taken from the image, but in a setting involving computers that's a very iffy distinction to draw. A .zip file containing a copy of, say, Marvel's Avengers is, in and of itself, just a bunch of data. I, as a person, can't actually see the movie just by looking at the binary code that composes that particular zip file.

But I can use a computer program to turn that data into a human-readable copy of the Avengers. I think we can agree that I can't evade copyright protections just by compressing my unauthorized copy into a zip folder.

So, take a stable-diffusion model like this one I found on CivitAI (Warning, there are NSFW images there, but they are blurred by default) and ask it to generate an image of Sega's copyrighted character Rouge The Bat and you can get a result like this:

Thereby proving that the checkpoint file contains copyrighted material in a manner similar to that of a .zip file or other compression file.

I think squareallworthy used some painting nobody has heard of to make the same point but the principle is the same either way.

I don't know if this is a knock-out argument in terms of copyright law; I would expect it to be far more difficult to generate, say, a specific panel of a specific Sonic the Hedgehog comic, but it's a colorable argument.

However, that argument applies only to the checkpoint model itself, and is far less convincing when applied to a given output.

Say I instead use the same model to create my own extremely original not derivative of anything in particular OC:

If I just publish the above image, you cannot in any way simply just use that jpeg to recreate the checkpoint model or any copyrighted data that might arguably be inside the checkpoint model.

To me, this is more like, imagine I have a stolen copy of Marvel's The Avengers. And imagine I write a computer program which, say, repeatedly samples the color of a random pixel in the movie at a random time, assigns each color a musical tone, and then outputs the whole thing as an avant garde audio file.

My argument would be that, sure, you might be able to get me for having an unauthorized copy of Marvels The Avengers, but the audio file itself is so transformative of the work that the original work cannot be derived from the audio file, so it would be absurd to say that the audio file has violated Disney's copyright.

I am very skeptical of attacks on this kind of image generation which rely on the idea that they constitute "theft".

Based on the reasoning above, I think you can only argue that the checkpoint models potentially violate copyright; the idea that my mouse girl represents a violation of Sega's copyright because the same model can produce an image of the mouse and an image of Rouge the Bat strikes me as absurd on the face.

The idea that the model itself violates copyright, while I don't agree, is certainly less obviously absurd.

But the danger here is that, if the models violate copyright laws, then that means that only truly giant corporations could produce them, because you'd either need to pay tremendous numbers of licensing fees OR just already own the copyright to an enormous pile of digital images.

Yes, that might hurt MidJourney, but it would definitely kill all open source image generation tech.

A world where this tech can be used easily by individuals, but legally we are only allowed to do so if we pay Adobe a monthly subscription fee strikes me as actively worse than a world where this tech is available open source to individuals.

PS - I originally wanted to do this demonstration with the main Stable-Diffusion models but they, and I cannot believe I am saying this, don't know who Rouge the Bat is. I'm kind of kidding on the square when I say that if these models didn't get any images of Rouge the Bat, they can't have harvested that much data from the internet.

PPS - In terms of the copyrightability of the output images, I generated forty-eight images of Rouge and 14 different prompts, and the numbers are even higher for the mouse girl. It turns out this model trained mostly on furry porn does not have the best grasp of what a shopping cart is. I played a LOT with the weights of individual prompt elements on the mouse girl trying to get something that was at all legible as a beer mug on top of her head. I also looked around to find the best model to use for the demonstration, and added some supplementary models which pulled the image in a certain direction. I was really considering inpainting before I just said, "Dang it, you can't work on these forever, just write the dang post already". My point is, I would argue that, while a tremendous amount of that image is not the result of my decision making, a significant chunk of it is, I would argue I had more input into the subject matter and composition than I would have for, say, a photograph of a neat bug I came across at random, and that photo of a neat bug already is copyrightable.

[jinzouactor]

thank you so much for the thorough and thoughtful reply!! it’s really encouraging. I have access to CSP and I need to learn my way around it - I mostly use PS atm so I would love to hear any CSP tips you’re willing to share!

yeah!! ok this might be a long post but i want to highlight the CSP specific things that i havent found so easy in other programs. though idk if thats still the case

the main advantages I find are in the panelling tools and the text bubble tools that you can drag-and-drop to an existing canvas

there's a lot of pre-set layouts you can choose from, but i usually make a single frame and cut it up into panels using the sub tool to match whatever sketch i've made of the page, putting the speech bubbles in or over the panels.

CSP automatically makes layers for each folder, which stops you drawing or filling outside the panel when you're trying to draw inside

Although sometimes your brush tries to snap to the panel border as if it was a ruler which is annoying. deleting the associated ruler or turning off ''snap to frame'' can help.

you can draw speech bubbles using the balloon pen or use the ones in your downloads. the CSP text tool is sometimes janky but its good enough.

the 3d model feature comes in useful sometimes for poses harder to visualise or just to save time

this moire effect is done using the layer property tool that can create different screentone patterns (not just dots)

i went through a phase of using a LOT of these for a comic book look

other than that i sometimes scroll the assets page for unique brushes, speech bubbles, auto actions i can download and use

[abimee]

Honestly as someone who's used a ton of different programs I feel like Sai is the best program I've found for no pressure art, especially since their pen line tool is pretty good and intuitive. I dont feel like CSP is any better unless you wanna use their extra comic tools and assets and the like.

thats just the thing is i dont use assets since they clash and i dont like using stuff thats like. looks Too good? if that makes sense

like for instance i draw all of my comic panels by hand and theyre wonky and look like shit, but its because i find using the ''linework'' tool that gives me perfectly flat lines just makes everything look weird

so i really dont use ad-ons or special tools unless theyre like simple texturing stuff that i can easily just get in SAI as well since i have a shit ton of texture choices for brushes

so maybe it is for the best i stay with SAI. its never failed me and ive never had a complaint.... my one true love

[kenthenugget]

Adobe Broke Photoshop in 2023

A bit of a disclaimer: this will contain quite a bit of swearing and a lot of anger so be warned

For the past 3 and half years, I've been using photoshop for pretty much all of my digital drawings. Ever since I discovered you could draw in it back in my high school digital media class back in the 11th grade in 2019, I've pretty much used it for everything from school work to my comic to personal works. Despite its hefty price, its been reliable tool for me, and I've never had any sort of issues with it, up until recently.

Upon joining the tapas community, I was shocked at how much photoshop was disliked by the wider art community. Hell the mod in a server I'm in hates it with a burning passion (and may hate others who use it but idk). Mostly I've noticed that the complaints boil down to photoshop being buggy, unstable and overall unreliable. But in my experience that couldn't be further from the case. And if this were me from 2022 typing this, I would have to agree. But now I can see where they're coming from. In the course of 6 months, photoshop has gone from being a reliable good program to a complete mess. And any good will I had towards it is gone, and I'm surprised I'm still using it. The following is a recollection of my experience with the program beginning at the tail end of 2022 to now. Its going to be hard for me to frame this story in terms of escalation because it starts off really bad but gets slightly better by the end, but not by much.

Crashing:

Its inevitable that any computer program will crash at some point, and Photoshop is no exception. Up until this year, crashes were never really an issue. Sure they were annoying then they happened but they happened so infrequently that it was never a major problem. But that would quickly change. Beginning a few days before 2023, and ending around March and April, Photoshop would crash at the frequency of...every week, usually once per week at best and up to 3 or fucking 5 at worst. And it would all be the exact same. I would be drawing and out of nowhere, the program would freeze. I couldnt minimize it, close, save or do anything. The only way I'd be able to close it was by using task manager to force quit it. This was, as you could expect, annoying and extremely rage inducing but it wasnt just crashing that caused this.

Now thankfully, photoshop has an auto recovery feature so if the program crashes or if your pc looses power, you can recovery what you were working on and everything would be fine! But if photoshop crashed this way, auto recovery wouldnt work properly. It would recovery the file yes, but anything I was working up to the moment of crashing would be fucking gone. I cant tell you how many hours of work I lost because of this. Entire page layouts, sketches, selections, layers, etc gone within in an instant. I would try to levy the damage by changing the auto recovery timer from 10 to 5 minutes but only just.

I tried tolerating this at first but it kept happening more and more and eventually I had enough. My solution was to downgrade to the previous photoshop version as I surmised that the newer version had broken photoshop. This happened in February and up until the end of my spring break in March, I felt a sense of peace that I hadn't felt in a while. Sure, it would still crash but not the level as it did before. But that changed on the 16th and 17th. Photoshop crashed 5 times within those two days, three of them happening on the SAME... FUCKING... DAY!!! I wont lie, I felt defeated in a way I hadnt felt in a long time and out of desperation, I ended up updating to the latest version, praying that that would be the fix.

However this part of the story has a happy ending...sort of. I ended up making a thread about this on the adobe forums and ending up updating the driver for my graphics card and after that, photoshop stopped crashing. And unlike the last time, it didnt increase to that frequency ever again. In fact, I found a way of spotting when a crash would happen and found ways of avoiding it. The freezing would happen on certain files I was working on. And if I closed that file, I could avoid the entire thing freezing and loosing all my work. But regardless, the first 3 months of the year have (as stupid as this sounds) permanently scared me and Im still subconiously scared photoshop will crash constantly again.

The Annoying Ass Bugs:

Though the program had stabilized, my issues with photoshop would persist in the form of bugs which are really really fucking annoying to deal with. The first of those came in the form of it getting stuck on left click. If I had the program open for longer than 24 hours (or if I used the keyboard commands for undo, copy + cut + paste, or other tools that werent the brush and eraser tool), photoshop would get stuck on whatever tool I was using left click for. If it was the zoom tool, it would zoom in and out without me holding my finger down on the left mouse key. Same with the rotation tool and so on. The only way I could stop this was by closing the program and reopening it. Now, this is far better than the program crashing on me every day, but its very inconvenient. And I dont think I need to explain why. Other updates would come but Adobe didnt seem to fix it until an update that came out in early June. However, in doing this, they introduced another bug....

If I rotate the canvas or zoom in on a file Im working on, switch tabs and come back to that file, the camera position is reset. Rotations are reset, Im now zoomed out instead of zoom in, the camera is focused on a different part of the canvas. And unlike the last one, I cant stop it by closing the program. I dont understand how Adobe keeps on doing this. This fix a bug by introducing a new one. How is that even possible? And to make matters worse, they rolled out another update with "stablitiy issues" and according a comment left on a thread I made about this on the adobe forums, they still haven't fixed it. God only knows when they will and when they do, I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe found a way to break photoshop again.

So there you have it! With 6 months Photoshop has gone from a reliable work horse to a program I don't trust using. About half an hour before typing this blog out, Photoshop crashed while I was trying to fill in something, and I have to ask myself, "Why am I still doing this?" Why am I still using a program I hate using? Why am I subjecting myself to this? Why cant I just use the program every artist gushes over like its the second coming of Jesus Christ, Clip Studio Paint? And I dont have an answer. Apart from me wanting to finish my comic without worrying about adjusting to different art programs, I don't know why I'm still using photoshop. Maybe its because I've used it for so long that I have an attachment to it. Like I cant move on and just be done with it. Maybe despite all I said, I dont want photoshop to be this bad. I want it to be a good program. I want say with pride that its reliable program. I want it to be a functional stable thing I can use to draw my characters. I hate what Adobe's done with it.

I don't really know how to end this post. But all I can say is Adobe, you fucked up big time....

[livewireprojects]

Rambling about old art program

I'm mostly doing this cause I want to ramble & I don't want it being most of the text on an old image I'm posting.(Cause lots of rambling)

When I was younger I had a program called Manga Studio Pro 4.0, I didn't know how to use it much but I eventually was able to use it good enough.(Although at points I couldn't figure how to remove the text on some things if I was making a comic instead of just an image) This was an old program, while some of my stuff was digital installs I don't know how I got or were already there(MSPaint) this was the old way involving a CD that came in a box with a code.

At some point either from either from losing the box(this was a program I had a CD & code for in the past), using it too many times(I transferred computers a few times) or who knows what like not knowing how to use the code or losing the code for it I eventually lost the ability to install/use it. I think I tossed everything I had left for it after I lost the ability to use it & I don't remember when I tried to reinstall it. It worked I was able to reinstall it I just couldn't figure out if I had the code or not anymore cause some stuff confused me.

I don't remember much but I know that when you saved new projects you'd have a folder with the file to open the picture in the program(with layers there if they were there) & an image that was a jpeg full sized(depending on how big you made it) image with all visible layers merged.(I mean it's an image so of course) I have many unfinished projects I found in some backups I made of past computers, they'll never be finished & I'll never be able to open them up in the program again. It's not like I could finish them without starting over anyway thanks to how much shit has changed.

Looking around what I was able to it seems the most recent pics I made in manga studio were from 2012 which was my second year of high school.

My art programs back then were MSPaint & a copy of Paint Tool Sai I found somewhere(I bought a license for the program a few years back so use an actual legal ver now)

When I was younger I use to use Photoshop CS & MSPaint(every once in a while I used Manga Studio Pro 4.0)

Today/in recent years I use Clip Studio Paint EX, sometimes Paint Tool Sai, MSPaint occasionally(mostly use it for quickly pasting screenshots or stuff to copy to paste elsewhere) & very recently Procreate.

Up until a certain point after high school I drew with a mouse, I sometimes draw with a mouse but I mostly use a wacom tablet I've had for a few years. Also use an ipad for procreate.

It's kind of funny, I didn't use manga studio that much but I use clip studio paint a lot now. I bring this up cause manga studio is still going, it's called clip studio now.

Here's so images I was able to find from when I still used the program just so you can see what I worked on. If you've seen my art stuff you'll know how much things have changed too.

This pic was from 2011, it's an old image of my fursona's quad form

To the right is a more up-to-date version from 2016, not much has changed but the paw print is gone(the tail has a little more detail like it has fins now)

Here's a pic from 2021 were my fursona is dressed for pride month that shows better details. Funny enough first pic is manga studio, second pic is sai & third is clip studio paint so I guess it comes full circle.

Pic 1

This is the most recent pic(2012) I made in manga studio, according to the description I sketched it in manga studio then colored it in sai, the text is done in MSPaint. This was for an Alice in Wonderland based project I didn't get far in except for a few ideas.

Pic 2:

I have no idea when I made this, DA says I posted it there in 2012 but going off the art style looks older than I recall. After trying to search around I think this & pic 3 are maybe from 2010 & I got a little better in 2012 when I made pic 1.

This is for someone I use to know that I don't exactly have good memories of. I use to be in an AMV group with her & at some point she requested art from me & would repeatedly ask if it was done. I don't remember how often but I know she was asking about it to the point it was considered rude especially after I asked her to stop.

This was for one of her projects that as far as I know never got very far. I don't even remember what the plot was. I think it was two high schoolers falling in love while caring for a kid that was either their future daughter or the guy's little sister.

I think I was experimenting with the background on this & pic 3 cause I think the backgrounds had to do with finding random brushes & using them as much as I could were I thought it fit.

Pic 3:

From the same person that the less said that I remember the better cause I'm just going to end up ranting about how she kept making child me pissed from repeatedly asking if an art request was done when I kept asking her to stop & it wasn't done yet.

Anyway I think this was suppose to be for a slice of life fanime she was working on. I don't remember much past the blond(Midori) being the I think main character & something involving her having 3 ex-boyfriends with the magenta/pink hair one being dead. I think I drew this before pic 2 but I put it at the end cause there's more stuff.

Three of the images(the image in the thought bubble, the photo to the left & all three chibis if you count them as one image) were all imported into manga studio to be part of it.(Or the photo on the very left & the chibis were imported cause I think the pic in the thought bubble was edited in using Photoshop CS & the text was shaded in Photoshop as well)

Here's the three images in pic 3

Pic 1 was made with MSPaint & Photoshop CS(background is one I made in photoshop at some point), the writing was suppose to look crayon like cause this was before I had Sai which had a crayon brush

Pic 2 was made traditionally on paper & with sharpy before editing it in Photoshop CS. Don't know where I found the floor, the text in the corner is the only thing helping me guess this is from 2010. That cat charm is an old character of mine, was kind of a joke on Hello Kitty for some reason.

Pic 3 was made in MSPaint

I got one more pic I made in manga studio but it's getting it's own post.(Link to said post)

It's kind of crazy just how much was done & how much has changed from then & now.(I dunno how to end this)

[norbezjones]

I did the art meme! It was actually quite interesting, digging up pieces from my past for this retrospective, and it made me reflect quite a bit. So here's a full reflection of my art journey as depicted in this timeline:

2015: I was dedicating myself more to my art, and made a comic with a friend for a contest that year. I had always been passionate about comics, and had made comics in the past, but with this one, I really stretched my creative muscles. I was trying to learn more techniques with inking & lining. I did traditional art, as I had tried digital art, and considered myself very bad at it. I had been drawing consistently from a young age, and loved the craft.

2016: more traditional art, more comics. Still very passionate about art. The art depicted was for a little exercise I made that became the story idea "Complex Chords" (which is ironic, because I said in the caption of the original piece that, "I won’t be continuing this story." TOTAL LIE LMAO).

2017: the art depicted is the cover art I made for the public release of my game The Mouse, which is an interactive project about a college student named Evelyn Grey who is being abused by their roommate. I drew a lot of Evelyn Grey and her friend, Miss Dexter, that year.

2018: I can't remember much about this year, to be honest. The art depicted is the yearly self-portrait I did from 2015 to 2018ish if I recall correctly.

2019: I tried doing more digital art, using the Fire Alpaca creation tool. I didn't consider myself very good at it, and that discouraged me. The art depicted is a crossover piece between Good Omens and a friend's game, which I gave to that friend as fanart. The most important thing to know is this: I basically gave up on art completely this year or 2020, because I became convinced I wasn't good enough at it, as I had been told by people in my life I wasn't good enough at drawing. So I basically stopped, aside from doodles for myself in my notebook.

2020: I barely drew this year, aside from the coronavirus zine for charity, which the art depicted is from.

2021: I searched far and wide, but I couldn't find any saved pieces from this year. I assume this is because I still wasn't drawing at that time, so there wasn't much to save.

2022: This is where things take a shift. Due to my pseudo-dementia (which was not yet diagnosed), I needed an outlet to express my feelings, and began drawing again. I was very scared to return to drawing, because I was convinced I was so bad at it, but to my pleasant surprise, doing so was a rediscovery of a lost love. I had forgotten how passionate I was about drawing, and I eagerly continued where I had left off, drawing A TON that year. I especially loved returning to inking & lining with pen. The art above is from an animatic I made of my friend's actual play show, Heart Town Hunters. Go watch it, it's really good!

2023: I decided to try digital art again with the program Ibis Paint X, because I was in pseudo-dementia recovery, and only had a phone in my possession. Ibis Paint X is a mobile & PC application, and it's pretty versatile as well. I soon found a great meeting point between my traditional art, and my desire to thrive in the digital art space: I could line the art traditionally, and color it digitally. This meant I used my copic markers less, but it really helped develop my skills in an aspect of art I hadn't yet practiced much. I also participated in ArtFight for the first time ever that year! The art depicted is from my NSFW alt, of my 4 horsemen characters and their handler.

2024: this year, I've only developed my digital art skills more, though I'm no good at shading--that still alludes me (if you have any advice/tips for that, please share them!). I drew all of the art for my upcoming game Romance The Backrooms, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm making a lot of progress, and I'm happy. Here's to more art in the future!

[cooladddy]

The spontaneous and colorful illustrations of Massimiliano Aurelio

Among Massimiliano Aurelio 's passions is music, to whose protagonists - including pop, rock and jazz - he has dedicated more than one illustration. In the past his points of reference belonged to the world of comics , among them Frank Miller, to which along the way the masters of illustration were added. Today, among his clients we find Mondadori, Il Sole24ore, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and Wired, just to name a few. We asked him a few questions to get to know him better.

Hi Massimiliano and welcome to Picame. Do you want to introduce yourself to our readers? I was born in Puglia, precisely in Taranto and after studying art and illustration at the IED in Rome I came to Milan where I entered the advertising field as an Art Director. Illustrating, however, is a passion that I have always had since I was a child, so in 2012 I decided to take the path of being a freelancer which initially saw me working both as a freelance art director and as an illustrator but which gradually over the years saw me increasingly plus the field and for the past eight years I have been working full time as an illustrator. In short, I draw to live and to relax I draw.

Do you remember your first drawing? There is no trace of my first drawing in my memory but I remember very well some drawings related to my childhood. I remember them because I had the obsession of always depicting cranes building buildings and railway level crossings. I think I've drawn hundreds of them. My mother's numerous art history books that I occasionally used to draw on in the absence of blank sheets of paper also know something about it.

The artificial creation of images now has a spectacular level of quality, which helps, but at the same time threatens, among others, the professionalism of illustrators . Various forms of creativity can be “imitated” by AI and therefore completely replace human processing. Jacopo Perfetti, a teacher and entrepreneur who knows the subject well, states: " What worries me most is not that machines may one day think like man, but that man may one day think like a machine and therefore, Done, stop thinking ." What is your point of view? It is a topic on which I have not yet been able to delve as deeply as I would like but from the few articles I have read I am very much in line with the words of my colleague and friend, the excellent Emiliano Ponzi, when in an interview published a few weeks ago on the subject he said: " I have the feeling that there is a wave much higher than the shelter that can be found ." I can only agree, this is because if we already cannot control the tax evasion of small or large companies in the world, how can we control the images of other hundreds of millions of computers and users? It's too complicated, unless there is a restriction to the source where you access the images. The thing that worries me most about ChatGTP or Midjourney is that many artists are probably influenced by them so much that they no longer work to express their own way of seeing the world, but to copy what AI will succeed. I speak of artists, focusing above all on "commercial" illustration, which for reasons of time and budget does not have much time available for processing and publication. Instead, true artists have original, personal, inimitable styles. People like Salvador Dalì or Picasso speaking of the past, and recent artists or designers like Blu or Zerocalcare, have nothing to fear from the programs. To conclude, I still recommend a site like Have I Been Trained? , a tool that allows artists to understand if their works have been used to train this or that algorithm linked to the app that generates digital art of the moment. I would call it one of the tools that opened the eyes of many other artists who were unaware that their works had been used in the training program.

Three artists that you would like to recommend to our readers. Three are really too few but if I have to narrow the circle I would first recommend two great illustrators: the first and most current is Christoph Niemann who I consider one of the most brilliant minds in contemporary visual communication and who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago here in Milan . The second is Miroslav Sasek who I continue to appreciate today as I did twenty years ago with his colorful line and witty and vintage, yet current style. The last of the three but most linked to painting as an art form remains Amedeo Modigliani . In addition to the jobs for which you are popular, do you have any other passions or secret dreams? I have always wanted to have musical talent. One of the instruments that I have never touched but which remains on the wish list is the drums. I have loved it since I was a teenager when I listened to bands like Offspring, Nofx, Korn and I continue to appreciate it even today since my more adult ears have also been carried away by jazz music.

Chet Baker Is there an artist or character from the past or present that you would like to meet in person? Even here just one becomes too restrictive. But I have always been fascinated by characters and artists like Toulouse-Lautrec in Belle Époque Paris who lived and transmitted in each of their drafts or works of art. I would have a lot of questions and curiosities to ask him so one meeting wouldn't be enough. A work goal that you would like to achieve within a year . There are some projects in the works. The desire is to continue looking for new stimuli and not repeat previous experiences too much. There is an objective that I would like to try to achieve but I believe it will not be easy to complete within the next 365 groups. It is an idea about the history and events that happened in Milan in the last century in each decade and on different themes (architecture/fashion/events). Because Milan is the city that in Italy, more than others, has transformed a lot and continues to transform rapidly from year to year. Can you tell us what you are working on these days? I have just closed a very interesting project that I created for the Emilia Romagna Region and which has to do with the child/parent relationship in different age groups. At the same time I am finalizing a new illustration for the Yacht Boat International magazine which has "adopted" me as its official illustrator for almost two years now.

Yves Saint Laurent + Mondrian

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