#and try it out with better proportions and a better sketch

[val-of-the-north]

Unfinished concept for a beast Brador. The proportions are all weird, but I REALLY liked the way I envisioned him in my head. The Bloodletter plunged into his stomach was one last attempt to draw the "tainted blood" out of himself, which he knew wouldn't work but tried anyway... now it's forever active.

[biganimal92]

shout out to my boy lampwick

[skunkes]

observation post but ive found myself doing a lot of "problem solving" for commissions in my sketchbook because it helps me in a way that drawing digitally does not... Now im trying to figure out why that happens and how to bridge that disconnect because well why would it be different. Why is it so different 😭

[brown-little-robin]

ok I'm not subjecting my poor ceramics blog followers to 2 JoJo sculptures in a row, so for once I'm putting a ceramics post only on main. hi friends :] I am OBSESSED with the pose potential of sculpting a guy as a wolf and his soul as a wolf that's twice as big and fancier and has no sense of personal space

[hawkeye-mrstrapper-pierce]

after a long hiatus: Klinger & Mulcahy Version 2, Digital only. Bonus reference pic included below for fun

July 6, 2023

(version 1 where Klinger is different but Mulcahy is the same will be linked here)

[teaboot]

Because a few have asked

Teaboot's Super Okay Guide To Developing A Brain That Makes Art Work

Or: How to get your eyes to talk directly to your hands without your brain micromanaging you

Or: How to draw better

⚠️ Warning for super fast gifs cause they all gotta be 5 seconds or less or else my phone shits the bed ⚠️

1. Do the following exercises. Don't just think about doing them or figure out a clever way to not do them, just do them. Yes even the boring ones and the ones that look ugly

2. If you have any pride, crush it. Kill it. Crunch it up into itty bitty bits and feed it to the ducks at the park. You have no talent and don't know anything and everything you make is hot garbage. Believe that. Make yourself believe that. That is where you live now. Surrender any indignation or shame you have to the void and embrace rock bottom.

3. Read step 2 again and actually do it this time. My methods will not work if you try to make this process pretty. Don't.

4. No drawing from your imagination on these. Actually draw from real life. If it's boring like eating day old oatmeal in in beige room but your usual art still feels wonky then I'm talking to you specifically. You can't write poetry until you learn words and yes learning words is as dull as horseshit sometimes but do you wanna be Robert Frost or not

5. Pick up some cheap paper and a ballpoint pen. Grab a small object, between the size of your hand and the size of a microwave. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Put the tip of your pen to the paper and press "start".

Now without looking at your paper, only looking at the object, draw the object in as much detail as you can. Do not break contact between the paper and the pen tip until the timer goes off.

This is a continuous line drawing, and you're doing it in pen because you need to know what rock bottom looks like and rock bottom looks like no eyes no erasers no shading no do-overs.

6. Sit down in a public place. As someone walks by, draw their their body in as much accuracy as you can before they are no longer in view. Once you can't see them anymore, the drawing is done. No adding details. Pick someone else and do it again. No "base sketch". Just them. If it barely looks human you're doing great

7. Get a black pen. Put a small object on a dark, flat surface. Now draw the surface without drawing the object. Don't draw the outline of the object. Don't do a sketch. Just draw the surface that is visible around the object until only a silhouette remains. No time limit just do it.

The ability to draw accurate proportions from sight comes from learning to see what exists between a thing and the absence of a thing and if that hurts to think about then you need to do it more

8. Keep doing these until you are Ready.

9. You will know when you are Ready. It will make sense when you are Ready. You will Understand.

10. Unwind with some goofy shit so you don't forget why you wanna improve to begin with

[wombywoo]

Ok! I've finally decided to put together a (somewhat) comprehensive tutorial on my latest art~

Please enjoy this little step-by-step 💁‍♀️

First things first--references!

Now I'm not saying you have to go overboard, but I always find that this is a crucial starting point in any art piece I intend on making. Especially if you're a detail freak like me and want to make it as realistic as possible 🙃

As such, your web browser should look like this at any given point:

Since this is a historical piece, it means hours upon hours of meaningless research just to see what color the socks are, but...again. that isn't, strictly, necessary 😅

Once I've compiled all my lovely ref pics, I usually dump them into a big-ass collage ⬇️

(I will end up not using half of these, alas :'D)

Another reference search for background material, and getting to showcase our models of choice for this occasion~

When picking a reference for an actor or model, the main thing I keep in mind (besides prettiness 🤭) is lighting and orientation. Because I already kinda know what pose I'm gonna go with for this piece, I can look for specific angles that might fit the criteria. I should mention that I am a reference hound, and my current COD actor ref folder looks like this:

Also keep in mind, if you're using a ref that you need to flip, make sure you adjust accordingly. This especially applies to clothing, as certain things like pants zippers and belt buckles can be quite specific ☝️

Now that we've spent countless hours googling, it's time to start with a rough sketch:

It doesn't have to be pretty, folks, just a basic guideline of where you want the figures to be.

The next step is to define it more, and I know this looks like that 'how to draw an owl' meme, but I promise--getting from the loose sketch above to below is not that difficult.

Things to keep in mind are--don't go too in-depth with the details, because things are still subject to change at this point. In terms of making a suitable anatomically-correct sketch, I would suggest lots of studying. This doesn't even have to be things like figure drawing, I genuinely look at people around me for inspiration all the time. Familiarize yourself with the human form, and things like weight, proportions, posing will seem a little more feasible.

It's also important at this stage to consider your composition. Remember to flip the canvas frequently to make sure you're not leaning to one side too often. I'm sure something can be said for the spiral fibonacci stuff, which I don't really try to do on purpose, but I think keeping things like symmetry and balance in mind is a good start ✌️

Next step is just blocking in the figures. Standard. No fuss 👍

Now onto the background!

It's frankly hilarious how many people thought I was *hand-drawing* these maps and stuff 😂😂 I cannot even begin to comprehend how insanely difficult that would be. So yeah, we're just taking the lazy copy and paste way out 🤙

I almost always prepare my backgrounds first, and this is mostly to get a general color scheme off the bat. For collage work, it's really just a matter of trial and error, sticking this here, slapping this there, etc. I like to futz around with different overlay options until I've found a nice arrangement. Advice for this is just--go nuts 🤷‍♀️

Next, I add a few color adjustments. I tend to make at least 2 colors pop in an art piece, and low and behold, they usually tend to be red and blue ❤️💙There's something about warm/cool vibes, idk man..

Now we move on to coloring the figures. This is just a basic block and fill, not really defining any of the details yet.

Next, we add some cursory values. Sloppy airbrush works fine, it'll look better soon I promise 🙏

And now--rendering!

I know a lot of beginner artists are intimidated by rendering, and I can totally understand why. It's just one of those things you have to commit to 💪

I've decided to show a brief process of rendering our dear Johnny's face here:

Starting off, I usually rely on the trusty airbrush just to get some color values going. Note--I've kept my sketch layer on top, but feel free to turn it on and off as you work, so as to not be too bound to the sketch. For now, it's just a guideline.

This next stage may look like a huge jump, but it's really just adding more to the foundation. I try to think of it like putting on make-up in a way~ Adding contours, accentuating highlights. This is also where I start adding in more saturation, especially around areas such as ears, nose and lips. Still a bit fuzzy at this point, but that's why we keep adding to it 💪

A boy has appeared! See--now I've removed most of the line layer, and it holds up on its own. I'll admit that in order to achieve this realistic style, you'll need lots and lots of practice and skill, which shouldn't be discouraging! Just motivate yourself with the prospect of getting to look at pretty men for countless hours 🙆‍♀️

I'll probably do a more in-depth explanation about rendering at some point, but let's keep this rolling~

Moving forward is just a process of adding to the figures bit by bit. I do lean towards filling in each section from top to bottom, but you can feel free to pop around to certain parts that appeal to you more. I almost always do the faces first though, because if they end up sucking, I feel less guilty about scrapping it 😂 But no--I think he's pretty enough to proceed 😚

They're coming together now 🙆‍♀️ Another helpful tip--make sure you reuse color. By that, I mean--try to incorporate various colors throughout your piece, using the eyedropper tool to keep a consistent palette. I try to put in bits of red and blue where I can

Here they are fully rendered! Notice I've made a few subtle changes from the sketch, like adjusting the belt buckles because I made a mistake 😬 Hence why you shouldn't put too much stock in your initial sketch~

The next step is more of a stylistic choice, but I usually go over everything with an outline, typically in a bright color like green. Occasionally, I can just use my initial line layer, but for this, I've made a brand new, cleaner line 👍

And the final step is adjusting the color and adding some text:

Tada!! It's done!

All in all, this took me the better part of a week, but I have a lot of free time, so yeah ✌️

I hope you appreciated that little walkthrough~ I know people have been asking me how I do my art, but the truth is--I usually have no clue how to explain myself 😅 So have this half-assed tutorial~

As a bonus, here is a cute (cursed) image of Johnny without his mustache:

A baby, a literal infant child !!! who put this wee bairn on the front lines ??! 😭

Anyway! peace out ✌️

[mel-addams]

Get Started Drawing...

...even as a complete beginner!

In my efforts to help some friends who are only just starting to learn to draw (as adults! glorious!! <3), I kept digging around for resources that cover things I remember learning in the various art classes I've taken...but that does a better job than I can of laying it all out in a comprehensive, but not overwhelming, manner. (I am far too prone to rambling as you can see from this post, and bounce around topics as I remember them, rather than in a sensible order.) I've found a few guides here and there that cover one thing or another decently well...but I've finally found a free site I'm really keen on as an overall source if you're just starting out with learning to draw!

It's incredibly clear and concise, whereas many of the other sites and books I found could sometimes be overwhelmingly detailed. It's arranged in a way that reminds me of the flow of art classes, starting at the very first steps--how to approach art if you've never done it before, and the fact that you only need basic tools to begin with. If you go in approximate order, it then establishes that you should start sorting out a solid foundation by practicing simple lines and shapes--the same way you learned to write letters so you could ultimately make words, sentences, stories... This includes some neat little practice exercises with questions to consider while you do them, so you also learn to see and observe things like angles and proportions, which are critical for being able to accurately draw more complex things.

It evolves from there into how to take those basic shapes and turn them into simplified human bodies--and from there, how to consider more complex 3D versions of the shapes to give those bodies a sense of dimension and physicality. It even touches on things like composition, silhouette, negative space, and line of action--all in a quick, straightforward manner. It plants the seed of understanding for these more complex illustration concepts, which you can then research further, armed with relevant terminology to dig up more in-depth resources as they catch your interest!

The style itself is usually simple, but even if your aim is to draw with a more detailed style, this one can serve as a base sketch to add that detail to. (Combine learning this base with photo studies, plus more detailed style guides for wherever you want to take your art, and you could use this as a base for comics, cartoons, anime, realism...the core concepts and skills remain the same!) There's also examples of how to adjust for varied body shapes, so it provides more flexibility than some drawing guides do, which often only focus on one "ideal" body type. (This style can also be used for that, if it's what you want--you just adjust the proportions of the basic shapes as you need! But this provides examples of how to handle variety, which will give you a better foundation for drawing people and characters so they don't all look the same, instead of having to figure out how to adjust for it later on.) The Shape Dolls for reference are also incredibly delightful, and a great cheap way to have a little pose reference mannequin of sorts!

There's also links to sources if you want to dig into concepts more deeply--available both as a general source page, as well as some specific topics including relevant sources at the bottom of their respective pages. There's also a patreon with some extra thoughts that is fully accessible for free, but has a paid option if you want to support Tan for providing such a lovely resource! (Also they have a legit vegetable farm?? How cool is that.)

So yes! If you have any interest in learning to draw--whether you've ever tried before or not, and no matter your age--try looking through this site, and let it guide you through the process!

[hey-august]

Word count: Just under 1k Warnings: NSFW, MDNI, buggy x GN!reader, no use of Y/N, mentions of masturbation, sex, and oral.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

Buggy who is surprisingly good at drawing.

Buggy who doodles all the time. Ugly little caricatures of people who piss him off. Goofy scribbles of bits that make him laugh. Potential skits. 

Buggy who scrawls on the margins of paper, the corner of napkins, anywhere he can relieve the itch in his hands.

Buggy who designs costumes for his crew. Colored pencils and oil pastels bring the flashy couture to life.

Buggy who carries a small sketchbook in his coat. Deckle edged paper wrapped in leather, perfect for practicing pencil sketches and graphite drawings as he observes the crew.

Buggy who doesn’t share the drawings in his sketchbook, though. Some had to learn the hard way not to look over his shoulder.

Buggy who realizes too late that you are overtaking his personal pages. What started as small forms to study pose and movement grew larger, capturing more of your essence.

Buggy who becomes obsessed with capturing the small details. How your nose crinkles when you laugh. The sneer in your lips when you’re pissed. The way you rake your fingers through your hair when you try to calm yourself.

Buggy who gets curious late one night. Curious and desperate.

Buggy who draws you from memory and fueled by his filthy imagination. The soft sound of pencil scraping along the paper is comforting.

Buggy who fills a page with you in compromising positions. The lewd expressions you might wear. What he thinks you’d look like split on his cock. Or mouth open, begging to have your face fucked. His hands gripping your plush thighs.

Buggy who fucks himself to the hand-drawn porn and cums all over the page.

Buggy who feels guilty and burns the soggy drawings, as best he can. It takes a few frustrating tries and he panics, even though no one is around.

Buggy who tries to ignore those feelings. Trying to draw anything except you. But everything looks like shit now. Proportions are off. He presses too hard when sketching, unable to erase the stark lines. Even his doodles lack life.

Buggy who gives in and scribbles you in the corner of his sketchbook before moving on to something else. And it works. His movements flow better. A weight is lifted off his chest.

Buggy who eventually caves to the nighttime muse once more. Filling another perverted page with the obscene images flooding his mind. This time, he doesn’t ruin the drawings with jizz or fire.

Buggy who revisits that page frequently. Adds to that page. Convinces himself that it’s okay, it’s not hurting anyone. In fact, it helps him by taking away other urges.

Buggy who eventually manages to misplace his sketchbook. He fucking lost it.

Buggy who doesn’t want to bring attention to his lost treasure. If he says it’s missing, some freaks might find it and look through the pages. They’ll realize what a pathetic loser he is.

Buggy who frantically retraces his footsteps, barking orders to keep everyone away from him. 

Buggy who finally finds it in the hallway just outside his room. The book must have fallen out of his pocket and laid mostly out of sight with the brown leather blending into the wooden floor.

Buggy who is relieved. It doesn’t look like the book had been touched or moved. Even the leather string is still wound around the sketchbook tightly.

Buggy who needs to get back to other duties after sloughing them off most of the day. He’s still on edge, reading into everyone’s interactions. No one acts differently, adding to the relief that no one knows about his perversions.

Buggy who doesn’t open the sketchbook until the end of a very long day. Who waits until he’s alone and in his room.

Buggy whose stomach lurches at the note peeking out of one of the pages. A page devoted to your smile. A note with your handwriting. “This is so impressive! I look so happy”

Buggy who slams the sketchbook shut and starts to pace around the room. Fuck. Did you find it first? Did you look through it? Why? What else did you see? What else did you see?

Buggy who freezes at the thought. Who stares at the awful book, as if it would pipe up and tell him in a fluttery voice.

Buggy who grabs the book and roughly throws it into a drawer, ready to lock up his feelings. Ready to deal with his unhealthy actions with more unhealthy actions.

Buggy who tries to go to bed but can’t sleep. He lays in bed surrounded by a carousel of thoughts. Of fear. And anxiety.

Buggy who sends over a hand to retrieve the damn book. He has to know. He’ll die if he doesn’t find out.

Buggy who can feel his hands shake with each heartbeat as he thumbs through the book, looking for more notes.

Buggy who feels both calmed and excited as he finds your commentary on a few more innocuous pages. Praises for his skill and appreciation for scenes he captured.

Buggy who finally flips to the page. That one.

Buggy who’s afraid to read the note you left there. But he does. “Want to collaborate one day?”

Buggy whose stomach and heart are in knots. 

Buggy who keeps reading. “I’d like to see what you look like too.”

Buggy who shows up at your door, panting and red faced. Sketchbook in hand.

Buggy who trails his fingers along your face as he fucks into you, commiting each detail to memory. The shape of your mouth with each moan. Your lust-filled eyes. The little teeth marks left after you bite your lips.

Buggy who can’t help but stare at your sex-tired body. Chest heaving. Glistening.

Buggy who still wants to taste you. To taste himself on you. Who uses his mouth and tongue to memorize more of your body.

Buggy who is surprisingly good at drawing and collaborating.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ ✩ ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

A/N: Just want to highlight this line bc I love it "This time, he doesn’t ruin the drawings with jizz or fire."

[momokarp]

hi I love your sketchbook art sm! your lines look kinda messy in the best way possible and i rlly wanna achieve that same look!! also i wanted to ask, do you sketch everything out in pencil beforehand or just go directly in with the pens?

Thank you! I used to hate how not clean my stuff looked compared to other’s stuff but I eventually came to really like messy inky things! Makes me feel better about my mistakes and it stops me from being a perfectionist.

As for my process I do both!! I’ll either go straight in with pens, or sketch first in pencil- OR if you want it to look messy but also kinda sick?? Do your under drawings in a super light pen/marker (like yellow or blue or gray) and then lineart on top. Maybe make that color you use something to add to shading later on. I’ve also done under drawings with dried out pens before to get a gritty texture, if you have any dying pens, they can still be put to use!

I just broke into a new sketchbook so I labeled what I did what with for these Needles Concepts. Fineliner pens can get you consistent line weight but BRUSH PENS can be thin or thick or flex to get some nice line variations. There’s soft brush pens and harder ones too if you’re worried about control.

The stuff where I went pencil first and then pen is FAR neater in general, and I can plan more. It’s pretty difficult to go just straight pen but I encourage you try it out a few times. It makes you plan and think about posing and proportion all in your head but boy it can be fun!

[paper-mario-wiki]

i'm loving seeing you post more of your art!! out of curiosity, how long have you been drawing? is there anything specific you do to practice or do you just pick something and draw it? (i've been trying to learn to draw myself for the past year or so, and seeing your art more often has become somewhat of an inspiration for me!)

ive been doodling all my life! thought when i say "doodle" i mean "as an unmedicated youth i was unable to focus on a drawing for more than 45 minutes at a time"

here's some posts from an art blog i had in middle school, and the first year of highschool.

what most critically separates this art from the art ive been doing recently is that i NEVER used any refrence. ever. i looked at stuff to make sure i knew what it looked like, but the rest was always roughly estimated based on what i thought would look good (which was largely based on cartoons).

but i only ever started trying to "learn how to draw" over the past year. here's the thing: spending a bunch of hours practicing drawing cubes and cylinders is like. all you have to do to see yourself start improving in real time.

draw a bunch of cubes and cylinders, and learn how to make them look realistic in proportion to each other using references to guide you. practice drawing stuff like basic buildings, cans of soda, maybe a cake (3 short fat cylinders on top of each other) if you're feeling daring. then try to draw slightly more complicated shapes, like spheres and cones and stuff. layer these shapes on top of each other to make more complicated shapes. you're gettin the picture.

infuriatingly, basic shapes is like 40% of the "getting it to click" work done.

after than, move on to 30 second sketches of nude models using this site. yeah, only 30 seconds. it doesnt matter if it comes out looking like shit, the point is learning how to simplify complicated shapes down into their most basic lines. dont waste time erasing. dont waste time pressing ctrl-z. erasing is your enemy. you arent learning how to erase, you're learning how to draw. (you'll get your eraser back later).

do this hundreds of times. yeah, hundreds. put on a podcast or something. get in a voice call with your friends. but ya gotta practice this one. that's the next 20% of making it "click".

now, unfortunately, the last 40% is just a matter of slamming your head against the wall of art until things slowly start to look better and better. it's sort of like a chemical formula, in that the closer you get to 100% purity, the more and more difficult it becomes to distill it.

the key is to ALWAYS use reference. you cannot learn how to realistically draw something you've conjured from your mind if you cannot depict something that's right in front of you realistically.

im currently in this valley, as most artists are. in fact i dont think it's possible to make art "click" in your mind 100%, but it sure is fun to inch closer and closer!

below is a bunch of art in chronological order from april to now. you'll see that it's not really a straight road of getting better and better, but you'll see my lines slowly getting more confident and details becoming more clearly defined!

[not-quite-normal]

Hello, hope this finds you well!

As a film enjoyer and small artist I was absolutely mesmerised by the animation work in ATSV all around but The Spot in particular stood out to me! I was curious how the process of animating his scenes went especially with all the portals, which I assume many of which were painted in afterwards? Was the way the team thought out his scenes different from other chatacters?

Apologies if I'm asking about something you didn't work on but I thought asking was worth a shot! Anywho thats it, may you have a lovely day!

good question, and thank you! i haven't seen much talk about spot but a lot of development went into his look

for posing, we took a lot of inspiration from the artist egon schiele, an idea from humberto rosa. we wanted spot to look awkward by making him feel like a loose yet controlled sketch, exaggerating his weird long and lanky proportions into very squared off and angular shapes

for the portals, they had to be created in anim first and then fx did a pass on them to add all the little extra swirly bits, and then comp did another pass on them to integrate them into the scene. every element that you see in a shot had to be created in 3D in order to move properly down the pipeline so that the other departments knew what to do with the scene, because they don't always look at the animation playblasts, what matters is what's published in the scene file. we can draw over our shots to try things out quickly but eventually had to put in the work of making them real 3D assets. every portal that you see on spot's body and floating off of him was placed by an animator

near the beginning of production, a lot of tests were done to make spot's face portal more expressive, mimicking mouth and eye shapes as a part of his acting. it was decided that simpler was better in this case, so it was mostly just kept as an oval instead

in order to make a shot like this work in 3D, we used two spot rigs here and a portal tool that let us flatten the geo of the second spot down to 1 pixel so that only his hand can be seen while animating in and out of the portal. nothing is painted over here, this is pretty much 1:1 to what's in the maya scene

in order to progress spot's power throughout the movie, we needed to add more body spots in the india sequence, similar to the second to last pose here (art by aymeric kevin):

our anim tech lead emmanuel gatera worked with rigging to update spot with the ability to turn sections of his body black with the use of a boolean, since it was impossible to add enough spots to totally cover his hands and midsection. he did still need a lot of spots along with the booleans though, i think it was somewhere around 80 (we had library poses for them, didn't need to bring them all in and manually place them in every shot haha)

and finally forget what i said about having to create everything in 3D because the final stage of spot's power was the exception to that rule since he was only in a small handful of shots. nideep varghese animated this shot with the regular spot rig and drew over it entirely in 2D, which the fx department recreated with about a bazillion layers of hand-drawn fx by arthur muller, srdjan milosevic and filippo maccari. lighting/comp by craig feifarek

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for snitching on people cheating on a test, if it could affect my grade too?

You may remember me from the "wibta for reminding our professor about sketches she assigned us to do"

TLDR on that: im an art student (F20, all students involved are 20), and this professor assigned us to do a lot of sketches that will be graded. for context, im really passionate about art and i have perfect grades while most others are just here for the diploma and are doing the bare minumum.

i thought they would try to let the professor forget about the assignment, and i'd have the dilemma of if i should remind her or not, even if i know nobody else did it, which is what my last post was about.

however! it's even worse then that. some of em are gonna trace it (from photos, its life drawing). this upsets me because the way these are graded is that theyre compared to each other - their proportions will look perfect, and mine might look bad next to them. this feels really unfair, i really don't want to see my streak of perfect grades ruined because someone is cheating.

wibta if i snitched?

some notes: 1) the professor won't notice on her own (as much as i wish she did), i dont feel like typing out how i know this but just take my word for it. 2) normally id feel confident enough in my skills to draw better then someone tracing, however this professor gives pretty random grades based on if she likes u or not (for example two people turned in the exact same sketches and she not only didnt notice but she gave them different grades). and from previous experience i know she does not like me for some reason lol (she most likes men which is weird af??)

✨ ->to find

What are these acronyms?

[redslug]

NEUROSLUG NEUROSLUG NEUROSLUG

Ahem. So, I spent the last day force-feeding Stable Diffusion my art to teach it the concept of an anthropomorphic insect. As a result, I have a working LoRA that imitates my coloring style fairly decently and it can kinda do bug anthros. Emphasis on "kinda", it still needs a lot of iterations to be able to maintain proportions on it's own. However, it does quite great when provided with a simple line drawing as a quideline. Here are some examples I whipped up in like 2 hours. Input image:

AI's pure output:

After touchup:

There was quite a bit of touchup on this first attempt with the generation serving mostly as a rough under drawing, but then again I didn't stress the network with details too much. Then I tried squeezing more definition out of it. Attempt 2:

It can be quite competent when I supplement it with styles it knows well. I only used 30 of my own images to teach it, so it might be a little starved for examples at the moment. Adding "Bob Eggleton" seems to knock some sense into it for now. Okay, still images are working, now let's bash Neuroslug against some animation.

For something named Stable Diffusion it's not the most stable, huh. I'm still pleased with the result though, it's pretty cute. And while trying to make it cute I learned a little thing. AI art isn't art. It's a mixture of alchemy, gambling, detective work and demon summoning it seems. And a bit of just art. What I mean by that is that it can attach very unexpected meanings to words. Since I trained the AI on just anthro insects, it follows their defined anatomy quite closely. Specifically, they do not have breasts. As a result, adding "with big boobs" to the prompt changed the shading style and colors but not the actual anatomy. And so, most of my prompts have this lovely phrase just to improve the colors. 'Kay, time for the freak show. At some point during testing the machine decided that my moth isn't decent enough and put panties on her suddenly.

Now that's a booty

Look at those eyes

They have seen things As you can probably tell these have no sketch to guide the result.

It's still bad but it's got the right spirit.

THICC

Surprisingly cute even if janky.

Looks better than it has any right to Now I'll crawl back into my hole to play with settings for an indeterminate amount of time. I'll publish my mini-me for you all to mess with once I deem it stable enough.

[sleepingdeath-light]

human au + sentient puppet reader hcs ; wally darling

requested by ; suninwalls (14/05/23)

fandom(s) ; welcome home

fandom masterlist(s) ; here

character(s) ; wally darling

outline ; “Hello! Unfortunately, I was also tapped in a underground concrete box by those puppets. I can't leave! Can I ask for Human!Wally and puppet!reader (a little switcheroo). How would he deal with a sentient or hunted puppet that he or someone else brought to his house. Have a great day!✴️🌟”

note ; i need to refresh myself on the lore after this, but since this is a complete role shift au it shouldn’t be too badly ooc

warning(s) ; human & puppeteer au, mostly fluff!

though your friendship had started off on a… rough note to say the least, once wally has gotten used to the whole ‘sentient living puppet’ thing, the two of you became as thick as thieves

(after all, puppeteer or not, most people would panic if the puppet they just bought from an auction suddenly sat up and started talking to them of their own accord — arguably, if anything, wally handled the whole thing quite well by pushing through his fear to introduce himself to you and ask you about yourself)

whenever any of your stitching becomes loose or one of your button eyes falls out, wally is always there with a needle and thread to do some last minute repairs — he’s not at poppy’s level of mastery over textiles, but he knows just enough of the basics to keep you healthy

he’s brought you on the ‘welcome home’ set a couple of times when you’ve complained about being bored when he’s left you home alone, and you’ve been incorporated into a couple of episode sketches here and there — typically to teach a lesson about empathy, self acceptance, or something else along those lines to their young audience

(it’s always a good laugh, even if it is a bit strange for you to watch your fellow puppets get human limbs, or whole humans in some cases, shoved inside of them in order to bring them to life — like you know they aren’t alive like you, but it’s still a deeply disturbing thing to witness)

(wally has also had to pretend to be your puppeteer to hide your sentience before, which earned him plenty of praise for his vocal range and a very stern talking to from you about warning you before grabbing you by the hemming — you forgave him, obviously, since he’s your dearest friend and the absolute most, but you’ve never let him live it down)

when he’s not working on set, he’s up in his workshop painting something or another (a trait he shares with his most well known character, which you never fail to joke about) — most of the time he just paints whatever comes to mind, other times he’ll start painting you because your puppet proportions are so unusual to him that he can’t help but try and capture whatever thing you’re doing at that moment

his close friends and fellow puppeteers are the only other people who know the extent of your sentience, and they’ve all readily accepted you into their friend group — for better or for worse

for example, julie and poppy are forever planning and crafting up new outfits for you to wear (including a recreation of the wally puppet’s outfit which everyone seemed to find rather amusing) and making sure all of your materials are well taken care of, whilst barnaby is someone who is quick to rope you in to whatever prank he’s about to pull on your dearest human companion — you never really know what you’re going to experience from one day to the next, but you wouldn’t have it any other way

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

How do you (personally) balance designs looking cool and practical/realistic? I feel like I get stuck on my spec bio that I lose the fun in designing. Or I can't find anything neat from the animals I use for inspiration to add and don't know where to look for other ideas.

you gotta add life and whimsy. sounds kinda weird and maybe doesn't make sense, but it's true. you can spend all sorts of time making a perfected realistic looking design and if there's no life and whimsy in it, it feels flat. you can practice this by drawing very fast gestural poses, putting your character/creature designs in Situations and drawing how they'd react, and just practicing expressive faces.

Make a whole character out of your creation. doesn't have to be a character you give a name to and keep around forever as a new story protagonist or dnd character or whatever. you just have to breathe some individuality and life into it for a bit.

I'll try to illustrate what I mean.

(image description: two sketch pages of an orc and an elf. on the first page, they are drawn beneath reference images of a wild boar head and a macaque. here, the orc and elf have more realistic facial proportions and match their reference animals better, but they look a little dull. on the second page, the orc and elf have been redrawn. at the top of the page are sketches of each of them laughing. the orc's mouth is wide open, making their snout wrinkle a lot as they lift it in their laugh. the elf's mouth is only a little open, with the lips pushed forward in an O shape, and they are squinting happily. below this are full body sketches of the orc and elf, fully dressed in casual outfits, crouching to snarl at each other. the orc is baring their tusks but keeping their mouth closed, while the elf has their mouth wide open, putting their long canine teeth on display and also holding their tail straight up. end description.)

body language and facial expression are so important! you gotta be loose with it to learn how to create more dynamic and lively designs. and for characters, it's also important to explore things like culture and personality so you can individualize them.

I don't know exactly what your art style looks like or what it means for you to be hitting roadblocks in the design process as you try to find that balance between looking both cool and realistic. My art style is semi-realism, and I do think stylization plays a key role in crating interesting designs. the closer you get to photorealism, the more difficult it is to create dynamic designs, in my experience. it's not impossible! but getting to that skill level in realism is harder than i think some people assume it is.

I have seen a lot of photorealism art that was clearly done by skilled artists who know all the technical things about making art, but couldn't bring out the life in their subjects. it's easy to get stuck on the technical skills, to fuss over making the shadows of a portrait match the photo reference, to get so skilled at texture that you forget about gestural posing. maybe getting so invested in realistic and practical design you neglect the whimsy. fantasy is inherently whimsical! I know this blog is all about making fantasy anatomy more believable, which often means curtailing the whimsy if it gets out of hand. but the whimsy is essential! it just needs to be cultivated and pruned occasionally if it's getting in the way of your goals. and on the other hand, so does the realism! perfect realism can't really exist in fantasy, or it would already be reality, you know what I mean? if the realism is a roadblock to designs you truly enjoy, prune it back. cut the realism down to size and make room for some whimsy. that's the balance.