#but i think it works better in greyscale

[chibigaia-art]

contempt

[insignasus]

Wip of a dragon I've been working on during streams the past couple of weeks. Having a blast working in greyscale but also hoping to wrap it up soon so I can move on to colors.

Gonna try and toss the full wip on ko-fi within the next couple of days.

[itsevansart]

staff, he ain't female and you can tell. just so we're clear. i'm not breaking shit

hc that miguel is a chronic worrier (because that's what i am lmao) and that he rewatches fights he lost at night when he can't sleep to figure out how to beat em next time & improve. always on The Grind

make my day by reblogging and not reposting!

[iraprince]

gonna show u guys a little opalescent highlight hack i threw together today

rainbow gradient above your main figure (i usually have all my main figure folders/layers in one big folder, so i can clip gradient maps + adjustments to it!). liquify tool to push the colors around a bit. STAY WITH ME I KNOW IT LOOKS STUPID RN I'M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS

THEN: set it to add/glow (or the equivalent in ur drawing program), lower the opacity a bit, and apply a layer mask. then u can edit the mask with whatever tools you like to create rainbow highlights!!

in this case i'm mostly using the lasso fill tool to chip out little facets, but i've also done some soft airbrushing to bring in larger rainbow swirls in some areas. it's pretty subtle here, but you can see it better when i remove the gradient map that's above everything, since below i'm working in greyscale:

more granular rambling beneath the cut!

u could also just do this with a brush that has color jitter, but what i like about using layer masks for highlight/shading layers is how simple and reversible it makes everything. i can use whatever brushes i want, and erasing/redoing things is super low stakes, which is great when i often approach this stuff with a super trial-and-error approach.

example: have u ever thrown a gradient w multiple colors over an entire piece, set it to multiply etc, and then tried to erase it away to carve out shadows/highlights? it's super frustrating, bc it looks really good, but if u erase something and then change ur mind later, u basically would have to like. recreate the gradient in the area u want to cover up again. that's how i used to do things before figuring out layer masks!! but masking basically creates a version of this with INFINITE undo bc u can erase/re-place the base layer whenever u want.

anyway, back to rambling about this specific method:

i actually have TWO of these layers on this piece (one with the liquified swirls shown above, and another that's just a normal concentric circle gradient with much broader stripes) so i can vary the highlights easily as needed.

since i've basically hidden the rainbow pattern from myself, the colors in each brushstroke i make will kind of be a surprise, which isn't always great -- but easily fixable! for example, if i carve out a highlight and it turns out the rainbow pattern in that area is way too stripey, i can just switch from editing the mask to editing the main layer and blur that spot a bit.

also, this isn't a full explanation of the overall transparency effect in these screencaps! there's other layer stuff happening below the rainbow highlights, but the short version is i have all this character's body parts in different folders, each with their own lineart and background fill, and then the fill opacity is lowered and there's multiply layers clipped to that -- blah blah it's a whole thing. maybe i'll have a whole rundown on this on patreon later. uhhh i think that's it tho! i hope u get something useful out of this extremely specific thing i did lmao

[kithehedraws]

Reblog of someone who made art inspired by one of my practice pieces. Theirs is so much better and cooler!

Lonely ? Dude, you have yourself !

Just a fanart of this really amazingly cool piece by @kithehedraws

[kozachenko]

(Click the image for better quality)

Yipeeee that Keiki and Mayumi fanart I posted the WIP of is finally done woooo- This piece was a very experimental one that I'm kind of OK on. Maybe because I've just gone insane looking at it for so long and I'm my own worst critic lol.

Artist's Notes;

So I've once again been playing around with my rendering style, mainly because I have been wanting to improve my lighting for a while now and as I was just scrolling through Tumblr, I saw some of the official art for that one webcomic-turned-animated-TV-Show Lackadaisy and was immediately inspired. I also have seen a technique a few times in the past where the lineart and shading are merged together, so I've been meaning to try that for a little while.

I did some experimentation on this one sketch of Keiki I posted in my sketch dump and I really liked the results of it, so I carried those over to this piece.

I ended up scaling up Keiki and Mayumi from the original WIP because I felt like they were both getting lost in the composition, and I'm glad for that because I think it works a lot better. I'm not a fan of how Mayumi's sword turned out at all, but it's not really meant to be the focus of the piece so eh. Overall, I think I could do better with my colours, probably because with Keiki and Mayumi's colours, I did them flat in greyscale and then used a brush on the overlay blend mode to colour all of them over, after which I changed the base layer for their colours from white to yellow and then lowered the opacity so it all went together better. I also decided to use gradient maps for a lot of the background elements, mainly to experiment with getting in my values first to make them pop out more. I ended up finding a really nice sky gradient on Clip Studio Paint that I really liked, and that kinda helped to establish the colour scheme of the background a lot. I think the whole "start in greyscale then colour" thing really works better with painterly styles rather than more illustrative ones, and while it is good at making sure your values are more readable, I honestly don't think I have the skill level to pull that off yet. Honestly, I think I've been looking at this drawing too long or maybe I added too much to it, but I wish I could've made the colours less monochromatic, but I'll just save that for the next piece I do.

I do love how the flame (...well it's more of a weird space rift than anything in this piece) and the lighting turned out, those were fun to do. I was initially struggling with the flame and how Mayumi is positioned in front of it before realizing "Oh wait! This is a weird abstraction of a weird creature! I don't have to follow the laws of anatomy!" and just dislocated it's flamey bottom jaw from the main body. I also changed the colours of it since I was really not liking how incredibly bright it was when it had lighter colours. Again, the gradient maps served the more painterly style of the flames well.

I also love how Mayumi turned out. I could do her sleeves better but that's more of just me needing to study how those types of sleeves fold in that position more. I'm also very happy with the posing, the technique I used for that was taking photos of myself in the positions I wanted, blocking in the silhouette and then modifying that by adjusting it to my lines of action that I drew on top of the original photos, and then sketching over the silhouettes and drawing in the shapes of the hands overtop of the photo if I needed to get the fine details right. As for what I do to take the pictures myself, I use a tall chair I have, prop up my phone with a phone stand, put on a ten second timer and scramble to get in position. Yes, I did have to use a bunch of thin markers I had to try and get the hand positioning on Keiki's pose right, yes I do have a fake sword that I used to get the positioning of Mayumi's arms and hand right, the sword was for an old Halloween costume from several years ago. I really like how both Keiki and Mayumi turned out in this drawing, I'll have to play around with these designs for them more in future drawings.

Also, if you wanna know why I draw buildings like that, when I watched Fantasia 2000 as a kid (One of the Disney movies where they make really beautiful animations to classical music) the way they drew the buildings in the first few sections Rhapsody in Blue segment (the jazz one with the cities) changed my brain chemistry and now whenever I need to draw buildings really quickly, I refer back to that. Since the buildings aren't really the main subject, I didn't put much thought into them.

As you can tell I am very tired of this piece, mainly because I made things harder for myself by overcomplicating the process compared to what I usually do, mainly with the whole "starting in grayscale then adding colour." I'd honestly just prefer having a black layer set to colour that I can just toggle on and off when I need to see the values, but it was good to experiment. And that was mainly the point of this whole drawing, to experiment. I'm definitely going to have to play around with this new style I'm going for, mainly because I liked how it turned out a lot in the augmented Keiki sketch, and also because I want to find ways of making it suit my style more. I also really want to keep experimenting with my lighting like this, it's very fun. Last but not least I am never starting in greyscale again because dear god I do not like the workflow it forced me into. I don't have a problem with the method itself it's mainly just a skill issue lol.

If you wanna read my headcanons for these two, I put them in my WIP post, so you can read them there if you want to. The more I look at this the more I prefer the simplicity of my WIP. I might go back to this and just take away the fancy colours and effects to see what it looks like without all of that stuff and reblog this post with that drawing, but for now, I don't think I can look at this drawing again for a while.

[crystalreydraws]

Hello hi I just found out you're the artist of my favorite pic of Jamil from all time 🥹 I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEE SO MUUUUCH his bday art from 2020!! It's my favorite one from every art and he looks so pretty and hot and cool and like he's in a music clip and about to drop a fire verse!! I LOVE your painting style so much, as a baby artist, would you one day show us how you color? I'm sure you put so much blood, sweat and tears into your hard work and it would great to get a little bit of that wisdom. Please keep drawing, keep doing what you love because it makes the world a better place to live!

Sketched my sleepy and tired oc to do a very quick demonstration but it covers how I color when i render things:

Start with rough greyscale first, it's a good start to roughly decide light direction and value of your overall work. Especially if you have no idea on your shading.

Next, apply base color to greyscale. I'll use gradient map if I want to keep the details of my greyscale. But if not, I'll just start with a flat base color, and try whatever I can to apply color.

Rendering phase. Add layers and just paint on top to refine it. Merge all layers if it's too messy. Then add layers again. My rendering really depends on how much time taken because it's just a loop of paint over and refining. Thats why i do more simple fanart cuz I sometimes get bored of rendering Also at this stage when doing lineless style, I merge lineart with layers and cover up the lines.

Final touch. Merge all layers and use [filter gallery > paint daubs (brush size 1, sharpness 2)]. It will sharpen your work and look detailed. Or add some very fine noise texture, it will look detailed too.

Another very rough demonstration on how i apply color mood. This will be after step 2. And same will be more refining and even paint over to ensure the colors look ok.

Other tips:

Add warm and cool colors especially on skin.

Use pinterest. Always find more than one reference for a subject if you want to draw better than yesterday. Pure ref is a nice tool to gather reference on your pc. When i draw a single hand I had a lot of ref. (pose, color temperature, lighting, photos, artwork, all diff ref)

Color theory is so important I still struggle a lot. I highly recommend beginners start from practicing Marco Bucci's ball practice. After that slowly change to adding character into movie scene and photographs, the purpose is to adapt different color moods and learn the lighting from the image. Learn more from famous movie and cinematic. They did their best to nail the colors.

Anyway,

this is a long answer about how I color. My previous job influenced me so much on coloring so there's a lot of thinking and struggle on my colors.

So, I suggest you be more experimental and try new ways, at the end what remains is what fits you.

[restinslices]

Silly little request but how do you think LKB would dress like casually? Like once every blue moon they have a day off and ding need to wear their uniforms? Can you do this in bullet points?

Them not in their uniforms is such a normal concept but it seems so weird for them if you know what I mean. Like, wdym they don’t wear those outfits to sleep? Also this is probably shorter than other posts because it’s about outfits, yk?

Bi-Han

Black. Moving on-

On some real shit though, I feel like this man’s entire wardrobe is in greyscale 

Someone’s like “hey there’s this event coming up! Can you wear a blue shirt?”

You’d think he’d have blue but nope. Nothing but blacks and greys and maybe a white in there 

I saw a post of biker Bi-Han and I definitely see it now 

Idk if the pictures imma attach at the end are really biker tho so that’s why I’m saying mainly blacks 

Like Elsa, the cold doesn’t bother him anyway so jackets aren’t really a thing he has to wear. He kinda just does because it makes the outfit look better 

That’s all the brain power he puts into it though because this man doesn’t care about his wardrobe at all 

He cares enough to not look sloppy but he doesn’t care about piecing shit together or brands and designer. If you look closely you can see he’s wearing the same shirt he was wearing yesterday 

He wears black because he’s still thinking like an assassin. The whole “I shouldn’t be noticeable” thing 

Which is wild when you think about how he’s definitely noticeable in that blue outfit but idk

He also wears black because… he doesn’t know 

He checked his closet and realized that shit looked like a black void but refuses to actually wear more color 

I don’t see him accessorizing much either. He only carries stuff he can fit in his pockets 

Kuai Liang

Lazy 

Bi-Han adds a jacket for a bit of razzle dazzle but Kuai Liang doesn’t 

In all fairness, he gets hot easily (this is stereotypical but idc) so a jacket isn’t gonna work 

He wears the most basic t shirts and pants 

Like he legit got the same white shirt 50 times 

The shit is despicable 

I don’t think he adds many accessories either. He probably doesn’t carry much on him 

Long sleeves never really happen either 

Honestly I don’t think of any them dress with any special aesthetic in mind

But him? Extra lazy

I am being so serious when I say he buys the same clothes over and over again. He forgets he has a white t shirt in his closet so he buys another and the cycle repeats 

Probably doesn’t care as much because what are the chances he’ll be out of uniform?

You know how people say men's outfits are so boring? He’s the main example they use because there’s no personality with his shit 

I don’t see him doing much on his off days though so that’s probably why he just throws something on

He’s just getting dressed to go grocery shopping 

Tomas Vrbada 

The one with the most style 

Which isn’t saying a lot 

Wears multiple layers 

Why do I think this way? Idk. But if I said they all dress the same, it’d be boring so here we are

He probably has a normal type of body heat since he’s not a pyromancer or cryomancer so he’s wearing hoodies and jackets because he’s genuinely cold 

He accidentally has style 

Wearing a hoodie and jacket is stylish to people for whatever reason. He doesn’t get it but he’s like “yeah, I definitely have fashion sense. It’s definitely not because I’m cold all the time. That just doesn’t sound like me”

May accessorize a bit but not as much 

As a whole I think accessories can become heavy and get in the way and our boys gotta be ready to bust a move if something pops off. Just because they’re off duty doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention or in danger 

So that’s why our boys travel light 

He has those smoke bombs and shit so he might have a little pouch with him but I don’t think he’d carry a backpack. Goes back to being too heavy 

If something can’t fit in a pouch, it’s staying home 

Dresses in neutral colors. I don’t think any of them are necessarily into bright colors 

Doesn’t have the same exact clothes but wears them the same exact way. His outfits look like a skin variation 

He’s doing his best 

Remember all I do for you because imagining them in normal clothes fucked me up more than I’d like to admit

[egophiliac]

Hello! Sorry to bother but do you have any digital art tips? I’m quite new to it and any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful! Your coloring style is very beautiful and I love it a lot!

thank you! 💚💚💚 sorry this is a bit late, hopefully there's still something helpful in it!

(also, it got pretty long, sorry!)

I think the biggest thing is to just take things slow -- digital art feels different than drawing traditionally, and it's SUPER easy to get overwhelmed by the billions of cool features that the digital world offers. (I say, as someone who spends a lot of time downloading cool brushes and textures...and then never using them ever.) there is a ton of really cool stuff you can do digitally, but because there's so much, I think it's really important to take time to figure out what is and isn't working for you. spend some time doodling without any intent to do a finished piece, figure out how you like to hold (or not hold) your tablet, what keyboard shortcuts you end up using a lot (and therefore might want to map to your pen/tablet buttons for quicker use)...that kind of thing!

everyone's workflow and preferred program and style are different, so it's hard to give hard-and-fast general advice. but the things that I think of as the essentials for learning digital art programs, and what I think of as a good order to focus on learning them in (although YMMV, especially depending on what kind of art you're doing):

brush customization (e.g. flow, opacity, softness)

layers and layer masks

selections and transformations (e.g. scale, rotate, flip horizontal/vertical, skew) (skew is underrated and I will die on that hill)

blending modes (e.g. multiply, screen)

adjustments/adjustment layers (e.g. hue/saturation, curves)

and I think most stuff after that is gravy! often very good gravy though! but yeah, as overall advice I recommend just taking things one little bit at a time, spending some time just drawing and messing around with each feature and what you can do with it. whether or not you end up incorporating any of it into your workflow, it's always good to try things out and just see how they feel! :D

and just so there is at least a little more concrete helpfulness in here, here's a few more specific things that I think are super important to keep in mind!

use! your! tablet/pen buttons! I mentioned this earlier, but they are extremely useful for keyboard shortcuts that you use often! most programs will also let you create new shortcuts for other things -- personally, I use the magic wand tool to fill in big color blocks a lot, so I made shortcuts for 'expand selection' and 'fill' and then mapped them to my tablet buttons.

flop your work horizontally often! when you're working on something, you get used to the way it looks, so seeing it mirrored is a quick way to see it with fresh eyes! in my experience, it often feels like this:

(a common thing is to find that everything is sort of 'leaning' too much one way, which is where skew really comes in handy!) (seriously, I love skew, it is my savior)

if you're working with color, keep a hue/saturation adjustment layer (or a layer filled with black or white and set to Color) on top and toggle it on occasionally to check your values! a lot of people who know a lot more about color than me (and are better at putting it into words) have written about why values are so important, so all I'll say is that the rule of thumb is that your image should still be readable in greyscale:

there are some exceptions and grey areas (do ho ho), but it's a good general rule to keep in mind! (some programs also have a colorblind mode, so you can check to see how your work will look to someone with colorblindness!)

and finally, here's some digital art programs I recommend, if you're still looking for a good one!

free: krita, FireAlpaca

paid: ClipStudio, Procreate (iOS/iPad only)

[not-my-final-account]

I sighed and leaned back onto the chair provided as the family argued in front of me, Nightwing seemed very untrusting of me which was sad but to be expected, Jason however was valiantly defending my honour saying that it calmed down the pit rage. I really need to look into these pits, both because they’re clearly ectoplasm of some sort and also yum.

I watched them argue back and forth but when Jason didn’t try to kill any of them or storm away (poor guy really needs to get his system cleaned) they seemed to accept that what I had done had worked, they also did a few blood tests and with some assurance that I knew how to take non dangerous levels of blood they left it alone.

Jason turned around to talk to me but I was already in mist form to watch his reaction, he gave a smal sigh and muttered something about asking him to do that more often, ooh, good. I flew through the layers of stone and walked to Arkham Asylum to see Jazz, she’d moved there as a psychologist and apparently had the longest streak of staying alive or sane as one, weird.

A guy with a face full of clown makeup skipped happily down the street and everyone turned their gazes away and not say anything, Gotham truely does reminds me of home but with more crime and more normal stuff, like nice normal clowns instead of freakshow or ghost clowns.

I walked into the asylum “Hi! I’m here to see Jazz!” I said, he glanced at me and then my teeth and claws

“Poor Jasmine, if you kidnap her can you set it up to look like Joker? I’ve got money riding on him.” the guy asked, I gave him a look and went to where Jazz was, waiting until some guy with an impressive nose walked out of the room

“Danny!” she cried as the ran over and hugged me

“Jazz!” I said back “Have you heard about the Bats?” I asked

“I’m Jokers therapist, I know about them.” Jazz said and I laughed

“Okay so here’s the story

I walked down the street sipping my ecto, it’s blood red was kind of disorientating but whatever, better than having to pay for food. Suddenly two guys jumped me! I sighed and kept drinking, I punched the first guy into a wall a bit harder than I intended to but he’d be fine, the second guy I knocked out easily, and the third guy tripped me but I caught myself by flying and tripped him up then gave him a purposely harder punch which winded him, no need to knock my lunch out of my hands.

I turned around to pick up my thermos and saw Batman, BATMAM. Look, maybe hissing then turning into mist and flying at him to get it might not have been the smartest choice, but I don’t have fully human instincts anymore so there was no fear stopping me and no one in the world needs any more sources of ecto, and I had spent hours tinkering around with that so it filtered ecto from the atmosphere just right no way was I doing that again!

Anyways, he thought I was a vampire so I decided, giw are after me so I decided to be a vampire, I got jumped about a week later. I’m living in the Bat cave.” I said

“Are they treating you right?” Jazz asked, I nodded “I have a story too. I’m liminal, we all know this, anyways, I saw this lady whos on greyscale and could be from the victorian era. So I met Lady Gotham!” Jazz said “She’s cool.”

“Oh awesome, I left some gifts for her when I moved in. She said I could live here but I only met her that once.” I admitted

“Good.” Jazz said with a nod “Listen to what Frostbite and Clockwork teach you about Ghost etiquette.”

“There’s this guy who has really good tasting ectoplasm too, it’s fermented and in his blood.” I mentioned, Jazz blinked

“Huh. What do you think of him?” she asked

“He’s strong, keeps mentioning ‘pit rage’ I think these pits are old ectoplasm, good ectoplasm, it’s delicious.” I said

“Is this guy Red Hood? Lady Gotham mentioned him, he died and got revived by a pit of ectoplasm, but he didn’t come back as a ghost, just the same human as before, so the ectoplasm is keeping him alive but he’s probably makes way too much for a human to filter.” Jazz suggested “He was probably frustrated about something, and then it amplified that frustration which led to more frustration and anger which got amplified, creating a positive feed back loop. He probably has no control over the anger now though.” Jazz said, I knew enough about coding from listening to Tucker to know what a positive feedback loop was.

“Huh, poor guy.” I said, Jazz nodded solemnly when there was a knock on the door and the gruff voice of someone who’s seen some stuff

“Your next patient Ms Fenton.” he said

“Bye Jazz!” I said and I walked out.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

[rad-roche]

talking about rebelle

TLDR: it's really good

Too Long DID read: in the niche it occupies, it's the best program I've used. This isn't a sponsored post, nothing like that, no affiliate links. Just pure sweet fat of the hog.

Rebelle Paint is a painting software designed around imitating physical mediums. Watercolour, gouache, acrylic, oils, pastels, and so on. It might be better to think of it as a physics software that happens to have a bunch of art tools inside, for better or for worse. Let me give you an example.

These two blobs represent an area of the canvas I've made wet through the watercolour tools. This is where the physics sim comes into it. The backgrounds aren't just static paper textures, the paint disperses and interacts with the grain of the 'paper', or the canvas, or whatever you have selected.

If you're already good with watercolours, you're set. If not, like me, you're in for a steep, steep learning curve, because they're hard to control. I can't call that a fault, real watercolours aren't exactly famed for being easy to use. But if you do this across a few layers, that means Rebelle is simulating a bunch of things at once, which means that your computer is gonna CHUG. Seriously, if you have a laptop, get the demo before you even think about buying it. I'm using a solid desktop and can't go beyond five layers without my processor screaming for mercy. This is only with the watercolours, however, for things like ink/markers, I got up to about 30 layers with that comic. Deploy the pomegranate.

Circling back to that canvas being a physics object thing...

Here's what comes with the software, enough to cover any of the mediums you'll use in it. If you want more, however, you have to buy them in the store, and if you wanted all of them, for whatever reason, that represents about 150 dollarydoos, and individual sets (cold pressed watercolour etc) coming out to about 10 each. I might pick one up in the future if I really want one, but so far I haven't felt the need. You aren't being deprived of options, is what I'm saying.

The biggest compliment I can give the software is that it feels like they either take direct feedback from its user base, or are so good at pre-empting what you might need that it makes other software like this (Corel, CSP) seem clunky. Let me give you an example. Like most art software, there's a reference panel.

Unlike most art software, that panel comes with tools already in it that are very useful. Say I just wanted to practice painting in colour, and the likeness of this model isn't what I'm focusing on. You have two options: half-assing it, or tracing and then painting yourself. Rebelle lets you place guidelines on the reference, which are then projected onto the canvas. If you toggle greyscale mode on to check your values, then colour-pick, you don't pick up the desaturated tone, you'll always pick the true colour underneath. That might sound like a small thing, but when you get used to working around that in other software, it adds up.

Pros:

One-time Purchase

Very very strong tools. They're a joy to use.

Almost no learning curve regarding the software itself, even if you're moving over from another programs

All tools are able to interact with one another. Want to drench your acrylic paint in water? Go for it! A lot of traditional imitation software locks the tools you can use to certain layer types (Corel, Realistic Paint Studio), but not here.

Liquify, transform tools, adjustment layers, all the normal stuff you'd want in digital is all here.

Brush customisation engine is excellent

Cons:

Two tiers of purchase (standard and pro). I bought standard, and honestly I'm thinking about upgrading because the image scaling is locked behind pro. Standard shakes out to about ninety bucks, pro one-fifty, and in this economy that's a big ask. Saying that, there is a sale on right now. If you just want digital tools that mimic traditional, and don't need any of the extras, consider Artrage Lite at one third the price.

Resource HUNGRY. Way, way more than any other art program I've used.

Anything involving water requires juggling in a way real watercolour doesn't. It's very very easy to keep painting, look back, and realise something 5 layers ago is still soaked and leaked into everything else.

Prone to crashing.

Overall, I'm really happy with it. I don't think it's great for anything very detailed, like that comic I did the other day, and for general use Clip Studio Paint is a better purchase, but this is a great supplement.

[canmom]

hi cuba i'm dad

I watched I Am Cuba, whose not-so-recent restoration was playing at the GFT. insanely well shot film, like the level of choreography to pull off those long takes and supercomplicated crane shots with no steadicams or anything is just mind bending. absolutely wild that the soviets didn't say "wow we have a banger on our hands here comrades" and play it everywhere - as a propaganda film, it did its job! definitely leaves you fired up to fight the Cuban revolution.

it is certainly a very didactic film, with the lesson of each vignette being pretty clear. but it is able to lend enough depth to the archetypal characters - the struggling sex worker from a slum who has to hide her relationship serving american visitors at a jazz club, the salt of the earth sugarcane farmer whose land is sold out from under him, the student revolutionary who hesitates to pull the trigger, the other farmer who only wants peace - to get you really engaged, though definitely the revolutionary characters (probably closest to the experience of the filmmakers) feel like they're the most fleshed out.

the third act, in which a revolutionary student plans to assassinate a regime cop (unnamed) but hestitates when he sees the man with his family, only to see that same cop murder first his friend and them himself, is maybe the most spectacular, with huge scenes of rioters getting blasted with water cannons, or the incredible funeral shot...

but it's not just these flashy huge shots; it's a gorgeously lit greyscale film (absolutely crazy detailed looking with the 4k scan, so cheers for that one Scorcese), ingeniously augmented by infrared photography in places to make it extra stark. more than that and so many shots have really elaborate blocking and camerawork, with the camera drifting from actor to actor, effortlessly sliding between closeup and longshot like it's in the hands of Ichirō Itano, which is wild for live action.

one relatively simple scene towards the end I noticed had a revolutionary arriving at a farmer's house and sitting down for the meal; the men argue, and the farmer goes to stand at the door, allowing the camera to perfectly frame the two of them and almost nothing else in the shot.

it is otherwise very happy to linger on a musical sequence, such as the intense club scenes at the beginning, in a way that feels way more modern than you'd think for the 60s.

the architecture of revolution-era Cuba is just as striking - some buildings, like the rooftop where Enrique tries to line up his shot, look like they could easily be modern buildings. compared to the romantic picture of something like Chico and Rita, of course, this is a film determined to remind you how bad things are, not just show you the touristy bits of Cuba. much of the film revolves around the question of violence - certainly from an agitprop angle, like act 3 is sorta should you hesitate (no), and act 4 is like will you be OK if you keep your head down (no); many of the revolutionary songs are in major part about how it's good and righteous die for the country.

when first shown, it was criticised in Havana for stereotypical depictions of Cubans - which doesn't entirely seem unfair, they are kind of stock characters for the most part, although portrayed with a lot of humanity. in the Soviet Union, meanwhile, it got criticised for not being propaganda-y enough, which is wild because to my mind it works better at getting its emotional message across than most oldschool propaganda films I've seen. that said, I definitely need to watch more critical Cuban films from the same period like Memories of Underdevelopment, or recent ones like Strawberry and Chocolate, for some contrast.

all in all cool film, big shoutout to @hamiltonianflow for suggesting we watch it together <3

[quibbs126]

Oh yeah, so I’ve been actually coloring my stylized versions. This is just what I have so far on the page, but I still felt like sharing

First we have Dark Cacao and Choco, obviously, since they were what started it and they’re my faves

I feel like I should mention, I said previously that they were gonna be monochromatic, specifically greyscale, with the eyes (and probably gems) being the only pop of color. I did that, and then sent it to a Discord group I’m in, but then someone there told me “hey maybe don’t color them as grey”. To be fully honest, I’m still not entirely sure why (note that I’m white and also tend to live under a rock when it comes to real world stuff), but I do vaguely recall some people being upset that Fettuccine when she came out had a somewhat grey dough color, so I assume there’s some sort of negative connotation around coloring black people with grey skin. Yeah I’d say this was a case of me not thinking before I do something, which is pretty common for me tbh. So I decided to instead make their colors purple and red monochromatic (outside of the hair), and that person on Discord said it looked a lot better

I probably didn’t need to tell you all that, I could have just said I decided to make them purple and red and avoided saying that I did that, but I don’t know, I felt like I should? I don’t like being dishonest (unless it’s my parents)

Also Dark Cacao and Choco’s eyes are white as a partial reference to the Shadow Milk puppets

Anyways, so on to Golden Cheese and Black Raisin

I mostly drew them because on Twitter, there’s someone who ships the two of them and she’s been liking my art, so I thought to draw them. Well I was already drawing Golden Cheese, but I drew Black Raisin too because of that

They’re triangles because birds, and also because Golden Cheese has the triangle Soul Jam

To be perfectly honest, I feel like Golden Cheese didn’t turn out that well. Or at the very least, she looked better in the rough sketches. Maybe it’s because I don’t draw her that much

Golden Cheese was the one I probably took the most liberties with design wise, but color wise she stayed mostly the same. It’s mostly because how her face is drawn, meaning you only see one side of it, and her colors kind of just work as is with the stylization

Golden Cheese is probably going to be the only Ancient to keep her normal dough color, other than maybe Pure Vanilla

Black Raisin turned out better I think. She has sharper angles mostly because I didn’t realize until later that I should make GC sharper, but it didn’t look right. And also I think it fits with Black Raisin’s character to be sharper

Black Raisin has a lot less colors, mostly because I didn’t think she needs that many, she’s relatively simple color wise

Sorry I’m in class right now, and I’m only half paying attention to this post. I think I’ve got most everything down, so I’ll just post now

[steamberrystudio]

26/08/2024 Devlog

Hallo everyone!  Tumblr devlog time. Sorry I missed the last one. Sometimes I just miss the notification when it pops up. Sometimes I remember on the off week but don't want to throw off the schedule and end up just waiting for the next one to roll around.

Summary:

Finished Yren's Play test

Finished Raif's Play test

Finished Noel's Play test

Started Kav's Play test

Finally got the colour slider in the game with help from Windchimes

New music room (slightly redesigned)

New gallery screen

Bonus scene page

Wrote the rest of the ch1 bonus scenes

Got the affinity indicators coded

Multiple new BGs

Finished Yren's Ch 2 CG

Started Noel's Ch 2 CG

Worked on coding sprite expressions

Set affinity scoring up through Ch 5

Worked on the premium and public game guides

Writing/Playtesting:

I have been working on my own play test of the game which is essentially another round of reading and editing. Last time I said the script was 616,000 words. Well it's now 621,000 words. 

I'm not just cramming in filler. A lot of that is additional choice options. Sometimes I would find places where you went a really long time without choices. Others I would encounter a choice menu that had 3 options when it needed 5 or 6 options (one for each LI).

Adding menus and choice options can increase your word count pretty rapidly so that is where most of the increase has happened.

I'm also fixing a lot of small continuity issues. This usually results in a small variation or callback being added into the script for clarity or to correct a seeming contradiction. For instance, at one point I realised that I  needed an additional variation in Ch 5 to account for a game state that wasn't accounted for in the existing options. And I had to do it for all 6 LIs. Which meant that a 200 word variation became a 1200 word addition to the word count.

So yeah, those things add up fast when you have 6 LIs.

I am continuing to work on this. And I will do one full play test of everyone's "best" ending before beta testers touch it.

I also have decided to add in "bonus scenes" these will basically unlock at the end of some chapters. Some of these will be POV scenes and some will be other scenes and content told from the MC's point of view. These are just extra scenes that I think help flesh out the characters and relationships but really didn't fit into the main story because you just...can't fit everything in the main story. I will be writing any bonus content as I work on the episodes and as I get ideas for them.

I don't have any specific rules I'm going to hold myself to for bonus content. They're just fun extras. They may be quite short in some cases. The ones for Chapter 1 are 1400 or so words.

Art:

Art wise, I've received new BGs - they're about 90% done at this point.

I also completed Yren's CG and started on Noel's. Raif's is already done, Kav doesn't get one for Ch 2.

So yeah. Getting those completed bit by bit.

Other Stuff:

Lots of other stuff. 

We managed to get the colour slider set up for Wil's sprite (we being me and my friend from Windchimes games). This required re-colouring the original sprite and original CG for Wil in greyscale and then coding in everything necessary to have Wil colourised by Ren'py rather than by  me.

As you can see from this Wil's hair and eyes are not colourised. Wil's eyes being silver/grey are just kind of a plot element and is related to their species. And while I contemplated having Wil's hair be on a slider too the reality is that the hair styles were not designed to be colourised in this way and some of them don't look as good. Particularly the curly hair which doesn't have strong outlines or, really the same type of shading to give it depth. Some colours looked quite good on it and others looked quite bad.

I tried redrawing that hair half a dozen times to see if I could make it look better while retaining the same overall look and feel and it just was not possible. I could have redone the hair but frankly. I didn't want to. And some of the other styles didn't look *amazing* recoloured. They were just okay.

I think if I want to revisit the slider in the future then I just need to approach the art with that in mind versus trying to add it to art not designed for it.

But in any case, Wil having only black/silver options was also originally with intent so I don't mind keeping with that set up.

In terms of other features that are finally in game we have affinity indicators, a newly designed music room, the bonus scene page, the gallery screen and things like that.

I did the affinity scoring up through Chapter 5 which is when the route gets locked in. That was primarily so I could test that section properly. But yeah. That's done.

And I've been working on coding sprite expressions. If you have been following me for a while you know that sprite expressions are an *ordeal* for me.

I have a lot of expressions coded in which means I tend to change the expression every 1-4 lines - especially for the main character. Gilded Shadows had about 6500 expression changes per route. Including the common route, that's about 60,000 expression changes coded manually. Which is a lot.

About half of those probably...were Morgan. She is on screen more than anyone else, of course. All the narration is her internal dialogue. She is on screen for it and her expressions are changing based on what she's thinking.

WSC is very much the same.

So the expressions are a lot.

I got Wil's expressions completed through Chapter 2. This chapter is about 50,000 words and of course I've been working on a ton of other things so I've only dedicated an hour or two a day to work on expressions. It's very tedious. It's also impossible to not edit as you go because you have to read the script line by line to decide what expressions people are using. Inevitably you see typos and stuff that you fix as you do expressions.

So it's just kind of a time sink that isn't *difficult* but does tend to take some time.

Upcoming Weeks:

My huge checklist has become smaller and smaller over the last few weeks.

The main things now are...CG creation, flowchart set up, coding expressions and getting my play test done. 

Those are kind of the things that have to get done before Episode 1 can go to beta testers on Patreon.

There are always features and elements I consider big milestones when they get ticked off the main list. The colourised sprite was one of the remaining "big ones" - the flowcharts are another.

Anyway, that is all for this update. I will hopefully see you all again in *two weeks* this time.

(I swear I need a less easy-to-miss reminder). LoL

[angelofthemornings]

I think what I’m really bad at is COLORING BETWEEN THE LINES and I don’t necessarily have to shade in black and white so long as I block out colors by airbrushing and then add the linework as the last step. The linework seems to distract me and stops me from understanding and depicting the form. If I paint first and cartoon over it, it feels more organic and looks waaaay better. Observe

Top I did the linework first and shaded it in (using the greyscale method), bottom I painted first and then added lines to complement the form instead of creating it. The bottom picture definitely looks nicer. In fact I think everything I’ve drawn that I really like was done that way.

Don’t let me forget that’s the way I prefer to work or else I’ll never hash out a personal style 😩

[samipekoe]

I had a bad day so I went into your blog to look at your art and it made it better. I have been meaning to say something for a while but I'm easily intimidated but you're like one of my fav artists in here. You mentioned once being influenced by Shirow Miwa and I honestly can see the inspiration while the style remains so Yours! I love how you show volume and weight and I love that you work in greyscale, I FUCKING LOVE GREYSCALE, anyway I hope you have a great night and eat your favorite food

waaaah thank you!!! im so happy and flattered to hear my art could make you feel better...a fellow greyscale lover!!! miwa shirow was paramount to my style when i was a mere drawing baby..studying his art is what made me focus on many StaplesTM of my style now like hair and legs and mouths. i think many of my inspirations are pretty obvious but i dont think anyone's ever brought up miwa shirow before so im happy you think so! and im a holy knight put on earth to fight for lacille. it was my calling no need to thank me