#i didn't know graphic tablets existed

[paperzombiie]

thinking about the shoyru post and shoyrus in general... shoyrus were one of the only things i drew when i was 15 bc i was obsessed with dragons and shoyrus were simple to draw... I also had A LOT of them in my accounts and in my mind as OCs...

i want to show you all a relic i still have with me

yep i made a base in paint to draw all my shoyru character and these aren't even all of them fbdshjkb there's one that's even a rip off from a character of an anime i don't actually recall watching

of these only Elyon, Michiyo and NEOF9 were real neopets, one shoyru i had named Arya (whose name was framed by underscores or something similar i believe), Michiyo and NEOF9 still exist in accounts i no longer have access to, Elyon (who had x's framing her name... i think it was something like xXx___Elyon___xXx) and another shoyru that doesn't appear here named Bloodfire66 were erased in the purge... and those two were actually my most favorite pets of all i had so i was really sad when i came back and searched "bloodfire66" to find nothing existed by that name :c

in rememberance of my lost children let me post some old art i just found of them looking for that first pic

first one is Elyon, red one with purple hair is Bloodfire66 and the one with the yellow bandana is Arya... I think she still has this drawing on her pet profile actually

[alabyte]

It's not Star Wars, but it's still my art, so bear with my scribbles for a bit :DDD

This is a picture I drew half an hour ago. I made it fairly detailed and rendered, but overall spent a couple hours on it - which isn't much when it comes to drawing for me.

And this one I drew almost three years ago when I first bought a graphical tablet. I barely understood what layer effects were, didn't know what a brush stabilizer was, and took great pains to understand how the graphical editor settings worked. I spent almost all day on that doodle, and I was very proud of it at the time because I had done the best I could.

Anyway… If any of you have wanted to take up drawing, but are afraid it's too complicated and you'll get shit no matter how hard you try, go for it. Go ahead and draw. Find buttons you didn't know existed (I just found out last week that one tool in SAI has different modes), use tools by rote, try techniques, palettes and effects you've never tried before!

Don't be afraid to try and learn.

[yeniel]

Emperor Auguste

Just noticed, I never really did a faq. So, I'm not really a "communicant" (does that word exist?!) but I'll try the exercise with the questions people asked me.

Present yourself I'm an artist from France, always was and always will. I'm catholics, no proselytism everyone is my brother, but if you're from a sect, you can take the back door to hell.

How do you work? I do all my drawings by hand, then I chose the ones I like the most -not especially the best ones- and I clean them. Then scan it and put digital colors on it, I only publish online a very small amount of my drawings though. I do the same with my paintings, but I rarely put them online. I usually compile all the drawings I did into books for professional printing to keep a trace of everything I did for my "old" days and my after death heirs. I'm drawing a lot of comics too, but the amount of it is too big to scan it -_-.

Do you use a tablet? No. I never was at ease with it, maybe it's because I'm an Asperger, but I need to feel the paper under my hands and have "full-control" of what I'm doing. Plus, because of the disease, I have a paresthesis on the right side of my body. It's ok now, but there are many stuff I can't do with the right hand, including the work with a graphic tablet, and usually you need dexterity with your both hands for this thing. So, mouse!

What program do you use? My old Photoshop cs2!!! No really I tried the x9 and never got use to it, and some other softwares but NO. I have my habits. I really think it doesn't matter which software you're using as long as you feel good with it.

Do you use android apps? Nope, I know I'm not fun, but the reasons are the same.

What are your inspiration? Before drawing into this "style", I was looking for one that could fit me, and as I was a huge fan of the Escaflowne anime, I started with that. Then I don't know, I didn't read a lot of mangas in my life when I think of it, but I enjoyed Kaori Yuki and Shiori Teshirogi's books. Now I rarely read it anymore. It happened a lot of times for people to send me the list of all the mangas they like, but I didn't know a huge part of the titles xd. For the colors, I just like it that way -u-.

Did you think of stopping to draw? I won't explain too much my disease, but I nearly died. So drawing as a pro was my last thought you know. Drawing is a passion for me, I just don't care if I'm popular or not, I just enjoy to draw. Of course when people are buying my books I'm happy, but I'm happy as well to have done it and maybe will do others in the future. It's a revenge on all that this disease stole from me.

You're drawing since long, how old are you? Young one you're impolite, in France, you don't ask a lady about her age!! But I'm probably older enough to be your mom ahahah!

[tavvoc]

Hey there! Fellow scientist/hobby artist, totally know the struggle & delight of balancing both passions. I looked at your Instagram and your progress is amazing! What program do you use? What's your art journey been like? :)

Oh, this is exciting. I didn't think anyone would use the ask button but okay! Congratulations for being my first. 🎉

To answer the first question: I've always used Photoshop. When I was 8-ish, I got my computer second-hand from a cousin and it had Photoshop installed. At the time, I didn't know you had to pay for Creative Cloud, so, er, I never questioned it. Now I use my uni's educational license. Otherwise, I have Clip Studio Paint on my (Samsung) tablet when I'm out and about.

Come to think of it, my art journey began with that copy of Photoshop. Back then, I would read original fics on Wattpad and thought that it would be a good place to put my own stories. Several writers I followed made cool-looking covers using Photoshop and stock images, which I had incidentally. I bought a graphic tablet and made covers. They suck. Wrote stories. They also suck. It turns out, however, I enjoyed digital art a whole lot more than photomanipulation.

Anyways, Angel Garnev was one of the first art Youtubers I followed. Because of him, I spent a lot of time doing studies of the Asaro head and photo references. One thing he advised to beginners was not to draw babies and people with soft features because it's harder to notice the planes of the face. Was this a good advice? I don't know, but that's the reason why the early posts in my Instagram consists mainly of portraits of Henry Cavill-esque men. (I remember thinking no one liked them because cute anime girls was the trend; in reality, it was because they sucked.)

But my style and process was more directly influenced by the artist WLOP. If you asked me when I was 12 what my art goal was, I would've probably told you "I want to be WLOP." Six years later, I'm definitely not WLOP but I'm happy to report I've improved greatly. Quite excited to see where I'll be in a few more years (and I rather hope you'll stick around too).

I have discovered many artists since then: Sinix Design, Valentina Remenar, Betty Jiang, Jamie Jones - I could go on and on. I'm so glad they exist because I could not be here without them. If you ask me now what my art goal is, I would say I hope to inspire someone as all these great artists have inspired me.

Finally, the most recent turn in my journey was when I watched a Bloodborne lore video and was promptly sucked into the Soulsborne wormhole. The day I stop doing fanart for them is the day Bloodborne 2 is announced.

And here we are. Thanks for the questions!

[jjeinn-tae]

Forwards after mostly regaining power!

I got my tablet working again. So, of course, I have started working on the graphic I wanted in my pinned post. In the local culture, the Sun/Moon logo that definitely needs some fine tuning is roughly comparable to their equivalent of the taijitu (the yin-yang symbol) and has a... related philosophy where things are associated with either the solar, or the lunar side of the universe. As the emperor is the sun, solar associations tend to be seen as better culturally. That's not to say that the moon is bad necessarily, although more things with negative connotation fall there.

The 6 symbols here besides the Sun/Moon symbol that I need a name for represent the 6 primary elements, which you will be going around collecting the support of the lead sages of each element. If you know Chinese or Japanese you'll probably see some inspiration from the characters that mean what each of these elements are, but I specifically wanted to not use real language for these, LoGuo is not China. These are the only characters that exist of "LoGuoan" right now. The circle around the sun are the 5 traditional Chinese elements (Wuxing). From the top and clockwise, we have Water, Wood, Fire, Metal and Earth. And then alone on the top we have the element of Time which, like... Part of my idea for this game is it is like it was made by an American company in some alternate timeline where the video game crash didn't happen. The studio in addition to definitely being like... East-Asiaboos, absolutely made this game in response to OoT, and oh we need Locca to be an adult too. Hence quickly appending Time to tradition, or whatever. In the final "medallion" screen, I plan on Time kind of being... The background or something like that. I'm still tinkering with this and this was like, first pass, but I really wanted to actually make a post.

Later in the week, I'm going to be making a post about our heroine Locca, and the Emperor, who I think I have a name for but that goes with explanation and this post is already hella rambly.