#i love drawing them with a more cartoony style nowadays so it's less detailed and i love it

[suspicious-scarecrow]

2016 -> 2022-2024

i was 14-15 when i made the old designs

[scourgefrontiers]

hey everybody im gonna ramble about art styles for a bit b/c everyone's asleep <3 LOL

PREFACE: THIS IS LITERALLY JUST MY OWN PERSONAL PREFERENCES AND OPINIONS!! i dont want to sound like i think im an authority on this stuff at all so dont take it as such. im just stream-of-consciousness rambling here

anyway on to the ramble

so occasionally i like to drown myself in nostalgia by going on deviantart and browsing old ms paint art of people's fursonas and such. tonight i was doing that and it got me thinkin about art styles and how theyve changed over the years! like, back during the time im talking about (like early 2000s-very early 2010s), the anime style was very popular at least in the furry deviantart community i was a part of. although i think that extends to human art as well, which i'll get into in a moment. but ya like, ive noticed that ppl would draw their furries all anime-y with big eyes and swirls in their very spiky fur...fur was a lot more detailed as well! there was a distinct style goin on. and over time it's kinda shifted into a less anime and more western cartoony style it feels like? sure theres still anime influences but its not Blatantly Anime anymore if that makes sense. its more squishy and cutesy i guess. of course this is just a lot of what i see, theres exceptions too here and there. as for human art the early 2000s/2010s anime art styles were just. so choice. i miss them so much actually

to get into general art styles tho, i was looking at style evolution charts for anime from the 80s to the 2020s and it was rly interesting to see!! id like to say my fav eras of style were the 90s-00s specifically, and honestly my opinion carries over to western cartoons as well. now here's where im gonna get Conch Reversal i think. bc im one of those people who--god i hate that i probably sound pretentious for this--prefers the Older art styles to the modern ones? if you follow me u know im a big fan of stephen silver's art, particularly from the danny phantom era. i love the early art styles that were goofy and cartoony and bouncy but had sharpness to them, like they were pretty angular? and nowadays it seems like everyone's into that spongey soft round style (not to bring up steven universe but like. steven universe-esque) which is appealing in its own way but not in the way that i personally would choose yknow? thats why im rly into danny phantom and stuff like that i guess

ive been told that art styles like that are outdated and maybe they are! but i find such a particular enjoyment in looking at them u_u its really hard for me to give them up. the 90s shoujo anime styles, the 00s angular cartoon styles...idk. they appeal much more to me than modern anime and toony styles :( and that probably makes me sound like an old pretentious fart but whatever LOL thats my onion and you are free to disagree i dont rly care

but ya like. idk. as an autistic person, art has always been both my biggest special interest AND hyperfixation, so i feel super strongly abt stuff like this and it makes me happy to share my feelings so !!! there u go <3 sorry this is extremely long lol

[taikova]

Hi! I'm really new to drawing digitally but i really love it. Im also so in love with your art and was wondering if you had tips (specifically for coloring/detailing), because a problem i have is colors looking a little to harsh or flat. I use photoshop right now but am open to trying different software suggestions.

hi, and thank you! :3

i have answered some art asks before, and there are some more tips about CSP tools somewhere in there, so try going through the “asks” tag on my blog for tips. also, these are just my thoughts on how to improve and how i WANT to improve atm, so take this with a grain of salt. if you don’t want to do all this, or just want to concentrate on one of these things, or NONE of these things, that’s perfectly allowed. a lot of these are “pro painting illustrator” tips i’ve absorbed from various sources, but they aren’t the “end-all, be-all” of making art, even for me. YOU can just do what you wanna do, no pressure at all.

this is a cliché but i think it’s true: these rules are meant to be bent, but it helps to bend them if you understand the rules first. 

If you wanna learn painting, or just.. want to understand how and why pro painters get their colors to look so good, i recommend learning at least some fundamentals of art like uh.. values, composition, lighting (it helps me that i remember there are all sorts of light going on, like bounce light, ambient light on top of the imagined main light source) and using a lot of references. pro illustrators have a really good grasp on lighting, generally, and even on a more cartoony or less realistic style, i helps me a lot to do some painting studies of these fundamentals. It also takes a lot of trial and error and failed attempts.

With colors, it’s really important to recognize how colors work relative to each other. if you add grey, or rather, desaturated colors in places that you don’t necessarily want to draw rhe viewers attention to, it will make the brighter hues or colors (for example the opposite color on the color wheel) pop more. depending on your style it’s easier to make your art look good with brighter colors, and by using multiply layer style for shadows etc.. but you should understand at least a little bit of color theory, so i recommend looking into all of that.

i also recommend you avoid using black (or at least, ONLY black) to shade your art unless you’re making a desaturated (grayscale) picture in the first place. it always makes the pretty colors you chose turn muddy. shadows HAVE colors, so very dark hue of any bright color is almost always better than straight up black (in my experience). If you start with black lineart, you can lock the transparent pixels in photoshop (in the layers box), and use any brush to change that hue. 

when i want to learn composition and good colors, it helped me to start learning values first by painting in only gray hues, and adding color after (like with layer styles like “color” and “overlay”. it may not make the colors look successfully pretty often times, but at least the composition and the play between shadows and light would work and make the art look nicer?

also, at some point (i recommend starting immediately, I Need To Do This More Myself) think about the sketching with the colors+shadows in mind. maybe try to use lines to separate where your colors and shadows change! when you’re sketching, don’t think of it ONLY as, “here’s the line of where the shirt ends, and where the nose ends” think of it like.. this is where the nose curves, so it creates a shadow THIS big and in this direction. just as an example. i TRY to do that as often as i can remember nowadays, so that the coloring will be much more comfortable later, because then i’d have made the sketch with the goal of making the values, shadows and colors look good. here’s a pretty good video on sketching like faces this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJkIaMECW6c

and.... ALL of the above requires reference to “get”, whether it’s well-lit photographs or other artists’ work, it’s always recommended to use reference. it’s not shameful, all artists need to use it, no matter how good they are. only thing you need to be aware of is to avoid posting straight up copies of others art, especially if you make money out of it (i think just drawing for fun and posting fan stuff is fine, if the reference is famous or you provide the reference...). but it’s recommended you find good references for what you want to draw. art studies that help you improve some part of your art always require them.

all of this is really hard to explain without visual aid, but i recommend channels like “tyler edlin” on youtube, who critiques student work and posts videos about tips for painting. his channel is more for environments but the tips often apply to any object or figure. i think this channel is the one of the only pro art mentor types i have found that i can stand (the critique is sometimes kinda harsh and tiring, though not always, but if you don’t want to see that or it makes you feel unmotivated, stop watching and look at some art or mentor for inspiration instead).

check out “astri lohne”’s youtube too, she paints characters and has some real cool paintings and couple of tips on improving your art!

(this clickbait title lmao. but i remember this has some good info about lighting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAIdEcNJaM

someone who has some really nice, bright colors and fun painting videos, is Laura Price/lulusketches, who also worked on Steven Universe! Her whimsical colors are inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS3ZMbzTOXdDuJlhAZuXgaw

i don’t really have tips at this point for cartoony art, but.. these fundamentals have helped me choose how i color, even the flat colors with multiply layers for shadows. Tools to learn for coloring in these are: the lasso tool, “selection” options like “select color gamut” or “color range” (it selects only one limited color range: you can adjust that range too, so you can fix that color or add more hues into that block of color you have in your drawing), locking the transparent pixels option, learn what each layer style does, try adjusting the colors sometimes... just... there’s a lot photoshop or CSP can do, as long as you learn the program properly. i don’t really know how to give you any software tips, you should probably google photoshop tips for drawing, or find photoshop tutorials! I use clip studio paint, and that is a really good program for digital art imo!

i have a yt channel where i put sped up videos of my fanart, so you can see how i sometimes draw and color things (i haven’t made any hardcore painting videos, they’re mostly about lineart drawings). if you go to the website version of my tumblr you can find a link there in my sidebar. or by going through my art, i post links to those videos on here too. i hope all that helps.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #480

Top Ten Videogame Logos

I like games. I’ve been playing them for a long time; since the 1980s, which was over seven years ago. In that time I’ve seen many ages of gaming come and go – remember full motion video? – but one thing I have noticed is that game packaging has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. From large sturdy cardboard boxes the size of two hardback books back in the early nineties, to slim ‘n sexy DVD cases around the turn of the millennium, to – well – absolutely nothing these days as we oxidise games from the air. And one of the things that used to – and, I guess, still can do – make a game’s box art really pop was a sexy, elaborate, or otherwise just really frickin’ cool logo.

Now, by “logo” I’m basically talking about the design and typeface of the title itself. I don’t really mean the lambda sign from Half-Life, or – to step outside specific games for a second – the famous Ghostbusters symbol. Some games do actually end up with iconography incorporated into their title design, and you might see a little bit of it here; but for the sake of argument, I’m using “logo” to mean “title”, and how pretty that title is.

And I gotta say, some games had very, very pretty titles.

Now, I know, from research, that 8-bit games released in the eighties often had wild and wacky logos. However, there’s precious little of that on my list, because I didn’t really notice it at the time. I can appreciate it now, looking back, but it meant nothing to me forty years ago because, well, I wasn’t born or was simply far too young to notice. I didn’t really pay attention to box art until I had my Amiga, and that was about 1990. So there’s precious little here that’s genuinely old. That being said, I do seriously think that the golden age of logo design was that late eighties/early nineties period, as we transitioned from 8-bit to 16-bit home computers, with a legacy that continued into the PC dominance years of the mid-to-late-nineties. I think at this point the industry benefited from beginning to have certain established patterns and artists, but was still loose enough to allow a huge deal of experimentation and a feel of general lawlessness. It was in this era that Roger Dean reigned supreme, a vastly talented artist whose airbrush style defined the Amiga 500 for me. His work can be seen on this list, and – surprise – it’s at number one. Dean was so good that not only did his artwork grace dozens of boxes, but he also designed the greatest logo for a game developer of all time.

(Just as an aside: I had a lot of Psygnosis games for the Amiga. I remember vividly my cousin and I would desperately try to parse the wording of that logo – “Is it a P-S-V? P-S-V-C?” – during the brief time it appeared on screen whilst the game loaded. Ah, those exotic early years, full of wonder and possibility… but I digress)

Anyway, there were loads of bright, bold, colourful logos in those days. I think they mostly wanted box art that leaped out from a crowded computer shop shelf, and generally there was probably an assumption that the audience would be either young or nerdy, so there was no outward desire to be elegant or minimalist. Huge, chunky logos were popular; large text, airbrushed artwork, characters incorporated into the logo itself; plenty of shading and embossing effects were used to make a logo stand out proud on the box.

As time wore on, and the target audience aged and maybe wanted to appear a bit cooler, logos seemed to grow smaller. 3D extruded block text was replaced with simple white font work and elegant design. As such, into this new millennium, there are very few really exciting logos nowadays. Even my beloved Half-Life has a really minimalist design, which works, yeah, but it’s not exactly an all-timer. We do still get some very good logos now and again; I’ll go to bat for Halo any day of the week, but even that is twenty years old now. BioShock’s was pretty cool, too, with its rusted brass façade, but even that’s, what, 14 at this point? Blimey.

I think the evolution of the game logo can best be illustrated by comparing the original Doom logo to the one used in the 2016 remake. Vibrant colour versus flat white. I know which I prefer.

So there we are; my ten favourite game logos. And as these are game logos, I’ve banned anything that’s adapted from external media, whether it’s a Star War or Spider-Man or even Cyberpunk 2077 (which does have a cracking logo but is more or less a version of the one used in the original role-playing game). Anyway. Let’s have at it.

Shadow of the Beast (1989): not the first Roger Dean box art, but arguably the most famous, and certainly the one that caught my attention. Well, actually, it was Beast II in 1990 that I saw, but I’m picking this original logo as it’s a bit cleaner without the “II”. Anyway, what’s not to like? Dean’s fantasy-metal style is evident, with a logo that’s kind of threatening to look at, the pointed curls descending from the letters connoting teeth or claws, but the brushed, metallic detailing giving it a technological bent. Supremely cool, freakish, and a style carried very strongly into the game (and moreso the sequel).

Elite (1984): a rare example of a relatively minimalist piece of box art for the eighties, but all the same this logo is something else. Huge and bold, carved out of solid gold, its eagle wings suggesting the power of flight whilst the strangely-crowned head suggests something almost majestic or godlike. It’s the perfect logo for a game about space exploration, yet it also has echoes of Nazi symbolism or even Judge Dredd, giving the game a subtle sense of menace.

Lemmings (1991): unlike the other two, this was a fun, bouncy game, whose childish, cartoony stylings hid a dark and fierce puzzling heart (and also supremely distressing scenes of Lemmings getting mutilated). But this logo is beautiful, its jolly, chunky green typeface reflecting both pastoral beauty and the hair of the little critters; the misaligned letters reminiscent of the undulating hills the levels hint at (but don’t actually contain, particularly). And we get the heads of the Lemming poking out, squarely cementing them as an important part of the experience, their character the defining characteristic of the game itself and all its associated art.

Doom (1993): a seminal moment in gaming, and a seminal logo too. Surprisingly colourful for a game about the ravages of hell, this is a bold and bright bit of typography, the extruded letters suggestive of the 3D nature of the game itself; the almost terracotta tiles meshing with the complex mechanical geometry on the letters reminiscent of the game’s merging of the supernatural with the highly technological. And there’s the pointed extremities of the word, directed down like fangs, hinting at the horrors and dangers to come. Quite simply brilliant.

Minecraft (2009): the most recent game on the list, but its logo is almost a throwback. Thick, square, blocky letters reflect the cuboid nature of the gameworld; the angle away from the camera suggests height and importance, subtly hinting at the scale of the game itself. This is an iconic piece of iconography, instantly recognisable by children – to the extent that trying to draw a logo like Minecraft, or recreate the Minecraft logo itself, is fairly common in our house. I also like that one of the letters appears to be a Creeper.

Pac-Man (1980): and here we have the oldest logo! But so iconic. The chunky font, with letters comprised of thick shapes, devoid of some of their detailing, is cool enough; despite being released at the beginning of the eighties it has an almost sixties vibe. The “C”, of course, looks like Pac-Man himself. But what really makes it art is the offset colours, giving it the air of a misprint or of looking at 3D without glasses. It’s a deeply cool effect and helps make the logo feel timeless.

Dizzy (1987): another oldie, making its first appearance in ‘87’s Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure, although the logo design was very slightly tweaked and refined by the follow year’s Treasure Island Dizzy. Simplistic 3D block letters, but what makes it sing is that they’re dizzy; linework suggests them spinning, but it’s how the perspective differs from letter to letter, giving them a confused and discordant feel, that gives it just that little bit extra.

Zool (1992): perhaps a lesser-known and less iconic logo, unless you were a huge Amiga game in the early nineties. The airbrushing to give it a metallic, embossed effect is very of the moment, but what I love is the eyes. The double-O is rendered as Zool’s cross-looking eyes in his ninja bandana. On one hand, making the Os eyes is rather first-base, but partly it’s how they’re executed that I like; it’s also just because the big angry eyes are rather funny.

Pokémon (1996): first appearing on the cover of Pokémon Red and Green in ’96, the general Pokémon logo is a beaut. Again, it gives the appearance of simplicity, but the execution is complex. Chunky, friendly lettering, yellow like kid favourite Pikachu; kids’ll love that. The blue outline and drop shadow help it pop and give it a subtle, almost 3D effect. And the letters are discordant; rather than a regimented logo, it’s all over the shop, different sizes and weights of letter, all jostling for position on the page. It perfectly encapsulates the tone of the game.

Deus Ex (2000): I’ve more-or-less steered clear of the sci-fi design of “metallic logo that’s otherwise just the title”. I like logos with a bit of something extra; hence no Perfect Dark or Halo, despite those being great in and of themselves. Deus Ex takes the spot, though, partly because the letters seem built out of something, cobbled together in a dystopic, cyberpunk-y way. As you play a cyborg, this feels apt. And then there’s the logo itself, a towering corporate-looking edifice, a brilliant juxtaposition of two shapes that together suggest a D and an X. It’s slick and shiny, and is present in the game itself as a gently rotating loading screen, reflective of the advanced 3D graphics the game possessed.

Honourable mentions go to Theme Park, with a logo that’s suitably corporate and also reflective of a roller coaster, and Quake, just for that really cool nail-through-the-Q effect.