#im trying the new style ive been doing to render this ...

[marciaillust]

your design of me

[u3pxx]

darling ur my ANGELLLLLLLLLL

[marcmorrigan]

i finished the duel monsters dub for the first time ever last night (!!!) so i figured i oughta lock down my faces for the aibous... what a show, man

[unlimitedtrees]

making character sprites as a one-person indie game developer

(huh. turns out this post on cohost didnt have a “read me” section”. o well. i will put the read me section Here,  before any of da actual text. click it if u dare !!)

so, i've been meaning on making a Big post talkin all about how i actually Make my games and my processes n such ,but also ive been procrastinating on making it for so long that i thought i might as well just make One part of that post now .. and its about making the Character Sprites for my games .

So. these images are the (mostly) full sprite sheets of the three characters from my game UNITRES Dreams, taken directly from the big giant 'charactersprites.png' image that i used for nearly every sprite for Most of the game's development. some quick things to make note of: First off, Trees (the first one) was one of the earliest things i made for the game, and had their sprite sheet redone Twice since then.. this first picture doesnt contain the latest sprite sheet as the new sprites were done on aesprite and im too lazy to make a sprite sheet out of them right now.

Secondly, the Second character (the pink one), had two different designs, being completely redesigned as i didnt like their first design all too much. their redesign's animations was done in aesprite, but i made a sprite sheet out of em before so i was able to just put them here. Lastly, the Third character (the blue one with the big silly hat) remained mostly unchanged as their original sprites and design were pretty good, but they needed to be cleaned up and given better colors so i ended up polishing all of their sprites.

Anyways. it's going to be hard for me to explain my actual process, as i am Bad With Words, but i will try my best.. So. for Most of my time as a game dev, I've used Paint.NET for Everything. This includes backgrounds, tilesets, and every animation ever in all of my games. For my character sprites specifically, i usually start with making the color palette (which is a whole different process where i mess around with the RGB values until i get a specific color that i think looks pretty ... its hard to describe). When making a new character, i usaully start with an Idle animation, just so i have a good base to make all the other sprites on. I just make a sketch of the character, then i do the flat colors (as my games dont have line art), and once i have the colors i start doing the rendering , where i try to pull off a sort of Sonic CD-esque , celshaded style while Also including a bit of anti-aliasing and other modern pixel art techniques to give the sprites more Depth and make them look Sharp. Idk. it's hard to describe my process in words ... i Did make a video Years ago showing off my process, but its old and my editing in that video isnt the Greatest.

So., that's my process Lol . the only thing thats really changed is that Now i use Aesprite for making the Actual Animations , as making animations with Paint.NET is Really Difficult and Annoying , as i have No Idea how the animation will Look until it actually appears ingame .. which results in the early versions of each character's animations looking a little weird (such as Trees' first two versions, the first version of the Pink character, and the Blue character's animations.. .though the blue character isnt as bad as the other two and i kept their animations mostly the same in the final game LOL).

Something that people have kind of criticized about UNITRES Dreams' animations is that some of em dont exactly ... Look Good. a lot of animations are pretty Inconsistent , with characters like Trees having inconsistent sizes in some animations and the movement in animations such as the Pink character's walking animation and various other animations (Especially the ones made in Paint.NET) looking Unnatural.

And Well .. here's the thing about making animations and sprites for something like this. When you're the Main person making an indie game, you have Tons of different parts of the game that need to be worked on while having Very little time to work on others. On Top of making every single animation for UNITRES , i had to make every single Tileset and background for every single level, On Top of making the Level Layouts , Programming , and even making sprites for things like the UI. And you have to constantly Test the game to make sure everything works and things Look good.

So. i had very little time to work on the sprites, and i Knew this. Something you have to consider is that, not only are you making the animations for the main character , you Also have to make Tons of animations and sprites for Literally Every Other Aspect of The Game . this includes Enemies , Level Gimmicks , NPCs, And the UI .. so you end up having to work on Thousands of sprites by yourself in such a short time.

I ain't the best animator , nor the best sprite artist . But , for this game I chose an art style which is Kinda simple and comfortable for me, which made making things like tilesets and backgrounds so much easier for me. The character sprites specificially only use a few amount of colors ,but also i tried my best to give them as much depth and make them as Colorful looking as i could. Also , something you might notice is that all of the playable characters dont actually have a whole lot of animations .. each of the characters only have the Exact amount of frames and animations necessary for them to Look Good moving around the levels. Aside from a few Gimmick Specific animations that arent in the sprite sheets i posted , there arent many Extra animations or animations with Tons of Frames that i wish i could have added .. and it Kind Of Sucks . Having to split my time across Three Different Characters , i had no time to make any animations Too Crazy or Too Smooth , and i couldnt include any extra animations that could add a bit of personality to the characters ... In Fact ,the Idle "animation" isnt an animation , its just a still frame. I didnt have time to even make a simple waiting animation !!

It Is What It Is. For what its worth , Ithink Im pretty proud of the animations i did for UNITRES Dreams. while i think ive become a much better artist and animator since then, i still think some animations and some of the frames look really good ..just looking at some of the still frames is really nice .. so i think i did a good job, especially for a game that was made in 2 years and is Free. And Hey, while the animations in UNITRES Dreams may not be the best or have the most smooth animations , i Did get to experiment with making more smooth animations for TREES' ADVENTURE. while ,now, i think some stuff could use some work, i am Really Proud of how some of the animations look .. ididnt get to make Too Many extra animations (there still isnt even an Idle animation), i Did get to make some cool extra animations , such as individual animations for your Jump that are based on how fast you're moving . (the original post on cohost had a buncha gifs of da animations but im Too Fuckin Tired 2 post em here LOL !!!)

So Yea . the moral of the story: making video games is kind of hard and time consuming , Especially when you're like , the Only one working on them. just make sure to plan ahead and try not to overwork urself .. make what you can and do it when you can. Thats what i think , anyways.

[bbbeowulf]

YIPPEE I HOPE EVERYONE HAD A GREAT HOLIDAY SEASON AND HAS A HAPPY NEW YEARRRRR!!!!

I have a lot of art resolutions that I wanna get through this year so I figured I would share them with all of you… VIA BINGO CARD!!

Bingo card inspired by AlmaKRowan on Twitter/X!!

List and explanations below the cut!!

Architecture: I want to learn how to draw buildings, rooms, etc.!!

Adopts: I want to make adopts!!

KOI character refs: Reference sheets for the characters in my story “Knights of Irene”!!

ArtFight: I’m gonna aim for 20 attacks/revenges, but we’ll see!!

GraVT piece: a group picture of the indie VTuber group I’m in, GraVT!!

Animated Illustration: I’VE BEEN WANTING TO DO THIS FOR YEARS MY TIME IS NOW

Animal studies: learn how to draw animals better

PNGtuber+ comm: I made one for myself (see it HERE) but I want someone to commission me for one >:,(

VTuber redesign: potentially maybe redesign my VTuber (even tho I literally just killed myself making the PNG+ model but WHATEVER IM ON DRUGS IG)

Leo TOTIKFR animatic: animatic for my OC Leo to the song “The Only Thing I Know For Real” by Tyson Yen

Digital painting: IVE BEEN WANTING TO LEARN HOW TO DIGITALLY PAINT/RENDER BUT I CANNOT WRAP MY HEAD AROUND IT BUT I WANNA TRYYY

Holiday YCH: YCH comms for major holidays!!

Snow Fairy MAP: I have a part in @jurygarroth’s Snow Fairy MAP so I need to get that done :D

Art Prints: I WANNA SELL ART PRINTS RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bug studies: I wanna learn how to draw bugs :3c

OC sticker sheets: I wanna make (AND SELL) sticker sheets of my OCs (and maybe other fandom characters like MLP and stuff!! We’ll see.)

RP movie posters: movie poster style illustrations of my active role plays!!

DTIYS: I WANNA MAKE ONE AND PEOPLE PARTICIPATE PLZZZZ 😭😭 JUST ONE PERSON PLZ I BEG

Emotes: re-do my twitch/discord emotes

Sell canvases @ gallery: I have an art gallery in my town that I wanna apply for and sell some irl artwork!!

YCH comms: more YCH comms!!

Lobelia lore animatic: lore animatic for my VTuber

Pose studies: learn how to draw poses better

KOI cover: book cover for “Knights of Irene”

Abaddon Webcomic: this is a HARD maybe, but I’ve tried to make this webcomic happen 2 or 3 different times and I always got sick and tired of it before I got ANYWHERE with it. I think if I take it in more of a mini comic approach like Shen or Merryweather!!

There are a few more ideas I had that I didn’t put on my bingo!!

Leo’s Final Form: conceptualize Leo’s final form and draw the finalized version

Backgrounds: get better at drawing backgrounds

Foliage: get better at drawing foliage

Color Theory: learn color theory

Interesting shading: play around with colors and shade with different colors perhaps to make it pop?

Aphmau art: draw more Aphmau art

KOI: Finish planning out KOI and potentially start writing it? It’s not art in the sense of it being written not drawn but whatever I wanna do this

Commissions: keep doing commissions! I wanna try to do at least 20 this year 👉👈

Art trades: do some art trades with people outside of ArtFight!!

Art raffle: do an art raffle 🧍

Draw my FRIENDSSS: I WANNA DRAW MY FRIENDS WAHHHHHHHHHH

GET HIRED BY YORUNOMACHI: *on my hands and knees sobbing, begging, throwing up*

Do Aphtober/Cringetober/some form of tober AND FINISH: I doubt I’ll finish lmfao

Make OC profiles on UnVale: it’s like toyhouse but it doesn’t make me want to kms when using it

Learn VTuber Rigging: I just wanna know how to do it :3

Anyways I’m sure there’s more but this is just a list of everything I can think of off the top of my head! A week from now I might decide to not do any of this LMFAO! But we’ll see how much I actually do this year!! Yippee!!

Happy new year everyone!!

[liamakorn]

Hey all!! Commissions are officially open! Im gonna be posting some newer art in the next couple days because i know ive been gone forever lmao but please hit me up! I'll draw p much anything as long as you follow my simple dont's list haha.

These are my starting prices but theyll probably be fluctuating as i find my rhythm. For right now I'm accepting payment through PayPal, but if you use something different definitely let me know and I'll see if i can set up an account! Im open to new ideas and always looking to expand my business to make things as accessible as possible for everyone. I cant wait to work with you! ❤️

[Transcription]

First Page

Hi there! My name is Liama, I'm 23, a Gemini, and a genuine menace to society. I'm reopening my commissions for the first time in a while, please be gentle haha. If anything on these pages is confusing please shoot me a message!

My handle on almost everything is @liamakorn, or you can email me at liaamakorn@gmail.com. Message me for PayPal ❤️.

Do's: pretty much anything! This is a friendly space for all communities and fandoms, including - D&D, OC or Existing IP, LGBTQIA+, Video Games, Furry, NSFW, Monster Love, Tasteful Gore

Dont's: i do not support and will not tolerate hate of any kind on my platform. If the following is requested or mentioned in my comments you will be blocked. - NSFW of underage OC or Character, Political or Bigoted Speech, Threats of Any Kind, Non-Con. NAZIS. LEAVE. You are not welcome.

Note: not great at Mecha but will try my best! :)

Second Page

Lineart Pricing-

Full Body: $50

Knees-up: $40

Torso-up: $30

Portrait: $20

Flat Color Pricing-

Full Body: $75

Knees-up: $65

Torso-up: $55

Portrait: $45

Simple Shading-

Line Art and Flat Color: +$20

For lineart, this could include crosshatching, flat shading, pretty much anything i could do with a pencil. Shoot me a message and we can discuss the level of detail needed.

For flat color this will include either hard or soft cellshading, and an optional rim light.

For anything for complex please refer to Full Render.

Additions-

Simple Background (colors/shapes/etc): +$5

Full Background (detailed scene): +$10

Add Character: +$10

Full Render-

A full render piece will be more of a case by case bases, dependent on project size, the detail required, the amount of time committed, etc. For this type of piece, by DM or email, we will work out what vibe you're looking for to better gauge the price. I wouldnt charge $10 a head for a crowd scene lol.

Please reach out to me with your idea and budget and we can discuss our options. Im excited to hear from you, lets make some art!

[Note under full render box, coming from a chibi version of my boyfriends sona-]

Something like this (full color, full render image with different light sources and a painterly style) would be about $200-$300

[lagomorphics]

hi majora! your art is really cute, and I hope you don't mind if I ask about your process? I'm new to art and yours is an inspiration! I wanted to ask how you learned? and your process, because you seem to draw near daily! also any tips you might have for me? thank you!

HI ANON!!! ur very sweet thank u so much WAHH <33!!! idm being asked abt that at all!!

in terms of how i learnt; i've kinda always been drawing for as long as i can remember? been posting art online since around 2013-ish so i got a big big catalogue of stuff to look back on

but learning in specifics of like, how i learned to shade n draw bodies etc etc. i studied! theres a lot of resources out there that'll break down a lot of the 'basics', i dont have any i can name off the top of my head except for morpho; whole bunch of books about body types and anatomy.

im not really good at providing tips for how to learn (bad memory </3) but studying, drawing things over and over (i do with reference and then without, and try to draw in different angles/perspectives) is very useful!

ALSO VERY IMPORTANT: literally do not worry at all if what you draw the first time around looks wonky or "ugly". being negative towards yourself about your art only serves to stunt ur growth!! shakes you (and anyone reading this) by the shoulders. it can be very easy to slip into hating your art and not enjoying anything ur drawing. this is me telling u to try and draw something youve never drawn before. experiment. it may not look perfect or even "good" but it will refresh ur brain!!!!!

MY PROCESS...... oh man i really have been drawing pretty much daily huh? i do draw every day but its been a hot minute since ive been doing finished pieces haha

but basically what i do is; start with a few warm-up doodles! just anything to get me in the groove

then over the course of the day i slowly chip away at whatever pieces im working on (lined stuff will usually take me a few hours, rendered stuff takes a day or a few....)

i cannot really assist in like "so how do you draw?" because i honestly just go Lights Off Its Drawin Time! but i always do a rough sketch of an idea i have, refine the sketch, refine that sketch, and then if its rendered i'll make a palette for myself somewhere, but if its lined i'll start on the lineart and then fiddle around with colours.

i draw for fun, so if i dont like how somethings turning out, i'll stop drawing it. no use frustrating myself over a piece to the point of hating it!!

(this ones just forfun and just for me) i keep a small little doc full of notes about my own pieces! i like analysing stuff, and also enjoy talking about why i draw something in a specific way, so this is just a nice little thing for me to have fun with. also helps me avoid potentially slipping into "hate this. bad" mindset bc im specifically noting things that i Liked (i do obviously have a bit of chatter like "hmm i think i couldve drawn this better, i should keep that in mind" but its only when its helping myself. the jora does not talk bad about its art)

aaand then i do some cool-downs to get any last little doodles outta my head so i can relax in bed

in terms of tips? do stretches, walk around, TAKE BREAKS! draw at your own pace, and also Have Fun With It. experiment with different colours, limited palettes, different styles!

seriously though do make sure you take breaks and stretch im lookin you in the eye okay?

I HOPE THIS MADE SENSE AND IS HELPFUL IN A WAY i ramble. far too much. and im not the best at articulating my thoughts!! but i hope u have lots of fun drawing very cool stuff <333

[purpurps]

for the ask: 1 3 11 !!

YIPPEE TY FOR THE ASK!!

1. list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

i think my favourite thing about the ava/m fandom is how creative people are, like how people manage to make really awesome and interesting designs out of literal stickfigures,, its just so cool

i also quite like how it’s not a huge fandom. big communities can be really overwhelming and toxic at times, and this fandom is one of the least problematic ones ive been in (at least here on tumblr, the tiktok fandom scares me lowkey)

my absolute favourite thing about this fandom is just how many awesome people ive met, ive made some really cool friends and mutuals and everyones just so nice :))

3. a character that fandom has helped you appreciate

honestly, probably gold :) at first i didn’t really pay much attention to them, since they only have a few minutes of screen time. but after being in the fandom for some time they’re definitely one of my top 5.

11. if you're a writer or artist, what fic or piece of art are you proud of making?

i think my favourite art piece i've made is this one, it was my first time trying out a new rendering style and i quite like how it turned out!! im planning on doing a lot more stuff like it very soon :3

[ridiasfangirlings]

How do you think a time loop would work in k project? Like which point would you choose to start the loop at and which character out of the entire cast excluding yata and fushimi would you pick to be stuck in the time loop? Im writing a fic with this premise and ive chosen chitose and im thinking of either the day totsuka dies or the day after with the loop concluding every time mikoto dies lmao so im interested to see what youd pick for yourself.

'Excluding Yata and Fushimi' how dare you put this in hard mode D: The start of the time loop would I think depend on whether you want Totsuka's death to be avoidable or not. If the loop starts on the day of Totsuka's death, and by 'day' that would mean morning before, then obviously the first step in trying to change things would involve keeping Totsuka from going to that rooftop. While obviously my bias would be to have someone from the Blue clan doing the loop I think if we're putting the start of the loop in a spot where Totsuka's death is something of a catalyst then it would make most sense to have a Red clan member be the one starting the loop. I'm thinking either Kusanagi or Anna would probably be my pick, Kusanagi for the 'time loop to avoid all your friends being dead' end of things or Anna because of how things go in Missing Kings and how close she is to Mikoto and Totsuka. In both cases I can imagine the loop having two main points that need to be avoided: Totsuka needs to survive and then, by extension, Mikoto needs to survive, but at the same time they can't lose any other members either, like say the loop covers the time from when Totsuka originally died to when Mikoto died on the island. Actually rather than a Groundhog Day style loop it could be interesting to follow something similar to how Summertime Render's time loop works, where the character who's the main point of the time loop can 'reset' things by dying themselves but the catch is that the start of the loop continually shifts forward with each subsequent loop, so anything that's happened prior to that loop is now set in stone and can't be changed.

In this case I think I'd choose Kusanagi for the time looper (because Anna's a kid and has had enough trauma), like maybe when the time loop starts he decides to go to the roof with Totsuka in order to shuttle him away before Colorless can get there. Unfortunately Colorless still meets them coming down from the building, Kusanagi pushes Totsuka out of the way and ends up getting shot himself. Poor Totsuka is obviously upset, calling Mikoto and a little frantic as he tells Kusanagi to hold on while Kusanagi tries to tell Totsuka to make sure Mikoto doesn't do anything drastic this time, like at the very least if Kusanagi can change things so that both his friends survive then he'll feel like this death was worth it. Moments later though the loop restarts and now Kusanagi and Totsuka are on their way to the roof, Kusanagi stops Totsuka and suggests they go get a drink first instead. Kusanagi convinces Totsuka to stop at this nearby late night cafe and they stay there until it's past the time that Colorless left the rooftop, thus avoiding Totsuka's death in this timeline and Kusanagi thinks everyone's been saved. But then maybe this starts a whole new mess of problems, like Colorless still has interest in Mikoto and isn't going to just give up so he keeps trying to target Mikoto's people and say other characters end up dying as a result. Maybe in this loop Colorless crashes Weismann's airship directly into Bar Homra killing half the Homra members including Anna and Yata, and severely wounding Kusanagi. Kusanagi dies again but the loop starts once more, now the start point being when he and Totsuka are about to enter the cafe from earlier, and Kusanagi starts to realize what's going on here.

So from this point it's basically Kusanagi just desperately trying to stay ahead of what Colorless is doing at any given moment and doing his level best to keep Totsuka and Mikoto from dying (and imagine Totsuka in particular keeps dying pretty constantly, like the universe is just out to get him that way and Kusanagi is affected each time but then at the same time there's this exasperated 'not again' aspect to it too). I imagine he would try to keep this to himself just because he doesn't want to dump these worries on everyone else but it would be nice if he had allies too, like Anna figures out what's going on due to her powers and decides to help him in whatever way she can. This could actually be a good point to bring in the Silvers too, like particularly I'm thinking if the original loop started maybe right after Mikoto died in S1 originally while Kusanagi knows more or less what's going on with Shiro there was a lot he wasn't privy to as well. So while Shiro, Kuroh and Neko are running around trying to avoid Scepter 4 and Homra, Kusanagi is trying to find them and broker some kind of truce so that they can help defeat Colorless and keep Mikoto and Totsuka alive. And every time Kusanagi loops his time moves up, so he's also just trying to keep a step ahead of his own fate, knowing that at some point everything will be set in stone and once again lose things that he can't afford to lose.

[rotwrists]

I'm not exactly knowledgeable/articulate about art so forgive how this sounds, but I'd like to say that it seems like you have a really nice grasp of character design and line economy... people in your art style seem concise to me; you seem to know exactly how many/which types of lines and shapes you need to use to depict a silhouette, which then allows you to add details that build characterization and/or purpose (ie a zigzag of body hair, sweat drops, wrinkles, a hair out of place from the rest on a character's head, etc.). These also make the depiction feel more human IMO, which is something I personally love to see + really aspire to learn to include in my own art.

Obviously your art style may only appear to be this way to me because you've only posted a few pieces on tumblr so far; your more rendered art and your non-character-focused art probably have their own charms.

Originally when I started typing this out I just wanted to compliment the way that you draw characters having piercings that aren't in their canon designs, but as I started writing it out, I realized that what I appreciate about your art is more than just that lol. Thank you for sharing it with the world

OMG!

Okay i had this ask in my drafts forever, but uhm thank you so much. Ive been very discouraged with my art and etc etc and im glad you like my doodles ;_; i do love rendering too, ill post some finished stuff one day. been in a slump which affects motivation. anyways, thank you so much. Fuc k.!!! Ive beenbsuper deppressed n allat so i took 4ever to answer sorry! i just wanted to give this a proper post because this means so much 2 me! (Also, your second part of the ask im trying to draw stuff for LOL)

oh also most of all, ive always wanted to be a story artist !!!! i hage 1 im working on now to "i dont want to die" by the unicorns!

ty for supporting me even tho im a little niche and new tumblr, i have so much more i plan to work on, but oh man ty. a lot of my design comes from how i learned to draw curly hair bc i hated my hair growing up + also adding piercings i have on characters i see myself in or putting piercings on characters that i would think suit them.

[ankhisms]

the always wonderful shelley @shanheling tagged me to do this thank u so much!! i think that everyone i wanted to tag has already been tagged to do this but if you feel like doing this feel free to consider urself tagged by me!! im putting this under a readmore bc its long and i ramble a lot

the piece i was tagged to explain my process on is this oc piece! unfortunately i have a habit of deleting my original clip studio file once ive finished my art and saved it as a new png file, so i dont have the file to show the sketch and different stages of this piece. but I still can go through my general process and talk about how i did that piece!

1. planning

honestly i think about the art that i want to do a lot, and in this last year or so ive thought about the art i want to do more than ive been able to actually create and finish that art that i want to do. for my planning i tend to do a lot of different thumbnail sketches for the art im thinking of

these are some examples of thumbnails, a lot of times ill do thumbnails just on pencil and paper and with some of these theyre done quickly with my fingers on my phone note function on a day where i was feeling too bad to get up and draw on paper but still wanted to get the thumbnail ideas down. two of these are for the same songxiao piece that i still havent finished and i have more thumbnails digitally on clip studio for the same piece, i do a lot more thumbnails when a piece isnt working the way i want it to and theres times where ill completely scratch a thumbnail or a sketch and start over in order to do more thumbnails because i dont feel happy with some aspect of it.

two of these are small gouche painting thumbnails for two pieces i did maybe a month or so ago, i did the thumbnails and then tried to expand on them digitally and im wanting to do more thumbnail paintings like this in the future because it was fun

for the piece of my oc trio it was based off a series of ask prompts i got for a few different outfit prompt memes i had reblogged, so i based their outfits on the ones in the meme. when im drawing figures i tend to try and get the movement down in the poses when im sketching, i do several rough sketches of the pose before beginning to start setting down lines (if im doing lineart at all because sometimes i dont like doing lineart and do a more lineless painting kind of style). i really try to get my art to convey some kind of emotion, in the oc piece i wanted it to feel fun and like youre seeing three best friends while theyre out on the town having a fun night

2. creating

this is the only real example i have of a piece in the middle of being filled in and created, this piece is one that im really not very happy with & have had lying around for a while and ill probably scrap it and try to come at it from a different perspective at some point. but anyway it still shows what i do, i lay down a kind of neutral gray color underneath my final sketch/lineart if im doing lineart in that piece and then i start picking out the colors that i want for the piece and kind of setting out a pallette for myself. i dont do this color pallette thing 100% of the time but i do it really often, especially if im working on a commission or a larger piece where i know theres going to be a lot of colors or if its a piece where im not sure exactly what color scheme i want so laying out the colors together helps me kind of decide what kind of scheme i want. i am sooooo picky about my colors in my art i am genuinely obsessed with colors in art and there are times where i really have to stop myself from working on something forever just constantly adding more colors or putting little tiny changes and gradients in the colors.

after ive got the colors i want down i tend to try and block out parts of the piece with the base color for that section, and then i start to paint with the colors that i want to go on top of that base color from there.

once im satisfied with the colors/shading/rendering and everything ill go back and look over things and will fix things that look off or sometimes completely redo segments if they dont look right to me. when i was younger and mainly doing digital art using my phone and my fingers i would use a lot of filters and overlays on top of my art once i was done, and honestly im glad to not be doing that anymore because i dont think it made my art look any better. i do color adjustments and sometimes will put on a color overlay or a layer to emphasize the shadows and the light in the piece, but i try to keep those layers to a minimum and like i said before i have a tendency to obsess over the colors and ill spend a good amount of time in the color adjustment tool of clip studio and then ill just decide "actually it looks fine as it is" so yeah!

3. posting

i feel like i dont have a lot to say here gbfm i mean i honestly have a lot of thoughts about the relationship between artists and social media and how social media changes our views on art including our own art and how we can feel like we constantly need to be posting new art and just become content machines churning out new stuff. but ill save that rant for another time. i used to be really concerned about how many notes my art would get when i was younger, and i dont at all blame anyone who still is very concerned about that bc it sucks when u work hard on something youve created and then you dont get a lot of recognition for it, but honestly within the last two years or so i feel like ive begun to have a lot healthier relationship with posting my art. i really just post my art on my art blog, reblog it to my main blog, and then thats that yknow! i do really appreciate any and all support people give me, it means the world to me, but for me having the mentality where i dont need to post all the art i make and i dont need to be posting every day or every week or every month even has been a lot healthier for me because then im not constantly asking myself why didnt this get notes is my art awful??? and yeah i just kind of post it and my brain goes okay were done with that art we gotta make more

ive honestly been struggling a lot with art thru the pandemic and if youre reading this and have been struggling with creating in any way recently or even before the pandemic, please know theres no shame in having trouble creating and it doesnt make you bad at whatever it is u create!

thank you for reading this, feel free to consider urself tagged by me again if u want to do this!! love u all

[ibblescribbles-archive]

Ibbles, do you have any advice or videos you could share for a beginner digatal artist when it comes to colouring? I know to practice a ton but I need some sorta direction, ya know? Btw I ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡ you're art!!! °°°•▪︎☆°••☆▪︎☆☆°••☆▪︎•°▪︎°

thank you sm! hmmm, i think any advice i could give depends on what direction you want to take you coloring style! you’re right when you say practice cause i think a lot of developing any kind of style is about experimenting and seeing what feels comfortable. what helps me when im trying to figure out a new coloring style or upgrade my main one is looking at artists i admire and trying to mimic parts of their shading, or figure out how they create certain effects. for my own coloring style i originally started out wanting a mix between cell shade and soft shade and gradually (like over the course of a few years) moved towards a more painterly style just bc i realized i most admired a more rendered look. and im still developing that! but recently ive wanted to have a secondary more simple style closer to cell shading, so ive been trying to examine how artists who mainly cell shade utilize bigger and more basic blocks of shadow. in general if you’re trying to go for a more simplistic style, maybe focus on color picking and really learning how to choose colors that compliment each other, and if you want a more detailed style, focus on depth and how you can incorporate both subtle color shifts between shades, as well as well placed darker colors for depth. i still struggle w/ using dark colors to make light areas pop ^^; if you specifically want a “tutorial” on how i color, i do have one here...kinda! its specific to shading hair, but the main process is basically how i shade everything else too. im not sure that really helps too much but good luck figuring out your art!!

[neopuff]

hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!

hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol

ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:

(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)

1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:

(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)

2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there! 

2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:

3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)

I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up

when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested

4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.

Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.

5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine

(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)

6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects

6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.

So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.

7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.

8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:

This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):

Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary

These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol

9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol

And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.

Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!

[same-side]

hiiii! i just wanna say, i adore your art. second, im teaching myself to draw and while i can draw simple basics (mouths and sometimes eyes if im lucky), im still a beginner. ive watched many art videos and im still a bit confused on wtf im doing. so i just came here to ask if you had any words of wisdom for beginners? could be anything from what tablets to buy to simple mistakes to avoid. ive read some of the other posts here and have found it all extremely helpful so far! Thx for all you do!!

Hey there! Thank you so much!

I would put a read more but tumblr is broken. I’m trying to cover a lot of varied thoughts in little points, so if there’s anything you would like me to elaborate on or otherwise have questions on, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm me!

General

I think the biggest thing to remember is not to compare yourself extensively to others. A little bit of comparison is healthy... But too much will destroy your confidence, motivation, and take the fun out of art. Particularly if you are comparing yourself to someone older than you (life experience and coordination come into play here) or that has been drawing much longer (practice). 

Additionally... If you’re not having fun (and you’re not getting paid to do it), don’t force yourself. If you find yourself being frustrated or bored with art, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s how you burn out and get art block! This applies to parts of a peice, too! If you don’t feel like drawing a face or a hand today? don’t force yourself to finish it. Come back to it later when you aren’t as frustrated or are getting better results. Even if its a week or a month from now. Honestly, at any given time I have probably ten headless bodies in my drafts. That’s okay! I just come back to them when I’m ready to do the face. And don’t be afraid to abandon something if it doesn’t feel right!

Something that also doesn’t get said enough.... take care of your body! I never knew when I started art, but artists are supposed to do warmup sketches and stretches and muscle exercises! I didn’t do any of this, and i went through a period of a few months where I was drawing for 5ish hours every single day. I developed carpal tunnel from it! So remember to take care of yourself. Take breaks, stretch, remember to eat.

Practice

Practice!!!! Even if its just for fifteen minutes every day. Or twice a week. But if art is something you really want to get good at, you have to put in the time and effort!! You can’t expect to draw an hour per month and be on the same level as someone who draws an hour a day!

I know I say this a lot but I think the biggest thing is just reference! If you don’t know what something looks like, look at a picture of it when you draw it! To go hand in hand with that, though, don’t just copy what you see! Learn from it and apply it! So take, for example, a shoe! pay attention to the way the heel is shaped, the location of the eyelets for the laces... how large the toe is, how steep the top! While you’re at it, look at other styles of shoes as well, and compare them! See what makes it look like a boot versus a trainer! And then the next time you draw it, hopefully you’ll remember all the things you learned the first time around!

I do lots of studies that serve no purpose other than to teach me things! I use referencing/studies to learn about color theory, shapes, and anatomy in a real environment. For example, hands or fabric folds! Oftentimes I’ll do them timed (20 or 45 minutes) so that I don’t fixate on perfecting things, just on the process itself and what I can learn from it. This also helps with getting better acclimated to your software and more coordinated with what you’re doing. Repetitive learning, like with playing sports. 

I’ve realized a lot of people don’t quite understand what a study is? Basically you just look at a photo and try to replicate it so that you can learn about lighting or color theory or textures or anatomy or whatnot. So here’s an example of a timed study.

Additionally, don’t avoid!! We, as humans, have a tendency to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or are difficult. But it will make you a better artist in then end. When I first started, I absolutely hated doing fabric. I felt like I wasn’t good at it. So instead of avoiding drawing clothing, I sat down and did studies and sketches of different kinds of fabric. By the end of this learning period, I became comfortable with it and grew to enjoy it. These days, I adore sketching clothes, and it’s why my pants and shirts and things tend to be detailed instead of stylized in line art. If you don’t like drawing hands because you feel like you aren’t good at it? Sit down, look at a bunch of pictures of different hands, and practice it. By the end, you’ll be more comfortable, you’ll have learned something. Even if you feel like the drawings you ended up with aren’t good, you’ll still have learned, and that’s what matters!

Style

I worked on basics before I tried to develop a style. I made sure to start with a very realistic method at first, so that I could be sure I understood how fabric folds, anatomy, and realistic expressions worked before I tried to stylize them. I think in the long run this approach really paid off for me. It also allowed me to be conscientious of what elements I was absorbing into my artwork. I hear from so many artists that they started drawing when they were younger and into anime or cartoons or things like that, and tried to emulate it. Because those styles became so ingrained into their artistic skillset, it becomes near impossible to iron out those influences and get rid of them later. So starting with realism is a way to ingrain proper anatomy and other good practice into your artwork.

One way to develop style is to take a look at the artwork of someone you admire, and try to list out the things you like form their style - perhaps the thickness of their lines, or the way they do eyes. Do this with several artists, take all those little details you like and try them out! See if you enjoy using them in your own drawing process! Think of it like a grab bag or a pick-n-mix, sprinkling in the elements you like here and there to create something new and your own - not just copying another artists style word for word.

Don’t worry too much about it though; don’t allow yourself to become anxious or fixated on “achieving a style”. Its a natural ever evolving process that comes with time and practice. I know a lot of people get hung up on style, but just take it one day at a time!

Also try to keep in mind what style you’re going for as you begin drawing. And I don’t mean that like sailor moon vs. ghibli. I mean that as in, is this piece going to be a painting, a lineart, a lined painting, cell shading...? It will help you in the longrun if you narrow down the broad kind of style you use, and refine from there. 

Workflow

My workflow for paintings is very different from my workflow for lineart and cell shading. A full tutorial on how I do paintings can be found here! A process video for how I cell shade can be found here!

Everyone is going to have a different method that works for them! You just have to experiment and find out how you like to draw! For me, personally, I use color blocking for painting (see the tutorial above) and a spine method for lineart. How the spine method works is that I will draw lines that represent the legs, arms, back, etc. so that I can determine the placement, length, and composition. From there, I’ll add a dark outline that actually shows the shapes of the body. Then, I’ll use thinner lines to add details. This is the method I’ve found that works for me. Another commonly used method that I’m sure you’ve seen is representing body parts with cylinders and cubes. There are lots of good tutorials out there on breaking down bodies into shapes like this!

Something that I do is if I’m not quite happy with a part of a drawing, I don’t just erase it. I duplicate the layer so that I always have the original copy, and then I make changes from there. Sometimes I can end up with five or six different versions of the same arm or face that i’ve made minor changes to. And then I compare and pick the one I like best, or condense all the parts I like from each version to make a “best” version.

Tools

Currently I use Procreate and the standard Ipad with Apple Pencil. Prior to March I was using a Wacom Bamboo Touch and Photoshop Elements 2008. I find its harder for me to do full paintings in procreate, but its made my life a million times easier for lineart and cell shading. The pen pressure is phenomenal, and I also adore that its wireless / active screen instead of plug in like the wacom. The programme itself is intuitive and easy to get the hang of; it simply lacks a lot of the neat tricks that photoshop has, like rendering (lens flares, for example), gradients, and gradient maps. Try testing out different trials of programmes... firealpaca, photoshop, autodesk, whatever it may be! What works for me may not work for you!

[tormentedshadow]

Need inspiration? I know i do thus.... Monthly challenges

Well, ive noticed that im at my most productive during october for inktober and december for the 12 days of christmas. I think when my brain is given a bit of structure and a deadline it starts to kick into gear. So ive decided to create an art challenge for every month of the year and see if i can stick to it. And im putting this out there incase any of my more artsy followers might want to do it themselves or pick out one months challenge that sounds fun to try. If yous do try i would love to see them, might help to motivate and inspire me.

Jot a world January

Basically come up with a concept for a world and/or its inhabitants. That might be creating a Tolkienesque map of the world, it could be writing a short story about it or even a bunch of notes in an ideas book. Maybe its illustrating an index of the characters or creatures in your world, or painting some of the landscapes. Either way it has to be a cohesive world. Minimum 6xA5 fully rendered pages. Or 2xA3 fully rendered or 1xA2 fully rendered. Or one small A5 sketchbook of sketches, story or notes.

Fic pic febuary

This isnt just fanart, oh no... this is fanart of fanfiction. Maybe its doing an animatic or comic strip of a scene or two of one of your favoirite fics. Maybe its drawing a couple of stills from a go to fic. Cant choose? Then do one still for number of different fics. You like big art? Then make one big peice! Minimum 6xA5, or 4xA4 or 2xA3, or1xA2/digital equivalent.

Multimedia march

Well in this one the only rule is you have to use 5 different media on one page. It could be almost anything, crayons, pencil, paint, papier-mache, modeling paste, collage, felt, pastels, chalk. Hell you could use coffee, makeup, toilet roll, tinfoil, go out and stick some leaves in! Whatever works. Maybe you want to create a scene or a charcter, maybe you want to create abstract patterns have at it. 6xA5, or 3xA4, or 2xA3, or 1xA2

Agraian april

I admit it the only reason this is on here is because ive recently become adicted to stardew valley. Now thats out of the way this could be used to design your own farm where ever it may be whatever it might grow. Is the farm on mars? Or maybe you want to do some studies of real farms, crops or animals. Perhaps instead you'd prefare to draw some foliage trees and flowers. 6xA5, or 3xA4, or 2xA3, or 1xA2

Make a colouring book may

Do you ever look at some of the adult colouring books they have now and are just like wow. Now become them. What ever you want but try and emulate the colouring book style, detailed, simple, traditional, digital doesnt matter as long as your lines are crisp. 1-6 pages.

Journey june

For this one you have to show a journey is it a journey of the self, is it an adventure of a group, is it a holiday? Maybe its a short story, a comic or a series of stills. 6xA5 or equivalent.

Jar dwelling july

I know this has been done a billion times but i still think its cute. What or who dwells within your jars, is it aliens, a house, a planet a, a monster? Maybe its some potions or a fish or some interdimensional food products. What ever it is there need to be at least six of them, big or small.

Absurd abodes august

Ive recently got quite into isometric house/room concept designs on pintrest. I want to make some! Is it a witches hut or a multy story tree house maybe its a dungeon that houses a bunch of freindly skeletons. How absurd can you make your abode? 6xA5 or 1 xA3

Shiney september

Its time to make some shineys, use whatever shimery shit you got. You got metalic paints or gell pens? Do you have glittery goods? Maybe you havnt thats fine just use tin foil. Maybe you want to create your own pokemon and make them a shiney card, or do you want to paint lots of treasure, or do you want to make things that are definatly not shiney into the most eye watering glitterly mess you can, then this is the challenge for you! 6xA5, or 3xA4, or 2xA3, or 1xA2

Obscure october

I left this one vague so that anyone participating in the anual inktober can work this theme into it, no sense in more stress of an extra challenge.

New naritive november

For this one you need to create a grimm like fairytail of your own invention and illustrate it. Is it page by page or a strip? No length or size options for this one, what ever it takes.

Decorum december

Because i have my own challenge to do in this month ive made the theme easy to integrate into it. For everyone else i supose this is a chance to draw some nobles or royalty some victorians, anything or one with a stiff upper lip so to speak. No size or amount options for this either.

[zomb1gutz]

i havent been drawing much digitslly…. i think cuz ive found a cool new rendering (?) style ive wanted to try it out but it takes for ever and is very draining (mentally+ psychically ) and time consuming… so yea. also i have 3 owed art, one of them ill try to finish tmrw (actually today. .. since its 3:19 am rn… woops )and the other two ill start working on AND hopefully if i can, ill do the art of nekomaru and toko that i didnt get to make on their birthdays ):

also for several reasons , but mostly school and i get drained easy and my brain is just ↪️↩️⬅️↘️⬅️⬆️↖️↪️↕️↗️↗️↙️↔️ 24/7 it makes it hard to focus and concentrate on anything really

buuutttt im gonna start drawing digital again more and maybe ill learn some things and how to work quickly