#lighting and skin colouring tutorials

[wind-becomes-lightning]

whats happening to @skykashi is the reason why ive started recording most of my artworks. at least the ones i plan to upload. I mean, its not EXACTLY what worries me. I just got much better at copying poses and I am terrified people would accuse me of tracing. Now, I believe that a great artist will see that I didn't trace because I just make too many mistakes still, but the fear to be called out or witch hunted or whatever sits very deeply.

It's also why I draw tooons more than I ever upload anywhere. The art community is wild an I just wanna to stuff for fun.

[1818havefaith]

SUPERMODEL SMOKEY EYE: FAITH’S GUIDE

OVERVIEW

This look is sleek, it's edgy and it's glamorous. The supermodel makeup look focuses on the eyes, while every other part of the face remains simple. This makeup is a part of my "Model Off Duty" style guide on @havefaithinyourbadtaste

PRODUCTS

Primer

Baby Powder

Tinted Moisturiser or a Foundation and Concealer 2-in-1 combo

Concealer

Pressed powder

Setting Powder

Brow gel

Brow Pomade

Gel Eyeliner

Black Eyeshadow

Burgundy Eyeshadow

Salmon Eyeshadow

Lash Glue/ Bonding Glue

False Eyelashes

Highlighter

Clear Lip Gloss

Setting Spray

TOOLS

Beauty Blender

Powder Puff

Powder Brush

Eyeshadow Brush

Two Other Small Brushes

BASE

Apply primer all over your face (including your eyelids) and work it into your skin

#faithtip Apply baby powder all over your face with a powder brush for a long-lasting oil-proof base

Apply tinted moisturiser or foundation to skin

Blend well with a damp beauty blender

#faithtip: dampen your beauty blender with setting spray for easier blending and a longer lasting matte base

Now, because the focus is on the eyeshadow and the lashes, apply a concealer that is only slightly lighter than your skin tone to not draw attention away from the smokey eye

Apply concealer to the inner corner of your under-eye

Place concealer to the end of your under-eyes and be sure to follow the natural shape of your eyes

Blend it in well with a beauty blender

Take a powder brush and some pressed powder and apply all over your face

Now, using a powder puff or a beauty blender, apply loose powder to your under eyes following your eye shape.

Place a line of loose powder under your cheeks

Let the loose powder sit whilst you focus on another part of your face

BROWS

For this look, dark brows are included but the brows will not be as dark as my other tutorials

Brush through your brows with brow gel and then use pomade and a brow brush to fill in small gaps

Place a bit of concealer on the arch of your brow and blend it in with a beauty blender

Then apply setting powder to the arch of your brow

EYESHADOW

Apply concealer to your eyelids (all over underneath your brows)

Blend with a beauty blender

Then apply loose powder to your eyelids and the transition area

Use a powder brush to apply pressed powder to your eyelids

Now, take a gel eyeliner and apply it to your eyelids

Make it look smoother by using an eyeshadow brush

Apply a medium brown coloured eyeshadow to your crease/transition area

Use an eyeshadow brush to work a dark brown eyeshadow into your crease/transition area

Now apply black eyeshadow on your eyelids and work it in with a brush

Go back with the dark brown to smooth out the colour in your crease/transition area

Use a black eye pencil to line the inner corner of your eyes

Then use the pencil on your bottom lash line and lightly smooth it out with an eyeshadow brush

LASHES

STRIP LASHES

For this step apply glue to strip lashes

Wave the lashes around for a bit so the glue dries a tiny bit and feels a little bit sticky

Place them on the lash line and adjust where needed (using tweezers or fingers)

CLUSTER LASHES

Strip lashes can also be cut into smaller pieces or use cluster lashes

Dip them into glue and wipe off the excess

Use tweezers to hold the lashes

Pull the top of your eyelid upwards so you can see underneath your eyelashes

#faithtip Wipe the glue on the part you are applying to then you can dip the lash in glue again before actually placing it underneath your lash

This make the lashes more firm and secure

Make sure it is not too close to your eye as this can be irritating

Fan your eyes if you can still feel wet glue

BACK TO BASE

Brush the setting powder away with a powder brush

You will need to make sure you do this properly because the powder won't move easily, because of how long it has been sat on your face

Apply highlighter to your brow bone using a small brush

Make sure to keep the highlight application light and smooth it out with a small eyeshadow brush, the focus is on the eyeshadow!

Spray setting spray all over your face

LIPS

Apply some lip balm to your lips before applying clear lip gloss

[haikyu-mp4]

Sponsored

word count; 742 – gn!reader who likes makeup

“Sugarpill… what is this?” Kenma mumbled as he opened another PR package. This one was a bright pink box, on the smaller side. He scrunched his nose as he opened it, finding a little flyer and something square with a pixelated cat on the front. “Fun size… eyeshadow palette?” he read off the label and looked up as the chat suddenly went crazy.

kozuluvr: omg its makeup

kenkenspudding: will we finally get beauty guru kodzuken?

raginggamergirl: I dont even use makeup n I want this palette

Kenma hummed under his breath, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know why they would send me this,” he said honestly, twisting and turning the palette in his hands before opening it and showing the bright colours to the livestream, also doing his best to read off the names, which were all gaming related.

urfavkuroo: makeup tutorial for your next follower special?

He looked down at the palette, seemingly studying it. “The names are cool.”

When you came home from work, you kicked your shoes off and sighed loudly as you strolled into the kitchen. You knew Kenma was playing on livestream, so you picked up two juice boxes from the fridge and went to his office.

“Hey, baby,” you cooed, waving at the camera as you stepped up beside Kenma and pressed a kiss to his cheek. You two announced your relationship a long time ago, and after getting through the short period of intense hate comments, most of his fans seemed to get over it. They realised that you were kind of awesome.

“Hi, how was work?” Kenma asked, taking the juice box from you with a small thanks after pausing the game.

“Same old, same old.” You glanced at the screen and then back to him. “And yours?” you asked back with a teasing tone. “Looks tough.” Kenma scoffed and pinched your thigh, making you giggle. He ignored your question in favour of leaning across his desk to pick up the pink package.

“Look what I got in my sponsored mail,” was all he said, handing it to you and watching for your reaction with a small smile on his face. He really likes it when you get home.

People started posting suggested makeup looks with his name on Twitter and you even responded to a couple of them from your account, agreeing with what would suit him and what would not.

That’s why you two agreed that you would do the makeup on him, announcing on Kodzuken’s channels that if they got him to his next follower milestone, they would get a makeup special.

And what do you know, Kenma got a follower boost from all the posts his fans made about him and the palette.

You happily helped him set up to film in your living room, so you could sit cross-legged and face each other on the couch where the lighting was a bit nicer. In preparation, you cleaned your eyeshadow brushes and put Kenma’s hair in a nicer bun so the camera could properly catch whatever you did.

He raised a brow as you held up the eyeshadow palette to the camera and put your hand behind it, explaining the product. “What are you even doing?” he asked you, pointer finger drawing stars on your knee while he watched you affectionately.

“This is what us beauty gurus do,” you said in a jokingly posh voice, also telling him “You wouldn’t understand.”

“This is my channel, you know,” he teased, using his other hand to tap your cheek. If he focused more on you, he didn’t think too much about how much more exposed he was to his viewers in a video like this compared to what he was used to.

“Shh, I’m talking to my devoted followers,” you said before laughing, picking up the next colour on a new brush and putting a quick kiss on his lips before you continued with the makeup. “We’re all Kodzuken fans here.”

Kenma knew some people expected him to act annoyed, but he also knew there was no way to hide how much he loved your soft touches and the concentrated look on your face as your brushes ticked his skin to give him a (supposedly trendy) “rainbow blush”.

There were even more mentions of him online after the video was posted. Now the fans shared screenshots and video clips of him and his partner, discussing how adorable you were together. Couple goals.

masterlist

[originalartblog]

"Nawy what do you MEAN quick-ish 3D render it's got scratches and everything and I thought this was real for a minute!!"

Well, first, thank you very much that was the intention ❤, and second, you see, all speed is relative, and between finding my references, modeling, texturing and lighting, on top of having to learn how to make convincing gems, it still took me quite a few hours. I, however, cut corners everywhere for speed, and I wouldn't put this piece in a portfolio in its current state.

But! for the curious, I thought I could do a simple breakdown of how the witchcraft happens, without using too much specialized language to make it more accessible. In short,

In this case, I’m talking about a 3D model that was textured (colours and stuff) and then lit (lights on!) to make a pretty final picture. The objective is not to make a tutorial, but to put in simple terms what a 3D artist does to make something go from this, to that:

(people curious and/or trying to see if this interests them welcome)

I'm skipping the 3D modeling part altogether, since it isn't where most of the magic happens here. Just know that to be able to add colour and stuff on a 3D object, you have to go through the process or "unwrapping" it, which is like doing those foldable cubes in reverse

and then we can draw on it!!

Now, the good stuff:

Surfaces (metal, plastic, fabric, wood, skin, etc.) have different looks that make you able to differentiate them on sight. To make something look realistic, you have to try to replicate real life into the 3D world (duh.)

The software developers took care of the hard part (math and coding), so as artists we can play with the parameters available to make something pretty. What those parameters are depend on which "recipe" we're using. One of the most common "recipes" for realistic results is called PBR: Physically Based Rendering, named that way because it's trying to replicate real-life light physics. In this case, the 4 basic parameters are called albedo, roughness, metalness, and normal.

Albedo is the base colour of the surface (easy stuff). Roughness is to determine if a surface is rough or shiny. Metalness is to say if something is made out of metal or not. The normal is there to add all those tiny details you don't want to or can't sculpt on your 3D model (engravings, fabric bumps, etc.)

The roughness and metalness are black and white images because the information you're giving to the software is black = no and white = yes. It's easier to understand in the metalness image, where everything that is NOT a metal is black, and everything that IS a metal is white.

The normal is a bit more complex, but in short, it uses the colours green and red to know what is up/down or left/right, and will help the software fake relief on top of the model. You don't make it by hand; it's computer-generated from other stuff I'm not getting into.

With the technical stuff out of the way, we can actually use these. There are specialized softwares that will let you preview the results of each parameter in real time, so you can see what you're doing easily. This is what I have.

That software comes with some types of surfaces that are already set up, like the fabric in my piece, which was already 85% good for me straight out of the box. Then, it's up to me to use the tools available to decide how shiny a surface is, if there's dust or scratches and where, what colours things are, if there's metal parts, etc. That's where you can see a 3D artist's skills.

And finally, you bring it all together into a specialized software that can render 3D stuff and use those images on the corresponsing parameters, and then light the scene.

Because it all comes down to this: the light! For something realistic, light is vital to get right. You can pour your heart and soul into those tiny scratches, but if you don't light the scene correctly, well...

So we carefully light the scene to get some nice highlights to make the textures look good and highlight our subject (it's basically a photography studio inside a computer)

And then we add some camera effects...

and voilà! pretty picture!!

... and if you somehow did notice something different with the bolo tie from my last post, I did find out while taking all these screenshots that I messed up my initial renders in a way that made everything darker than it was supposed to be and that's why my gold looked so muddy...

I hope this was interesting and that you learned a thing or two!

[antoniosvivaldi]

Neural Filters Tutorial for Gifmakers by @antoniosvivaldi

Hi everyone! In light of my blog’s 10th birthday, I’m delighted to reveal my highly anticipated gifmaking tutorial using Neural Filters - a very powerful collection of filters that really broadened my scope in gifmaking over the past 12 months.

Before I get into this tutorial, I want to thank @laurabenanti, @maines , @cobbbvanth, and @cal-kestis for their unconditional support over the course of my journey of investigating the Neural Filters & their valuable inputs on the rendering performance!

In this tutorial, I will outline what the Photoshop Neural Filters do and how I use them in my workflow - multiple examples will be provided for better clarity. Finally, I will talk about some known performance issues with the filters & some feasible workarounds.

Tutorial Structure:

Meet the Neural Filters: What they are and what they do

Why I use Neural Filters? How I use Neural Filters in my giffing workflow

Getting started: The giffing workflow in a nutshell and installing the Neural Filters

Applying Neural Filters onto your gif: Making use of the Neural Filters settings; with multiple examples

Testing your system: recommended if you’re using Neural Filters for the first time

Rendering performance: Common Neural Filters performance issues & workarounds

For quick reference, here are the examples that I will show in this tutorial:

Example 1: Image Enhancement | improving the image quality of gifs prepared from highly compressed video files

Example 2: Facial Enhancement | enhancing an individual's facial features

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | colourising B&W gifs for a colourful gifset

Example 4: Artistic effects | transforming landscapes & adding artistic effects onto your gifs

Example 5: Putting it all together | my usual giffing workflow using Neural Filters

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop 2021 or later (recommended: 2023 or later)*

Hardware: 8GB of RAM; having a supported GPU is highly recommended*

Difficulty: Advanced (requires a lot of patience); knowledge in gifmaking and using video timeline assumed

Key concepts: Smart Layer / Smart Filters

Benchmarking your system: Neural Filters test files**

Supplementary materials: Tutorial Resources / Detailed findings on rendering gifs with Neural Filters + known issues***

*I primarily gif on an M2 Max MacBook Pro that's running Photoshop 2024, but I also have experiences gifmaking on few other Mac models from 2012 ~ 2023.

**Using Neural Filters can be resource intensive, so it’s helpful to run the test files yourself. I’ll outline some known performance issues with Neural Filters and workarounds later in the tutorial.

***This supplementary page contains additional Neural Filters benchmark tests and instructions, as well as more information on the rendering performance (for Apple Silicon-based devices) when subject to heavy Neural Filters gifmaking workflows

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post as an inspo link will also be greatly appreciated!

1. Meet the Neural Filters!

Neural Filters are powered by Adobe's machine learning engine known as Adobe Sensei. It is a non-destructive method to help streamline workflows that would've been difficult and/or tedious to do manually.

Here are the Neural Filters available in Photoshop 2024:

Skin Smoothing: Removes blemishes on the skin

Smart Portrait: This a cloud-based filter that allows you to change the mood, facial age, hair, etc using the sliders+

Makeup Transfer: Applies the makeup (from a reference image) to the eyes & mouth area of your image

Landscape Mixer: Transforms the landscape of your image (e.g. seasons & time of the day, etc), based on the landscape features of a reference image

Style Transfer: Applies artistic styles e.g. texturings (from a reference image) onto your image

Harmonisation: Applies the colour balance of your image based on the lighting of the background image+

Colour Transfer: Applies the colour scheme (of a reference image) onto your image

Colourise: Adds colours onto a B&W image

Super Zoom: Zoom / crop an image without losing resolution+

Depth Blur: Blurs the background of the image

JPEG Artefacts Removal: Removes artefacts caused by JPEG compression

Photo Restoration: Enhances image quality & facial details

+These three filters aren't used in my giffing workflow. The cloud-based nature of Smart Portrait leads to disjointed looking frames. For Harmonisation, applying this on a gif causes Neural Filter timeout error. Finally, Super Zoom does not currently support output as a Smart Filter

If you're running Photoshop 2021 or earlier version of Photoshop 2022, you will see a smaller selection of Neural Filters:

Things to be aware of:

You can apply up to six Neural Filters at the same time

Filters where you can use your own reference images: Makeup Transfer (portraits only), Landscape Mixer, Style Transfer (not available in Photoshop 2021), and Colour Transfer

Later iterations of Photoshop 2023 & newer: The first three default presets for Landscape Mixer and Colour Transfer are currently broken.

2. Why I use Neural Filters?

Here are my four main Neural Filters use cases in my gifmaking process. In each use case I'll list out the filters that I use:

Enhancing Image Quality:

Common wisdom is to find the highest quality video to gif from for a media release & avoid YouTube whenever possible. However for smaller / niche media (e.g. new & upcoming musical artists), prepping gifs from highly compressed YouTube videos is inevitable.

So how do I get around with this? I have found Neural Filters pretty handy when it comes to both correcting issues from video compression & enhancing details in gifs prepared from these highly compressed video files.

Filters used: JPEG Artefacts Removal / Photo Restoration

Facial Enhancement:

When I prepare gifs from highly compressed videos, something I like to do is to enhance the facial features. This is again useful when I make gifsets from compressed videos & want to fill up my final panel with a close-up shot.

Filters used: Skin Smoothing / Makeup Transfer / Photo Restoration (Facial Enhancement slider)

Colour Manipulation:

Neural Filters is a powerful way to do advanced colour manipulation - whether I want to quickly transform the colour scheme of a gif or transform a B&W clip into something colourful.

Filters used: Colourise / Colour Transfer

Artistic Effects:

This is one of my favourite things to do with Neural Filters! I enjoy using the filters to create artistic effects by feeding textures that I've downloaded as reference images. I also enjoy using these filters to transform the overall the atmosphere of my composite gifs. The gifsets where I've leveraged Neural Filters for artistic effects could be found under this tag on usergif.

Filters used: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Depth Blur

How I use Neural Filters over different stages of my gifmaking workflow:

I want to outline how I use different Neural Filters throughout my gifmaking process. This can be roughly divided into two stages:

Stage I: Enhancement and/or Colourising | Takes place early in my gifmaking process. I process a large amount of component gifs by applying Neural Filters for enhancement purposes and adding some base colourings.++

Stage II: Artistic Effects & more Colour Manipulation | Takes place when I'm assembling my component gifs in the big PSD / PSB composition file that will be my final gif panel.

I will walk through this in more detail later in the tutorial.

++I personally like to keep the size of the component gifs in their original resolution (a mixture of 1080p & 4K), to get best possible results from the Neural Filters and have more flexibility later on in my workflow. I resize & sharpen these gifs after they're placed into my final PSD composition files in Tumblr dimensions.

3. Getting started

The essence is to output Neural Filters as a Smart Filter on the smart object when working with the Video Timeline interface. Your workflow will contain the following steps:

Prepare your gif

In the frame animation interface, set the frame delay to 0.03s and convert your gif to the Video Timeline

In the Video Timeline interface, go to Filter > Neural Filters and output to a Smart Filter

Flatten or render your gif (either approach is fine). To flatten your gif, play the "flatten" action from the gif prep action pack. To render your gif as a .mov file, go to File > Export > Render Video & use the following settings.

Setting up:

o.) To get started, prepare your gifs the usual way - whether you screencap or clip videos. You should see your prepared gif in the frame animation interface as follows:

Note: As mentioned earlier, I keep the gifs in their original resolution right now because working with a larger dimension document allows more flexibility later on in my workflow. I have also found that I get higher quality results working with more pixels. I eventually do my final sharpening & resizing when I fit all of my component gifs to a main PSD composition file (that's of Tumblr dimension).

i.) To use Smart Filters, convert your gif to a Smart Video Layer.

As an aside, I like to work with everything in 0.03s until I finish everything (then correct the frame delay to 0.05s when I upload my panels onto Tumblr).

For convenience, I use my own action pack to first set the frame delay to 0.03s (highlighted in yellow) and then convert to timeline (highlighted in red) to access the Video Timeline interface. To play an action, press the play button highlighted in green.

Once you've converted this gif to a Smart Video Layer, you'll see the Video Timeline interface as follows:

ii.) Select your gif (now as a Smart Layer) and go to Filter > Neural Filters

Installing Neural Filters:

Install the individual Neural Filters that you want to use. If the filter isn't installed, it will show a cloud symbol (highlighted in yellow). If the filter is already installed, it will show a toggle button (highlighted in green)

When you toggle this button, the Neural Filters preview window will look like this (where the toggle button next to the filter that you use turns blue)

4. Using Neural Filters

Once you have installed the Neural Filters that you want to use in your gif, you can toggle on a filter and play around with the sliders until you're satisfied. Here I'll walkthrough multiple concrete examples of how I use Neural Filters in my giffing process.

Example 1: Image enhancement | sample gifset

This is my typical Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. When giffing older or more niche media releases, my main concern is the video compression that leads to a lot of artefacts in the screencapped / video clipped gifs.

To fix the artefacts from compression, I go to Filter > Neural Filters, and toggle JPEG Artefacts Removal filter. Then I choose the strength of the filter (boxed in green), output this as a Smart Filter (boxed in yellow), and press OK (boxed in red).

Note: The filter has to be fully processed before you could press the OK button!

After applying the Neural Filters, you'll see "Neural Filters" under the Smart Filters property of the smart layer

Flatten / render your gif

Example 2: Facial enhancement | sample gifset

This is my routine use case during my Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. For musical artists (e.g. Maisie Peters), YouTube is often the only place where I'm able to find some videos to prepare gifs from. However even the highest resolution video available on YouTube is highly compressed.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Photo Restoration. If Photoshop recognises faces in the image, there will be a "Facial Enhancement" slider under the filter settings.

Play around with the Photo Enhancement & Facial Enhancement sliders. You can also expand the "Adjustment" menu make additional adjustments e.g. remove noises and reducing different types of artefacts.

Once you're happy with the results, press OK and then flatten / render your gif.

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | sample gifset

Want to make a colourful gifset but the source video is in B&W? This is where Colourise from Neural Filters comes in handy! This same colourising approach is also very helpful for colouring poor-lit scenes as detailed in this tutorial.

Here's a B&W gif that we want to colourise:

Highly recommended: add some adjustment layers onto the B&W gif to improve the contrast & depth. This will give you higher quality results when you colourise your gif.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Colourise.

Make sure "Auto colour image" is enabled.

Play around with further adjustments e.g. colour balance, until you're satisfied then press OK.

Important: When you colourise a gif, you need to double check that the resulting skin tone is accurate to real life. I personally go to Google Images and search up photoshoots of the individual / character that I'm giffing for quick reference.

Add additional adjustment layers until you're happy with the colouring of the skin tone.

Once you're happy with the additional adjustments, flatten / render your gif. And voila!

Note: For Colour Manipulation, I use Colourise in my Stage I workflow and Colour Transfer in my Stage II workflow to do other types of colour manipulations (e.g. transforming the colour scheme of the component gifs)

Example 4: Artistic Effects | sample gifset

This is where I use Neural Filters for the bulk of my Stage II workflow: the most enjoyable stage in my editing process!

Normally I would be working with my big composition files with multiple component gifs inside it. To begin the fun, drag a component gif (in PSD file) to the main PSD composition file.

Resize this gif in the composition file until you're happy with the placement

Duplicate this gif. Sharpen the bottom layer (highlighted in yellow), and then select the top layer (highlighted in green) & go to Filter > Neural Filters

I like to use Style Transfer and Landscape Mixer to create artistic effects from Neural Filters. In this particular example, I've chosen Landscape Mixer

Select a preset or feed a custom image to the filter (here I chose a texture that I've on my computer)

Play around with the different sliders e.g. time of the day / seasons

Important: uncheck "Harmonise Subject" & "Preserve Subject" - these two settings are known to cause performance issues when you render a multiframe smart object (e.g. for a gif)

Once you're happy with the artistic effect, press OK

To ensure you preserve the actual subject you want to gif (bc Preserve Subject is unchecked), add a layer mask onto the top layer (with Neural Filters) and mask out the facial region. You might need to play around with the Layer Mask Position keyframes or Rotoscope your subject in the process.

After you're happy with the masking, flatten / render this composition file and voila!

Example 5: Putting it all together | sample gifset

Let's recap on the Neural Filters gifmaking workflow and where Stage I and Stage II fit in my gifmaking process:

i. Preparing & enhancing the component gifs

Prepare all component gifs and convert them to smart layers

Stage I: Add base colourings & apply Photo Restoration / JPEG Artefacts Removal to enhance the gif's image quality

Flatten all of these component gifs and convert them back to Smart Video Layers (this process can take a lot of time)

Some of these enhanced gifs will be Rotoscoped so this is done before adding the gifs to the big PSD composition file

ii. Setting up the big PSD composition file

Make a separate PSD composition file (Ctrl / Cmmd + N) that's of Tumblr dimension (e.g. 540px in width)

Drag all of the component gifs used into this PSD composition file

Enable Video Timeline and trim the work area

In the composition file, resize / move the component gifs until you're happy with the placement & sharpen these gifs if you haven't already done so

Duplicate the layers that you want to use Neural Filters on

iii. Working with Neural Filters in the PSD composition file

Stage II: Neural Filters to create artistic effects / more colour manipulations!

Mask the smart layers with Neural Filters to both preserve the subject and avoid colouring issues from the filters

Flatten / render the PSD composition file: the more component gifs in your composition file, the longer the exporting will take. (I prefer to render the composition file into a .mov clip to prevent overriding a file that I've spent effort putting together.)

Note: In some of my layout gifsets (where I've heavily used Neural Filters in Stage II), the rendering time for the panel took more than 20 minutes. This is one of the rare instances where I was maxing out my computer's memory.

Useful things to take note of:

Important: If you're using Neural Filters for Colour Manipulation or Artistic Effects, you need to take a lot of care ensuring that the skin tone of nonwhite characters / individuals is accurately coloured

Use the Facial Enhancement slider from Photo Restoration in moderation, if you max out the slider value you risk oversharpening your gif later on in your gifmaking workflow

You will get higher quality results from Neural Filters by working with larger image dimensions: This gives Neural Filters more pixels to work with. You also get better quality results by feeding higher resolution reference images to the Neural Filters.

Makeup Transfer is more stable when the person / character has minimal motion in your gif

You might get unexpected results from Landscape Mixer if you feed a reference image that don't feature a distinctive landscape. This is not always a bad thing: for instance, I have used this texture as a reference image for Landscape Mixer, to create the shimmery effects as seen in this gifset

5. Testing your system

If this is the first time you're applying Neural Filters directly onto a gif, it will be helpful to test out your system yourself. This will help:

Gauge the expected rendering time that you'll need to wait for your gif to export, given specific Neural Filters that you've used

Identify potential performance issues when you render the gif: this is important and will determine whether you will need to fully playback your gif before flattening / rendering the file.

Understand how your system's resources are being utilised: Inputs from Windows PC users & Mac users alike are welcome!

About the Neural Filters test files:

Contains six distinct files, each using different Neural Filters

Two sizes of test files: one copy in full HD (1080p) and another copy downsized to 540px

One folder containing the flattened / rendered test files

How to use the Neural Filters test files:

What you need:

Photoshop 2022 or newer (recommended: 2023 or later)

Install the following Neural Filters: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Colour Transfer / Colourise / Photo Restoration / Depth Blur

Recommended for some Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pro models: Enable High Power Mode

How to use the test files:

For optimal performance, close all background apps

Open a test file

Flatten the test file into frames (load this action pack & play the “flatten” action)

Take note of the time it takes until you’re directed to the frame animation interface 

Compare the rendered frames to the expected results in this folder: check that all of the frames look the same. If they don't, you will need to fully playback the test file in full before flattening the file.†

Re-run the test file without the Neural Filters and take note of how long it takes before you're directed to the frame animation interface

Recommended: Take note of how your system is utilised during the rendering process (more info here for MacOS users)

†This is a performance issue known as flickering that I will discuss in the next section. If you come across this, you'll have to playback a gif where you've used Neural Filters (on the video timeline) in full, prior to flattening / rendering it.

Factors that could affect the rendering performance / time (more info):

The number of frames, dimension, and colour bit depth of your gif

If you use Neural Filters with facial recognition features, the rendering time will be affected by the number of characters / individuals in your gif

Most resource intensive filters (powered by largest machine learning models): Landscape Mixer / Photo Restoration (with Facial Enhancement) / and JPEG Artefacts Removal

Least resource intensive filters (smallest machine learning models): Colour Transfer / Colourise

The number of Neural Filters that you apply at once / The number of component gifs with Neural Filters in your PSD file

Your system: system memory, the GPU, and the architecture of the system's CPU+++

+++ Rendering a gif with Neural Filters demands a lot of system memory & GPU horsepower. Rendering will be faster & more reliable on newer computers, as these systems have CPU & GPU with more modern instruction sets that are geared towards machine learning-based tasks.

Additionally, the unified memory architecture of Apple Silicon M-series chips are found to be quite efficient at processing Neural Filters.

6. Performance issues & workarounds

Common Performance issues:

I will discuss several common issues related to rendering or exporting a multi-frame smart object (e.g. your composite gif) that uses Neural Filters below. This is commonly caused by insufficient system memory and/or the GPU.

Flickering frames: in the flattened / rendered file, Neural Filters aren't applied to some of the frames+-+

Scrambled frames: the frames in the flattened / rendered file isn't in order

Neural Filters exceeded the timeout limit error: this is normally a software related issue

Long export / rendering time: long rendering time is expected in heavy workflows

Laggy Photoshop / system interface: having to wait quite a long time to preview the next frame on the timeline

Issues with Landscape Mixer: Using the filter gives ill-defined defined results (Common in older systems)--

Workarounds:

Workarounds that could reduce unreliable rendering performance & long rendering time:

Close other apps running in the background

Work with smaller colour bit depth (i.e. 8-bit rather than 16-bit)

Downsize your gif before converting to the video timeline-+-

Try to keep the number of frames as low as possible

Avoid stacking multiple Neural Filters at once. Try applying & rendering the filters that you want one by one

Specific workarounds for specific issues:

How to resolve flickering frames: If you come across flickering, you will need to playback your gif on the video timeline in full to find the frames where the filter isn't applied. You will need to select all of the frames to allow Photoshop to reprocess these, before you render your gif.+-+

What to do if you come across Neural Filters timeout error? This is caused by several incompatible Neural Filters e.g. Harmonisation (both the filter itself and as a setting in Landscape Mixer), Scratch Reduction in Photo Restoration, and trying to stack multiple Neural Filters with facial recognition features.

If the timeout error is caused by stacking multiple filters, a feasible workaround is to apply the Neural Filters that you want to use one by one over multiple rendering sessions, rather all of them in one go.

+-+This is a very common issue for Apple Silicon-based Macs. Flickering happens when a gif with Neural Filters is rendered without being previously played back in the timeline.

This issue is likely related to the memory bandwidth & the GPU cores of the chips, because not all Apple Silicon-based Macs exhibit this behaviour (i.e. devices equipped with Max / Ultra M-series chips are mostly unaffected).

-- As mentioned in the supplementary page, Landscape Mixer requires a lot of GPU horsepower to be fully rendered. For older systems (pre-2017 builds), there are no workarounds other than to avoid using this filter.

-+- For smaller dimensions, the size of the machine learning models powering the filters play an outsized role in the rendering time (i.e. marginal reduction in rendering time when downsizing 1080p file to Tumblr dimensions). If you use filters powered by larger models e.g. Landscape Mixer and Photo Restoration, you will need to be very patient when exporting your gif.

7. More useful resources on using Neural Filters

Creating animations with Neural Filters effects | Max Novak

Using Neural Filters to colour correct by @edteachs

I hope this is helpful! If you have any questions or need any help related to the tutorial, feel free to send me an ask 💖

[lazylittledragon]

How do you shade/render your drawings?? It looks so nice!

thank you!!

i'll make a proper tutorial one day but right now there's not much to say since i'm always changing how i do things. mostly i use a hard circle brush for skin/clothes and one of my lineart brushes for hair. i don't do a lot of actual rendering, just one multiply layer on top of flat colour and then details on top of the lineart. the lighting is normally just a hard light layer coloured with an airbrush.

when i finish a drawing, i sharpen the png a few times to crisp up the edges which makes it look a lot more refined than it is.

tl:dr: i cheat, quite a lot.

[watcherwatts]

hello ! so, i have noticed a problem with certain fanartists in the watcher community right now. basically, i have seen a shocking amount of people drawing ryan bergara's skin colour far too light.

here are some examples of skin colours i have colourpicked from various pieces of fanart (left) compared to swatches i have colourpicked from photos of ryan in various lighting (right).

as you can see, the ones picked from fanart are a lot lighter than the ones picked from photos. i personally think its pretty obvious why this is a problem.

here are the photos i used and the tones next to them, i also included the darkest shadown and lightest highlight.

how can we fix this problem ?

1. use a reference

2. colourpick

3. watch + read tutorials on colouring skin

4. watch + read tutorials on colour theory

5. watch + read tutorials on drawing people of colour in general

now unfortunately i do not have any good tutorials to link at the minute, but if you are aware of any, please feel free to link them. i will also be looking for some and linking them of course.

oh, this applies to the problem of people colouring ryan way too dark as well.

a general rule of thumb however, is if you are colouring a drawing and ryans skin is/would be the same colour as shanes ? then there is a problem.

please think before you post guys.

[seiishindraws]

Hey seiishin, I'm a beginner artist and i was hoping you could give a full tutorial on how you color?

hello! this is a bit of a hard question to answer since i dont think giving a tutorial of how i colour without learning any foundational colour concepts first would be very beneficial, so i'll try to give you some basic tips on picking colours instead since this is a very VERY expansive topic and im simply not the kind of person that can pass on that knowledge very well especially since im not the best at it lol

when im picking colours for my drawings, i try my best to "unify" the colour pallet so that it seems more cohesive, this tip from ggdg sums it up pretty well i think

other than that, i usually try to pick colours that generally look good together based on different colour harmony concepts, like these!

i'll try and show you an example with something i'm working on right now. you'll notice i didn't colour pick tinkaton's colours from its art and went for a warmer pink and saturated the blues of the hammer a little.

you'll also notice the canvases i draw on are NEVER pure white. this isnt to say pure white is something that can never be used but white is a colour that usually influenced by surrounding colours, so pure white in most pallets just wont look right. so its not usually a colour i would use as a backdrop if youre trying to pick good colours for your art. but again, there's always exceptions and this isnt a hard rule. here's pure white compared to the colour my canvases usually start with

another thing i should touch on briefly is colour relativity and the importance of value and saturation.

value is SUPER SUPER important for making sure all the colours in your art stand out from each other and read clearly. as you can see here, most of the values here stand apart from each other, and i can see that i probably need to adjust the darkness of the light blue in comparison to the pink hair tips, though the lineart separates them well enough already i think. this is also a good way tocheck you havent made any dark skinned characters too light. values are important guys!

hot tip: put a layer of pure black on top of your art and set that layer to "colour" and BOOM! you can see the values of your art in grayscale.

and i'll also briefly touch on colour relativity. because we percieve colours relative to each other, we usually read a colour as something its not when its surrounded by certain other colours. let's take a look at my background drawings in the cover i did for the shuichi saihara zine:

though i only used a bunch of different purples, when all of them are perceived in relation to each other, a warmer purple can look like blonde hair amongst all the other purples!

as for the brushes i use while colouring, i like textured brushes! i bought these so i cant share them for free but im sure there are many free alternatives out there

anyway, sorry if this isnt exactly what you wanted, but there are TONS of people out there that have worded this better than i ever could, i would suggest looking up some youtube vids on colour theory, but i hope these little tips are useful enough!

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

rough art tips to learn and then break at your leisure.

the distance between your eyes is roughly one eye. the corners of your mouth dont extend past the middle of each eye. ears are roughly in the middle of the tip of the nose and the eyebrow. the eyes are in the very centre of the head. the neck is just a Little slimmer than the width of the head (varies with fat distribution, but fat tends to build up under the chin). hair is easier to draw when you plot out the hairline and then where it parts. leaving appropriate distance on the side of the face (cheekbone area and back to ear) contributes to making characters look more realistic/hot as hell. i dont know specific tips for that so use reference. an amazing reference/study site is lineofaction.com . if you think of the face in planes it makes it easier to construct (look up tutorials). if you draw a spiral like a tornado it can help you figure out awkward perspective for extended limbs (look up foreshortening coil technique). tangent lines are when two lines intersect and cause visual confusion (when it looks like a line that defines an arm is part of the line that defines a building, for example) and avoiding them makes your art way easier to comprehend. quick trick to good composition: choose a focal point (where you want your viewer to focus), detail that area the most, and make sure various elements of the piece are pointing to that focal point. you can use colours to contrast hue, saturation, and brightness and make certain elements of your drawing stand out. drawing in greyscale can help you figure out values. using black in a piece isn't illegal but you should know what you're doing when you do use it- it desaturates a piece and if used as a shading colour can desaturate and dull whatever youre shading too. if you use almost-black lineart and then add black to darken the very darkest areas it will do a lot to add some nice depth. the tip of your thumb ends just above the start of your index finger- your thumb also has two knuckles and all your other fingers have three. if you see an artist doing something you like (the way they draw noses or eyes or hair or anything else) you can try to copy that and see if you want to incorporate it in your style <- this is ENCOURAGED and how a lot of us learned and developed our styles. there are ways to add wrinkles to faces and bodies without making the character look a million years old, you just have to keep experimenting with it. The smile wrinkles around your muzzle dont connect to your mouth or to your nose; there should be a small space in between smile or nose and the wrinkle line. eyes when viewed in profile are like < aka a little triangle shape. think of the pupil like a disk and apply foreshortening to it (it looks like a line when seen from the side instead of a full round dot). subtle gradients can add a LOT to a piece. texture can also add a LOT. look up Tommy Arnold's work (his murderbot pieces are some of my FAVOURITE) and zoom in. find those random little circles he added and try to figure out why he added them there. light bounces. there's lots of way light bounces. sometimes it even spreads through the skin. i do not know these light tricks yet but i want you to know that they exist. draw a circle to indicate hand placement, draw a straight line between that circle and the shoulder, and then (normally at a right angle) draw a straight line on top of that line to find the placement of the elbow. elbows are normally placed Just above the hip when standing and your arm is at rest. there are no bad colour combos if you're brave enough about it, just fuck with the saturation and brightness until it works. keep playing. try new things. add your own tips to this post if you want or even expand on some ive mentioned here. good luck go ham etc

[after-glow]

A gif colouring tutorial! (requested by the lovely, @ncutisgatwas). I keep my colourings super simple and easy to follow! So I'm happy to show what I do to achieve it!

I always start really simple with CURVES, I always select auto for this because I never like to artificially brighten the gif because sometimes it's too much?

So far, with just that our gif looks kinda plain but brighter,

Next, is LEVELS. I use the same for every single gif I make, the only thing I ever change (say the gif is in broad daylight etc) in the middle one, I either have it at 0.90 or 1.09. 0.90 for when the gif needs to be darker and 1.09 for when the gif needs to be brighter!

Same for our next step which is, BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. Again, I rarely ever change these, I never turn it brighter than 20 (you'll see why later), but if it's a lighter scene I usually have brightness on 10 instead of 20 same for contrast.

Next, COLOUR BALANCE. Now, I rarely use this (in other words if you gif doesn't need it you can skip this step because I usually do with all my other sets!) but if your gif does call for this, these are the main settings I use for more blue tone gif sets. Below you can see the difference, it brings back more of his skin tone and vibrance to the gif without actually adding vibrance.

after the colour balance:

Now, EXPOSURE. For this one, I literally eyeball it. I drag it until I think it's a good brightness! if you have a gif like this where the subject goes from side on to front on always make sure you scroll and check when they're turned (it can wash them out once they face the light source!)

Now for SELECTIVE COLOUR, like the other step I do this for every gif same settings. I always use these RED settings because I find it protects the true skin tone without giving it a too over the top red/yellow colour. It's also perfect if you're giffing POC actors!

I add another BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST layer but this is mainly because I think the gif is a bit washed out without the darker bits standing out more! (THIS IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL!)

And finally, once more COLOUR BALANCE. I simply felt it still looked a little too washed out for his skin tone and the colours in the room!

And that's our gif done!!

I use these same settings for every gif minus the colour balance. Always make sure to adjust the CURVES and EXPOSURE! If you have any more questions, my ask/dms are always open!

[o0kawaii0o]

Had issues with layout in the ask post so here's the rest!

However 1 artist comes to mind for now and that's Murata Yusuke; I'm rereading Eyeshield21 (again lol) and each time his art makes me go "wah so damn good".

From colours, to how dynamic and alive pieces can feel, to lighting/shading, to textures, etc. Lot of the pieces also have this feel of mundanity in it which I really like, and I also how at time I feel like I'm there as well. I love the mixture of realism in lighting/shading (and at times anatomy) with the manga/comic style!

The last image also was a bit of an inspo for my latest Luffy art!

As for tutorial, I might elaborate in another post at some point (cus it's quite a broad thing to go about). Like I've mentioned before, I'm soaking up things along the way! Which includes things like colour theory, lighting/shading, composition, etc. But I personally don't recommend forced research/practice; art needs to be fun after all, take things at a time but it might be nice to try something new with each piece, however how subtle.

I can recommend Saito Naoki's YT channel! I watch his 'whimsical correction' videos during lunch at times haha - Each 'correction' (more like professional advice) has a certain goal/theme which can be improved upon, which can be story wise, appeal, anatomy, etc.

--

Anyway, some advice I have for now are kinda my 'cheats' will follow now! [Disclaimer: these are things that work for me and are by no means the 'correct' way of doing things. So if I say things like "avoid this", it's something I personally do.]

My strength lies I think mostly in my lighting/shading at this moment!

My flats aren't bad or anything, but I feel like it really comes alive after shading. And the first thing to do is to establish where the light source is. Try to avoid 'pillow shading', work in bigger shapes and don't be afraid to do so. Working digitally, I can recommend to take a big brush and just put it very roughly on your character. You have the means with digital art to easily erase parts that are too much and to refine shapes afterwards.

One cheat is bouncing light.

(This was a Multiply mode layer set back to Normal mode for sake of visibility.)

You gotta have a bit of understanding of volume of where to apply it, but it's light that's been reflected by e.g. the ground back up again. This little variation in shading can add a lot. Note that it's better to go from the OG shading colour and sliding it on the colour wheel (hue) to be either warmer or cooler and then sliding in the square/triangle (saturation and value).

More examples of bouncing lights:

It depends how intense the light is reflected; the more, the harsher the contrast is compared to the OG shading colour.

Second cheat is 'light terminator' and 'substance scatter', not sure if it's really the correct terms but oh well.

This reddish tone (again on the Multiply shading layer) is kinda the border line from light to shade. It's reddish on skin (if you have red blood haha) but you apply it on other things with other colours too!

Make sure you don't overdo it and put it everywhere, also note if you use harsh or blended brush strokes, maybe even both for variation! Try it out and see what works best for you!

--

That's it for now; this took more time out of me than planned 💀 you better appreciate this anon! /jk

My main motto regarding art is "fck around and find out". This mindset also helps with keeping art fun!

[hydr0phius-art]

Tips For Painting Chiss Eyes and Scars

I said I'd do this, so here I am. It's not as long a post as the skin tutorial (link here), but it is long, so I'll shove it under a 'read more' button.

There's a poster at the end with text and pictures for easy reference later. It's pretty rough looking but it gets the job done.

Content warning for scars. That section is directly below the eye section and starts with the example image.

Chiss Eyes:

- Eyelids are thin and will have the most red glow showing through. - Eyelashes will most likely reflect some of that red light. - If you're going for a colour absorption accurate/legends accurate look for the eyes, wherever the red light hits will be black/dark blue (I'd go dark dark blue just to avoid flattening the shadow but do what you like tbh) because blue absorbs red light. Though because their blood is red, I do think that there would still be a bit of a faint glow on the eyelids. Just not necessarily on the inside of the nose's bridge. That bit would probably be quite a bit darker because the eyeglow isn't actually passing through the skin there, it's just hitting it. - If you want to make a Chiss' line of sight subtly obvious, concentrating glow where you want the iris to be (see above picture) works quite well. If your art style has a focus more on lines than this example, picking a colour slightly brighter than the glow you're using also works well.

Chiss Scars:

- Same as painting/drawing human scars, just blue. - New scar tissue is shiny, older scar tissue can still be shiny, just not as shiny. - Look at scar references and try and translate that to Chiss colours. - Scars can be lumpy and bumpy as well, so keep that in mind when adding lighting if you want the scar to stand out or not. - I usually use light blue for old but not too old scars, then darken as wanted. - For anything more complex than a slash scar, like blaster wounds etc, I would look at references for those on a human and translate to a Chiss colour palette.

The examples I've given are (from right to left): - Fresh wound - New scar tissue - Older scar tissue - Old scar - Stretch marks. - Small/not as deep

Poster/reference for later

(It's pretty much this whole post in image form).

Hope this is helpful :3

[noritaro]

bestie asked how I rendered so yeah, kind of a tutorial? it's more like a step by step but alas

tutorial under read more

sketch/line art ► I don't do line art out of sheer laziness + I'm not very good at getting clean looking lines. My lines are always coloured and set to a multiply layer.

colour block + base colours ► the block is 90% of the time the characters skin colour, but if I'm feeling fancy I might go with other colours like I'm doing with this one, a light reddish pink

I do this because I colour everything in one layer

I use a mixing brush to sloppily throw in the characters actual palette

yeah it's very messy, but has a fun unpredictable variation in the colours you typically wouldn't get if you just threw in base colours like a normal person

shading ► continuing the trend of being absurdly sloppy with my process...

I like shading with multiply or burn layers, and highlights are usually done with overlay or add (mostly add) could obviously be done with any colour except full on black or white

after this I merge all my layers together for clean up

clean up ► the fun yassification part wooo!! essentially all I'm doing is just carving out the various shapes I want with a basic round hard mix + soft mix brush, further refining everything and making it not look sloppy

I always start with the face and then move out to other parts like hairs and clothes

Marco Bucci on YouTube has fantastic videos on painting shapes and he explains everything better than I ever could

Optional filters + edits ► boring part simply adding a paper texture over the piece using overlay, just makes everything look less flat and digital

profit ► yeah!! uhh thats really it honestly, I don't really do anything special lmfao

[nectar-cellar]

Hi! Can I ask if you edit the screenshots of your sims a lot or do you just use certain skins or skin details that give your sims' faces more definition? Just wondering because my sims look really smooth and "flat" despite using tons of skin details and I'd love to know if there's a way to make them look better in game :)

hii :) i don't edit my screenshots, i only use gshade, i'm too lazy to do much beyond cropping and adding text. my gshade preset is in my downloads but it doesn't do much other than sharpen & brighten the colours a bit.

lighting is really important. if you're talking about my sim portrait & closeup pics. if there is too much light in the room, it washes out the features and makes everything look flat. you could try playing with fewer lights and being strategic about the placement in relation to your sim. you can also adjust the light's brightness to "dim" by pressing shift and clicking on the light in buy mode. dim light will be softer, more diffused. you don't want "too much" light on your sim because then there will be no more shadows and no definition.

more lighting discussion/tutorial here

using a skin with more realistic detail definitely helps. some skins that are too maxis match, they lack realistic shading so (in my opinion), as someone who prefers realism, they don't look defined enough in closeup pictures because the texture is just too plain. these days i mostly use my own skins because they give me just the right mix of realism & cartoon.

using a HQ mod helps a little bit too. i have my texture size at 2k, so all the skin details and makeup show up very well in pictures.

finally i would suggest, don't forget the 3D aspect of your sim. if you want your sim's cheekbones to look really defined in all lighting situations, it's better to sculpt that with sliders instead of relying on a strong application of makeup. sometimes you have to use more extreme slider values, exaggerate the features a little bit, for it to look right in live mode and on camera.

[bitterie-sweetie]

Redo

Pairing: Wonwoo x reader Genre: fluff WC: 3.5k Warnings: mentions of alcohol

The party was a little crazy and you wake up not remembering who you were making out with last night. Luckily your best friend was there and can help you solve this mystery, right?

Is it bad that the only thing you can remember from last night is making out with some guy?

Yeah, you were wasted out of your mind. The obnoxious pounding of your head and the lack of memories beyond your fourth shot at the party is only further proof of that. But oddly enough, you can clearly remember the stranger's gentle touch, the heat of his mouth, and your heart pounding so hard it might explode.

Which, when you think about it, is the other weird thing. That kind of knee-weakening, heart fluttering type of feeling has only ever been evoked by one person before—

"Y/N? Are you even listening?" Wonwoo waves a hand in front of your face, thankfully interrupting your train of thought. "Are you sure you don't remember anything from last night?"

"Based on the way you keep asking me that, I'm starting to think I'm better off not remembering it," you retort, groaning at the growing headache when you attempt to recall any memories at all. "Anyway, that's exactly why I called you. You're the last person I remember from yesterday, and I need your help."

Wonwoo's instant frown tells you that he's already wary about where this conversation is heading. And sure, he has every right to be after having spent years being dragged into the antics of his closest friend.

In your defense though, the party last night wasn't exactly your idea.

The party was Joshua's holiday party that he was co-hosting with his friend, Jeonghan, at a local bar where one of their friends works. You definitely weren't expecting an invite from Joshua, but there he'd been, handing it to you at the end of your tutorial one day. By this point, you'd already heard the rumours about how their parties tend to be... just a little bit sketchy. They had a bad rep, so to say, but no one ever talked about the reason behind that. Of course that only made you all the more curious.

So really, you were just an innocent guest attending a party that your friend personally invited you to.

And it was a good time, at least to you. But judging by Wonwoo's unamused expression, you're now wondering if you perhaps contributed to this bad rep, whatever it was you ended up doing.

"Yeah so. Did you see who I, um..." You have to pause to figure out how to ask your question without asking it directly. "Like, how I ended up getting home? After leaving the party?"

No response. You can feel him staring at you, likely to be judging you internally, but when you meet his eyes, he looks away.

"Right, okay." You give him a wry smile. "That's fine. I was thinking that retracing my steps from last night might help me recover my memories."

Wonwoo blinks.

"Please? I'll buy you that skin you've been eyeing lately?" The least you can do is try to appeal to his gamer side.

He considers for a moment, acting as if the two of you don't already know what the outcome would be. "Make it two skins."

"Deal. Now let's go do this thing."

An hour later, you're getting a strong sense of deja vu as the two of you head to the dinner spot you were just at yesterday. Nothing has changed within the span of a day—the lights are still up, not yet lit in the fading afternoon sunlight, and the trees are still decorated with the tiny trinkets and colourful tinsel. If anything, it's just slightly quieter on the streets without the same bustle of people out like last night.

The stillness on the streets coupled with Wonwoo's strange silence gives you the opportunity to finally slow down and think about why exactly you want to remember the events from last night. Why are you so adamant on finding this mystery person you were making out with? Truth to be told, you don't really know the answer to that; it was just a kiss after all, albeit a good one, but did it need to mean something? You save the thought to examine later.

"Here we are," Wonwoo breaks the silence. He opens the door to the restaurant and steps aside, waiting for you to enter first. "Anything ring a bell yet?"

You snort. "Please, it's not like I can't remember anything from this early on."

He follows right behind you, and soon, the two of you are seated. You're on the opposite side of the restaurant today, though yesterday's table with the couple currently occupying it is within your field of view.

"Oh yeah?" Wonwoo raises a brow at you. "Then what were we talking about?" He slides a menu your way and then opens his own, though he chooses to stare at you instead of reading it, awaiting a response.

You shoot him a dull look back. "We went over your hatred for the holidays. Sorry—not hatred, but distaste. The crowds are terrible, the lights are way too much, and you obviously don't like the red and green colour combo. Don't even get me started on the music."

When the waitress comes by to take your orders, you snap your mouth shut, hoping she didn't overhear this odd conversation. Wonwoo picks something off the menu as if he'd been reading it, while you end up ordering the same thing as yesterday.

"Wow, is that really how you think of me?"

"Who knows," you shrug, feeling the smug smile on your lips. "But you see, I have a theory that it's not really about any of that at all."

"Really? Go on."

You lean a little closer and gesture for him to do the same, intentionally pausing to up the suspense. "I don't think it's about the holiday or festivities at all. What you actually dislike is the—how do I say this..." you wrack your brain for the right term. "It's the couple-ness of it that you don't like. The whole cuffing season thing, the way couples are all around you, from the moment you step out of the house to when you turn on your screen and those hallmark movies are playing. You hate how love is in the air."

He doesn't respond immediately, and so you take a sip of your water to make your whole demeanour a little more nonchalant. The subject is one you don't bring up much—you may have known him for a long time and are his closest friend, but you still don't know why he's never shown any interest in love. There has never been a crush, a dating app, or someone he vaguely found attractive, and he's never cared much about your love life either and would much rather avoid the topic entirely.

Well, not that you've had much of a love life in a long time.

The crease between Wonwoo's brows deepens as he thinks, and by the time he opens his mouth, his entire face is a look of disdain. "I'll go with answer A: shitty crowds, lights, and colours."

"Bingo. I got it, didn't I?" You push it just a bit more so that maybe then he'll tell you what's really on his mind. But before he can respond, the waitress comes back with the food, and you know you've lost your opportunity.

Wonwoo stays silent for a while as the two of you eat, but you can feel his analytical eyes on you every now and then. He almost looks like he wants to say something, like he's wavering and might actually answer your question instead of avoiding it like you expect him to.

He doesn't, though. In the end, he decides to change the subject. "What about you? Why do you want to find the person you were with last night?"

"Because—"

You stop to think.

Perhaps it's what you remember about it that stirs this feeling in your gut. You remember the way it felt, the softness of his lips and the warmth of his fingers as they gently held you. The absolute tenderness that existed despite the heat of the moment and despite the alcohol in your veins making everything glow as the world spun around you.

And then there were the butterflies, the ones that only come out in the presence of that one special person. You're sure not just anyone could've made you feel like that no matter how inebriated you were, so this stranger had to be someone special. There was definitely something there.

Or so you think. Of course it might've been something you misremembered because of your delusional state last night, but at least it was something you could cling onto, right? You've been telling yourself to get out of this cycle of unrequited love and hopefully move on with your life next year. This would be the perfect excuse, and a much better one than the blind dates that your aunt keeps trying to set up for you.

"My family is still on my back about that blind date," you say, rolling your eyes for extra effect. You might as well lay the foundation now so that you have a back up excuse. "Maybe if I find this person and things work out, then they'll finally stop pestering me about that."

"How are you going to find this person? Surely you're not going to go around kissing strangers until you recover your memories? Do you remember anything about them?" Wonwoo's questions come one after the other, and it's the first time he's so interested in your love life. Usually by this point he'd be looking slightly uncomfortable and then changing the subject, and seeing this odd behaviour makes you wonder if it has anything to do with what happened yesterday.

"I... haven't thought that far," you admit. "I guess finding them isn't that important; I just want to know who they are."

"Does it matter who they are?"

The question surprises you again, so you peer at him, trying to analyze him the way he often does to you. Wonwoo's face doesn't give anything away though; he stares back without moving away once you meet his gaze, almost as if daring you to answer the question. Just like you did earlier when asking about his aversion to the holiday stuff.

"Hey, how are we doing over here?" The waitress stops by just in time.

You send a silent thanks to the greater powers.

After finishing up the meal mostly in silence, you're now heading toward the bar where the party was held last night. It's not too long of a walk from the restaurant, which was good for yesterday when you were trying not to freeze in your party outfit—or, well, maybe it wasn't so good since Wonwoo did pull you in and open up his coat to try to shield you from the wind with it.

What this short walk is also not good for, is today when he seems to use every opportunity to convince you to turn around.

"Are you sure you want to know, Y/N?" Wonwoo slows down his steps beside you until he's practically dragging his feet. "It's not too late to go home. We could watch that movie on your list or put up the new ornaments you bought."

His offer is so strange, not quite unlike your offer to buy him skins for his game, that you nearly accept on the spot. But as tempting as it sounds, today needs to be spent finding the potential love of your life.

You pretend to consider for a moment. "Tempting, but no," you shake your head. "I need to solve this mystery."

He doesn't say anything to that, but you don't give him a chance to before you're speeding up and heading to the next spot.

The sun has now set, and the many coloured lights of the streets are just beginning to light up as the two of you head towards the bar where the party was last night. More people are out and about; couples holding hands as they walk side by side, singles hurrying home, groups of friends heading to the Christmas market nearby. Everyone you look at could potentially be the person you were with last night.

But who could it have been? Surely it couldn't have been the worst-case scenario, your ex—you don't even think he was at the party since you've never talked about him before, but knowing Jeonghan and Joshua, they totally could've found a way to bring him there. Maybe it was the hottie, Mingyu, whose name is the only thing you can remember just because of his thousand-watt smile. Or maybe it was—

No. Your heart gives an involuntary jerk at the thought, and you have to shake your head to get rid of the idea. No, it's not possible at all.

"Y/N?" Wonwoo stops a few steps ahead of you, glancing back with concern at your abrupt stop. "You good?"

"Yeah, of course." You shoot him a quick smile but avoid his gaze. Now you definitely need to get rid of that thought.

The two of you make your way to the bar, but the search is futile the whole way. People are everywhere all around you, walking along the streets and gathered by the bar, and yet, somehow no one you look at seems to fit the picture. You see the same bartender from last night and he greets you with a wave, but his hair is much longer than what you remember about the mystery person, and his lips much thicker.

But you soon realize that the lack of resemblance isn't even the issue. At the back of the bar when you do seem to spot an attractive stranger with similar features to what you remember, your heart still sinks at the thought of having kissed them. And it's the same with every person you look at, which only means one thing: the problem is that you can't possibly imagine ever being in love with them. You can't imagine being in love with anyone other than your best friend.

It feels like hours later when the two of you finally decide to call it a day. 

There's an empty bench just down the street from the bar, close enough to the Christmas market that you get a nice view of the lights when you collapse onto it. The bustle of earlier has calmed down at this late hour, though it does little to calm the nervous pulsing of your heart. You can't quite pinpoint what it is that's making your stomach twist, and it certainly doesn't help that Wonwoo is so close you can see the fresh snowflakes landing on his eyelashes and in his hair.

It'd be nice if this moment could last forever—only the two of you existing as the rest of the world is muffled by the snow.

But nothing lasts forever, and you know that you have to end this and move on with your life.

"It was someone from the party, wasn't it?" you ask tentatively. Wonwoo seems to be analyzing you when he looks over, but otherwise doesn't respond. "And you know who it is."

That earns you a nod.

"I thought so." You heave a sigh, turning away from him to stare at the lights in the distance. No wonder he seems to have been dropping hints all day—the cryptic questions, the subtle slip ups. He can be a really careful guy when he wants to be, but this time it's as if he wants you to know that he knows. And yet, the two of you still spent all day aimlessly retracing your steps. "Then why wouldn't you just tell me who it is?"

"Because," Wonwoo mumbles, "what if it's someone you don't want it to be?"

"Then it would just have been a fun time and nothing more, I guess. Why does that m—"

"What if it's someone that you can't see that way? Someone you'll never be able to have feelings for?"

The question catches you off guard. Here you are, half expecting a name drop at this point after having spent so long searching in vain—you expect him to simply tell you that this mystery person really was your ex or maybe the bartender, or maybe even Joshua himself for whatever reason. Gross. So yes, there might be a list of people you don't want it to be, but what you don't understand is why Wonwoo is making such a big deal out of it.

When you look over at him, there's a sort of apprehension written on his face that he doesn't bother hiding. And while it confuses you why he's taking this so seriously, you can also feel the growing tension in the air between you, making each ticking second veer towards a slope that you'll be unable to turn back from. You never thought this would matter so much, but it's as if everything depends on this one, singular moment. The instant when he reveals the truth.

Why would he care so much about it though? Why would it matter to him who his best friend was drunkenly making out with? Why would he be so oddly hesitant yet curious about what you thought of this person—

"What if you're disappointed by who it is?"

The memories rush back so quickly that you nearly kneel over.

Stumbling out of the bar, finding this exact bench. The world spinning in a kaleidoscopic blur of lights, the warmth of his hands guiding you. You'd sat here and teased him about his distaste for the holidays—you asked if he hated it when you brought him to the Christmas market with you every year, and if he'd much rather not help you put up the tree. You asked why he even went to the holiday party with you this year despite hating both the holidays and parties. 

Then when you looked up...

"The mistletoe." You let out a gasp when you see it right above you, still in the same position it'd been in last night. The very mistletoe that you'd pointed out to Wonwoo and asked him if he hated it too.

If he hated being underneath it with you.

"You remember it now?" he asks quietly. He appears calm, stoic as usual, but it's all too easy to see that there's anxiety swimming just beneath it all.

"Yeah, it's coming back to me now. So that's why you didn't straight up tell me even though you knew all along." You nod to yourself as you put together the pieces.

"We were drunk and caught up in the moment so I didn't think you meant what you said or would even want to remember it. I was going to let you forget it, Y/N, in case you thought it was a mistake."

It all makes sense now. All of that would explain his nervous energy today, the odd questions, the sudden interest. Except there's just one more thing... "But then why did you agree to come with me and retrace our steps? You—you wanted me to remember."

He sighs and gives in with a nod. "Yeah, it was a chance to redo the day. Last night was wild and things kind of went out of control, but this way, we can do it differently. I kept hoping that maybe there's the slightest chance you really meant it, what you said about..."

About being in love with your best friend, you think, internally cringing when you can hear the words in your own voice from last night. You'd nearly screamed it out loud, and the situation was probably more than embarrassing and not pretty at all—blame it on Joshua for having this party in the first place. This was nothing like how you might've pictured confessing to a crush at all.

But as crazy and mortifying as it was, it feels almost like an inside joke, a moment that only the two of you would ever know. And when you finally manage to process what Wonwoo just said, your heart speeds up for an entirely different reason.

Hope. This is what you'd been hoping for, too.

"I meant all of it," you quickly say, diving right in before you can chicken out. "Did you? When you said that you don't hate all this holiday stuff, but actually enjoy it because it's with me? That you... feel the same way?"

"Yeah, Y/N. You have no idea how long I've been holding onto that." The tension in his body has eased and there's finally a smile on his lips, perhaps for the first time today. "And about the mistletoe right above us? I don't hate it, Y/N," Wonwoo repeats his words from last night. "Not at all."

"Ah, I see," you tease despite the hammering of your heart at what's to come. "Is that what you want to redo this day for?"

Wonwoo's smile widens. "I'd gladly redo any day if it's with you."

When the distance closes and you feel the tenderness in his touch and taste the soda on his tongue, you know that this redo of a night would be committed to memory forever.

[jelly-fish-wishes]

Please tell me how you do glowing effects so well in your comics, because it's so good!

IT'S ACTUALLY PRETTY SIMPLE AHAHAHAHHAA LEMME SHOW YA!

Ok so first of all we have our finished image here. We'll use this as a tutorial thing!

Lets get rid of the dark shading so we can get a better view of the setting.

Here's a makeshift Luma for our light source lol

So when I make a glow effect, i pick the lightest colour from our light source! (Note: The lightest colour works SOMETIMES. You gotta go a little darker for some lights. The green flames, for example, use the strongest green to look good instead of the palest green).

Now on a separate layer, you use the largest (or whatever floats your boat) size for the airbrush and transform it into a really BIG SIZE!

The "Lumalee" is off center, so move your glow. You gotta center it with the Lumalee, otherwise it looks wonky (if your light source if offscreen, make the glow as big as you want and move it offscreen too. As long as you can see a smidge of the glow, it works).

Once you have it where ya want, apply a filter (or don't if it looks good to ya) so that it blends well with the background. For Lumalee's case, I use the add layer. I'd use the overlay for many other light sources, like the flames in the prison, bit it doesn't work with Lumalee's colours.

And then finally, you lower the opacity to your liking! I made the glow a little too big in this tutorial, but YOU GET WHAT I MEAN, RIGHT? But as you can see, Luigi's skin and clothing are highlighted to his right, which means the light source is to his far far right. The correct look for a glow here would look like this.

His far right.

Did I explain this in a way that made sense? 😶👉👈