#the halftone effect especially

[dconexe8849]

Mr. L

A Mr. L artwork I made for an art collab on Discord!

[soni-dragon]

did it!! ☆

[ricky-mortis]

I drew Ted from the wonderful @nabwastaken ‘s Time Bastard Au! The original design is by the talented @midnightnautilus , and was so very fun to draw!

[xuune]

Hii first of all, I FUCKIN LOVE YOUR ART! ITS GORGEOUS AND IM SURE EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND YOU REALLY GIVE YOUR SOUL INTO THAT🤧 Your color palette looks so good, What do you pay attention to when painting? (Like when do you think its better to use multiply or something like that and etc.)

first off, I'M HAPPY YOU CAN TELL THAT I PUT MY SOUL INTO MY ART!!! im genuinely in love with drawing and am always finding ways to make creating art enjoyable and impress myself with what i can achieve and learn :D

second, thanks for asking your question!! i dont mind answering it, but my response is quite long. here's my thinking process:

(you specified layer modes like multiply, so im gonna gear my answer towards that a bit) 1. REFERENCE SEARCHING IS KING. color is actually extremely hard for me, so i search around for artworks with palettes i'd like to use and study how an artist uses it. some situations i have a clear idea of what i want, but usually the images in my head are extremely vague, so i borrow palettes from various other artworks that fit the vibe of what i want. an example is this one. my main palette reference were from these artworks. im looking at this artist's use of high saturates and how drawings are overlayed on top of each other. while looking at references, im asking myself how is this artist using warm/cools, where are these warm/cools placed, if their illustration used any form of texturing (like halftones, hatching), how do they use their palette to render form/shape/gradient, when/where do they saturate/desaturate their colors. those questions inform my decisions when using colors too.

2. USING LAYER MODES WHEN NECESSARY. i used to be reliant on multiply for everything, which atp i dont do since i can definitely push colors more first before using layer modes. only when i feel like my current colors are lacking do i start tinkering with tone curves and/or brightness/contrast/hue/saturation/luminosity settings. and if that doesn't work, then i start using layer modes. using layer modes do help with achieving certain effects, color corrections, or when i want to fuck around and find out. i think having a better understanding of what these modes can do makes you more decisive on how you can properly utilize them and to achieve a particular look (like using multiply for a cel shaded style). here's an example:

this leads into my next point:

3. BALANCING OUT VALUES. big thing that makes an illustration hard to read is if values blend together which affects the hues and contrast. i check for what elements need to be distinguished from one another and if it can be read clearly. using layer modes can either help with this or not help at all. it's very dependent on the type of layer mode. here's this example where i applied pin light:

back to #2, there are various instances where i'm using layer modes for quick color corrections and/or to help with readability:

other times, i start off having my entire subject in gray and to figure out main shadow/lights (similar to the multiply cel shaded process i linked ealier). im thinking about what this should look like if i only used 2 value tones:

when in doubt though, i check my artwork in grayscale to ensure values aren't overly blended into each other, especially if i didnt start with grayscale like this one:

painting for me takes into consideration a lot of different aspects. im thinking about how colors should interact, where/when to give contrast, checking/balancing out values, etc, but im also making it a time to study off of how other artists use their colors through the references i collected.

hope this answered your question! lmk if there's more :]

[venacoeurva]

Commission of a more 🔞adult persuasion 🔞 are available again! Some very important rules before you IM me (ignore mentions of the slots being experimental, the rules were from my recent run of these testing the waters but still apply other than that) and the process:

Under the cut to save your dashes

Process:

Read the rules (below) and figure out what you would like if it's something I'll do (if shading, poses, overall scene, etc.). Also please acknowledge the price is something you can/are willing to pay.

IM me including an email you can use to discuss such content, if you're someone I recognize and am comfortable taking such a comm from you (unlikely chance I WON'T, but y'know) I'll email you. DO NOT INCLUDE THE ACTUAL COMMISSION DESCRIPTION/ANY IMAGES OF THAT NATURE HERE. Don't accidentally get yourself flagged.

I will give you a randomized codeword in the IM so I know who is who, especially if email and username don't match. Also, so I can verify it's not some rando who saw us interact/saw that you commed me before and is trying to sneak around. (in my and others' experiences, people do weird, cringeworthy desperate things to get these types of commissions, man...)

When I email you, respond with the following info: -The codeword and who you are on Tumblr -Paypal email to invoice - What you would like drawn as well as parameters (if cropped specifically, what type? If you want shading, if a comic then how many panels or pages, etc.) -Any visual references such as for OCs/Player characters or AU versions of characters. I will not draw characters that only have a written description unless I have done a commission with that for you before and I know you do written descriptions very well and are responsive wrt changes.

We continue from there. If I accept your commission, I will then invoice you and once paid and started, send you a sketch to be approved, and finish it once that sketch is approved. Until you approve a sketch or give feedback asking for any changes necessary and then approve the modified sketch/want any more changes, it will be counted as inactive and will not be worked on further. A lack of response from the client when it's required to move forward for 3 months will result in your slot being forfeit, and if I have gotten past the sketch phase, you forfeit a refund as well; this doesn’t come into effect if I haven’t started your comm yet due to backlogs.

Some examples of the type of lineart texture and how I do the black lineart shading in my style, including an actual comm I COULD censor enough. I can also add the weathered and halftone effects, just ask for it!

[puppyeared]

MAN your art, but especially the latest pieces of Walking Fire Friend and Sparkle Dog really have the vibes of like, sanrio?? I want stickers and half a dozen accessories with them plastered all over so bad

!!! thank u for the kind words!! im playing around with the halftone effect, i like how it makes it look like a newspaper comic ^_^

[martyryo]

how do you pick out such cool colors and outfits?!? :000 i love your art :3

HIII, THANKS KNOWING YOU ENJOY JT MAKES ME SO HAPPY AWAWAWAWAW😭❤️❤️

Also, I'm sorry if answers will disappoint you but I don't have a thought behind color picking. Truth is lately I've been just using colors I like, trying to make them fit to the overall vibe of the drawing.

For example, in the vamp marla drawings I used a dark moldy orange cause it reminded me of rust and decay, and with that I added some tilted bright magenta lines to contrast it and make it pop. That's it. And to figure them out I just kept modifying the hue until I liked the combination. So I guess, play around with colors, be silly :3

Oh also lines and halftones play a big role in my drawings. I don't like having many elements of the same value one next to the other, cause they don't make each other stand out. (imagine a plain outfit with EVERYTHING black. Nothing else. Kinda boring).

I try in fact to put dark areas next to brighter ones so their shapes are more distinct to the sight (the eyes in the drawing for example wouldn't be so visible if there wasn't the dark eyeshadow to drag your eyes towards them. The hair has subtle black lines as texture while the skin has halftones, this makes the brain perceive them as different).

Now for the outfits...well, since the past months I've been drawing the same 3 blorbos in their canon fits, soooo use reference I would say... referencing things is always the best thing you can do, from fits and especially colors if you're trying to obtain a certain mood or atmosphere (and I be forgetting cause I'm lazy but don't be like me 💥).

I did design the following fits out of raw imagination, but I needed some reference for cowboy and pirate fits on pinterest.

In these cases I tried to add some recurring patters for each of them.

Narrator has many horizontal lines going on on the pants (design and the dangly things on the side) while also having like two belts and a string. More lines yippie!

With marla I went with earrings matching the necklace, while also adding lace (is that how it's called??) on the rims of her top, glove things and collar. For her top and skirt I went with vertical lines that are also present on her stockings while cloak/scarf has those repeating things at the end (me when I don't know clothing vocabulary).

Tyler has kinda the more boring fit cause I was getting tired. I was trying to go with items of the upper body being tighter while having large pants with bug boots, kinda triangle shaped, but ehh I need to work more on that. Reoccurring would be the flowy clothes folds cause I view them as soft materials contrasted with a more rough vest. I tried to add on that soap bubbles patterns but it's kind of a weak effect so fnenrne.

Again. Reference. And taking breaks between designs cause your brain at some point has enough of your ideas.

Uhmm idk if all this yapping in an okay answer for you, I spent all afternoon trying to analyze my drawings and I was going insane. But I thank you for asking cause you made me realize I should adapt to a stable technique huehue =w=

Also for school work, when I need to pick colors, the website I linked below is the tool I always use. You can search for an already existing palette or generate a random one u.u

Lmk if you wanna know anything else, I'll try my best to answer. Have a great day <3

[gemfeathers]

I’m sure you’ve gotten this before so I’m sorry but what is it you do to get that faux-printing effect? Its really neat especially the regions with the kinda splotchy halftone dots. Is there a particular brush or postprocessing thing?

The bulk of the effect comes from placing certain layers underneath a halftone texture set to "vivid light". I also use modified Kyle Webster brushes for more selective splodges. My drawings are usually pretty simple before I put 'em through the grinder, so most of it's a system of fiddling with blending modes and textures. Thanks for the ask, always love to chat about art methods!

[twstunes]

I am OBSESSED with your colored in manga pages!!! They’re beautiful I can’t stop thinking about them, how do you do your TWST page edits??? I’m really wanting to color the chapters too! It looks so fun!

I downloaded the pages (of chp1) straight from where I read them, and edited over (im using krita! Maybe photoshop would be better??) but I can’t seem to make them look the way I want them to. The line quality is nowhere near yours, yours looks so professional! I hope I’m not stepping on your toes by asking but I feel like I’m missing something 😭 would you mind explaining where/how you download the pages with such high quality? Do you turn them transparent like coloring books or edit overtop of them? I hope this ask isn’t too much!!

XOXOXOXO I hope you’re doing well!! You’re easily one of my fav twst blogs!

kicking my feet and giggling,,,,,, I hope you're doing well too!! you're not stepping on my toes at all, don't worry!

The pages I've been using for color edits are from turtlesoupscans' uploads – they're a scanlation group focused on TWST, and currently have stuff up for the manga (both the main story + anthology comic) as well as translations for the official novel. To my understanding, their scans ARE okay to use for color edits, but not for re-translations or mass-reuploads.

I do all my edits in photoshop using a lot of multiply & lighten layers! The coloring book method u mentioned is so enticing yet so traitorous…in photoshop, the selection + erasing method tends to damage the lineart, and the inverted channel method for removing white backgrounds quickly will keep a 'film' if the background isn't pure #ffffff. (Maybe krita has a more effective solution? 👀)

(Also bc I brought up using photoshop I'm ethically obligated to mention that photopea, an online equivalent to photoshop, exists and is free to use)

I've never used krita before, but from what I'm seeing of its layout/capabilities, the process I use should translate over fairly well–

(Added a black bg to the "fill" portion to make it easier to see)

First come the "fill" layers, which are for covering up halftones & similar shading techniques. This step isn't super necessary (and sometimes involves a lot more editing to replicate halftone gradients/patterns), but I heavily recommend it for scenes that involve a lot of dark colors. Leaving halftones in can cause colors to look darker & grayer than they should, the latter of which you specifically want to avoid when making color edits of darker-skinned characters. (They can also be really good for conveying texture tho, which is why I left the statues' shading alone in this example.)

Next are the color layers, where the bulk of the editing happens. As I mentioned above, I use a ton of multiply layers for this so I can just draw over the image. Darken layers also work, but I've found they tend to affect line density & smoothness. The shading and highlighting here is done using masking layers for individual objects/structures – I think quick group + choosing inherit alpha for the mask layer is the krita equivalent? Layers for darkening the overall lighting (like for nighttime scenes) would also go in this section.

Finally, the lighten layers are solely for the lineart. This is to help "soften" the the lineart, so to speak, making the scene feel a little more 3D/fleshed-out. This step is especially important when dealing with hard shadows, like on the Dark Mirror's frame, Pomefiore's windows, and Ignihyde's central pillar-thing. What I do is put down a bunch of lighten layers, typically at 50% or 75% opacity, and color-pick the darkest part of whatever feature I'm editing the lineart for. Because I'm using a darker color, the surrounding multiply layers will usually go unaffected by the lighten layers – if not, I just gotta zoom in and be careful about it. These layers need to be on top of/closer to the 'front' than the color layers, or else the multiply effect of the color layers will apply to the lighten layers as well.

Thanks for bearing with my kinda long-winded explanation! I've been learning as I go, so there might be easier/better ways of doing things that I haven't stumbled across yet.

I hope this helps & that you have fun doing color edits!!

[underpaid-paragon]

Your VTM comic book covers are simply GORGEOUS, I'm totally in awe! How did you get the super cool halftone/coloured dots effect? It looks super cool and realistic, I love it! Have a lovely day! :)

Thank you so much!

So to get the halftones, I use an old-ass tutorial I got off deviantArt literally....more than a decade ago? (Rosalarian's Golden Age Tutorial). The account appears to be deactivated, but I'll go through the steps here:

For reference, I bounce between Clip Studio Paint and a very old-ass copy of Photoshop, but if you're using other programs that have fun pixelate filters and you can change the color mode, you should be ok.

NOW...

Ink your drawing in straight black on its own layer

Block your colors on another layer (I hunted up some old comic color palettes thanks to madformidcentury dot com/2013/10/mid-century-color-palette-in-comics dot html)

Turn off any and all blackwork (this is INCREDIBLY important), and take your colorwork into Photoshop. (if there are any gaps in your color work, fill a separate layer with white and then merge the layers so it's all solid)

Set the mode to CMYK

Go to Artistic Filters >> Pixelate >> Color Halftone (the only thing I mess around with is the size of the dots; the default for my era of Photoshop is 8 and that's a lil big for my taste--all the VTM covers are between 4-6. It's up to your own best judgement, but I go by how "readable" things look--does the face still look like a face at a reasonable distance or is it just a smudge? If it's not readable, undo and change your dot size)

Add 3 new layers to your document and LABEL THEM: Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow

Then go to your channels panel and click on the Cyan layer to make a selection of it

Back to your Layers panel, make sure you're on your Cyan layer, and SELECT INVERSE

Then FILL the selection with the CMYK cyan that you've picked out

Deselect your selection, move to the next layer (and make sure you've got CMYK magenta in your bucket) and repeat steps 6-8 selecting Magenta and Yellow respectively

NOW you've got the beginnings of retro-feeling halftone. At this point, I import the halftone manipulation back into CSP and turn my blackwork back on.

For the ✨ grunge ✨ effect, I grab an old paper texture (after reducing its saturation and upping the contrast until it's mostly black and white splotchy) and set it to OVERLAY at anywhere from 50-20% (this is a 'let your soul decide' moment) over the whole thing

Then I grab another old paper texture and put underneath the Overlay Texture Layer, on MULTIPLY, at anywhere from 65-25% (again, let your soul decide). Both layers will give you a nice level of funk to go with your halftone shenanigans

A lot of the colorwork is going back and forth and back and forth because what looked ok in flats didn't translate after toning, but it works out eventually!

Some important things to remember:

Cool tones tend to fade back and warm tones tend to move forward if you're gonna use this method on any kind of scene

Keep your shapes SIMPLE; don't get bogged down in tones of gradients and fades and all of that because most of it WILL NOT come across once you start toning! Think of it this way: mass-production doesn't have time for fine detail, that's why comics are a lot of heavy black inks and flat color contrast

Experiment with the colors! You're working in a limited palette (if you're using any of the old Marvel/DC print books especially), and it doesn't have to be photorealistic/absolute. For instance, my Nos isn't actually green, but the tone suited the funky retro vibe so I went with it!

Let yourself fall down the research rabbit hole of pulp covers because they're both hilarious and informative. Same dot energy is an interesting collection website to go through, you can also go through your search engine (remember to add -pinterest -youtube to your search term to filter out that crapola)

HAVE FUN!

💖

[frostbite-the-bat]

how do you do the “cut out of a piece of cardstock or paper or something” effect

i'm gonna do an image guide, if that's okay!

i use these texture overlays - i've been planning to make a post that credits all these sorts of assets i use that i can link in my pinned post, but i keep forgetting...

so, well, i'll credit them now! and you can get them yourself, too! they're quite handy. it's a name your price thing, so you can download it for free, or be kind and donate to the creator!

-> Natural Materials Vol. 1 by TOMB of NULL

guzma art guide underneath all this, it does get a little long, but it should cover my whole process for getting this effect!

you download the thing above and unzip it, and get some handy files to open in basically any art program that can handle PSD files. there's other material packs, but i only use this one! and out of these, i really only ever use the ones i lined with blue. (CARDBOARD and WATERCOLOR-PAPER)

the idea is, that you draw a drawing and paste it within these folders. however, i don't do it this way, as you can see! it's a very different result. as an example, i'm gonna use the non-textured version of my old icon .

you can do this and get a nice effect, especially if you use more fitting colors for this sort of style, but again, this isn't what i do! i actually copy specific layers and paste THOSE into my actual pieces. (specifically "LOWLIGHT" and "HIGHLIGHT" from "WATERCOLOR-PAPER")

i paste LOWLIGHT first, and set it to MULTIPLY. then, i paste HIGHLIGHT on top of it, and i set it to SCREEN.

then, i lock the layers for both and either paint over or bucket-tool fill them with a different color that fits my piece more. i adjust the opacity of each layer. i don't get the color first try always, i spend some time to play around with it - but for demonstration i stuck with what i picked at the moment.

but that isn't all! i sometimes use "LOWLIGHT" from "CARDBOARD" as well, set on top of both of these layers, but instead set to OVERLAY. due to some scratches in the texture i don't like, i may move the position slightly. unless you draw really big, the texture will cover up your whole pieces and allow for some movement. if not, re-sizing is okay!

but i don't use that one always - what i use MOST of the time, and what i've done before i began using any paper overlays - were dot/halftone overlays! i either use these ones below, that are a specific, same size. (i resize for canvases all the time, that doesn't matter.)

...or i also use another method! it requires krita.

you open up krita, and paste your whole piece into it. (what i do, is flatten my current piece, copy it, then undo to get all my layers back. then i paste the image into krita)

once i'm there, i go to FILTERS -> ARTISTIC -> HALFTONE. i adjust as i think it looks good, and then copy that.

then, i paste that back into sai. however! it may be off by a few pixels! zoom in and move it slightly left or right - turn the opacity down slightly to help you figure it out. once you do that, set that layer to OVERLAY. you can play with the opacity - or even do fun things! it makes it look better, so hang on a minute!

the "fun things" i mentioned is going over to LAYER and selecting "CONVERT LUMINACE TO TRANSPARENCY". in this case, it makes the white transparent and removes it, while it keeps the halftone! then i can change it's colors to be more fitting to my piece. (like we did with the texture layers!)

i used a purple overlay - so it makes the picture feel more purple and it ties the colors together a little bit more, without the use of an layer on top that's just one color set to OVERLAY or MULTIPLY to give it a different color hint. i usually do that, but set to super low opacity. but not always!

a lot of these are just done by "feeling it" and trial-and-error! just messing around and seeing what looks nice, after all, these are usually my final details i add to a piece once it's done to give it a more finished, uniform look. plus, the texture looks nice, and it's great to make more flat colored pieces just POP OUT !!

and of course, i use either the image half-tone overlay or the krita method depending on just what i think looks good. i don't really have a specific method!

and sometimes, i add different overlays on top and mix and match - sometimes from actual scanned paper textures! i've downloaded some from this google drive i'm going to link below. i use them rarely, but it's worth the credit, too.

-> PAPER TEXTURES GOOGLE DRIVE (not mines!) (unfortunately, i lost the tumblr post i got these from.)

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few other things i tend to do, also: i tend to add extra saturation once a piece is done. i like bright colors.

i also tend to copy the original drawing underneath all these effect layers, and paste it over all these other layers. i set it to OVERLAY and set it to low opacity. (or rarely, without the layer effect!) it helps gets a bit of the "original" feel out, while brightening/saturating the colors out a bit... i always play with the opacity here a bit.

and so, here's the layers again + the final piece!

admittedly, this was supposed to be a softer looking piece from the get-go, so saturating it may make it look a bit goofy when the flag in the background has been made brighter previously... but it makes the characters stand out! still looks nice! i'd definitely tweak this a bit, but it's definitely the kind of result you may be looking for!

i did use sai as an example, but if you use krita, medibang paint, fire alpaca, csp or photoshop... this all should work there as well! i've done this in ibis paint as well - using textures from the app itself! using what you learned here could help you figure that out for your own.

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well, i hope this was helpful and somewhat comprehensive! if anything's a bit messy here, i can admit i made this while in a call, so that may be why. feel free to ask follow-up questions! thanks for reading!!!

[ducktracy]

2. 5 favourites of your own work?

i say everything is a hard question… BUT IT’S TRUE! THESE ARE HARD! i like different pieces for different reasons, and favorite doesn’t exactly equate to “best” (which doesn’t matter of course!) BUT. i’d probably wage these guys… and i’ll tell you why below!

this is unequivocally my favorite thing i’ve ever drawn to date for a myriad of reasons! the short of it is: it’s my favorite cartoon of all time, with my favorite cartoon characters of all time, i got to flex my muscles in different mediums, i took my time with it, i’m happy with the little details, it feels believably human, and it’s my love letter to all of my favorite influences. i love it so much that it’s my background on my phone!

i don’t think words will ever be able to accurately describe how much cartoons mean to me. how much being a cartoonist means to me. i especially will never be able to accurately express just how much the work of influences such as Bob Clampett, in this case, have touched me to my core. i do think though that this piece, more so than others, is a particularly effective way at getting those points across. it was definitely made with love, sincerity, and passion, more so than others. it’s a very comforting piece and i think is a very solid representation of me! not that my art is all about me, and i didn’t make this with the intention of appeasing myself in mind, but it is a very “Me” piece, and unapologetically so. i could stand to be much more self indulgent, so it’s nice to have.

this was a redraw of a picture i’d made in my sketchbook in high school! i’d work on it in my AP Literature class over a matter of days, and my friend and i’d talk about setting up our own Krusty Krab restaurant someday HAHA. who knew i’d be doing what i do now!! i love it for that nostalgic connotation alone, but i’m also very happy i got to transform it into what it is. fun perspective! bold lines! my only regret is mistakenly coloring the floor brown instead of green… but i honestly thing it sort of adds to the authenticity? comic halftones took a lot of shortcuts (especially in golden age comics), so i just try to see it through that lens HAHA.

3. i’m a big fan of this for its versatility! i’m happy to have tried something a bit differently than i normally do. it’s stylized and warm, but still true to both the original Rocky and Bullwinkle and to my sensibilities! i’ve gotten a lot of print requests on this one too, which makes me happy

4. i’m very pleased with how bold this is (and for stepping out of my usual menagerie of characters!) i really like how crisp and sharp it feels, but also maintains that sort of warmth and familiarity i’m always striving for. very happy with the poses as well. i know for a fact i was thinking of Frank Tashlin when drawing Max especially!

5. another one i love for nostalgia, as well as loving for representing yet another cartoon very important to me! i’m very fortunate to have drawn many more seasoned Daffys and Porkys since this, but am particularly fond of it seeing as i had drawn this alternative only a YEAR before! it was my first time drawing Daffy! i think it really represents my growth as an artist in such a short amount of time, and i’m eternally grateful that i’ve made even more progress since then. it being a redraw of one of my favorite images of all time helps greatly!

[rexwrendraws]

How did you get the old style printer effects on the BitB flyers? Did you use Photoshop? ❤️

Yes I did use Photoshop! The printed effects are a combination of a few things: (original post here)

The easiest thing to do is to use Photoshop's default Filter Gallery, I usually use this as a starting point when editing. The filters I like also tend to flatten the image, which I don't usually mind unless the image starts getting unrecognisable/unreadable or loses depth in places where it needs it. For example, in the pic of Mason above, the shadow where the jaw meets the neck gets lost with the Halftone Pattern filter (it becomes hard to read)— to solve this, I used the Conté Crayon filter on a different layer underneath the halftone so that the shadow is still visible while maintaining the graphic qualities I like.

The other easiest thing to do is to avoid using pure whites and blacks anywhere. For this I recommend looking at what kind of printing you're trying to replicate digitally because it differs based on printing material. I also think it's worth seeing if you can actually, physically print and scan it back as a digital file to further edit because nothing beats the real effect.

The left image is the digital files, and the right image is the same files printed (literally an office printer) and scanned back. The file with the white background scanned back in slightly grey/toned, which is what I tried to replicate in my original toned background digital file. Both printed/scanned versions interact with color overlays differently. It's a lot of trail and error, general experimentation lol.

On top of this, I like adding texture overlays! They're my best friend! Indieground has some fantastic freebies which I use a lot (especially the Photocopy Noise and Abstract ones), and Resourceboy's textures (especially his White Paper Textures, they've saved my life many times) are also excellent. For the BitB flyer, I added photocopy scanner textures before I printed it. I've used the white paper textures on this Daniel Hall artwork and the Horse Girl AU Poster.

Picking and adding color also depends on what kind of print style you're trying to replicate. The BitB flyer is trying emulate xerox flyers across both grunge and punk eras, so I wanted it to look like it was printed on colored paper of some kind.

These colors were added as adjustment layers above everything else. I think each color was at a different layer type though, I was purposefully avoiding anything that flattened the 'ink' and textures or made anything too pure black. I try to limit color when imitating xerox printing to one ink color and one paper color, but it's up to your personal tastes tbh.

Honestly, there's no one way to do it! It's always a lot of experimentation and feeling it out. This is just my general though process but hope it helps in whichever way you needed!

[paintpanic]

Thanks earlier for your advice on drawing Elfilis! If it’s ok to ask this next, what’s a good way to experiment with brushes for an art style? And may I ask how you draw the outline things you do? They’re really cute :)

Long post that got a little rambly. 😅

When I experiment with brushes, I'll generally open up the "all" tab for them and start picking out ones that look interesting. Just start scribbling things on the page!

Generally, when I'm looking through brushes, I have an effect I want to achieve in mind. For example, if I want to make a soft looking sky, I'll check out whatever blending brushes and airbrush type-things I have in stock.

Also, if you haven't already, you can go online and look for brush packs to add to your program. Download whatever looks neat, if you don't end up using it it's no big deal!

Don't be afraid to use brushes in ways they weren't intended for. Right now, my favorite brushes for line art are ones that seem meant for color blocking. (I'm using GDQuest's "Pixel Grunge" and Krita's default "Charcoal Rock Soft".) I like slightly fuzzy, gritty-ish line art, so these work well for that.

You can also try making your own brushes, either from scratch or by playing with existing ones from the program. Last summer, I made a brush out of a normal watercolor brush and a Paint 3D render of Elfilin. Here's something I drew with that. Please, don't be afraid to get silly with brushes!

In addition to experimenting with brushes, I love to play with filters, especially to make backgrounds more interesting. If you use Krita, you can go to Filters > Start G'MIC-Qt to play with a big list of powerful, fun ones. (I also reccomend playing some with Filters > Artistic > Halftone).

In regards to line art, I generally use the two previously mentioned brushes (GDQuest's "Pixel Grunge" and Krita's default "Charcoal Rock Soft" both scaled really small) to get a grungy, textured look. Like most people (I think?) I do my line art over a sketch layer which I've made semi-transparent.

I leave little gaps in my line art, which I've heard can contribute to an "illustrated" feel? Anyways, I color in between the gaps as if there was a continuous line there. (I do my colors on a layer below the lines, which I also think is common practice) Sometimes I'll tint my line dark brown or dark blue to add to the color palette of a drawing. It's also fun to set your lines to "alpha lock" and play with colored line art or airbrushing a gradient onto it.

The most important thing about your art style, though, is that YOU enjoy drawing in it! If drawing things a certain way is too hard or stresses you out, you're always allowed to draw it a different way. You're also always allowed to "cheat". I totally have templates made for things I know will be a pain to do (eg. Sectonia's wings) so that I can trace them when I need to draw them in a piece.

Good luck with your art! Have fun!

[ivettel]

been a while since the last behind the curtain! also probably bc i haven't done anything too crazy edit-wise as of late. anyway this was a fun one! been wanting to edit the style ever since yrs dropped this mep, but i just never got around to it lol.

my ingredients: - after effects cc 2022 - red giant universe - sapphire distort - video copilot twitch

so the first step was figure out how to do the melty text effect--i knew how to do it in photoshop, but it's a little different in motion! i figured there were a few ways to do it, so i narrowed the most likely down methods to:

scale wipe + wave warp effects

text to shapes + crazy keyframing action

shape layers + linear fades or something along those lines

photoshop + liquify

and i am so sick of animating shape layers i feel like it's all i do. it literally is like 70% of what we do in motion graphics. i'm sick. i went with the scale wipe + wave warp method because fuck this LMAO. the process was like type > precompose > slap effects on > keyframe. to an exaggerated extent, this is what you get:

you could probably achieve a similar wave warp effect with ae's plugin btw! but i liked that sapphire gave me a bit more customization. once i had the movement i liked, it was a simple keyframe job.

then because i am LAZY and cannot be arsed to deal with manually separating colour channels or triplicating multiple text layers just to get a chromatic aberration effect, i stuck uni.Chromatic Aberration and uni.RGB Separation onto the precomp and fiddled with those settings until i thought it was appropriately eyestrain-y.

for the edit itself, i finally put my money where my mouth is and Thought About Form And Content. shoutout to my students for their relentless teasing. i set my comps at 12 fps to enhance the somewhat disjointed editing, and then i actually planned out the composition of my gifs instead of just throwing things at the wall and hoping something stuck. the background is black ice + a halftone overlay for the comic-y aesthetic. font is arial black (cheated with geller sans ultrabold for the "7" and "1") because #typography history and #cheeky references to the genre.

panels 2 + 3 basically employed the scale wipe + wave warp method in addition to my usual mograph bullshit (rotation, text animation, fake 3d using gaussian blur instead of adding a camera), but i changed minor things around. panel 3 especially, i gave the liquify tool a shot--and i don't like, hate it, but it was harder to map.

everything else seems pretty self-explanatory--stretch + center keyframes for the scale wipes in panel 1 (for the text effect), but aside from that, basic movement animations, basic glitches. i didn't reinvent the wheel! just added seb to it and spun.

[schemilix]

Before and after using the halftone shader.  I like the effect a lot, especially close up. At high res it gives the vibe of an aging magazine print too. Might utilise it for a certain project.