Hello!
Sorry to bother but do you have any digital art tips? I’m quite new to it and any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful! Your coloring style is very beautiful and I love it a lot!
thank you! 💚💚💚 sorry this is a bit late, hopefully there's still something helpful in it!
(also, it got pretty long, sorry!)
I think the biggest thing is to just take things slow -- digital art feels different than drawing traditionally, and it's SUPER easy to get overwhelmed by the billions of cool features that the digital world offers. (I say, as someone who spends a lot of time downloading cool brushes and textures...and then never using them ever.) there is a ton of really cool stuff you can do digitally, but because there's so much, I think it's really important to take time to figure out what is and isn't working for you. spend some time doodling without any intent to do a finished piece, figure out how you like to hold (or not hold) your tablet, what keyboard shortcuts you end up using a lot (and therefore might want to map to your pen/tablet buttons for quicker use)...that kind of thing!
everyone's workflow and preferred program and style are different, so it's hard to give hard-and-fast general advice. but the things that I think of as the essentials for learning digital art programs, and what I think of as a good order to focus on learning them in (although YMMV, especially depending on what kind of art you're doing):
brush customization (e.g. flow, opacity, softness)
layers and layer masks
selections and transformations (e.g. scale, rotate, flip horizontal/vertical, skew) (skew is underrated and I will die on that hill)
blending modes (e.g. multiply, screen)
adjustments/adjustment layers (e.g. hue/saturation, curves)
and I think most stuff after that is gravy! often very good gravy though! but yeah, as overall advice I recommend just taking things one little bit at a time, spending some time just drawing and messing around with each feature and what you can do with it. whether or not you end up incorporating any of it into your workflow, it's always good to try things out and just see how they feel! :D
and just so there is at least a little more concrete helpfulness in here, here's a few more specific things that I think are super important to keep in mind!
use! your! tablet/pen buttons! I mentioned this earlier, but they are extremely useful for keyboard shortcuts that you use often! most programs will also let you create new shortcuts for other things -- personally, I use the magic wand tool to fill in big color blocks a lot, so I made shortcuts for 'expand selection' and 'fill' and then mapped them to my tablet buttons.
flop your work horizontally often! when you're working on something, you get used to the way it looks, so seeing it mirrored is a quick way to see it with fresh eyes! in my experience, it often feels like this:
(a common thing is to find that everything is sort of 'leaning' too much one way, which is where skew really comes in handy!) (seriously, I love skew, it is my savior)
if you're working with color, keep a hue/saturation adjustment layer (or a layer filled with black or white and set to Color) on top and toggle it on occasionally to check your values! a lot of people who know a lot more about color than me (and are better at putting it into words) have written about why values are so important, so all I'll say is that the rule of thumb is that your image should still be readable in greyscale:
there are some exceptions and grey areas (do ho ho), but it's a good general rule to keep in mind! (some programs also have a colorblind mode, so you can check to see how your work will look to someone with colorblindness!)
and finally, here's some digital art programs I recommend, if you're still looking for a good one!
free: krita, FireAlpaca
paid: ClipStudio, Procreate (iOS/iPad only)
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More Flatland stuffff~~~
[Cursive transcript: I'm so sorry this is so sudden, but I had to keep my Chosen safe!]
So, uh, the 4th dimension, am I right?????
So, on my last post, people were more interested in A. Tesseract than I thought. I did not expect her to stir so much interest, but here you go lol.
More under the cut lol / lots of notes:
Some basic information on 4th dimensional beings:
They refer to themselves as "hypersolids" and "polytopes". Only Tesseracts prefer a different name than just "hyper(insert shape here)". When talking to other dimensional beings, they call themselves "Spacelanders".
They usually keep their eyes closed, and they do not emote much.
Their bodies naturally morph as they talk. They are also partially transparent, so you can see their inside movements. Not organs or anything, but the next emotions or actions they are going to express. Sort of like key frames or a fade in effect.
They call "Spacelanders" "Heightlanders".
Their civilization is located in space. They are able to breathe through little pockets of air on their rings that recharge when they enter the atmosphere of other plants. (This is why they are spotted relatively frequently)
Buildings are constantly moving spirals. They also fly everywhere, so they require a lot of energy to maintain their health. Luckily, any stars nearby tend to charge them up just fine.
Also, everyone goes by they/them along with another pronoun if they choose. Gender constructs be damned (or certain groups are fighting for that).
There will be more once I think of it, but that's what I have in the world-building department right now.
Some basic information on Angelica "A." Tesseract (she/they):
She tends to say "I'm sorry" after anything they might think could have been of inconvenience or offensive.
They are relatively soft-spoken, but they are incredibly smart compared to her peers.
Her quiet nature causes others to disrespect and step all over her.
She overthinks LITERALLY EVERYTHING. You could tell her something that is even the slightest bit vague and they have the chance of spiraling.
She KNOWS there are more than four dimensions, but they are struggling to prove it with science.
They are much more emotional compared to other hypersolids. They tend to cry easily.
She chose A. Sphere because of his confidence and drive to get his points across. They admire him for that.
Some basic information on A. Sphere in this:
He's much less snarky. His whole vision of the world was destroyed in the blink of an eye, and he's stuck in another world completely unknown to him. He's going though it currently.
He's still blunt about everything. If you suck, he'll tell you. If you are cool, it'll take a little longer, but he'll tell you.
He got his eye busted after the attack on Messiah Inc. When getting removed from "Heightland", his eye got caught in the blow last minute and it got damaged. He can still open it slightly, but he can't see out of it.
He was relatively indifferent to seeing his body transparent. He was more worried about his eye injury over anything else.
At first, he did not like A. Tesseract (cuz kidnapping), but he learns to appreciate the gesture and does his best to help her out.
[Cursive transcript: For now, I'm afraid so... sorry. / I'm so sorry. If I was just a but faster, I could have saved your eye.]
Yeah, their friendship starts out really rough.
A. Sphere adjusted to the environment very poorly at first. He was very standoffish and snappy, but it then soured to just sorta feeling sad all the time. He gets better eventually the more he learns about the world, but it takes a lot of effort out of A. Tesseract to get him there.
I mean, he expected to die, lost his eye, everyone in "Heightland" hates him now, he lost his business and research, and he fails to take the blame for anything for a while. I would also be super pissed and sad.
A. Tesseract was not any better. She feels an incredible amount of guilt for not stepping in in time to prevent A. Sphere's eye damage, and she constantly apologies to him for everything. This sucks for A. Sphere since he finds it super annoying.
[Cursive transcript: N. H.Sphere: You weren't supposed to bring them HERE! / A. Tesseract: I'm sorry, I had to save him- / N. H.Sphere: I should fire you-!]
N. H.Sphere is a mega grouch. He is A. Tesseract's boss who treats her terribly. Discrediting her work, ignoring their research, and just not valuing her opinion cuz women, he is not fun to talk to or just be around in general. No one knows how HR lets him stay in charge, but some theorize that he pays them off or something.
Despite all of the traumatic crap A. Sphere has gone though in this story, he still does not stand for disrespect from anyone. When he learns that A. Tesseract is constantly being pushed around by her bitchy boss, he decides to defend her.
This solidifies their friendship and later science partnership when the story ends. This also makes N. H.Sphere more resentful towards both A. Tesseract an A. Sphere. This leads to A. Tesseract actually getting fired from her job. Thanks A. Sphere.
[Cursive transcript: N. H.Sphere: Why are you so scared? He's fine! / A. Tesseract: It's my un-medicated anxiety!!]
One of the downsides of being in the 4th dimension and living in space is that the gravitational pull is super sporadic with no real patterns. Some areas have super powerful gravity while others have zero. 4th dimension beings have learned to adjust perfectly fine.
The pressure changes and general lack of oxygen negatively impact A. Sphere's body, however, so to help him be okay, he sits in those vacuum boxes that allow for added pressure to be put on him to help even his breathing. He usually isn't put in unless he is fading in and out of consciousness, since he hates the confined space. It freaks out A. Tesseract every time it happens.
Her boss thinks she's stupid for worrying so much and using company tech. A. Tesseract worries more for A. Sphere than keeping her job, so she ignores N. H. Sphere.
[Cursive transcript: Care to see him again?]
Outside of the partial angst and stuff, this dimension is the reason why A. Sphere shows up in A. Square's hallucination.
During A. Square's trauma-induced hallucination, he shows up in the 4th dimension briefly with the Monarch of Pointland. A. Sphere and A. Tesseract take notice, and she offers him the ability to talk to A. Square one last time for closure reasons.
In this version, this scene would be longer, with A. Sphere possibly apologizing for denying the existence of the 4th dimension and not being able to assist A. Square in the way he wanted to. It's more wholesome and conclusive than transactional like in the movie. The other stuff is there too, but having more sentimental moments would be so cool.
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I am very sorry how messy these particular doodles are, I was drawing all these super late at night during my shift, so I was not paying much attention to the flow of the images. When the inspo hits, you don't really realize how incohesive they are until you start photographing the images to post lol
Thank you once again for reading this whole thing, and have a wonderful day :)
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