#want. to draw one of those dramatic character sitting w a bunch of paintings things. w rachel ofc. bc gf has placed a wizards curse upon me

[whimsicalcotton]

i am once again afflicted by the Images

[cfrog]

for the art questions thing: what’s your process for shading? how do you come up with drawing / animation ideas? how do you sketch / how does a sketch differ from a complete piece for you?

Oh boy thank u for the questions! Uhh i ended up writing a lot w these so I'll throw this under a cut. I added pictures too. We'll call this a first draft for whatever I end up doing for my class assignment.

My process for shading changes pretty dramatically between if I'm doing my easy cel shading or my fancy soft shading. Lately, if I'm doing cel shading, I'll just come up with colors straight off the color wheel (colorpick and move it darker, more saturated, cooler/warmer depending on the material). OR, one trick I like, I'll draw where I want the shadows all on their own layer, THEN copy my color layer, mask n merge it on top the shading, and multiply that onto the actual layer. So it's the same colors for each exact section multiplied on top of itself? If that makes sense? Does nothing for the Atmosphere but it is Darker, and if I'm drawing them in a void anyways, it works fine. Sometimes I like to just slap a random tilted rectangle on it like its a garfield background. My soft shading is much more trial and error; for those fancy Xiph pin-ups I've been doing, I'll have like 30 different layers going, all doing different shit. Multiply mostly for shading, then for highlights I'll just try overlay/screen/soft light/hard light until something Works. A fun thing I do on these too: To get that "painted" look without adding a bunch of random texture, I use my default lining pen sized WAY up with the opacity WAY down and just go ham. Close up of robot ass for reference.

For ideas: I'd say the majority of the art I put out is "inspired" from something else, like memes or songs or tiktok audios. Honestly, I'd say every piece of information I receive has to pass through a "could this be about my ocs" filter in my brain, and if the answer is even kind of yes, I Will Make It So. Everything is ocs to me <3 and sometimes I inflict those oc thoughts on everyone else :3 For actual Original stuff though? Most of my ideas come about as a natural result of trying to figure something out with my characters. How would they respond to this, how would they do that, how does that work? The whole reason I started doing art is cause I have such a hard time with words, and sometimes drawing it out is just the only way I can communicate a thought. Expressions, camera angles, visual gags, subtle details, timing, those are things I could never figure out in writing. So I make comics and animations!

Sketching, what can I say about sketching. My sketches are very messy because I try for a Zero Erasing method like I do in real life (<- enjoys drawing in pen). If I sit there overthinking every line of a sketch, I get too caught up in the details before I've figured out the full picture. Sketching is for blocking/framing/posing ONLY, clean up is for lineart. I do sketch in only black/grays if that's a thing people care about, but that's because I have very strong thoughts on color, again it's too distracting. The main difference to me (that im sure no one else notices) is I let my sketches get fuzzy from resizing. I'm very particular about my art having NO anti-aliasing/transparent pixels. Crisp and clean, and VERY easy to color. Sketches I have on hand for example. Lil preview of smthin im working on :3c

Actually, sometimes I don't do sketches at all ? Like I go straight to clean lines. Only for certain characters, like LEDD and the lab rats, and if it's not a crazy angle or something. I can just draw them on command at this point. Very handy.

Thank you again for questions ^^ I am. slowly figuring this assignment out.