Some Photoshop Tips

I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 

Firstly, what you need are

—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —

Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:

For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):

This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu

You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once

This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 

Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:

- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 

- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.

- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds

The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

—  PATHS  —

But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.

Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:

Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:

Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 

You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.

I got a lot of asks about this so I made a tutorial on how I was able to emulate the 80s aesthetic, please keep in mind I’m not an expert and what I put here is just what I personally did. I hope you guys like it and hope it helps

go crazy kids

How to make a futuristic city with junk (x-post r/Filmmakers)

@officialhagfish relevant to your interests?

How to THINK when you draw SMOKE EFFECTS part 2!

If you want MORE, click these links for tutorials covering how to draw… PLANES      HORSE HEADS       ROCK FORMATIONS         ANGRY EXPRESSIONS        VEHICLES      WATER       FABRIC And if YOU have a REQUEST for a tutorial subject, just let us know over on INSTAGRAM HERE or on TWITTER HERE. More tutorials coming EVERY WEEK! Lorenzo!

Get some extra classes with the 11-page Clean up your Acting supplement~

This tutorial is about acting for comics! It’s not a subject people talk about a lot, at least compared to art and writing, but I’d argue that great character acting is one of the reasons we fall in love with fictional characters… and horrible character acting is why we stop believing in the characters, the story, and possibly the creator?? Fortunately, learning to spot bad acting is an easy way to correct it in your own work.

I was maybe a little snarkier in this tut than I needed to, but we’re friends here, I don’t need to pretend with you that I love every work equally. What I really do love tho, is when people learn to turn their criticism into corrections, which is the whole point of making and sharing these tuts! I hope you enjoy it :] You can also check out a bunch of human, monster, and alien crab acting in my own comics The Meek and Mare Internum.

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All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5 years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The recent tutorial is about Worldbuilding, so feel free to stop by~

and! thanks a ton in advance for not removing my text <3

This is great!!

One of the big tells for me that a cartoonist is a novice is when they rely too heavily on manga/anime exaggerated expressions - we see this A LOT with first-time webcomics. Even if you love manga and want to create works with that visual language, notice how those exaggerated expressions are most effectively used to enhance a moment. They aren’t there to handle the bulk of the acting or to carry a scene. If you use them constantly for every expression, it becomes visually exhausting (and reads disingenuous), and also you have nowhere left to go if you want to use a goofy expression as a visual punch.

Anywho, I back Der-shing on patreon and she always has good and insightful tips from a valid perspective with lots of experience!

(Eventually I want to back all the women in webcomics on patreon, but… that is a story for another day.)