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Art references and Resources

@referenceforartists / referenceforartists.tumblr.com

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devipotato

serif’s Affinity line of products is currently 50% off right now ($25 each for mac and windows, $10 for ipad), if anyone wants a comparable, modern, non-subscription replacement to adobe products! they are also offering a 90 day trial period instead of the usual 30, if you want to try them out first.

here’s the gist: Affinity Designer is an art-focused program that specializes in vector stuff, similar to illustrator, but has a unique twist: it’s also a raster program! you can mix vector and raster objects and layers together, mask them onto each other, group them, etc! this program has completely replaced illustrator in my own vector workflow, and having the raster toolkit has allowed me to sketch and color in the same file, mark up/sketch over my vector work for edits, add extra textures and effects, use raster erasers to get a fade instead of a gradient, and lots of other useful tricks. designer is missing a lot of power features that illustrator has, but it’s still extremely worth looking into as a vector artist. the raster stuff is really cool. i cannot praise designer enough

Affinity Photo is a photo manipulation program similar to photoshop. i just picked it up as part of the sale today, but it appears to be a good replacement for image manipulation since a lot of other art programs people replace photoshop with (clip, sai, etc) don’t work very well for image editing specifically.

Affinity Publisher is a graphic design tool similar to indesign. i haven’t used this one at all because this isn’t something i need, but it’s worth looking into if this is something you do

the one downside to affinity is that you have to pay per-platform, so if you want both the windows and mac versions or the mac and ipad versions, etc, you must buy each platform separately, but it’s still significantly cheaper than adobe by miles.

here’s their website for screenshots and more info

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Making & using a lace brush in CSP

saw this tweet on twitter,

which actually goes over using file objects to make repeating textures, which is the same method I used to make my lace brush shapes! I elaborated on the process on twitter, and I’m just crossposting this here.

So the first thing is to make a new file object as explained in the tweet, and then if you make use of CSP’s symmetry rulers you can make some complex repeating patterns like this!

The flowers were all done using a 6 line symmetry ruler, and the part at the bottom used a 2 line ruler.

image

& when you set the file object to tiling, you can set what directions it tiles in, too!

Once you’re all done drawing your pattern, you want to make it a brush tip. You need to set this up correctly! CSP’s brush tip engine works as black = primary colour, white = secondary colour,

so to ensure that the brush changes colour as expected: make sure you’re working on a transparent background, and convert your layer to greyscale before you save it as a brush tip material!

This step is important, if you don’t set the layer to greyscale, it will not change colour, even if it’s in black & white.

Anyway with that done you can make it into a brush tip shape by going to edit > register material > image… Here are the settings you’d want for a lace brush! Make sure to tag it so you can find it later.

Once that’s saved you can make it into a brush,

  1. go to brush tip and change the material to your new lace tip
  2. go to stroke, and enable ribbon
  3. if it’s repeating in the wrong direction, go back to brush tip and change the angle to either 90 or 270 (depends which way up you want it)

And you’re done! But as for actually using it, actually prefer to have my lace brushes using the figure line tool, and to make a vector layer for them!

That way you can adjust the line as you need to create more realistic deformation. This works fine with the brush tool too, but drawing a line with the brush tool will create a lot of anchor points so it’s a little trickier to work with.

Anyway! Here’s an example of me using this method

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anyway now that im back i actually wanted to tell you guys, i’ve made a new brushes page which you can find here on my neocities: https://wyrmbabies.neocities.org/brushes.html

Along with links to where to download them, there’s a brief explanation of how they work, what I use them for, & how you would create them in another program if you don’t use CSP.

My apologies, I did not set the sharing correctly for the drive to my brushes - you should now be able to download them!

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loish

Here’s a little preview of my most recent tutorial! It’s Cyber Monday so all of my tutorials are 20% off at the moment ~ there’s three in total: one on digital painting, one on character sketching and one on digital speedpainting (which is the one in this vid). They are 30mn to an hour long and explain my technique in Photoshop from beginning to end! So if you wanna get them, now’s a better time than ever because it’s the biggest discount of the year. Find them here: https://cubebrush.co/loish?ref=QwOmmw

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The Complete Introduction to 2D Animation - A video package I finally finished

Here is a video summary for something I just finished.

After a year and a half, my video package, the Complete Introduction to 2D Animation is up and ready!

Learn how to animate for any style of Hand Drawn Animation. The Complete Introduction to 2D Animation is a modernized and fun way to approach the classical animation fundamentals that is applicable to any approach of 2D. The package is a dense collection of lessons, demos, project files video lectures and advice for approaching hand drawn character animation. Aimed for students who wish to use this as a supplement, artists within the industry interested in 2D, independent animators and content creators.

The goal is meant to introduce hand drawn animation in a more fun way!

Visit my store to purchase it at: https://gumroad.com/stringbing

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Want to join the team of Redline Artists? Here’s how! Applications are now open!

Please make sure to read the WHOLE post before you send us an email. If you fail to follow the guidelines we might ignore your email and not consider your application alongside others. 

*This post expires on August 24th, 2018*

If redlining art seems like a fun and fulfilling experience for you, then you can apply to be one of the artists on the team! A Redline Artist will look at the submission box, choose an art piece that they feel comfortable redlining, draw their corrections on top of it, and then post it to the blog alongside the original. They can also reblog useful art reference posts to the blog or create tutorials and post them here!

This is a volunteer position, meaning that you will not be paid, and that your obligations to the blog are entirely based on how much free time you have. There’s no minimum-posts-per-month. If you apply and get in, you can redline whenever you have the time to do so, since you are the one offering up your advice for free.

In order to apply to be a Redline Artist, you have to have some prior experience in art. Read on if you think you might be interested!

  • You need to be at least 18 years old
  • You need to have a tumblr account
  • You need to have made at least 6 drawings/illustrations in the past 12 months

In order to see if you’re a good fit for the Redline team, it would help us if you were to send us some examples of your work in an email. Please read the below instructions carefully - although your ability to read instructions does not make you a worse or better artist, it does help us decide whether you should be trusted to politely and maturely critique someone’s work.

You’ll need…

  • A link to your tumblr where you have plenty of your drawings posted (doesn’t have to be your art tumblr, it can be personal, but make sure we can easily find your drawings)
  • At least 3 ATTACHED examples of your work, including…
  • A full-body drawing of a human
  • A full-body drawing of any kind of animal
  • A redline of ONE of the following drawings:

or

or

or

or

or

Attach examples of your art AND a redline of one of the drawings above, and…

Q: Do my example drawings all have to be realism?

A: No, not at all! They could be semi-realism or be leaning more towards an anime style or a cartoony style. However, they should show that you understand how the baseline anatomy works. So for example, drawing something like Jake from Adventure Time would NOT be good for showing us whether or not you can draw a dog. But if you wanted to draw Tramp from Lady and the Tramp, that would be adequate.

Q: Do the drawings have to be full-color?

A: No! They can be black and white or cleaned up sketches. As long as we can see it clearly, you’re good.

Q: Do all my example drawings have to be from the last 12 months?  

A: Nope! You can send us older examples. The only thing we ask is that you have drawn SOMETHING in the last 12 months. They don’t all have to match the description of the examples.

Q: Can my examples be nsfw?

A: The examples can have artistic nudity, but please don’t send us examples of porn. We don’t care if you draw porn in your free time, but we would prefer not to see it.

Q: Does my redline need comments?

A: Nope, just the redline is fine! We just want to see an example of how you would adjust/critique the work if you were to become a mod.

Q: I sent an application email to the blog before and didn’t get accepted. Should I reapply?

Yes. 

Mod Chekhov thought to keep the emails from previous applicants, but the rules of applications have since changed (we now require an example redline). Because of this, and because the email for the applications has also changed, it will be easier and more fair for everyone if we received fresh applications. Sorry for the confusion!

Q: I applied last time. Should my examples be the same or can I send new ones?

A: That’s up to you! Treat it as a whole new application.

So, what are you waiting for?

Send all emails to: [email protected] (emails to the old submission address will be ignored). We will review your application over the next few weeks and reply to your inquiry by our decided deadline.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

*This post expires on August 24th, 2018. Please double check the status of mod applications on our blog before applying.*

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What ARE Vanishing Points?

So I feel like a lot of confusion with drawing in perspective is because people are not taught the absolute basics properly? So let’s do that.

Let’s say we have a cube.

Now, a cube we know is made out of 6 squares or rectangles, and every edge is at a 90 degree angle.

so every opposite edge of a cube is exactly parallel, right?

but let’s say we draw a cube using only parallel lines:

this looks a little weird, you know? Like if i try think of this as an object in 3d space and i look at it for too long, the faces start to look really warped - with like the back looking bigger than the front as if its been made out of weird wonky trapeziums

so what’s going on here? if all those edges are exactly parallel, why does it look weird?

Now we know that the rails on a track are always going to be parallel, they have to be the same distance apart so the train can stay on the track yeah?

But we can very clearly see that these tracks are converging to a single point in the photo.

So what does this tell us, exactly? That our view of the world is naturally warped, and that lines that are physically parallel when drawn in perspective will converge to a single point.

Now, I could call this image “one point perspective” - but that’s not really true,

if these lines are also parallel, then they must also converge to a single point in perspective, right? so lets add another point

clip studio paint automatically adjusts the horizon line to fit the new points you add to your perspective…. notice how the horizon line actually fits the photo better now?

our new point is a very very long way away, so we don’t notice a lot of difference in the angle between lines, but the point that i’m trying to make here is:

Drawing with perspective guides is not about choosing one, two, three point perspective etc. those are just quick ways to set up a certain viewing angle

What you are doing when you use these guides is making your parallel lines converge to a point.

So, if you want to draw a big ol’ cube that’s aligned to be parallel with these railroad tracks, then you can do that with the same point as the tracks - because it’s parallel. It’s on the same axis!

but what if you want to draw a cube that’s rotated, and isn’t parallel to the tracks?

well that’s not too difficult to do if you know that every point represents one set of parallel lines.

If these lines aren’t parallel to the ones you already have, then clearly you just need new points.

We’re not planning to tilt this cube up into the air, or rotate it onto its side, so we’re going to leave the vertical axis alone, and just move our horizontal points to a different place on the horizon line

But speaking of the vertical axis - the only points that will be on your horizon line are the ones that are flat on the ground. But you can still have points that are not on the horizon line!

This is important to remember because if you’re trying to draw something like a slope or stairs, something that has an incline, it’s not going to be level with your horizon.

Let’s draw some stairs as an example.

This is actually pretty simple - first draw where your slope starts and ends by drawing a big L shape.

this will give you some parallel corners, which you can then connect to make a new point for your slope

And with this you can then find the centre and divide that up into equal parts to make your stairs (http://lesbianlinkle.tumblr.com/post/176704472820)

So lets go back to our original cube, with the knowledge that our parallel lines should all converge to a point and draw it again

well, doesn’t that look better!

but also, now you know how to make a cube lean against its buddy like this

because we just make new points for the new parallel lines

Anyway I hope that clears some things up, and makes perspective easier to understand!

Also if these tutorials have been helpful and you’d like to support me, I do have a patreon & a ko-fi you can donate to :^)

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gif example for the first 3:

another example of applying measuring:

I know poppin’ to be roughly 5 feet tall. I also know that, on average, the height of a room is at least 8 foot tall.

I also know that the pokémon centre has two levels to its base floor room, so I’m thinking it’s a bigger room than average but still a little less than two storeys tall. I decide to make it 12 feet tall, thats one and a half rooms. Considering the average size of pokemon is like, huge, it sounds about right to me.

So I measure that out:

then I add another floor on top, and that gives me the height of the building!

this is the same as measuring out the cubes, I just applied a number this time! the pokémon centre is about four poppin’s tall, or four cubes if you will

there’s all kinds of things you can do by using just a few lines to measure things out. I wanted to make sure hugh was taller so I measured that out too!

so when you’re drawing things like architecture instead of thinking of it as a big complex shape, break it down and think about the size and position of things - especially the edges - relative to each other, and you’ll find it much easier to draw.

It’s very time consuming, but if you’re patient you can draw anything no matter how complex :^)

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toastyglow

some resources for people who want to start animating

my advice: have fun and play–play is learning | always be watching real life to see how things move | also be watching cool animations to learn from them | it’s hard but so worth it when things turn out well, good luck!

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