#first time playing with gradient maps

[lozzamation]

Thinking about 3rd life recently, i miss them

[moggettt]

Anonymous asked: FOR art requests, if you're still taking: Wyll from BG3?

Red gladiolus: moral integrity, strength of character, honor, and sincerity 🗡️

Thank you so much for sending in a request!! <3

[codfish-underpants]

pfp for my friend jurt < 3

[dandysworlds]

how does one make graphics (i need to . improve)

Well, the Princess' methods are very simple! She would be glad to teach you.

A bit long graphic tutorial under cut ^_^ (all art by Iinquint on twitter)

First, we import the frame or mask you will use. You can find these by searching "rentry frame".

Then, we will import our picture and erase any excess outside of the frame.

Then we usually add a chibi, You can do this by finding chibi art and erasing the background.

And now we will add any PNGs to the graphic. We chose circle laces for this.

Now we will duplicate the layer of our chibi.

We then use the Stroke Outer filter to find dots that weren't erased, we will go to the top original later and erase where all the exposed dots are.

After that, we delete the layer & reduplicate it. Then we use stroke outer for a white outline, and then a black one. If the chibi or whatever you are using is white or very light already, feel free to reverse the white & black.

Then we add glow outer (usually around 1-2px)

Continue this process for everything

Save it

And then we will import it into a new canvas through 'import picture' & then use the grayscale.

Now, We do not always use a gradient map. But feel free to try out gradients to see if it looks nice on the graphic. Either of the 2 top sites work.

Find a gradient that looks nice. If none fit your vision, feel free to skip it.

Now, import the new image and then add textures. Play around with blending modes & opacity until it looks right.

Boom! You've made your very own graphic.

Now for animated graphics...

(No visuals) If you'd like one where the small chibi moves, move it to be angle -5, save it, and then angle 5 and save it. (Also adjust angles if the 5 looks weird.)

Import the images into ezgif gif maker and turn on "Don't stack frames" and adjust delay time. (I usually use 80ish)

--

Animated graphics 2

Import your graphic into capcut. Add a green background or whatever color is not present on your graphic at all. Add the gif you want on the graphic. Adjust for all the images to go on for equal times so it works.

Ezgif > Mp4 to gif > Remove Background > Select hex code of background > "Replace hex with transparency" > Adjust Fuzz > Optimize

And voila, your graphic is completed! Feel free to adjust in ezgif effects if needed.

[mistercrowbar]

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start draw comics?

Read comics. Try to absorb the layouts and lettering - there’s so many ways to tackle it! Also even in published comics you’ll see that the art is messy and scrungly and you can take that as permission to be messy and scrungly too.

Comics are about efficiency and Good Enough. If you try to make each panel a masterpiece you’ll be there forever. Reasons why I mostly do simple pencil comics.

Start small. Do a scene or gag comic at a time. Get a feel for the medium and all the steps you have. If there’s a step you hate, find a way to emphasize the steps you love. EG I hate laying down flat colours but love shading, so I make my page form comics painterly greyscale with a gradient map to spruce them up.

Thumbnail!!!!! Figure out your page or panel layout before you start pencils. It can just be chicken scratch and sticken figures but it will help make sure there’s a clean line of action carrying the viewer from panel to panel and that your lettering fits.

don’t skimp on lettering. you can have beautiful artwork but if your dialogue is time new roman on half transparent ellipses or somehow unreadable it’s gonna drag everything else down. Blambot is a great source for free and affordable comic fonts and even has guides from an industry pro.

There are a huge bajillion elements to making comics but once you’ve made like, literally 100 pages you’ll start just intrinsically knowing things like the 180 rule, how to place a speech bubble when the first speaker is on the right, and that you can draw one nice background and then have gradient colour blocks carry you through most of the page/scene. And then you’ll still keep learning. Always learning!

LOTS of example stuff under the cut, mostly for lettering and layouts:

thumbnails vs finished page. The detail is just enough to remind me who goes where. You can see I mostly played with the last part of the scene, going from three panels in one row to making each panel an entire row across three rows. Panels on the same row have less “time” between them as the eyes skips from one to the other faster, whereas there’s a little more gap skipping back to a new row (think resetting a line on a typewriter). Here, the first thumbnail may have fit the artwork more neatly, but I wanted to give Astarion more time to deliberate his decision.

You can also see that I changed the top panel from a close up on Aldiirn to a wider shot showing both. This sets the scene, and the rest of it uses simple/abstract backgrounds until the final panel, which makes a nice bookend while making the overall load easier. One good environment panel will carry you for a while, but don't leave your characters in the void for too long.

Make a script before you start layouts but don’t be shocked if you need to cut things out to have them fit a page. Less is more, generally. This also goes for visual elements - what's most important to the scene? What's just extraneous detail you find fun but is creating clutter?

For the 4-panel comics I don’t put time into thumbnails unless it’s a difficult panel, but I always put the lettering and speech bubbles down first so they have enough room and nothing important gets covered. If you do this much you’re a step ahead imo.

This one I’m working on now and there’s a lot going on with four characters speaking to each other! It’s important to keep a clear line going for the dialogue. Astarion’s first line has the top left corner and clearly starts the conversation. The tail of the bubble carries over to where he whispers to Aldiirn, and we pick up Aldiirn’s lines. The rock wall on the right then draws the eye down to Shadowheart and Gale’s bubble at the bottom. I don’t think the tails on the bottom bubbles are 100% ideal, but it’s Good Enough.

There’s also slightly different points in time going on in this panel, because the art is static but it’s a long convo going on. Gale’s signature finger isn’t in response to Astarion whispering, but to his answer to Aldiirn that comes after. Think of how time works in your panels, especially when you got a big one because size = time.

You can use all sorts of things to direct the eye across a comic page, but I find the strongest things are the bubbles & tails and where characters are looking. Here, Gale’s “stop by” line breaks the panel line to help draw the viewer to him in the last panel, since otherwise the eye was likely to end up at Aldiirn.

I generally like bubbles to be tucked into their panels, either fully inside or up at the edges like “my condolences.” It looks neater than when bubbles are willy nilly over the edges which I see as a sign of poor planning. And! it means when you do break panel lines it can be more meaningful.

the 180 rule is a film/stage thing for composition to avoid confusing the audience, but the simplest way to put it is: if a character is on the left side of the scene, they should stay there until the action or whatever moves them. You can see here that Aldiirn is always on the right facing left, even when the camera is a bit behind him or a bit behind Gale. the 180 line is the front of Aldiirn’s tent, and the camera never crosses it in a way that would put Gale on the right.

I find it distracting when a conversation is happening in comic and a character breaks the 180 for no particular reason, though are times I’ve done it because a panel worked much better that way. The book Framed Ink has some great guides on composition and how to change the 180 line.

You can also see in the above comic that it’s arranged so that Gale’s always the first speaker in the panels he appears so there’s no criss cross bubble tails. Buuuut what if the first speaker is unavoidably on the right?

Stack the speech bubbles. You want the first speech bubble CLEARLY and undeniably the closest to the top left corner and then other speakers can go below.

the middle example above also has some examples of playing with the speech bubbles. Wyll’s “square-y round-y” bubble is the standard, the boxy ellipse. The tail has a slight, lanquid curve. He;s comfortable teasing the poor vampire. Aldiirn’s bubble is pointy! the tail straight! with urgency! And Astarion’s bubble and tail are burbling and grumbling through gritted teeth and pain. Varsh Ko’kuu, even though he’s speaking with a standard shaped bubble, has a sharp point in the tail that speaks to his assertiveness in protecting the egg. And Shadowheart has some hesitation with that wiggly tail.

Either hand drawing or using vector shapes for bubbles is fine, but I recommend staying away from true ellipses because they look static. Square-y round-y is where it’s at. Just make sure there’s enough space between text and edge of the bubble, usually enough to fit a capital H or W, but you can play with that spacing too.

The second panel here breaks the “first bubble goes top-left corner” rule, so it’s ambiguous if Gale or Aldiirn speaks first. However! In this case everyone is giving their responses in a jumble to Rath, so order matters less. I’m pretty sure every rule I’ve mentioned has a time and place to break it, but it’s still important to learn the basics first.

Key thing about comics typefaces: the capital I will have bars and the lower case will not. The barred I is used for I, as in, “I am not inclined to share” where the unbarred is used everywhere else.

When choosing a font, I recommend grabbing one that has Regular, Italic, and Bold/Bold Italic typefaces. I use Milk Moustache for my 4-panel comics because it’s very casual and similar weight to my own handwriting, but it doesn’t have an italic typeface and that drives me nuts sometimes. For the most flexibility, choose a font that has lower case AND uppercase type faces. I stick to upper case 90% of the time but lower case adds more options, like Aldiirn’s “really?” being so small due to his stressed state.

There are some official guides on what should be bold or italic in dialogues but they don’t matter as much unless you’re working for a big publisher with a style standard. Italics for thinking and whispering are common. I go with my gut, like Astarion’s speech is so dramatic I use italics and bold liberally, whereas for most others I may or may not just choose a key word to bold.

I think some programs will let you make text to fit a bubble instead of a square box, but tbh I just spend a lot of time manually making the text fit nicely in that bubble shape.

[the-borgias]

sorry if this has been asked before but how do you make your gradients look so good?

Hi Anon! First of all thank you so much 🫶

I like to use gradient maps (which I've explained here) or gradient fills + gradient tool. I'll drop a little tutorial under the cut:

GRADIENT FILL

I'll be using this gif which I've already sharpened and coloured:

First of all let's make the background pop so I'm going to add a gradient fill (Layer -> New fill layer -> Gradient) with these settings (I'm using this colour #0099ff):

Now it's the time to play with the blending settings! Depending on your scene some will look better than others but I usually switch between Soft Light, Overlay, Color or Hue. 90% of the time I use soft light but this scene looked much better using overlay:

As you can see the background looks more blue and vibrant but it's not too much you know.

GRADIENT TOOL

Now it's time to use the gradient tool to give this gif a hazy look. I haven't seen many gifmakers talk about this tool but it's soooo useful and it takes gradients to a whole new level.

Before using this tool we'll need to add a new layer above the gradient fill, like this:

(HELP I just realised I typed “later” instead of “layer” 🤡 but let’s ignore that)

You can choose the gradient tool by pressing 'G' and then clicking here:

Make sure your gradient goes from any colour to a transparent background.

Okay so next to this gradient settings we have five different styles and each one will create a different shape. Depending on the scene I'll use the first, second or fourth one. Here are how they look:

1. Linear gradient

2. Radial gradient + Reverse (if you don't click this you'll end up with a blue circle above your gif)

3. Reflected gradient + Reverse

This time I'm going to use the radial gradient so to draw it start by clicking on the centre of the gif and drag the line (the farther you drag it the less intense the gradient looks):

And this is the gradient:

And here comes the fun part again, playing with the blending setting and the opacity! Before doing anything I duplicate my gradient layer because I always use more than one so this is how your layers should look like:

Let's go to the first gradient tool layer and again try different blending modes: soft light, overlay, hue... Most of the time I'll use 'Soft layer' and I'll leave the opacity at 100%.

For the second layer choose 'Screen' and don't worry if your gif looks too bright because we're going to fix this by decreasing the opacity. Anything between 20-60% should look good but it depends if you want a more vibrant or more natural effect. I ended up using 40% and this is the result:

And we're done!!! As you can see the result looks much different from our first gif and it only takes a couple of layers!

Honestly the best advice I can give you is to play with the opacity and blending mode of the different gradient layers because depending on the scene some will look better than others!

[mechncheese]

I'm genuinely so fascinated with your art! it's got an interesting texture if that makes sense.

I remember on Instagram you saying digital touch ups/mixed media but I have such a hard time telling what's digital and what's traditional because it all gels together so well!

if you've ever made a post about your general process that I've missed, I'd love to see it!

anyway thanks for the transformers content, it's feeding my family out four rn

Awh omg thank you so much ! Yes, I've been doing a lot of mixed media lately and I'm glad people think my mixed media art looks seamless ! I'll take you on a journey down my mixed media process ! More below the cut !

I start out traditionally ! I sketched this piece with a colored pencil and went over it with a very thin fine point sharpie (I don't have microns </3) When I'm done I take the picture on my iPad, depending on the room lighting or time of day results vary, but it doesn't really matter how bad the lighting is as long as the lines look crisp.

Then I crank the hell out of the exposure and play around with the photo settings, lighting things up until it looks like this

I don't have exact specific settings for this since it varies depending on how bad the lighting I started with was so I just play around until it looks relatively good. I'm going for bright background with no shadows and crisp lines. Then I pop it into procreate !

First order of business after importing, new layer, color pick the background, fill the layer with the background color, then put the blend mode on divide ! This will get rid of the yellow lighting.

I use Procreate's halftone feature to apply it to my lineart before I color, it just gives it a fun effect.

For coloring, I go on a new layer and put that blend mode on multiply, this lets me color within the lineart, I block out my shapes (usually characters) in one solid color and then as I continue to color I just add layers and clip them together.

Here's a speedpaint for this piece, audio warning for music and flashing warning, especially at the end when I play around with blend modes + gradient maps

The brush I use for drawing over my lineart is Procreate's default gel pen, I slightly adjusted it so that it has a rougher look that blends in with the traditional lineart (the only thing I changed is the jitter amount)

Other brushes I used include; Abbie Nurse's Pan-Dem-Ink's Brushset (Skadouche and Blotto) for my onomatopoeias + blood, paper textures are from one of thedawner's procreate brush packs (I believe volume 3 or it might have been the mixed texture pack, the brushes are just called paper tex 4 and paper tex 5), 1 also use true grit supply's procreate texture bundle a ton for the ink splatter look next to some of the lines as well as the blood (drrty detail 4 + grunge shader - detailed)

For paper textures, I kinda layer them on and play with the opacity to give the piece an almost withered or worn out effect

When I'm done with the piece I slap more halftone on it and play around with the opacity until I'm happy

That's essentially it ! My process is mostly lost of experimenting and playing around until you find that sweet balance

[mikelogan]

if you ever have time/feel so inclined, i would love to see a tutorial or some tips from you about how to do color isolation sets!! they are absolutely incredible and I love them so much! <3

absolutely! thank you so much 💙

here are a few examples of my color isolation sets:

the substance (yellow) || beetlejuice (red) || us (red) || conclave (blue) || sleeping beauty (cyan/blue) || crimson peak (yellow) || smosh (purple) || conclave (red)

beneath the cut, i'll walk you through my coloring process!

notes: tutorial assumes basic gifmaking knowledge & i'm using adobe photoshop 2023 (though afaik, your version shouldn't matter much)

i don't color my gifs until they're sharpened and i'll give you a quick overview of my process: file -> import -> video frames to layers -> trim any extra frames -> crop to desired dimensions -> run sharpening action (i used this tutorial and just made it into an action) which also converts to timeline

once i'm in timeline, i go through my normal coloring process. unless i'm giffing similarly colored scenes that i've already colored and saved a psd for, i usually color from scratch every time. obviously, some adjustment layers vary depending on the source material, but these are almost always my main adjustments, just with differing values

a brightness/contrast layer set to screen - this is a gamechanger for especially dark scenes. note: i do not adjust the values, i leave them both at 0 and just change the blending mode

a curves layer utilizing the black & white eyedropper tools. first, i select the black eyedropper and then click on the blackest area of the gif. i do the same with the white one, using it to select the brightest/whitest spot. this can help a lot if you're dealing with heavily tinted scenes!

a selective color layer (set to absolute, not relative) where i adjust the blacks usually anywhere from 1-5 notches higher and the neutrals either up or down the same amount depending on the scene. be careful with the neutrals when giffing poc as lightening them can result in whitewashing. if need be, i will also adjust the whites, making them slightly whiter with the black slider. selective color is by far my fave adjustment layer and i use it in every single coloring.

after this, i sometimes add a black & white gradient map adjustment layer set to soft light. i'll play around with the opacity, leaving it anywhere between 5-100% depending on the scene. i think this adds depth to your colors and adds some contrast, but i don't use it in every psd.

occasionally, i'll mess around with vibrance/saturation, and that'll be my final layer, but oftentimes i won't actually add this layer until i've finished the rest of the coloring. this is just where the layer will go.

these are the main 5 layers i almost always start every single coloring with and they act mostly as a base and to color-correct any weirdly tinted or exceptionally dark scenes.

now, let's talk about scene selection. i try to set myself up for success by choosing scenes that either already have a very noticeable pop of color or have a color i know can easily be manipulated. you'll want to pick scenes that aren't drenched with the color you want to isolate though, or you won't have the contrast of the black & white.

here are a few examples of good scenes:

the only red here is the covered bridge and it will be easy to adjust only that and not the blue, green, or yellow.

same as above, apart from ralph fiennes's face, which obviously contains red undertones. i'll go more in-depth on this in a bit, but because this scene doesn't have a lot of movement, this will be able to be fixed with layer masks.

again, here we have one bright occurrence of yellow surrounded by blue that we'll easily be able to neutralize.

and a few of bad/less than ideal scenes:

while this scene is an absolute dream for making super vibrant sets or color palettes, it's no good for color isolation. this yellow covers basically everything, leaving no other colors to cancel out.

while i definitely did try this one out, the scene is ultimately too dark and too cyan-tinted to properly isolate the red of the blood or the cyan in her eyes and on the walls.

just like the first one, this scene is fully just. color drenched. would make a great base for a vibrant or color palette set but not useful for color isolation.

bad and wrong!! coloring this movie, however beloved, was a test of my sanity. you have this yellow/green filter over everything and so much of it that isolating or changing one or the other is pretty much impossible.

with all that being said, play around! the best way to learn what does what is to try it out yourself. selective color, though there are other ways of getting the same or similar effects, will be your best friend. it's how i'm able to make sets like this & this!

let's look at this adjustment layer using a scene from conclave:

truthfully, you could either isolate the orange of the wall or the blue of her outfit. i'm going for the latter at the moment.

add a selective color layer by clicking this button:

i like to really emphasize the color i'm going to isolate, make sure it's as consistent with the other scenes i'm using and that it pops. from the dropdown in the layer properties, i select blue.

each color from the dropdown will look like this. you have adjustable sliders for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. the more to the right, the more you're emphasizing that color in any blues in your image. the further to the left, the more of that color's opposite you'll adjust. each opposite pairing is as follows:

cyan + red magenta + green yellow + blue black + white

if you're struggling with this (i did at first), visualize it. pull up one of those "bad" examples. say we take the yellow scene from the gorge. add a selective color layer to it and select yellow from the dropdown. play with the sliders to see how AND how much each adjustment changes the coloring. decreasing the yellow slider all the way to -100% is adding blue to anything ps identifies as yellow. because yellow and blue are opposites, it pretty much neutralizes the scene. instead, if you use the magenta slider and push it all the way to the left, you make any yellows become green. if you move the magenta slider all the way to the right, you'll add magenta to any yellows, making the scene orange. it's all about knowing the color wheel and experimenting!

back to the conclave gif! i want to bring out the blue as much as possible, under the blue dropdown, i crank the cyan slider all the way up and bring the yellow all the way down.

is it a massive difference? no, but you can definitely see the difference between the left (with the adjustment) and the right (without).

depending on the scene and color i'm working with, i'll play around with other layers from the dropdown. but i prefer to do each color in a different layer and i right-click on the box with the eye in the layers panel and change it to the applicable color. that way, it's easier to adjust something later on. you can also rename your layers, but this is quicker and easier imo.

with this particular scene, this is the only adjustment i want to make to the blue for the time being. now, it's all about getting rid of any other colors. to do this, add a hue/saturation layer and select every color, one at a time, EXCEPT the color(s) you're isolating and bring the saturation all the way down to -100. in this case, it's everything but the cyans & blues.

and this is what i'm left with:

from here, you can leave it, but a lot of the time, i'll add a vibrance layer or even another blue/cyan selective color layer and crank that shit up.

this is after adding a vibrance layer (increasing both vibrance & saturation to 100) AND a selective color layer (decreasing the yellows to -100 in the blues).

i would consider this finished, but this can also be super fun to mess around with, again, using selective color:

and if the way her hair changed colors is bugging you, toggle your layers on and off until you find which one(s) changed it and add a layer mask, coloring over her hair with a soft black brush:

once you're happy with everything, save your gif in your preferred way. these are my save settings just for shiggles:

et voilà!

overall, the best advice i can give is to try. experiment! if you're not sure a scene will work, give it a shot. even if it doesn't, you've still learned something. i know it can seem confusing at first, especially if you're not super familiar with these layers or the color wheel, but please feel free to ask any questions. also, let me know if anyone wants another tutorial(s) where i go more in-depth on other colors. i'm happy to do it!

[tickfleato]

how to make cool blobby turing patterns in photoshop

i'll preface with i learned the basic loop from skimming a tutorial on youtube, but as someone who prefers written tutorials i'm sure many would appreciate one! also, the second part of this is some of the visual effects i figured out on my own using blending modes and stuff.

i'm using photoshop CS4 on a mac so some buttons and stuff might be in different places on windows and newer photoshop versions but all the actions are the same. my canvas is 1000x1000 pixels.

UPDATES (i'm hoping these'll show up whenever you open the readmore?)

it's possible to do something similar in krita using this plugin, made by the love @arcaedex

it's also possible to do this in photopea, a free browser alternative to photoshop! the results are pretty much identical.

FIRST off you wanna get or make a black and white image of some kind. it has to be one layer. can be noise, a photo, a bunch of lines, whatever. here's mine, just some quick airbrush lines:

now find the actions tab. idk what it looks like in newer versions of photoshop but you probably won't need to dig!

hit the little page thingy to make a new pattern. once you hit 'record', it'll record everything you do. the little square 'stop' icon will end it.

now you want to do a high pass filter. you can mess around with the radius to change the size of your squiggles, but the tutorial had it set to 6. experiment!

now add the 'threshold' adjustment layer. i use the adjustments tab but i think there's also a dropdown menu somewhere. keep it at the default, 128. merge it down. (control or command + E or you can right click it like some kind of weirdo)

and finally, the gaussian blur! the radius of this affects the shape and size of your squiggles as well. i like to keep it around 4.5 but you can mess around with that too.

after that, hit 'stop' on the action you're recording, and then repeat it a bunch of times using the 'play' button, until you have something you like, like this:

WOW!! that was fun!! and only a little tedious thanks to the power of macros. anyway, here's some fun layer blending stuff i like to do. it's with a different pattern cause i made this bit first.

anyway, using a black and white gradient (or a grey base that you do black and white airbrush on), make a layer with the vivid light. this will make the blobs look thicker or thinner.

then, for cool colors, do a gradient map adjustment layer over that:

and finally, my best friend, the overlay layer. just using a gradient here bc i'm lazy, but feel free to experiment with brushes, colors, and blending modes!

NOW GO. MAKE COOL SHIT WITH THE POWER OF MATH. AND SEND IT TO ME

also these are not hard and fast rules PLEASE mess around with them to see what kind of weird shit you can make. here's a gif. as you can see i added some random airblush blobs in the middle of it, for fun.

[www-bestiemme]

I realized i never posted these!! Here's my mlp founders redesigns :]

Under the cut notes, individual pictures compared to their og design and the bases for each drawing ^_^

Princess Platinum's outfit the same but i have changed her to resemble more medieval European unicorn.

l also added a bit of a red gradient to her to contrast Clover the Clever

More brown eyed horsies for my soul

I wanted her to look more regal, hence the royal bodytype

Her base is this drawing of Luna!

Clover the Clever was genderswapped with Private Passionflower (we'll get there) and the palette swapped with Smart Cookie.

The reason she was genderbent that the founders had 3 girls and 3 boys, but since i wanted to give Smart Cookie's colour palette to Clover that'd mean degreenify a girl, and we get so little green girls! So i gender-swapped but maintained the 3 girl 3 boys thing

As per her outfit, i found it weird all of the founders had pretty elaborate clothing except a ROYAL advisor, and the show was also indecisive of Clover's cloak as his original design shows the cloak from the Heart's Warming play but in the episode The Haunted Spell-venger hunt (a Matter of Principals)" they show a COMPLETELY different cloak. So i redesigned the whole thing inspired loosely by some medieval depictions of some

The base is Saffron Masala

Commander Hurricane is now coloured after hurricane heat maps :]

I changed his symbol to be the ACTUAL hurricane symbol, I don't understand the lighting dash OR the twilight ass cutie mark

I wanted him to look more gruff. Im assuming hes around the same time as Flash Magnus, which means the hearts warming tale wouldn't be his first rodeo yknow?

Here's his base

Private Pansy is now Private Passionflower, since he was originally a girl it didn't cary any implication. But now he's a dude, so it does

Also i wanted to get inspired off my childhood passion flowers!!

His outfit is more akin to the play one then the historical one

I struggled a lot with his colours looking spike-like, but i think they still do look like that :,)

Private Pansy was more akin to fluttershy's personality, I wanted Private Passionflower to be less shy and more Generally Awkward

I liked the heart’s warming play outfit better, so i based his off that

This is the base i used

Chancellor Puddinghead is now less-pudding more panna cotta, i just really like panna cotta. My favorite is the caramel one but he's frutti di bosco

The play outfit was once again SO MUCH CUTER compared to the historical one. I decided to keep it the exact same

I kept the bodytype the exact same!

Face marking kindaaa meant to resemble a mask like in the Commedia dell’Arte specifically pulcinella

The base is a screenshot I took of the praire dog trainer from Las Pegasus

Smart Cookie is not green anymore! She gave her green to Clover and is now a cookie like pingo horse

I changed her outfit from brown to blue for better contrast

Her eyes were originally blue with the yellow and orange being place holders but i really liked it

Her base

[emryx]

I just wanted you to know that the way you draw Teia and Viago are just so so so gorgeous and I could stare at them for hours. The pic in the bathtub? I can FEEEEL the emotion. Viago post-snake bite? 10/10 it's perfect. The pic as your header? The sexual tension is PALPABLE like just kiss her already . Teia in your recent pic is so fierce and angry and gorgeous I can't stop looking at her. I'm sorry I just needed to gush about them because they're just so greatttt. Ty for your contribution to the fandom 🥹💕

GAH THIS HAS BEEN SITTING IN MY ASKS FOR A WHILE JSKSKSMCS I wanted to wait until I had something Teiago to answer with but life got busy and artblock threw a brick at my head…

Thank you SO MUCH 🥺💜 Reading this for the first time made my day and it still does even now. It makes me happy that people enjoy these two as much as I do—I’ve noticed a lot more content for them popping up since the time I first got hooked, but they still don’t have as much as many other characters and ships and I’m in a perpetual state of rattling the bars of my enclosure for more mdkfks I love them dearly and even if I take some breaks for my own blorbos, I’m always gonna come back to them.

I give some comfy art from me playing with my gradient maps <3

[improvapocalyps]

"Okay, yeah. If you kill a red name, killed a red name-" "I'll give you a life for that. That's the deal." "We'll be back together like buddies again, Bdubs."

In participation of Extreme Timed Challenge Gift Exchange hosted by @extremetimedchallengeexchange!

[gifs, full storyboard, behind-the-scene rambles under cut]

past 48h animatics: MCYTETC2023, ETC2023

[Red Lives-Suspicion; Prayer-Determination; Fireworks]

Fiddled with gradient maps this time for some additional colors :D I would have colored in the eyes as well, but I didn't have enough energy left when the event hit the 47th hour xD

Also played around with camera movements. Respect to people who do fan edits and other forms of video/ assets editing 'cause keyframes are so 😭

13 hours to draft storyboard this time! Last year I used 16 but with waaay more frames idk how I accomplished that. Probably bc this year I'm drawing more than three(3) characters lmao

Progress Timeline:

[13th hour] finished storyboard/ draft (plany off time...) [25th hour] lineart for the first 10 seconds (wuh oh) [36th hour] lineart for the first 25 seconds (oh shit oh fuck gotta shorten it) [45th hour] finished Bdubs' part (NOOO I DONT HAVE TIME FOR ETHO)

ngl kinda glad i cut it in half rn 'cause i'd have to spend time figuring out shadowDog's design /lh

Designs I used for Lizzie and Joel (old art from 2022 and 2021 respectively) (holy shit i've been here for 3 years???)

Joel *shakes fist* i hate u and ur stupid beard

[Lyrics vibe/scene planning; hours before disaster]

I think most of the drawn parts didn't deviate from the initial idea. Mostly timing adjustments and building upon the vibes. The parts that were changed the most was the "And you caused it (×3 combo)".

Went from "vague flashbacks" to "following Etho and co. out of the cave and back to Scott's base while implying who Etho blames with single character focus shots".

The first one is Scott because he suggested the idea. Like, obviously he's to blame. It's not like Etho went along and cemented the deal himself. Scott totally peer-pressured him into it.

The second one is Etho because... well the scene ends up kind of being like. The sight of the Snow Fortress triggering a flashback. (EthosLab the content creator deliberately turned his camera towards the Snow Fortress and holds it there for a second instead of looking at the huge lava pillar right in front of him. What is WRONG with him.)

But also like. Clocks are kind of special to Bdubs right. Whoever gave him a clock basically has his (temporary) loyalty or at the least earned a favor from him. So like. If he hadn't gifted Bdubs the clock, which signifies a closer(?) bond, maybe Bdubs wouldn't be so devoted to him (wrong). Also serves as a call-back/ reference to the "Prayer-Determination" shot ("pray with clock" in the scene planning screenshot). I like to think that Bdubs weighted his options and thought about "if he will kill/ who to kill" a lot while following the other Red Names. And in that scene he's like, convincing/ motivating himself. Remembering who/ what he's doing this for.

(It is also meant to be part of my giftee's other prompt: "an exploration of the doubt one or both of them felt during the heart transfer that didn’t happen after Bdubs killed Lizzie, and the following guilt Etho felt." The Etho section starting from "we're setting fire to our inside for fun" til the end of the animatic is based on that prompt.)

After a brief period of self-blame, it's time to shift it onto someone else! Because you're in denial! If Bdubs hadn't gone red, then Etho wouldn't have to offer the deal. If Bdubs hadn't want to stay as teammates, then he wouldn't agree to the deal. If Bdubs wasn't so devoted to Etho, then he wouldn't have attacked Lizzie and gotten himself killed.

Then the animatic ends with the end of the session :D

...That's longer than I expected but also not that long. If you read through all that, tysm :] Tell me your thoughts! Have a good day/ evening/ night :D

[strawberry-seal77]

Hii!!! YTTD fanart from my inprogress playthrough with @rookeryyy!!!

We took a 15-20 minute break from playing and 7 hours later this image was sitting on my screen fully formed. also rook drew sara's warrior cats purrsona!!!

Extra images and thoughts under the cut!!!

Time Spent: 7 hours 24 minutes

Okay so first thing, if it's not obvious, this is them playing warrior cats on the playground!! We have decided they do this. Shadow the hedgehog and baby baby shadow are part of the awesome sillyness that happens when you make a drawing on vc!! Though baby baby shadow himself is a longer running joke between us.

Second thing, this playthrough is SUPER FUN !!!!! Chat and I split the voices evenly (somehow) and we've been adding on silly little bits as we play!!! Like Sara sleeping through the instructions of the gun game (and yet winning flawlessly) and Joe having unwaivering confidence in her.

Also Sara threatening to beat people up, as we see above <33

Though it DOES mean the game takes much longer to get through, especially if you're taking a SEVEN HOUR BREAK to draw FBDJHSBFH

the drawing was INTENDED to be a quick doodle but. as you can see. its gone past that

I had a good amount of struggle with Sara's fist, as I originally had her body turned away from the camera to look mainly at Joeheart, BUT it wasnt working, and I think it looks much better this way anyhow <33

The drawing was first sketched, then colored in grayscale, colors were put on by overlay layer, and after that I did a whole lotta paintover!! <3 As shown below

After I did the greyscale I actually had to use a gradient map to make the darks darker, cause I have a tendency to pick really light colors. All is well though!!

We decided that Sara would be leader of the warrior cats group on the playground, hence being Sarastar, and Joe would be a dog! She takes being a leader very seriously, including hiding snacks around the playground for her clan to hunt! I think I even smell a doritos bag by that bush over there...!!

It's not as obvious in my image as in Rook's, but we also decided that Sara identifies as a gun (because me saying "as a gunslinger" was misheard to be "as a gun"), and Joe is a furry.

im soo happy with this <3 theres so much to LOOK AT Im not used to large canvases <33

[karnkritsanaphan]

Hi, You make such amazing Amazing gifsets !!! I had a small question about one of your sets 🥹

https://www.tumblr.com/khaotungthanawat/748206993697882112/i-ought-to-stick-to-another-man-a-man-that-surely?source=share

This is so pretty first of all❤️. I wanted to ask, how do we get the effect in the first gif, where the gif actually is like playing on a film reel/screen inside a black bigger gif? Thank you so much for any help 💛💛

hi! thank you so much!!! i don't have the psd for that anymore, but i'll make it again using the same effects. 💞

before i get started, this tutorial makes a couple of assumptions:

you're working in photoshop

you know how to make a gif in photoshop

(as a note, i work in timeline.)

so there are three overlays at play here: the pink lights, the scratches, and the super 8 frame.

i'll start with the lights. the light leaks overlay i used for this effect can be found here on youtube. once i had the overlay gif ready, i placed its layer at the top of all of my other layers and set it to screen. (you can also try lighten for this--it really comes down to what you like best!).

next i added a gradient map adjustment layer with a black to pink gradient. i'm pretty sure i left the blending mode on normal for this, and added a clipping mask to clip it to the light leaks layer.

and here's what i have so far:

okay! next layer is the scratches. there are lots of these on youtube, but i used this one! similar to the light leak, i set this on top of everything else and set it to screen. i also added another gradient map adjustment layer, this time just a simple black to white gradient, and another clipping mask to keep the bw strictly to that overlay.

which gives me this:

for the black frame, i used the super 8 frame overlay found in this pack (it's free) by neal chopra! once i had this gif ready, i slapped that on top of all of the the other layers. now, since the center of this gif is solid white, if you use screen/lighten, you'll have have a big white box covering your gif.

boo hiss! so what i did instead was set my blending mode to multiply.

and now i'm here:

i did some additional tweaking to get adjust placements, added contrast closer to what i wanted, slapped some text on it, and this is my final result:

again, here are the video overlay links:

light leaks

scratches

super 8 frame

i'm not good at tutorials, but i hope this made sense and is helpful to you. feel free to drop an ask if you have more questions. happy giffing!

[darckxlady]

could you please do a tutorial of your game of thrones 'so much for stardust' gifs where it has the ripped paper textures? it's so pretty, and i'd like to learn how to do one with just the texture in the middle and two gifs on either side, like half and half and just having a rip in the middle. it's so cool how you did a gif in the middle though so i wanted to ask as well! all of them are so cool looking. you are extremely talented. if you don't want to though i understand :) thank you

TORN PAPER EFFECT + BLENDING TUTORIAL

thank you so much for your sweet words, dearest anon and i'm sorry it took so long to answer but it's here now so i'll try my best to explain <3 disclamer: this is the first tutorial i ever made, it's very screenshot heavy and it assumes the basic knowledge of ps and gifmaking. if there's something you don't understand, don't hesitate to ask <3 so, let's get to it!

1. PREPARING THE BASE As you can see in this shot there's a lot of space between Rhaenyra and Alicent and that makes it perfect for the ripped paper overlay without hiding much of the base gif. So the first thing i did was to crop it like this:

Also you want to make sure that the highlighted box (delete cropped pixels) is unchecked! After taking the usual steps for the animation (creating frames from layers, reversing the frames, setting frame delay) you continue with the video timeline and convert your frames into a smart object. psa: if you don't have the motivation or the time to play around with coloring here are some psds i recommend: 1, 2; as for the sharpening i think this one is the best.

now that you have your smart object sharpened and colored what you want to do next is drag it to the end of the canvas and duplicate it. after that you move the copy on the other end like the original and make sure it's under the coloring layers, like this:

After that you have to create layer masks (the highlighted icon above) for both smart object and the copy and change the blending option of the copy to screen or lighten (whatever looks best!). So this is how it looks now:

pls ignore that there are no layer masks on the smart objects i just added them after changing the blending rip </3 Now, as you see both gifs are like fighting eachother for their rightful place on the canvas. (fgfgfdf) To fix that you have to use a soft round brush to delete the parts you don't want. (feel free to play around with the brush however you want to get the result you want!) Here's my result:

2. THE OVERLAY

Now for the both gifs you want to use for the ripped paper effect you pretty much apply the same steps as the ones you did with the gifs for the base. Here are the two gifs i chose:

Before blending both gifs however you want to create a clipping mask for each of the smart objects coloring layers, like this:

And now you're ready to blend both gifs together! You choose the group with one of the gifs and change the blending again to screen or lighten and place the said group on top of the other. So this is how it looks now:

optional: if you feel like the base gif doesn't pop out enough you can always add a gradient map on one of both gifs and play around with the opacity and the color you think fits best.

Then you add a layer mask on the overlay gif group and again play around with the brush to delete what you don't want. So this is the final result:

ps - don't repeat my mistake by placing the group with the layer mask under the other group. it should be on top and the blending option should be lighten or screen.

After blending both gifs together, you're ready to place them on the base. So first thing you want to do first is place both groups of each gif in one single group together. Then you duplicate the said group in the psd of the base gif and create a layer mask. This is how it should looks:

Now, in order to create the ripped paper effect, you'll have to download a ripped paper brush pack. This is the one i use. After loading the brushes in ps (if you don't know how here is explained) you're ready to begin! Change the size and angle however you'd like to make it look how you want. And if you want you can move the overlay gif by choosing both groups in case you aren't happy with the adjustment. This is how it looks like so far:

We're almost done! Now you have to find a paper texture, (i got mine from google) place it between both groups of your gifs and create a layer mask, like so:

What you have to do here is pretty much the same thing you did with the overlay gifs. Still, make sure there's enough space for the text you want to write in. However, if you think that the space isn't enough you can just delete a bit more of the overlay gifs. Here's mine:

3. THE TEXT

You're finally ready to type out the text you want! If you're having troubles with choosing the right font and size, here are my text settings:

You can always play around with the angle and if your text is too small, zoom in so you can place it just how you like it. And since i'm a bit lazy to deal with it later, i choose to add the highlight color while it's still zoomed. You just have to add an layer above the text and use a soft round brush with opacity from 70-75% and flow from 15-18%.

For the repeated text you want to make sure you create a big space for writing so it can contain the whole space of the torn paper. Also, write where the text will be seen only and use the tab button to skip the space where the gif is. This is how it looks:

Once you're done with writing the repeated text, you want to select all the character layers and the highlight layer and move them under the overlay gif and on top of the paper, like this:

With the layers still selected and in order to contain the text within the paper the last thing you want to do is create a clipping mask. And that's It. You're done! This is the final result:

[kozachenko]

(Click the image for better quality)

Yipeeee that Keiki and Mayumi fanart I posted the WIP of is finally done woooo- This piece was a very experimental one that I'm kind of OK on. Maybe because I've just gone insane looking at it for so long and I'm my own worst critic lol.

Artist's Notes;

So I've once again been playing around with my rendering style, mainly because I have been wanting to improve my lighting for a while now and as I was just scrolling through Tumblr, I saw some of the official art for that one webcomic-turned-animated-TV-Show Lackadaisy and was immediately inspired. I also have seen a technique a few times in the past where the lineart and shading are merged together, so I've been meaning to try that for a little while.

I did some experimentation on this one sketch of Keiki I posted in my sketch dump and I really liked the results of it, so I carried those over to this piece.

I ended up scaling up Keiki and Mayumi from the original WIP because I felt like they were both getting lost in the composition, and I'm glad for that because I think it works a lot better. I'm not a fan of how Mayumi's sword turned out at all, but it's not really meant to be the focus of the piece so eh. Overall, I think I could do better with my colours, probably because with Keiki and Mayumi's colours, I did them flat in greyscale and then used a brush on the overlay blend mode to colour all of them over, after which I changed the base layer for their colours from white to yellow and then lowered the opacity so it all went together better. I also decided to use gradient maps for a lot of the background elements, mainly to experiment with getting in my values first to make them pop out more. I ended up finding a really nice sky gradient on Clip Studio Paint that I really liked, and that kinda helped to establish the colour scheme of the background a lot. I think the whole "start in greyscale then colour" thing really works better with painterly styles rather than more illustrative ones, and while it is good at making sure your values are more readable, I honestly don't think I have the skill level to pull that off yet. Honestly, I think I've been looking at this drawing too long or maybe I added too much to it, but I wish I could've made the colours less monochromatic, but I'll just save that for the next piece I do.

I do love how the flame (...well it's more of a weird space rift than anything in this piece) and the lighting turned out, those were fun to do. I was initially struggling with the flame and how Mayumi is positioned in front of it before realizing "Oh wait! This is a weird abstraction of a weird creature! I don't have to follow the laws of anatomy!" and just dislocated it's flamey bottom jaw from the main body. I also changed the colours of it since I was really not liking how incredibly bright it was when it had lighter colours. Again, the gradient maps served the more painterly style of the flames well.

I also love how Mayumi turned out. I could do her sleeves better but that's more of just me needing to study how those types of sleeves fold in that position more. I'm also very happy with the posing, the technique I used for that was taking photos of myself in the positions I wanted, blocking in the silhouette and then modifying that by adjusting it to my lines of action that I drew on top of the original photos, and then sketching over the silhouettes and drawing in the shapes of the hands overtop of the photo if I needed to get the fine details right. As for what I do to take the pictures myself, I use a tall chair I have, prop up my phone with a phone stand, put on a ten second timer and scramble to get in position. Yes, I did have to use a bunch of thin markers I had to try and get the hand positioning on Keiki's pose right, yes I do have a fake sword that I used to get the positioning of Mayumi's arms and hand right, the sword was for an old Halloween costume from several years ago. I really like how both Keiki and Mayumi turned out in this drawing, I'll have to play around with these designs for them more in future drawings.

Also, if you wanna know why I draw buildings like that, when I watched Fantasia 2000 as a kid (One of the Disney movies where they make really beautiful animations to classical music) the way they drew the buildings in the first few sections Rhapsody in Blue segment (the jazz one with the cities) changed my brain chemistry and now whenever I need to draw buildings really quickly, I refer back to that. Since the buildings aren't really the main subject, I didn't put much thought into them.

As you can tell I am very tired of this piece, mainly because I made things harder for myself by overcomplicating the process compared to what I usually do, mainly with the whole "starting in grayscale then adding colour." I'd honestly just prefer having a black layer set to colour that I can just toggle on and off when I need to see the values, but it was good to experiment. And that was mainly the point of this whole drawing, to experiment. I'm definitely going to have to play around with this new style I'm going for, mainly because I liked how it turned out a lot in the augmented Keiki sketch, and also because I want to find ways of making it suit my style more. I also really want to keep experimenting with my lighting like this, it's very fun. Last but not least I am never starting in greyscale again because dear god I do not like the workflow it forced me into. I don't have a problem with the method itself it's mainly just a skill issue lol.

If you wanna read my headcanons for these two, I put them in my WIP post, so you can read them there if you want to. The more I look at this the more I prefer the simplicity of my WIP. I might go back to this and just take away the fancy colours and effects to see what it looks like without all of that stuff and reblog this post with that drawing, but for now, I don't think I can look at this drawing again for a while.